September 2022 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Friday, September 30, 2022

09/30 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Why "progressives" can’t deal with antisemitism; Auschwitz Was Not Bombed Because the World Didn’t Care

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Why "progressives" can’t deal with antisemitism

Ruth Wisse, an emeritus professor of Yiddish literature at Harvard and an unfailingly impressive commentator on the Jewish world, has uttered a desperate cry about the moral and spiritual state of American Jews.

Writing in Mosaic, she ponders the effect of liberal ideologies espoused by the media and the universities which are promoting antisemitism and damaging foundational American values.

The flourishing of American Jews, she says, lies at the heart of American pluralism. But she warns: “The surest sign of an America in retreat would be a Jewish community in retreat from its own Jewish heritage”.

This baleful development is what she now sees happening, largely as a result of widespread ignorance among American Jews of their own ancient culture.

Last January, more than 200 rabbis signed a statement expressing their concerns about the “shrinking space of ‘permissible’ discourse,” self-censorship and burgeoning antisemitism and anti-Zionism. This, they wrote, had arisen from an ideology about issues such as race and gender that “in its most simplistic form sees the world solely in binary terms of oppressed versus oppressor, and categorises individuals into monolithic group identities”.

These rabbis have been left aghast by the all-too visible harm being done by the “social justice” agenda that has been embraced by the majority of American Jews. But since these are mostly rabbis from progressive denominations, it is unclear whether they also acknowledge the harm embodied by that agenda itself.

For in signing up to it, “progressive” Jews have embraced a set of values that are inimical to Judaism. More devastating still, they have convinced themselves that these are in fact authentic Jewish values updated for the modern age.

There could hardly be a more graphic illustration of this fundamental error than the current period of introspection for the Jewish world culminating in next week’s Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Zelenskyy's choice: Rectifying the crimes of Babi Yar

Today, September 29, 2022, people in Ukraine and indeed across the world will commemorate the 81st anniversary of the massacre at Babi Yar.

It will be a moment of mourning and remembrance, but also an occasion to examine the tremendous progress made by Ukraine, which today, almost a century later is able to elect by a vast majority, a young Jewish president, the descendent of a family of Holocaust victims – Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine's efforts to recall its historical crimes was the theme of the address I gave in Kyiv, in 2016, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the massacre, at the very site where it took place.

That night, I spoke after then-Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu as well as the leaders of Germany, Ukraine and Poland – the forces that make up the new Ukraine.

In the address, I used my own words, of course, but I also spoke on behalf of the president of the Republic of France, who had sent me to represent him at this occasion. Some of the reasons that drive me, a French Jewish intellectual, to support Ukraine as I do, are contained in this speech:

President of Ukraine, presidents, ambassadors, rabbis and representatives of the various religions, ladies and gentlemen.

There is always a moment in the destiny of a great nation when the darkest pages of the Book of the Dead and the Living come face to face with the light of insight and remorse. For Ukraine, such a moment has arrived today.

Eighty years after the massacre of the multitude of Ukrainian Jews at Babi Yar, in this eternally cursed and damned ravine, over three-quarters of a century after the destruction of 34,000 men, women, and children, whose only crime was being born Jewish, the time has come for contrition, repentance, and for this heinous crime to become an integral part of the great memorial of the universal consciousness. It is perhaps no coincidence that this moment has occurred on the eve of this extremely special period, referred to by Jews across the globe as the "Days of Awe."

'Uncaged Sky': How a woman survived 804 days in an Iranian prison - review

British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert is imbued with scholarly brilliance, energy and a burning desire to fight. The fire in her belly helped her survive the Iranian regime’s penal colony, where she was held hostage for more than two years – 804 days – between 2018 and 2020. Her book The Uncaged Sky: My 804 days in an Iranian prison joins the pantheon of profoundly important books chronicling the crimes of totalitarian regimes.

For those who follow Moore-Gilbert on Twitter (and I recommend that Middle East observers follow her), she writes and works tirelessly to secure the release of Iranian political prisoners and foreigners used as hostages who are tossed into the vast prison system of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In September, she joined a high group of Iranian dissidents and former Western hostages to file a federal civil lawsuit in New York City against the president of the Islamic Republic, Ebrahim Raisi.

