Friday, July 22, 2022
Mark Regev: Will France's National Assembly persist antisemitism?
In June, French voters elected 577 members of the National Assembly. Of those, 131 now represent the hard-left bloc of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and a further 89 are from Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. Both have been accused of antisemitism.Anger as Resolution Denouncing Israeli ‘Apartheid’ Is Proposed by Far-Left Deputies in French National Assembly
Marine Le Pen claims that neither she nor her party harbor any hostility towards Jews. During the elections, she even proclaimed that the National Rally is best positioned to “protect French people of the Jewish faith.” Many remain unconvinced.
The political movement she leads was founded in 1972 by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, notorious for abhorrent remarks about the Holocaust. In 1987, Jean-Marie Le Pen referred to the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail of history.” And in 2005, he wrote that the Nazi occupation of France “was not particularly inhumane.”
Marine Le Pen has purposely endeavored to distance her political movement from the extremism and Holocaust revisionism of her father, but while some see this as a genuine ideological transformation, others fear her strategy is to sugarcoat an ultra-right agenda.
Fueling such skepticism are some of Marine Le Pen’s own comments. In 2014, she stated that “antisemitism is due to the implantation of Islamism in our country,” effectively whitewashing historic homegrown French antisemitism – from the expulsions and massacres of the Middle Ages, through to ideologues Edouard Drumont and Charles Maurras, and the collaborationist Vichy regime.
Like Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon piously denies any anti-Jewish prejudice. After all, as a radical socialist, he advocates the equality of humankind and rejects all ethnic hatreds.
Yet, when it comes to the Jews, Mélenchon also has a history of disquieting pronouncements. In 2021, he was quoted as saying that the murder of three Jewish children in Toulouse a decade earlier was “planned in advance” so as “to point fingers at Muslims.”
In 2020, Mélenchon seemed to repeat the historic deicide charge, saying: “I don’t know if Jesus was on the cross. I know who put him there; it seems that it was his own compatriots.”
Furthermore, Mélenchon has a serious problem with the Jewish state. He has espoused a radical anti-Zionist narrative that sees Israel as an illegitimate colonialist implant created at the expense of the country’s indigenous Palestinian inhabitants.
Far-left deputies in the French parliament have proposed a viscerally anti-Zionist resolution targeting Israel, accusing the Jewish state of practicing apartheid and committing war crimes against Palestinians under occupation.Melanie Phillips: The urgent need for Jewish leadership
Titled “Condemn Israel’s Institutionalization of an Apartheid Regime Against the Palestinian People,” the motion was signed by 38 members of the National Assembly who represent the newly formed far-left NUPES coalition. NUPES enjoyed a strong showing in June’s legislative elections, winning 131 of the chamber’s 577 seats.
Submitted on July 13, the 24-page motion became a subject of public debate only on Friday morning, after a dissenting NUPES parliamentarian, Jérôme Guedj, denounced its contents in a thread on Twitter.
Guedj said that he had first learned of the resolution’s existence on Thursday. “If it is always legitimate to challenge the policy of a government, I do not understand how the abolition of a state advances peace by a millimeter,” he wrote, referring to the resolution’s presentation of Israel as a colonial entity lacking in legal and moral legitimacy.
“The resolution maintains that Israel is an apartheid regime, calls for the legalization of the boycott of Israeli products and pleads for the official recognition of Palestine,” Guedj added. “If I can defend this last point, the first two are unacceptable. I condemn them.”
The resolution argues that “since its creation in 1948, Israel has pursued a policy aimed at establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and expanding its control over the territory for the benefit of Israeli Jews.”
It asserted that following Israel’s victory against a combined force of Arab armies in Six Day War of June 1967, “Israel extended this policy to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Currently, all territories under Israeli control remain administered with the aim of favoring Israeli Jews at the expense of the Palestinian population, while successive Israeli governments have continued to deny the right of return to Palestinian refugees for more than seven decades.” (h/t Rodin New York)
Two things need to change if the Jewish people is properly to defend itself. Jews need to be taught better about their own people, culture and history. And there needs to be a more effective strategy to fight their enemies by getting off the defensive back foot and onto a pro-active and aggressive front foot.
Precious little of this is done at present because the diaspora leadership is woefully inadequate: timid, servile and anxious to fit in.
In Britain, Jewish leaders publicly fought the far-left Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn because they felt safe in the knowledge that most people in the country reviled him as a dangerous extremist.
