Sunday, July 10, 2022

07/10 Links: The Other Special Relationship; Palestinians never cared about Shireen Abu Akleh; Twitter Debates Whether Anne Frank Had 'White Privilege'

From Ian:

The Other Special Relationship
REVIEW: 'The Arc of a Covenant' by Walter Russell Mead
The implication that Jews deserve a home of their own, but at a safe distance, helps explain the historical resistance of most American Jews to the Zionist movement. Among the paradoxes of the "special relationship" is that it often seems to connect American Christians with Israeli Jews, leaving their American cousins out of the picture. Before the Second World War, the American Jewish establishment distanced itself from Zionism, insisting that the United States was the modern promised land. It was only after the exposure of Nazi horrors and the recognition that the United States would not accept large numbers of Jewish refugees that many American Jews embraced Zionism—usually at the level of abstract principle rather than as a personal goal. Some of the old resistance has even returned in recent years. Inclined to religious and political liberalism, the American Jewish community has drifted away from an increasingly Orthodox and hawkish Israeli society.

Mead is not naïve about the geopolitical incentives that drew the United States closer to Israel around the middle of the 20th century. The book's most original chapters explain how American strategists came to regard Israel as an ally in the Cold War. This process was slower and more tentative than conventional accounts suggest. When Kennedy offered his dramatic assurance to Meir, Mead notes, France and West Germany were still Israel's major suppliers of weapons. And Kennedy's goal was not to unleash Israeli power, but provide security assurances that might dissuade Israel from pursuing nuclear weapons.

Still, Mead mounts a compelling critique of what he calls "Vulcan theory"—a reference not to Star Trek but to the 19th-century theory that irregularities in the orbit of Mercury were caused by a hitherto unknown planet (dubbed "Vulcan" by the French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier). Mead adopts the term to describe a different way of accounting for the apparently disproportionate role of Israel in American foreign policy. In this view, cultural affinities and overlapping priorities are not sufficient explanations of the close, though not codified, alliance. There must be some sinister explanation, often linked to the dual loyalties of Jews or eschatological hopes of evangelical Christians.

But there's no need to make such dubious assumptions. American support for the state of Israel since 1948 is sufficiently explained by mainstream public opinion, including a predilection for the perceived underdog. Nor are these views limited to the right, which now dominates the "pro-Israel" issue. Before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in fact, enthusiasm for Israel was more characteristic of the American left, which saw the Jewish state not only as the haven of an embattled minority but also a model of democratic socialism. This perception of Israel was somewhat mythological—as is the image of a Jewish Sparta that has largely replaced it. But that doesn't mean it wasn't sincerely believed by many ordinary Americans—or the politicians who took their opinions seriously.

But Mead's riposte to Vulcan theory isn't limited to Middle East policy. This large, somewhat ungainly book exceeds the boundaries of its nominal subject in mounting a case against any attempt to reduce American foreign policy to the mechanistic calculation of quantifiable interests. This kind of Vulcanism—more like Spock than Le Verrier—simply fails to understand the influence of ideas, culture, and history on America's intensely moralistic politics. Although it's unlikely to change any readers' views about U.S. relations with Israel, The Arc of a Covenant sheds welcome light on why they have been—and remain—so distinctively, often frustratingly, special.
Biden: My Flight from Israel to Saudi Arabia Symbolizes a Budding Normalization
President Joe Biden on Saturday published an op-ed in The Washington Post (Joe Biden: Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia) describing his upcoming visit to the Middle East this week as an effort “to start a new and more promising chapter of America’s engagement there.”

Arguing that “the Middle East I’ll be visiting is more stable and secure than the one my administration inherited 18 months ago,” (a debatable statement) Biden revealed: “In my first weeks as president, our intelligence and military experts warned that the region was dangerously pressurized. It needed urgent and intensive diplomacy.”

“With respect to Iran,” Biden wrote, “we reunited with allies and partners in Europe and around the world to reverse our isolation; now it is Iran that is isolated until it returns to the nuclear deal my predecessor abandoned with no plan for what might replace it. Last month, more than 30 countries joined us to condemn Iran’s lack of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency on its past nuclear activities. My administration will continue to increase diplomatic and economic pressure until Iran is ready to return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, as I remain prepared to do.”