The plaintiffs allege violations of the Torture Victim Protection Act. “Iranian President Raisi was the head of judiciary during my sham trial and bogus conviction for ‘espionage’ in a Revolutionary Court in 2019,” Moore-Gilbert tweeted. “[I] and other victims are suing him in New York under the Torture Victim Protection Act.”

Raisi, who has earned the pejorative moniker “Butcher of Tehran” because of the mass murders he allegedly carried out, is slated to speak at the UN in September. The Trump administration sanctioned him for his role in the massacre of 5,000 Iranian political prisoners in 1988, as well as his complicity in the slaughter of 1,500 Iranian protesters in 2019.

Back to Moore-Gilbert’s imprisonment and torture. I strongly suspect her book will pique the interest of many Israeli readers and Jews in the Diaspora. I hope her book swiftly finds a Hebrew publisher, for it is riveting non-fiction that conjures up the works of the legendary spymaster author John le Carré and the spellbinding interactions among governments and intelligence services. “Spellbinding” is an overused work in the world of book reviews, but it authentically applies to Moore-Gilbert’s work.

She delves into the psyche of the wild conspiracy theories that occupy the minds of the ruthless men who wield power in the theocratic state.

A film-maker comments on Ken Burns' Holocaust documentary (Martin Ostrow)

By Martin Ostrow

Ken Burns’s advance interviews for his new Holocaust film provided much material for public discussion. Now that PBS has broadcast the six-hour series, how does the film measure up?

The answer, unfortunately, is that it’s a disappointment. “The U.S. and the Holocaust” misrepresents some key historical issues and entirely omits crucial information. Ultimately, Ken and his producer partners, Sarah Botstein and Lynn Novick, have failed to deliver the kind of film that we would have expected, given their track record.

I write not as a historian, but as the producer and director of a previous PBS film on America’s response to the Holocaust, “America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference,” which first aired in 1994.

Inevitably, both my film and Ken’s cover some of the same ground. We both describe the context in which America’s response to the Holocaust evolved, such as the racism, isolationism, and antisemitism in the United States in the 1930s. Ken handles those themes and the unfolding of the Nazi genocide quite well, worthy moments of Holocaust education.

It is one thing, however, to acknowledge the disturbing trends in public and congressional opinion in those days; it is another to make it seem as if President Franklin D. Roosevelt was captive to them, as Ken does. FDR, after all, was a masterful leader. When he cared about an issue, he knew how to fight for it. But he made no real effort concerning the plight of Jewish refugees, not even to let them stay temporarily in a U.S. territory such as the Virgin Islands.

One might argue that Ken’s series is so broad and complex that it’s easy to lose Roosevelt in its massive story. Perhaps that was his intention. Ken certainly has the skill to render his subjects with vivid three-dimensional effect. Yet in this vast work, FDR is at times ghost-like—a hapless, impotent figure. The film offers excuses for the president’s inaction and shifts almost all the blame to Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long. Viewers could easily forget who actually hired Long, and who could have fired him if he had wanted to. Long served at the pleasure of the president, not the other way around.

It's a shame the series brings nothing new to understanding Roosevelt’s troubling decisions and motivations. Ken had a major advantage in making this new film. He could have drawn on significant information scholars have uncovered in the past two decades about FDR and America’s response to the Holocaust. I’m puzzled and disappointed he did not. For example:

— FDR’s Private Feelings About Jews. Historians have uncovered more than a dozen private statements made by Roosevelt in which he disparaged “Jewish blood,” advocated quotas on Jews in various professions (and college admissions), and even accused the publishers of the New York Times of using a “dirty Jewish trick” to gain a tax advantage. While President Roosevelt’s private feelings about Jews may or may not offer a clue to his policies concerning Jewish refugees, they at least need to be part of the conversation. Yet they are not mentioned in the film.

— The James McDonald Diaries. The discovery of the diaries of the late refugee advocate and diplomat James G. McDonald shed new light on his efforts to help the Jews—and the refusal of the Roosevelt administration to assist him. Remarkably, McDonald is not even mentioned in the film.