But they refuse to fight Muslim antisemitism for fear of being called “Islamophobic”. Nor will they declare the demonstrable legitimacy of Israeli residency in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria — not least because so many of these leaders are ignorant of this themselves.
In America, Jews are increasingly living in a state of siege. Jews have been murdered in Pittsburgh, San Diego and Jersey City. Visibly Jewish pedestrians are beaten regularly in the streets of American cities and towns.
Jewish students are bullied and harassed on campus. The Democratic party exhibits either indifference to all this or even tolerates the virulent anti-Jewish prejudice in “The Squad” of congresswomen.
American Jewish leaders either lend support to such people and their ideologies, or else behave like rabbits frozen in the headlights. Now a grassroots movement has just launched to hold their feet to the fire
The Jewish Leadership Project has a ten-point “action list” to mobilise a more effective Jewish defence. It demands that major Jewish organisations “cease subordinating the safety and welfare of the Jewish-American community to partisan ideology”.
The project’s co-founder, Avi Goldwasser, said: “Many once-venerable Jewish organisations have primarily become front groups for progressive political interests. The significant danger the Jewish community faces today is an indictment of these institutions and their leadership.”
All over the west, people have been left left demoralised and disillusioned by an entire political establishment that appears determined to send western civilisation off the edge of the cliff.
They’ve been rising up against this using whatever opportunities come their way. In Britain, it was Brexit; in America, it was the election of former president Donald Trump.
It’s time the Jewish people told their own diaspora leaders “enough is enough”, and demand they start properly to defend the Jewish people rather than their own exalted positions.
Ben Shapiro: 'When Biden does the occasional right thing, I'll praise him for it'
While Israeli hip-hop sensation Hadag Nahash was rocking out the Tel Aviv Port in an outdoor concert Wednesday evening, across the road another celebrity sensation was met with roaring applause of a different kind: Conservative pundit and arguably the world’s most famous Orthodox Jew, Ben Shapiro, was in Tel Aviv.Ben Shapiro: Reform Judaism does not see Jewish identity as important
“I may not agree with Shapiro’s views, but it’s a good thing he’s around to balance out the craziness in the US,” said veteran Israeli columnist Ben Dror Yemini, who was among the 2,500 Israelis and expat Americans who came out to hear Shapiro on a hot July night. Yemini, who not unlike Shapiro has devoted himself to denouncing what he sees as liberal dominance of the media, said he was particularly worried about antisemitism on college campuses and what he said was anti-Israel reporting in The New York Times.
Shapiro, who through his podcast has become a standard-bearer for the American right, often defends Israel but had never previously spoken there. His talk — the keynote event for CPAC Israel, an Israeli version of the U.S. conservative conference — packed one of the biggest indoor venues in Tel Aviv, in a sign that American-style conservatism is finding a warm reception in a country where political debates between right and left have focused mainly on the Israeli-Palestinian Authority conflict and on the role of religion in public life.
Israel, Shapiro told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an off-stage interview before he addressed the crowd, has shown itself to be vulnerable to “woke culture,” but added that he hoped that it would reject it.
“It’s a terrible export from the United States,” he said, adding that the tide is now turning and that America is facing a correction after the left “pushed too far too fast.”
In his address, which was jointly organized by CPAC, Tel Aviv International Salon and Sella Meir Shibolet Press, an Israeli publishing house focusing on conservative writing, Shapiro told the audience that Israel should take inspiration from other aspects of the United States, by lowering taxes and regulation, removing judiciary influence over the government and removing unions from the public sector.
Right-wing media personality Ben Shapiro said he thinks Israel shouldn’t invest diplomatically in the Union of Reform Judaism in the United States and explained why he doesn’t plan to immigrate to Israel anytime soon. He was speaking at the sold-out CPAC-Israel conference, co-sponsored by the Tel Aviv International Salon and right-wing publisher Shibboleth. CPAC is the abbreviation for Conservative Political Action Conference.Jews in Trench Coats
As well as his role as keynote speaker at the event on Wednesday, Shapiro was also interviewed on stage by political commentator Amit Segal of Channel 12 News.
“What do you think about what former Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer once said: that Israel should put its political fortune in the Evangelist community rather than in the Reform Jewish community [in the US]?” Segal asked Shapiro, who at just 38 years of age has written 11 books.