He better hurry. In May 2022, the head of the UN’s atomic watchdog IAEA, Rafael Grossi, warned that Iran has been dragging its feet on information about uranium particles found at old undeclared locations in the country. On June 9, 2022, according to Grossi, Iran inflicted a near-fatal blow to the chances of restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal when it began dismantling virtually all of the IAEA monitoring equipment put under the agreement. For the record, Iran has several research sites, two uranium mines, a research reactor, and uranium processing facilities that include three known uranium enrichment plants. Depending on whose estimate you choose to believe, Iran is weeks or months away from having a nuclear device or already has one.

On June 30, Reuters reported, citing a senior US official, that the chances of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal were worse after indirect US-Iranian talks in Doha, Qatar. The Iranians keep moving goal posts, and, according to the official, “their vague demands, reopening of settled issues, and requests clearly unrelated to the JCPOA all suggests to us … that the real discussion that has to take place is (not) between Iran and the US to resolve remaining differences. It is between Iran and Iran to resolve the fundamental question about whether they are interested in a mutual return to the JCPOA.”

So that the president’s notion of reaching a resolution any time soon through increased diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran is a bunch of malarkey, as he himself would have put it.

Biden moved on: “In Israel, we helped end a war in Gaza — which could easily have lasted months — in just 11 days. We’ve worked with Israel, Egypt, Qatar, and Jordan to maintain the peace without permitting terrorists to rearm. We also rebuilt U.S. ties with the Palestinians. Working with Congress, my administration restored approximately $500 million in support for Palestinians, while also passing the largest support package for Israel — over $4 billion — in history. And this week, an Israeli prime minister spoke with the president of the Palestinian Authority for the first time in five years.”

The $4 billion sum Biden cited includes the annual portion of the 10-year, $38 billion military aid package signed under President Barack Obama in 2018, plus a one-time, $1 billion Iron Dome emergency aid to Israel the administration passed through Congress in March. It brings to mind once again the fact that with its $481.59 billion GDP, Israel should stop its dependence on American handouts and pay for the stuff it needs. And then be completely free to sell its fantastic military merchandise to everywhere else for much, much more than $4 billion a year.


TMZ: Twitter Debates Whether Anne Frank Had 'White Privilege'
Twitter is yet again proving it's the worst for bulk bad takes -- this time, debating whether Anne Frank, who was hunted and killed by Nazis, had white privilege while alive.

You might've noticed the late Holocaust victim was trending Saturday, but finding out why is disheartening ... some, it seems, have floated an argument that Frank benefited from white privilege in Nazi Germany -- an argument that is rightly being shot down left and right.

Unclear how this toxic discourse first started, but it seems to stem from a warped notion that Jews had the benefit of their skin color to go unnoticed in public, if only temporarily, during that bleak time in history ... while POC, historically, haven't been able to do so.

The theory is so twisted, and yet ... it's being defended by a select few on the bird app ... despite a vast majority of folks swooping in to bat down the rhetoric by noting that Jews were, in fact, seen and treated as an inferior race in an ethnic sense ... and that Anne Frank was murdered specifically because she was Jewish. Plus, she was in hiding!

As someone wisely put it, "Anne Frank didn’t have white privilege…you wanna know why? Jewish people aren’t included when white nationalists define the perfect Aryan race. If you think she did, tell that to all the other innocent jewish people forced into concentration camps for not being white enough."

In other words, Jews were not considered one and the same as Nazis at the time, by said Nazis, even pigmentation-wise -- evidenced in their literal extermination by the millions.

This harkens back to another weird debate from a few years ago, when folks were going after Hellen Keller -- who was both blind and deaf -- for only have achieved such notoriety and success in her day due to her own "white privilege." That was bad, this is much worse.

This also seems to be in the same vein as what Whoopi Goldberg put forth on 'The View' this year ... when she likened the Holocaust to one group of white people against another, and not wanting to conflate that with racial oppression experienced by African-Americans.


‘He stood up for Israel at every turn’: UK Jewish group hails resigning premier
The British Jewish group Conservative Friends of Israel has thanked departing Prime Minister Boris Johnson for his steadfast support for Israel following his announcement that he will resign from his position.

CFI issued a statement on Thursday applauding Johnson, who announced his resignation earlier that day, for being “resolute in his support of the State of Israel and the U.K.’s Jewish community.”

“From announcing legislation to tackle pernicious boycotts of Israel to proscribing the Hamas terror group in its entirety, Boris Johnson has stood up for Israel at every turn,” proclaimed CFI’S parliamentary chairmen and directors. “The U.K.-Israel relationship is stronger than ever before and, under his leadership, the government has opposed anti-Semitism in all its forms and wherever it occurs.”