— The George McGovern Interview. In a revealing 2004 interview with filmmakers Chaim Hecht and Stuart Erdheim, George McGovern, the former senator and presidential nominee, recounted his experiences as a World War II pilot who bombed the oil factories in the slave labor section of Auschwitz. McGovern’s eyewitness recollections about the feasibility of bombing the railways leading to the camp tell us much more than Ken’s commentators, who offer confusing speculations about why neither the railways nor the gas chambers were ever bombed.

Admittedly, a disadvantage Ken suffered was that in the decades since my film, some of the remaining principal figures in the story passed away. For example, unlike Ken, I had the opportunity to personally interview John Pehle, the first director of the War Refugee Board.

Recalling the British-American conference on refugees held in remote Bermuda in 1943, Pehle told me it was “a conference set up to not accomplish anything, and the people who represented the United States there were given those instructions.” Yet the Bermuda meeting, a crucial event in the history of the U.S. response to the Holocaust, was not even mentioned by Ken.

Regarding the failure to bomb Auschwitz, Pehle says in my film, “After we recommended to the War Department that the extermination facilities at Auschwitz be bombed, we were told [that] this would involve bombers being sent from England…and therefore, it was not possible to do this. Later, perhaps after the war, we discovered at the very time we were recommending this, bombing all around Auschwitz was going on from Italy, and we had been misled.” Pehle’s powerful words should have been in Ken’s film. They are not.

As with every Ken Burns film, "The U.S. and the Holocaust” includes affecting cinematography, touching moments, and memorable music--although the decision to appropriate the precise Bach violin concerto passage from the most poignant moment of my film, is certainly questionable.

But the film's strengths do not make up for the fact that this Burns production stumbles when it comes to the most important parts of the historical record. Ken promised "The U.S. and the Holocaust" would answer many of the lingering questions about our nation’s response to the Nazi genocide. But after watching all six-plus hours of the film, I can only imagine that many people are still asking the same questions. They certainly should be.

[Martin Ostrow has been an award-winning documentary producer, writer and director for public, commercial and cable television for more than 30 years.]

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Independent Arabia reports that Hadash MK Aida Touma condemned Israel making injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera available to Bedouin women in the Negev. She said it is “dangerous and falls within the appalling racist policies,” adding that this Israeli policy aims to control and restrict childbirth in the Bedouin community in the Negev.

It quotes Israel's Liberal magazine:

Inside a women’s clinic in the city of Beersheba, the largest city in the Negev desert region in Israel, Fatima Abu Al-Qia’an (30 years old) and a group of her married companions are standing in queues, anxiously waiting for their turn for an urgent medical examination.

This is just like the fake controversy over Israel supposedly forcing Ethiopian Jewish women to take Depo-Provera.

As I reported at the time, in more patriarchal societies, women who want to take birth control prefer to covertly use the Depo-Provera injection without their husbands knowing. Husbands might want huge families but many of their wives do not.

Israel is giving these women the option of birth control, giving them more control over their own bodies. Which means that the "progressive" crowd will report this as the exact opposite.

What about the side effects of Depo-Provera, which Touma says outweighs any benefits, specifically its effect on bone density? Well, the Royal Osteoporosis Society of the UK quotes the World Health Organization:

More recent advice however from The World Health Organisation (WHO) 2007 recommends that there should not be any restriction on the use of Depo-Provera if you are aged between 18 and 45 nor on the length of time you can use it (if you are eligible to use this method).
It recommends special consideration if you are under 18 (when bone density is being built up rapidly) or over 45 (when you are approaching the menopause) although it is felt that the advantages will generally outweigh any concerns about the theoretical consequences (fractures) of long term Depo-Provera use. This is in part due to emerging evidence that has shown that bone density tends to recover over time once Depo-Provera is stopped. However with continuing use of this contraceptive it recommends that the overall benefits and risks are periodically reviewed.

Other pro-women measures, like anti-polygamy laws, laws promoting female employment and laws against child marriages, are also meant to empower Arab women in Israel - and they also peripherally discourage the Arab women having families as large as they were forced to when their husbands didn't allow them to work. They too have been spun as "anti-Arab,"

Israel's attempts to modernize Bedouin society and empower Bedouin women is twisted as being racist.