“As a matter of blunt fact, that’s true,” Shapiro answered. “It’s an unfortunate reality of life in the United States that Reform Judaism, as a branch, does not see Jewish identity in a serious way, as central.
“It’s a very simple rubric for me: If as a Jew, your values are more in line with same-sex marriage, transgenderism and abortion than they are with, for example, the safety and security of the State of Israel – I have serious questions about how you think about yourself as a Jew,” he continued, receiving a standing ovation.
“If I’m looking at who’s more likely to back Israel, by polling data, Jews in the United States are the single-most atheistic group of quote-unquote ‘religious people’ anywhere.... What’s weird about Jewish identity is that it has an ethnic side because, halachically, Jews are ethnically Jewish, and then it has a religious side,” he said.
“So when people self-identify as Jews in the United States, that doesn’t actually mean that they do anything that has anything to do with Judaism; it means that their last name ends in ‘berger,’ ‘stein’ or something [similar]. And you know, there are a lot of people whose last name ends with ‘berger’ or ‘stein’ who fundamentally reject nearly all Jewish values and are secular leftists – and so they vote like secular leftists.”
On a personal level, this clubby, old-school antisemitism often manifested in questions, spoken and unspoken, about my judgment on matters related to the Middle East and Islamist extremism, especially in interagency situations. I was often jokingly referred to as “the Zionist agent” and not so jokingly told that my opinions carried little weight because as a practicing Jew, I had to be an Israeli sellout. An amazed Arab Canadian intelligence officer whom I liked and respected once said, “Man, you can’t catch a break—those guys just keep deferring to me, and for all they know, I could be al-Qaeda!”Roger Waters Bashes Israel In Support Of Pro-Palestinian Students At McGill University
Ironically, my interactions with Muslim community leaders were far more positive. Almost invariably, they were disarmed by the revelation that I was Jewish and would open up to me as someone with a unique relationship to Islam. “Really,” I was assured by one imam with a reputation as a firebrand, “despite everything, we are brothers under the skin, you and I.”
I can’t truly say that antisemitism adversely affected my career—like Isaac Babel, another Jew with spectacles on his nose and autumn in his heart, I got to ride with the Red Cavalry. I suspect London would say the same thing. Proof of this is that he succeeds where few intelligence memoirists do. He captures the joy of intelligence work, because really, as London says, “As serious of a business as it is, with the high stakes of lives on the line, God forgive me, it is incredibly fun.”
Some of that fun, especially for graduates of “The Farm,” as the CIA familiarly refers to its clandestine operations training depot at Camp Peary, Virginia, involves the obvious—jumping out of airplanes, handling exotic weapons, tactical driving, and so forth. But for most of us, the real fun lay in the deeper pleasures of the job.
Intelligence officers and analysts have a privileged view of the making of history; sometimes, they even get to participate in it. They see and experience and come to know the world in ways that nobody else can; they are privy to its secrets. But mostly, they experience humanity, in all its beauty and all its ugliness. Looking back at a lifetime’s worth of agents, sources, and informants, more than a few of whom were deeply disturbed and dangerous people, London recalls that they were “all at once human and inhuman, but terribly real and entirely authentic.” Intelligence work allows us to bring our best human and intellectual capabilities to bear in service to our country. “Real spies persuade,” London says, “thugs coerce.”
London is a smart, persuasive, and charming guide to what, for most people, is a hidden world. It is hard not to like and trust him. That’s probably what made him so successful at his job.
The event was covered by La Presse, Le Soleil and La Voix de l’Est. It was also mentioned in a Globe and Mail article. All news outlets failed to adequately cover the inflammatory comments that Waters made against Israel and the Jewish people.
To wit:
There’s no truth to the accusation that Hayarkon Park is “Built on Palestinian dead people.”
There was no “massacre” in Jenin in 2002. The Israeli Defense Forces carried out Operation Defensive Shield after wave after wave of suicide bombers originated from the Jenin refugee camps in months prior, killing hundreds of Israelis. In a pinpoint defensive operation, Israeli forces risked their lives by entering this raven’s nest full of terrorists to prevent further attacks on Israeli citizens. The final death toll saw 56 Palestinians dead, the majority of whom were combatants, along with 23 Israeli soldiers.
Waters’ attempt to draw sympathy for the efforts of Palestinian suicide terrorists is morally repugnant.