The Jewish group added that Johnson’s win over vocal anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party in the 2019 election was “a pivotal moment in our country’s history and for the U.K.’s Jewish community.”

StandWithUs executive director Michael Dickson similarly hailed Johnson’s support for Israel after the latter shared news of his resignation. Dickson said in a statement on Twitter: “Goodbye to Boris, who was a big supporter of strong U.K.-Israel relations, which have continued to grow and grow to the benefit of both nations, and I anticipate his successor, whoever he or she may be, will be, too.”


Let's play a game and see if you can find out what's fake and what's news



Palestinians never cared about Shireen Abu Akleh - opinion
It's no secret that I strongly disagreed with the way the Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, portrayed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After all, Al Jazeera is fully funded and owned by the State of Qatar – the same country that provides millions of dollars to Hamas annually.

Shireen Abu Akleh was tragically killed on May 11 while reporting about an armed clash between Palestinian terrorists and Israeli troops in Jenin, Samaria.

Videos from the scene showed Palestinian terrorists opening fire from civilian neighborhoods and civilian rooftops onto Israeli forces. Any respected media outlet would immediately ask why they were shooting from civilian streets, between homes. Likewise, they would at least raise the possibility that perhaps Abu Akleh was killed by those terrorists. But because Israel is involved, such questions don't apply.

Before an investigation was even conducted, the UN, together with the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and other mainstream media outlets, blamed Israel for her death and called for an investigation. Usually, one investigates first and only then attribute blame after considering all the facts. Yet, this is rarely the case when it comes to Israel, if ever. In fact, it's almost always the opposite.

For two months, the Palestinian Authority refused to hand over the bullet that killed the journalist to investigators. This raises the question – if Palestinians have nothing to hide, and if it's clear that she was killed by Israel – why did they refuse to give the bullet to a third party, only relenting after receiving significant American pressure? Because the longer they let the mystery of Abu Akleh's death simmer, the longer they could exploit the tragedy.
Rashida Tlaib urges Biden to get names of IDF troops from Abu Akleh shooting
During his trip to Israel, US President Joe Biden should obtain the names of soldiers involved in the operation in which Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed, US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said in a statement on Friday.

"During his upcoming meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, President Biden must obtain the names of the soldiers responsible for killing Shireen, along with that of their commanding officer, so that these individuals can be fully prosecuted for their crimes by the Department of Justice," Tlaib wrote.
"When an American citizen is murdered abroad, it is typically standard procedure for the US to open a criminal investigation."
Rashida Tlaib

"Targeted Assassination"
Abu Akleh's death was likely a "targeted assassination," said Tlaib, citing a probe by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and open-source intelligence investigations by news outlets such as CNN and The Washington Post.

Tlaib said that the US State Department and FBI must open a criminal investigation of Abu Akleh since she was an American citizen. The IDF has said that it will not open have military police open a criminal investigation into the incident with the information currently available

"When an American citizen is murdered abroad, it is typically standard procedure for the US to open a criminal investigation," she wrote. "But in this case, the State Department and the Biden Administration have yet to launch an independent US investigation."


West Bank Security Fence Has Been Israel’s Lifesaver
Semantics matter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Is it the West Bank or Judea and Samaria? Are the areas Israel gained control over in the Six Day War “occupied” territories or “disputed” ones? Do Jews beyond the Green Line live in “settlements” or “communities?”

More often than not, the word selection reflects a worldview.

This is one reason former prime minister Naftali Bennett got in such trouble with the right-wing for using the term “West Bank’’ during a press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in March. Up until then, Bennett had always referred to the areas as Judea and Samaria. Was this just a slip of the tongue, or was Bennett sliding left, semantic evidence of a changing worldview?

In the same vein, how one refers to the meandering fence built close to the Green Line at the height of the second intifada says much about a person’s politics. Call it the “separation barrier,” and you likely believe in a two-state solution and want to “separate” from the Palestinians. Call it the “security fence” or “security barrier” and you likely see it as a defensive barrier meant to save lives.

Refer to it as the “Apartheid Wall,” and it is abundantly clear where you stand. Roger Waters calls it the apartheid wall, as does – most likely – the chairperson of Ben & Jerry’s board of directors.