Because when you are an antisemite, everything Israel does is assumed to be racist.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

09/30 Links Pt1: ‘You little boy’: Abbas says he scolded Blinken for not pressuring Israel; PA envoy: Israel has committed most terrible massacres since WWII

From Ian:

‘You little boy’: Abbas says he scolded Blinken for not pressuring Israel

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told a group of Palestinian Americans last week that he scolded US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for failing to pressure Israel to make peace.

While Abbas has not shied away from publicly vocalizing his frustration with the Biden administration over the past year, his remarks during a private meeting with representatives of the Palestinian diaspora on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York appeared to go further and included the belittling of the United States’s top diplomat.

In a recording of the September 22 meeting obtained by The Times of Israel, the PA leader recalled a recent phone conversation with Blinken during which Abbas said he grew frustrated with what he called a recurring US practice of claiming that Israel is not interested in peace, while refusing to use the American bully pulpit to pressure Jerusalem into moving in that direction.

“I told Blinken, ‘You little boy, don’t do that,'” Abbas told the Palestinian Americans, speaking in Arabic. Some details of the meeting were first published by the Haya Washington Arabic news site.

Abbas said he then recalled to Blinken how during the 1956 Suez Crisis, Israel agreed to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip after US president Dwight Eisenhower ordered prime minister David Ben Gurion to do so.

“I know your history,” Abbas said he told Blinken, detailing a string of phone calls that Eisenhower held with Ben Gurion at the time. In one of those conversations, the PA leader said the US president called the Israeli prime minister and asked, “David, have you gotten out of [Gaza]? Tonight, you’ll withdraw and you’ll tell me yourself that you’ve done so.'”

“Ben Gurion wrote in his memoirs that he withdrew that same night,” Abbas said, seeking to prove that the US has the power to press Israel when it wants to.

Commenting on the testy conversation with the US secretary of state, the PA president said he told Blinken: “The lesson [from this] is not to say, ‘My beloved, do this or don’t do that,'” when dealing with Israel, but rather to use the “red phone” and the authority of the president’s office to strong-arm Israel into changing its policies. He claimed the US deals with “190 countries” in this manner, but not Israel.

Abbas told the meeting attendees he used to believe US administrations that claimed that Israel does not want peace. However, he now realizes that “it’s not that the Israelis don’t want peace but the Americans don’t want peace.”

PA envoy: Israel has committed most terrible massacres since WWII

Israel has executed the worst humanitarian massacres since World War II ended in 1945, Palestinian Authority Ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi charged in a speech he delivered to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday.

"Israel has committed the most terrible crimes and massacres against humanity since WWII," he said.

"So, Israel is the primary [nation] responsible for the international legal chaos supported by the positions of a number of countries led by America," he said, as he accused the Biden Administration of "blind bias" toward Israel.

The UN, he said, must work to deter "Israeli aggression" and to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law.

Khraishi spoke under Agenda Item 7, during the 51st session of the UNHRC, which began on September 12 and is slated to end on October 7.

The UNHRC is mandated to debate alleged Israeli violations of international humanitarian law at each one of its three annual sessions. Such a mandate has not been leveled against any other country. Israel routinely boycotts Agenda Item 7, arguing that it is an example of UN bias against Israel.

Khraishi's speech to the council fell in line with the increasingly hostile PA rhetoric against Israel. His words were delivered in Arabic and translated into English by the UN.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas was condemned in August when he compared Israel's actions against the Palestinians with those of the Nazis, which sought to exterminate the Jewish people and who killed six million Jews during the Holocaust.

Seth Frantzman: Nord Stream sabotage will permanently shift global trade

Headlines on September 29 painted an increasingly worrying picture. CNN said that European security officials say Russian ships were in the waters near the pipeline when the leaks occurred. A fourth leak was discovered on Thursday. According to Reuters, “NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday attributed the leaks on the Nord Stream pipelines to acts of sabotage and said he had discussed the protection of critical infrastructure in NATO countries with the Danish defense minister.”