His claim that there is a “fascist” system of “Jewish supremacy” within Israel ignores that two million+ Israeli-Arabs have full and democratic right alongside the Jewish majority in Israel. Israeli Arabs can vote and be elected to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. They have served on Israel’s supreme court, and are active in business, diplomacy, media and more within Israel. Clearly, then, Waters’ attempted portrayal of Israel as being under a “system of Jewish supremacy” is fanciful, and based in nothing more than ideology, not facts.
Comparing Israeli polices to the Nazis by insinuating that Israel is carrying out a “Holocaust” of Palestinians is antisemitic according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
Saying that Israel was founded by “settler colonialists” denies 3,000 years of Jewish indigeneity.
His claim that wealthy donors put pressure on McGill University to oppose pro-Palestinian policies a) has not been substantiated and b) insinuates that wealthy pro-Israel donors, Jews implied, control McGill University. This reeks of the antisemitic trope and conspiracy theory from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Are Israeli campuses vulnerable to what has happened at American universities?
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) July 21, 2022
A conversation with Douglas Altabef, of "?@ImTirtzu? ," on what he believes can, and should, be done. https://t.co/Ikfvw9nPDW
This is what it means:
— Harry's Place (@hurryupharry) July 21, 2022
"We ask how can we liberate the Jewish Holocaust to enable it to truly become part of the international struggle for human emancipation and solidarity with all of the oppressed"
One might call this an antisemitic word salad. pic.twitter.com/VxszfWp51E
Bash wants to remember "the first victims of the Germans were the Germans themselves"
— Harry's Place (@hurryupharry) July 21, 2022
There's a "uniqueness doctrine" that "downgrades the suffering of people who suffered in other Holocausts" Tina says
This misrepresents the Holocaust and removes Jewish people from it IMO pic.twitter.com/a5VDbv6dV5
This is the hard left faction that ran wild in @UKLabour under @jeremycorbyn, many of their members chaired CLPs, stood for office on local council and hounded Jewish Labour MPs.
— Harry's Place (@hurryupharry) July 21, 2022
There can be no place for these people in @UKLabour #FordeReport
Please confirm if you’re coming to this event on 4/8/22 at 7.30. The venue is limited so first come first serve. I’ll send the venue details on the day. It’s North London. Just DM pic.twitter.com/fkHechVlOY
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) July 21, 2022
BBC corrects Jeremy Bowen’s inaccurate Abu Akleh claim
Five days later we received the following response from BBC Complaints:Qatari Textbooks Making ‘Slow’ Progress in Eliminating Antisemitism, Says Watchdog Report
“Thanks [sic] you for contacting us about the News at Ten, broadcast on 14 July.
During our report on policy areas that would be on the agenda during Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East, we briefly referenced the shooting of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and said she had been “killed by Israeli troops”.
The findings of the UN report published last month pointed to the shots that killed Abu Akleh as coming from the Israeli Security Forces, and the US investigation confirmed that this was likely to be the case, although it could not prove it forensically.
Although this was a general report rather than an examination of the circumstances of her death we would agree it would have been preferable to have referred to the investigations and the way their conclusions were phrased.
We have acknowledged this on the BBC Corrections and Clarifications website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/helpandfeedback/corrections_clarifications/
We’ve shared your feedback with senior editors at BBC News.”
That correction – which interestingly does not mention the name of the journalist concerned – reads as follows:One can of course only wonder how many of the millions of viewers who watched that report from Jeremy Bowen will happen to visit the BBC’s ‘Corrections and Clarifications’ webpage and come across that ‘acknowledgement’.
Qatari textbooks are “slowly” making progress towards eliminating antisemitism and other problematic material, according to a new report by Israeli education watchdog IMPACT-se.
Released on Thursday, the review of Qatari textbooks from 2021-2022 found that officials in the Gulf state have removed antisemitic content describing Jews as treacherous, immoral, and responsible for Germany’s loss in World War I.
The group praised the removal of an entire 11th grade social studies textbook that said the Nazi Party ascended to power in Weimar Germany because Jews were “manipulating financial markets.” Another textbook was stripped of the false conspiracy theory that “the Jews” were responsible for a 1969 arson attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
On the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the report found that a “anti-Israel nationalist narrative” remains in Qatari educational materials, and that violence against Israel continues to be legitimized. Recent efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states is opposed.