The anti-Israel, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists have turned what they call the “apartheid wall” into the symbol of what they deem as Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. No wonder, then, that on campuses that hold “Israel Apartheid Week” events, replicas of the wall are erected on ivy-lined quads to illustrate the purported evils of Zionism. For those referring to the barrier as an apartheid wall, it is no less than the 21st-century incarnation of the Berlin Wall, designed with one thing in mind: to quash freedom.


Better to be a Jew Than Gay in Gaza, Says Gazan LGBTQ Man
“The lives of LGBTQ young people on the Palestinian streets, and especially in Gaza, are hell,” Ahmad, a 27-year-old from Gaza, a gay man who conceals his orientation and any sign that might identify him, told TPS.

Ahmed, a resident of a neighborhood near Gaza City, told TPS in a phone call, after promising to hide his identity, that “here in Gaza under Hamas rule, it is better for you to convert to Judaism and leave Islam and even better to be perceived as a spy for the Israeli Shin Bet and not declare your gay. Hamas may hang you from the lower part of your body.”

Young members of the PA Arab LGBTQ community testified that many of them are subjected to severe punishment even within their families. One of the shocking phenomena is damage to the various organs of the body, as a step of threatening to damage their genitals as well, all with the aim of redeeming them “from the disease” that has infected them.

The Palestinian Authority has not passed legislation for or against gay rights, but the chairman of the Palestinian Authority issued an order on May 20, 1994, stipulating that legislation and laws that were in force before June 5, 1967, in the West Bank under Jordanian rule and the Gaza Strip will remain in force. Under the old legislation, homosexuality is legal in the PA but is illegal in the Gaza Strip.

However, gay rights are not protected in either the PA or the Gaza Strip, and there is no specific civil rights legislation in the PA that protects LGBTQ people from discrimination or harassment.

In Gaza, under Hamas, which has already introduced Muslim Sharia law into the judiciary, the situation of young gay people is even more difficult. In 2016, members of the Hamas military wing killed one of their comrades, Muhammad Shtiwi, after it was discovered that he was gay.

In Arab society, according to data published by the Arab LGBTQ community in eastern Jerusalem, there is a very high suicide rate among young LGBTQ people, compared to western societies.
PMW: From incitement to terror and attempted murder: The PA-Fatah attack on Jewish worshippers at Joseph’s Tomb
As Palestinian Media Watch often reports, the Palestinian Authority continuously incites violence and terror. As a general rule, it is often difficult to attribute specific attacks to a particular event, speech, or publication, rather than the general atmosphere of incitement. However, on some occasions even though the incitement is subtle, timing and geographical location leave little doubt that incitement fueled a specific terror attack.

The terror attack carried out by Palestinian terrorists on the night of June 29, in which they attempted to murder Jews visiting the site of Joseph’s Tomb, is a perfect example.

The tomb of the biblical Joseph, son of Jacob, rests in the city of Nablus, which is under the complete control of the PA. It is one of the sites specifically mentioned as a “Jewish Holy Site” in the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Peace Agreement. Agreed security arrangements are meant to “ensure free, unimpeded and secure access to the site” and “ensure the peaceful use of such site, to prevent any potential instances of disorder…” (Article V, annex I, Israeli-Palestinian Interim Peace Agreement).

Despite the explicit commitment, Jews are only permitted to visit the site - usually only once a month - in organized convoys protected by the Israeli army under the cover of darkness. Jews who attempt to enter the site without prior coordination face potential death, as was the case with Ben-Yosef Livnat, who visited the site in April 2011 without coordination, and was killed by members of the PA Security Forces.

In order to prevent even the organized visits, the PA rewrites history, claiming the tomb as an Islamic waqf - i.e., an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law. The visits of Jews to the site are condemned and referred to as “invasions.”
PA security forces gives “military training” to kids age 7 - to fight “the sons of dogs
Host Muhammad Mundhir Al-Batta: “From the day that Fatah set out in 1965, the leadership has shown great interest in the lion cubs and flowers – [boys and girls] under 18, because we all understand that our conflict with the occupation is a very long conflict… Thus, Fatah established a training camp for children next to every military base of the Al-Asifa – in Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, and Algeria. (Images are shown of armed children -Ed.)
They gave them military training, and then advanced to disassembling and assembling weapons. They taught them the history of Palestine, why we carry weapons, and who we are fighting. Arafat and the Fatah leadership were present at the training courses, and gave them certificates [on completing] the military course for Fatah children…

Texts on screen: “Beirut 1978”
“Jordan 1968”

The national [PA] Security Forces contacted me and told me: ‘In partnership with Fatah, we are holding coexistence camps of the [PA Security] Forces. We have begun to accept boys and girls from age 7 at an army camp for three days.... They wear soldiers’ uniforms, eat their food, and are trained in military order and discipline.’’