Reports say that seismic meters recorded the explosions that damaged the lines. Now there is concern that a new phase of “hybrid war” may be coming, and Russia could use these kinds of incidents to upset the global order.

It’s worth thinking about what this means globally. Nord Stream was seen as an important project worth tens of billions of dollars, mostly financed by banks in Europe and by Gazprom. Reports said that Gazprom’s investments were driven by Moscow’s interests and geopolitics.

Russia was not only working on these lines – bypassing Baltic states and trying to literally get Europe addicted to the line from Moscow directly – but Russia was also moving ahead with Turk Stream, a project under the Black Sea to Turkey. This means that Turkey was also angling with Russia to make Europe dependent.

How does this impact Israel?
This matters also for Israel and the Middle East because Israel, Greece and Cyprus wanted to partner on an East Med line. It’s not a coincidence that Iranian-backed Hezbollah has threatened the Karish gas field off the coast. Iran has exported drones to Hezbollah, which has tried to use them to threaten the infrastructure working the field. Russia is also acquiring Iranian drones and using them against Ukraine.

The threat that Hezbollah poses to offshore gas platforms – and that Russia apparently poses to undersea pipelines going to Europe – links to related aspects of this hybrid war and shows how non-Western regimes may work together to wreak havoc on energy supplies.

The realization that Russia cannot be trusted to supply gas securely to Europe is leading to an earthshaking, once-in-a-generation event. Global economies, which have been marching zombie-like in one direction toward globalization and knitting everyone together, are now moving in a new direction.

This regional protectionism is embodied not only by Europe’s shift away from relying on Russian gas, but also by forums like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, where Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and other regimes recently met. Those countries want to work together and they are almost all authoritarian regimes.

Meanwhile, the US, Europe and Western states, and their allies in Asia such as Japan, South Korea and India, also want to work together. Israel’s growing ties with the United Arab Emirates and with South Korea, with free trade talks recently resulting in a new deal, represent an important step for the global economy and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Connecting the dots between Europe, the US, Israel, the UAE, India, Australia and other countries makes economic sense – but it also showcases how global trade networks are shifting.

Israel's gamble with Hezbollah on Mediterranean natural gas

From the perspective of negotiations, Hezbollah has effectively won the dispute with Israel over ownership of disputed areas of the Mediterranean.

This map (my additions to a map from Alma) shows the four major positions:

Line 1 has been Israel's position as to the maritime border with Lebanon. Line 23 has been Lebanon's traditional position. The "Hof Line" was the compromise suggested by US Special Envoy to Syria and Lebanon, Frederic Hof, during the Obama administration, rejected by Lebanon.

In 2021, Lebanon suddenly claimed that Line 29 was really the proper border. This new area includes part of the Karish field which no one ever disputed before was part of Israel.

This allowed Hassan Nasrallah to threaten that Hezbollah would attack the Karish field if Israel starts extracting gas from there, and he sent drones there this past summer that were shot down by Israel.

From all indications, the Lebanese claim to Line 29 was a bazaar bargaining tactic. It was never formally approved by the government nor formally claimed in international forums.

Yet it has worked. The Hof line is no longer even being considered, and reports indicate that in current negotiations with US envoy Amos Hochstein, Lebanon will get virtually everything up to Line 23, their original maximalist position.

Hezbollah's threats seem to have paid off. Yesterday, Arab Tawhid Party leader Wiam Wahhab tweeted after a meeting with Nasrallah that “Lebanon is on the verge of obtaining its full rights” in the dispute, meaning that even Hezbollah never seriously claimed that Line 29 was the Lebanese maritime border.

The latest news is that Israel would agree to leave the specific position of the seashore border unresolved, which would allow Hezbollah to continue to provoke Israel the same way it does in the (supposedly) disputed Shebaa Farms land border.

So why is Israel apparently conceding the border issue and leaving this uncertainty?

It appears to be a gamble: Lebanon needs the revenues from offshore gas extraction very badly, and Israel wants Lebanon to be a stable state. Israel also wants to show that negotiations with Lebanon can bring results, and not war.