Still, IMPACT-se found a “diminished tone of hostility” towards Israel, and a marked absence of open support for the Hamas terror group, of which the Qatari government is a key backer. Lessons about Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin have been purged, along with descriptions of “martyred” Palestinian terrorists and positive portrayals of rocket attacks on Israeli citizens.
The suspects were charged with attempted assault in the second degree as a hate crime, reckless endangerment in the second degree as a hate crime, criminal possession of a weapon, conspiracy, aggravated harassment, endangering the welfare of a child.https://t.co/7JZj2vFPAU
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) July 21, 2022
Wait till she finds out we are hiding dihydrogen monoxide in our toilets. https://t.co/ae0rvxhxJJ
— The Mossad Does Tweets (@TheMossadIL) July 22, 2022
The heroic doctor who saved Bukharian Jews from the Nazis
In the week marking the 80th anniversary of the round-up of 13,000 Jews in the Vel d’Hiv stadium, and their dispatch to Drancy camp outside Paris before deportation to Auschwitz, it seems appropriate to recall an unknown story of heroism in wartime France. Dr Asaf Atchildi, a Jewish doctor from Samarkand, saved members of the Bukharian community during the Nazi occupation. Here is a remarkable story of rescue, as told by Eve Weinberg in a Harif ‘Lockdown Lecture’.Israel Aerospace Gets $200M European Special Aircraft Deal
Although only 150 Iranian Jews lived in Paris at the time of the Nazi invasion, the city’s Jewish population also included Jews from Central Asia and the Caucasus. Partnering with Ibrahim Morady and Dr. Asaf Atchildi, a Central Asian Jew and president of the Bukharian community, the Iranian consul in Paris, Abdol-Hussein Sardari, submitted documents to Nazi officials testifying that Jews from Bukhara were actually Jugutis, a made-up term that described Persians who practised the “Mosaic” faith. At the outset of the war, Dr Atchildi and his wife never declared themselves Jews.
Eve Weinberg’s grandfather Aron (Arcadie) and his brothers Albert and Daniel together with Aron’s son David were taken to the Drancy Camp. Dr Atchildi pleaded with the Drancy camp commandant that the detainees were Afghans, not Jews. He managed to obtain the release of Aron and his brothers. But David was being held in a Suspects’ Camp. The only way to obtain his release ( as he was advised by Mr Kedia of the Georgian Jews, who had similarly been exempted from the Nazi race laws), was for Dr Atchildi to go to Gestapo Headquarters at 86 Avenue Foch in Paris.
Taking his courage in both hands, Dr Atchildi went to 86 Avenue Foch to plead David’s innocence, terrified if he would ever get out of the building alive. The young man had been accused of ‘opposition to the German army’. But the doctor managed to prove that he had been framed by a vengeful policeman. The SS officer checked his story, found it to be the truth, and ordered David’s release.
Dr Atchildi’s account was submitted in 1967 to Yad Vashem. But his bravery remained unacknowledged during his lifetime. However, B’nai Brith World Centre bestowed the Jewish Rescuers’ Citation to his daughter Dora Aftergood, 94, in honour of her father. Dr. Atchildi, they said, had put his own life at risk to ensure the survival of over 300 Jews in Nazi-occupied France. While Yad Vashem recognises ‘Righteous Gentiles’, B’nai Brith initiated the Citation project in 2011 to recognise those Jews who endangered themselves to rescue and protect others in Nazi Germany. Aftergood accepted the award on behalf of Dr. Atchildi in a small private ceremony in Vancouver.
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) said on Thursday it signed a contract valued at over $200 million to provide Special Mission Aircraft to a NATO member country in Europe.A mosaic that returned to its own homeland
The aircraft will be developed by ELTA Systems Ltd, IAI’s radar and intelligence technology subsidiary.
The systems utilize miniaturized sensor technologies alongside developing algorithms and software applications based on artificial intelligence, IAI said. Prior to this, most special mission aircraft utilized large cargo or commercial aircraft, it said.
IAI’s Special Mission Aircraft are already active in Israel, and in other countries worldwide, including Italy and Singapore, according to Flight Global.
The company did not name the customer or provide details about the aircraft type or delivery timeframe in the announcement.
ELTA’s special mission aircraft line includes Airborne Early Warning & Control, Air to Ground Surveillance, Maritime Patrol Aircraft and Signal Intelligence.
IAI president and CEO Boaz Levy said in the statement, “Time and time again, IAI continues to prove its ground-breaking capabilities, which have high global demand and worldwide appreciation.”
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