Guide and children: “Dalal [Mughrabi] arrived in Palestine (i.e., led murder of 37, incl. 12 children)
She is equal to the entire world
O Dalal, they trained you
Add on screen above “Picture of terrorist who led killing of 37”
and had you carry a Kalashnikov [assault rifle]
They led you to the shore
to a self-sacrificing operation (i.e., terror attack)
Dalal trained girls
in preparing explosives
and hand grenades.”

As children are shown disassembling and assembling weapons, a song is played in the background.

Lyrics: “Everyone raised their weapons and put a bullet in the barrel …
We are the national Security [Forces], we are the men of Al-Asifa
Fatah! Fatah! Fatah! We are its men!
We are the men of Al-Asifa, we do not fear death…


As Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Pushes Blood Libel, Media Twiddles Its Thumbs
Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on July 4 accused the Jewish state of conducting experiments on the bodies of dead Palestinian terrorists. The Palestinian PM's fabrications about Israel, reminiscent of ancient blood libels, clearly fall within the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of antisemitism.

This is but the latest in a string of controversial comments by Mohammad Shtayyeh. One year ago, in remarks that went largely unnoticed, Shtayyeh promoted the antisemitic "Khazar myth," also espoused by white supremacists, which posits that modern-day Jews are not related to the nation described in the Bible.

Some six months later, the PM presented a $25,000 award to ecoterrorists. The rioters from the West Bank village of Beita had burned makeshift swastikas embedded within Jewish Stars of David on multiple occasions.

Throughout, journalists consistently turned a blind eye to Mohammad Shtayyeh's violently anti-Jewish tendencies.

And Shtayyeh's latest peddling of inflammatory antisemitic tropes is similarly off the media's radar. Who, then, will hold the Western-backed PA accountable for this kind of hate speech…and the violence that it's inciting?


‘This is Biden’s last chance to stop Iran from getting the bomb’ - Steinitz
US President Joe Biden should use his visit to the region this week to ensure Iran knows there is a credible US military threat if it continues advancing its nuclear program, Likud MK Yuval Steinitz said on Sunday.

Steinitz, who as strategic affairs and intelligence minister coordinated Israel's talks with the P5+1 as they engaged in nuclear negotiations with Iran in 2013-2015, expressed concerns that Iran advanced its nuclear program significantly farther than ever before in the past year because it no longer felt threatened by the US, and that Washington-backed air defense coordination between Israel and Gulf States is no replacement.

“The whole visit is only worthwhile if it gets one result: A US military threat to Iran,” Steinitz said. “That is what we have been missing in the past year, which allowed Iran, for the first time, to race to the bomb.”

Steinitz expressed concern about Biden’s opinion article in Saturday’s Washington Post, in which the president wrote: “My administration will continue to increase diplomatic and economic pressure until Iran is ready to return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, as I remain prepared to do.” It mentions “diplomatic and economic pressure,” but not military, Steinitz pointed out.

Before Iran entered negotiations with world powers in 2013, it enriched uranium to 20% purity; while the agreement was in place in 2015-2018, it did not pass 3.5% enrichment limit stipulated by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

After the US under former president Donald Trump left the deal, in 2018, Iran violated the JCPOA, returning to 20% enrichment. Last year, Iran announced that it would enrich uranium to 60%, thought to be the closest any state without nuclear weapons has gotten to a bomb, which requires enrichment to 90% purity.

Iran has also increased the number of advanced centrifuges in use and, last month, disabled International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring cameras at nuclear sites.
JCPA: The Revolutionary Guards’ Navy Expands Its Activity in the Red Sea and Mediterranean Region
The Iranian presence in the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea hides behind slogans of the international war on piracy. However, it is also used for Iranian operational activity and arms smuggling to the Houthis in Yemen, Somalia, and Palestinian terror organizations in Gaza and Lebanon. As part of Iran’s aggressive drone strategy, converted ships used by the IRGC navy and the Iranian navy serve as launch platforms for drones, fast-boats, and explosive-laden naval suicide boats (GPS-guided and unmanned) that can strike targets in the Mediterranean, including the Israeli gas rigs. These Iranian naval capabilities are well-suited to Iran’s asymmetric-warfare doctrine. Some of these capabilities are now in use against Saudi strategic infrastructure, including attacks on oil facilities at sea and on land, on Saudi ships operating off the Saudi coast, and for Iranian retaliatory attacks against foreign assets in the region.