Part of the calculation is an illusion of mutual deterrence: if Hezbollah attacks Israeli gas fields, Israel could destroy any Lebanese gas infrastructure in response. But this isn't true: Lebanon can claim that Hezbollah was a rogue actor and Israel's response would be regarded as aggression by the international community, as it usually is.

Lebanese economic stability and a calm between Israel and Lebanon would be of great value to Israel. But this agreement seems to be conceding Israeli claims without any real guarantees that Hezbollah will ever stop its own claims - or threats.

And as long as Hezbollah effectively controls the southern Lebanese border with Israel and has the ability to attack Israel's own gas platforms, I don't see a way that Israel's security interests are being taken into account with the current reported outlines of the deal.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

"The Jews are the real antisemites" is not a new argument by antisemites

Modern antisemitic groups like Electronic Intifada, IfNotNow and others like to claim that they aren't antisemitic - the real antisemites are the Jews (they say "Zionists.")

It turns out that even that argument was used by the classic antisemites of history.

This op-ed in The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, October 03, 1941 shows that this argument was used by the antisemitic "America First Committee."

This op-ed shows a methodology of antisemitism that remains popular today.

"That's the trick, the technique and the plan of the anti-Semite. Blame the Jews for everything bad, then deny that it is anti-Semitism, and then blame the Jews themselves for bringing up the subject at all."

Nothing has changed in 80 years.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Tell Marvel to stop promoting the antisemitic Arab terrorist Scarlet Scarab! (spoof)

An Arab pop-culture writer named Tariq Raouf wrote a ridiculous screed about why Marvel should not introduce the Israeli character Sabra into their cinematic universe, claiming that she insults Arabs with her name that makes them think of Sabra and Shatila, because she is a racist who hates Arabs because her daughter was killed in a terror attack, because the actress to play her is Israeli - the usual litany.

That same Raouf is however enamoured with another Marvel cinematic universe character who was introduced this year on Disney Plus: The Scarlet Scarab.

I will now write an article "proving" that The Scarlet Scarab is an antisemitic, terrorist bigot using the exact same methods and illogic that we have seen in dozens of anti-Sabra articles. This is a spoof, it is not what I believe.

_____________________

Marvel's introduction of The Scarlet Scarab in its Moon Knight series has proven that it supports a worldwide anti-Jewish, pro-Palestinian, pro-Nazi conspiracy.

Scarlet Scarab's origin story is told in Marvel Comics Invaders #23 and #25, from 1977. During World War II, an Egyptian archaeologist named Abdul Faoul manipulates the Invaders superheroes to help him recover an ancient artifact known as the Ruby Scarab, which turns him into the Scarlet Scarab with the usual array of superhero/supervillain capabilities like superhuman strength.

When Scarlet Scarab is introduced, he is allied with the Nazis, protecting Egypt from the British and fighting American and British superheroes.

Scarlet Scarab leads a gang of terrorists known as the Sons of the Scarab. He eventually turns against the Nazis - but not because of their genocides or racism. He only opposes them when he realizes that they will not support an independent Egypt. His temporary alliance with the Invaders on the Allied side is one of convenience, not ideology. The genocide of millions of Jews doesn't bother him in the slightest.

Scarlet Scarab is clearly an antisemite, as most Egyptians were in the 1940s. His archaeologist persona reminds one of famed Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass who has said that "Jews control the entire world" and, as head of Egypt's antiquities ministry, said that he would not allow any Jews to pray in any restored Egyptian synagogues.

Scarab is also described as an Egyptian nationalist, which reminds Israelis all too well of the genocidal intent of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the most famous of Egyptian nationalists, who swore to destroy Israel.

The Sons of the Scarab, by definition, are symbolic "brothers." This appears to be a deliberate echo of the Muslim Brotherhood which has spawned terror groups like Hamas and Al Qaeda.

Even worse, the actress playing the now-female Scarlet Scarab, May Calamawy, is an Egyptian-Palestinian. The vast majority of both Egyptians and Palestinians are rabidly antisemitic according to multiple polls, and Calamawy must be assumed to be a racist antisemitic bigot unless she says anything pro-Israel.

It’s hard to see how any of Scarab's origins can become a “great Hollywood blockbuster story” for entertainment. Even though the new Scarlet Scarab is a woman, there is no “new approach” that could paint a terrorist with that background as a model hero.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to put an Arab hero in the MCU. However, putting Scarlet Scarab, a one time Nazi ally and terror group leader, into the world’s biggest blockbuster franchise is a problem. It certainly feels like the powers that be are ignoring the real-life atrocities happening to Israelis every day. There are so many other ways to whisk audiences away into a thrilling story without this problematic character. For Marvel Studios to go forth with using an antisemitic and Arab-supremacist character like Scarlet Scarab would be a shame and an incredible insult to Jewish and Israeli comics fans all around the world.

A Nazi-allied, antisemitic terrorist leader is hardly the type of superhero that Marvel should be promoting.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

09/29 Links Pt2: The tragedy of Jews who can’t stand with Israel; Over half of BDS-exposed US students support boycott; Berkeley Develops Jewish-Free Zones

From Ian:

Combatting anti-Semitism must include emancipating Zionism

Knowing the real-world harm that excludes Zionists from equal access and participation—in university book clubs, in support groups for victims of sexual harassment, in class, etc.—is an unacceptable reality. The mutation of anti-Semitism enabled by the appropriation and weaponization of foundational principles to demonize, delegitimize and apply double standards to Israel (the “three D’s”) finds multi-dimensional, escalating expressions. In a blurred-boundary reality, they manifest on digital platforms and on the streets, peddling and echoing modern renditions of ancient toxic anti-Semitic tropes as defined in the IHRA definition that includes, as it must, the three D’s, if it is to fulfil it role to comprehensively identify and combat anti-Semitism.

The “trigger” for the creation of the IHRA definition, a non-legally binding resource, was the 2001 Durban Conference “Against” Racism, the pretext for what became an anti-Semitic hate fest, a milestone in the systematic appropriation of human rights to advance and conflate Israel with apartheid South Africa. A mutation of the 1975 “Zionism is racism” U.N. resolution, revoked decades later, it is part of the recognition that where conventional warfare failed, a war for hearts and minds, implementing a systematic strategy, can gain traction. Appropriating Zionism, a 140-year-old progressive national liberation movement built on a millennia-old identity integral to the character, heritage and ancestry of Jews worldwide, most of whom identify as Zionists, has rendered their identity synonymous with the gravest of human crimes, enabling to “legitimately” include it in the list of “isms,” excluding and denying Zionists from equal access, rights or participation in digital and real spaces.

In order to ensure equal access to opportunity, safety and protection from harm for all, including those who identify as Zionist and regard it as an integral part of their identities, it must be added to existing, detailed lists of “protected characteristics” in the social media platforms’ hate policies. Transparency of the policies and their application is critical, as transparency is an antidote to growing distrust that threatens the fabric of societies, ensuring safety and protection from harm is extended to all, equally and consistently. Selective application or any appearance of double standards not only fails to protect one category, but undermines the entire infrastructure created to protect all categories.

The case study of the toxic mutation of anti-Semitism enabled by systematic appropriation, weaponization and selective application of foundational principles, institutions and mechanisms of international law and human rights, expose and shed light on processes that undermine and collapse the foundations of democracies. It can serve to enhance vital understanding of the processes that enable and empower terror regimes and organizations committed to the destruction of democracies that identify and utilize their strengths as weaknesses. In a digital reality, the IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism is a critical resource, informing and enabling to identify and combat its current, mutated form, and empowering to predict, prepare and prevent real world violence and harm. As a first critical step needed to address rising real-world harm and compromised safety of Jews, for most of whom Zionism is an integral part of their identity, as well as non-Jews who identify as Zionists—it is imperative to add “Zionist” to the list of protected characteristics in existing hate speech policies, affording Zionists the very same treatment as any and every other protected characteristic.

The tragedy of Jews who can’t stand with Israel

I thought back to the Cold War and it occurred to me that people under 40 probably don’t remember the Berlin Wall. While the Wall stood, there were fools, many teaching in universities—and some still doing so—who lauded the virtues of communism. The communism that was so wonderful a wall had to be built to keep people from escaping it. It was hard to find anyone tunneling under the wall to get into East Germany.