Moreover, Iran is smuggling arms to the Horn of Africa to step up its involvement in the region and strengthen its foothold in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Somalia, which is not only a destination in itself for arms smuggling but a transit station for moving arms up the Red Sea toward the Mediterranean.

Iran’s naval activity in the region has been hit by hard times, including mysterious attacks on Iranian ships and the confiscation of weapons on ships and boats originating in Iran. Yet Iran will continue its seaborne activity in the region, upgrade its drone-launching capabilities (for attacks and intelligence collection) from maritime platforms, and deliver arms to its allies in the area, the Palestinian terror organizations, and Hizbullah.

With ongoing air strikes against its proxies in Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, Iran attaches great importance to surface-to-air weapons. Accordingly, it will continue to upgrade its proxies’ capabilities in this regard with 358 SAMs and MANPADS and other air defense capabilities through smuggling via the air, land, and sea.

The increased Iranian presence – including IRGC forces tasked with logistic assistance and terror – intensifies the threat to international commercial and shipping lanes. It augments Iran’s ability to attack ships, such as the strike on the MT Mercer Street cargo ship off the coast of Oman in July 2021. The U.S. Central Command stated that the drone that hit the ship and killed two crew members was manufactured in Iran (two other drones launched toward the ship missed their target).

The improvement in Iran’s naval warfare, aerial and sea drones, fast boats, and missile capabilities from maritime platforms all give Iran the ability to operate against targets at sea in asymmetric warfare and to develop a possible response against Israel in retaliation to ongoing attacks on Iranian security assets and nuclear targets.


Banning Anti-Zionism: Feasible? Desirable?
One of the main differences between the American and European systems of democratic government is the absence, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, of a First Amendment-style guarantee of free speech. In the United States, for example, it’s perfectly legitimate for a neo-Nazi or an Islamist to deny the Holocaust and display hateful symbols at the same time, while in Europe such activities could theoretically land one with a prison sentence.

Europe, in general, regards hate speech and hate gestures as a form of criminality; it eschews the American approach that such outbursts should be protected, however offensive the words or images might be. And so, it’s worth examining whether anti-Zionist expressions of antisemitism — denying Israel’s right to exist, comparing Israel with Nazi Germany and so forth — should also fall under the rubric of the European courts, rather than being tested by public opinion. Two distinct questions arise here: Are legal penalties for anti-Zionism feasible? And are they desirable?

These issues are not entirely abstract. In Germany and the United Kingdom, for example, the annual “Al Quds Day” (“Jerusalem Day”) rally sponsored by the Iranian regime has been banned in recent years, largely because its open call for the destruction of Israel is invariably accompanied by vulgar antisemitic rhetoric. The last time the rally was staged in Berlin, in 2019, one of its organizers told a Jewish counter-demonstrator that “Hitler should come back and kill all the Jews.” Meanwhile, in London in 2017, calls for Israel’s elimination served as the perfect cover for one speaker, who told the crowd that “Zionists” were directly responsible for the devastating fire that tore through a public housing complex in the west of the city during the same year. After several years of lobbying and complaints from Jewish representatives, the authorities finally realized that, at least in the case of the “Al Quds Day” rally, anti-Zionism was not some liberal appeal for the human rights of Palestinians but a vehicle for attacking local Jews and the State of Israel simultaneously.

That observation should serve as a reminder that the main victims of anti-Zionist activism, particularly the BDS campaign seeking to quarantine Israel from the international community, have not been Israeli companies, but Jews living in Diaspora communities. Especially in campus settings, calls to boycott Israel have frequently involved harassment of individual Jews who, while they might well sympathize with the Jewish state, are not its citizens.
Harvard University is actively promoting anti-semitism on campus
Harvard University provides its students with unparalleled knowledge, skills and experiences. Yet, as we Jewish students have witnessed, the routine vilification of the State of Israel — both inside and outside the classroom — indicates that something in Harvard’s contemporary education has gone seriously awry.

In the latest example of this trend, the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson endorsed the movement to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish state in an April 29 editorial. BDS represents the economic arm of a global effort — spearheaded militarily by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran — to destroy the Jewish state.

That a majority of the Crimson’s 87-member editorial board believes this movement to be part of the global struggle for social justice has significance both for Harvard and American society more broadly. The hostility toward Israel that has permeated our campus — which often involves the endorsement of anti-Semitic attitudes, assumptions, and activities — is symptomatic of larger trends: a retreat from robust critical thinking and a surrender to the most hysterical, least rigorous elements of campus activism.

Such trends at Harvard are regrettable not merely because BDS is fundamentally anti-Semitic but also because its advocacy rests upon several falsehoods. The most pernicious is the idea that Jews don’t belong in Israel, that their presence constitutes an act of colonialism against the native Palestinian population. Such a position betrays an often-contrived ignorance of the millennia-long connection between the land of Israel and the Jewish people. It is also a denial of the right of self-defense for history’s most persecuted minority.

Yet this view has become de rigueur in a contemporary Harvard education. The Chan School of Public Health hosts courses such as “The Settler Colonial Determinants of Health,” which focuses on demonstrating how Israel’s “settler colonial” society undermines the health of “indigenous people.” Harvard Divinity School’s program of Religion and Public Life has hosted a year-long series of anti-Israel seminars, platforming numerous speakers who advocate for the “decolonization” and even the “de-Judaisation” of Israel. It is hard to imagine that any other national entity would be subject to seminar after seminar informing them that their own national aspirations are uniquely illegitimate.


Dr. Meir Masri on ‘BBC Arabic's idea of balance’
Notwithstanding his recent series of videos praising the murders of unarmed Israeli civilians as heroic acts of martyrdom and inciting against British Jews, British-Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan was again featured in a BBC Arabic programme on April 30th.

The subject matter of the programme was the terror attack in Ariel the previous day (which went unreported by the BBC in English) in which Israeli security guard Vyacheslav Golev was murdered.

Atwan’s co-panelist was CAMERA advisor Dr. Meir Masri, who used the opportunity to call out BBC Arabic for normalising Atwan’s hatred, noting the UK’s 2006 Terrorism Act. “It was BBC Arabic’s idea of balance in a nutshell: the screen in the studio featured the Dome of the Rock with a Palestinian flag surrounding it in the background, the introductory trailer interviewed solely Palestinian speakers and just weeks before the show, the Palestinian co-panellist, Abdel Bari Atwan, alleged that there are no civilians in Israel, that Jewish and Israel-affiliated institutions control British politics and that seventy Jewish Members of the British Parliament have conspired against him personally.

Then I, the Israeli speaker, was there to discuss recent attacks based on Israel’s view of Mahmoud Abbas and whether or not the Israeli state abides by the Oslo Accords. So instead I brought the subject of BBC Arabic’s integrity and the opinions of Atwan himself to the front.”

The show’s host was Nour Eddine Zorgui who in the past tweeted about “Israeli lobbyists” in UK universities and described himself as being “in Palestine” when hosting a BBC programme recorded in Jerusalem. Zorgui’s social media accounts were brought into line with BBC guidelines more than two years after his first breaches took place. When asked whether that delay suggested a lack of seriousness on the part of BBC Arabic with regard to its own editorial standards, Zorgui blocked CAMERA Arabic’s Twitter account.


16 things you didn’t know about the Maccabiah Games
This is going to be huge: About 10,000 teen and adult athletes from 65 countries in Israel to compete in 3,000 events in 42 sports during the 21st Maccabiah, July 12-26.

The Maccabiah is the third-largest sporting event in the world by number of competitors, after the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup. This summer’s games will be held at venues in 18 Israeli cities.

Normally, the Maccabiah takes place every four years. But the 2021 games were postponed – like so many other things – due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Ahead of this exciting sports event, ISRAEL21c gathered some interesting and fun facts about the Maccabiah:

1. The idea for the Maccabiah was conceived by 15-year-old Joseph Yekutieli in 1912 in response to a lack of international competitions available to Jewish athletes. It took years to develop and gain support for his plan. When the first games took place in 1932, Yekutieli participated in the cycling competition.

2. Though it’s often referred to as the Jewish Olympics and is organized by the Maccabi World Union, an international Jewish sports organization with branches on five continents, the Maccabiah is open not only to Jewish athletes from around the world but also to Israeli athletes of any religion.




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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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