I realized that this is analogous to Israel. For all its faults, there is no mass exodus from the Jewish state. On the contrary, people are clamoring to get in. If you believe the student rabbis, the U.N. Human Rights Council and other detractors, Israel is the worst country in the world. Yet thousands of Ukrainians fleeing war and Russian domination are seeking Israeli citizenship. If Israel is exactly like Afrikaner South Africa, please tell me why so many people are flocking to live under such a system.

Ah yes, the detractors say, but it’s only the privileged white Jews who feel that way. This ignores the hundreds of thousands of non-white Jews who came to Israel fleeing persecution in Muslim countries. Having experienced life in those societies, these Jews reject American liberal suggestions that they should be happy to live under the rule of Palestinian Muslims. They do not dismiss the threat posed by a nuclear Iran and Islamist terrorism in general.

But, of course, those who can’t stand with Israel claim that it’s Palestinians who are treated like black South Africans. But they’re not.

When Israel built its security fence, it was meant to keep terrorists out, not keep its people in—unlike the Berlin Wall. And in which direction did Palestinians choose to go? Did they want to be on the side controlled by the Palestinian Authority? No. Most of them wanted to be on the Israeli side of the barrier.

A declining number of Israeli Arabs support a two-state solution, and few would move to a Palestinian state if it were established. Whenever peace negotiators have suggested incorporating the “Arab triangle” in the Galilee—where most Israeli Arabs live—into “Palestine,” the residents have ferociously objected. Polls have found that most Israeli Arabs are proud to be Israelis. When asked how they identify themselves, only 7% said “Palestinian,” a majority said “Arab-Israeli” and an even larger percentage said they feel like a “real Israeli.” According to a Palestinian poll, 93% of Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem prefer to remain under Israeli rule.

Can you imagine blacks in Afrikaner South Africa expressing such views?

What does all this say about Jews who can’t stand with Israel? Who have less regard for the Jewish state than Palestinians and Israeli Arabs?

I stand with Israel. You should too.

A White House summit tackles right-wing extremism with talk of security, hugs — and Christian forgiveness

Katz said she was unsettled by a session called “Healing the Soul of the Nation.” It featured a number of survivors of racist and homophobic attacks who forgave their attackers. It was especially jarring before the Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, whose major theme is personal and communal accountability, not learning to forgive others.

“There was definitely a theme that forgiveness is good, and that the act of forgiving can help someone move through their journey. And I think people who have experienced trauma don’t owe their perpetrator anything,” Katz said in an interview during a break.

“We’re not obligated to forgive people who cause us harm,” she said. “It’s on the person who causes harm, to do the work and to be accountable.”

At least four of the six people speaking in the session on “healing” dwelled on forgiving their attackers and even advocating for them once they were captured.

“We have to do a better job of listening to pain and that includes the pain of those who are exhibiting or even perpetuating hate and violence,” said the moderator, Lisa Ling.

Joseph Borgen, the only Jewish participant on the panel, subverted the narrative of unsolicited forgiveness. Borgen, who wears a kippah and was beaten by pro-Palestinian activists in New York during the May 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict, said accountability was paramount.

One of his assailants, Borgen told the room, “was released the next day on minimum bail when he said he would do it again to another individual just like me, and it’s just unfathomable for me that someone in this situation can just be let out.”

Borgen’s presence was significant for another reason: He was one of the few victims who was not targeted by the extreme right. The session in which he appeared immediately followed two sessions focused on the extreme right, including one featuring Bill Braniff, the director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. Braniff, a University of Maryland professor, said the focus should properly be on the far right because that was where the overwhelming number of attacks originated.

Ling introduced every speaker except for Borgen with details of why the person was attacked. Turning to Borgen, she said, “Joseph, you are also a survivor of an antisemitic hate attack that happened just last year in New York,” without elaborating that his attackers were pro-Palestinian protesters, as CNN itself has reported. She asked Borgen to explain how his attack made him more sensitive to attacks on Asians.

By Daled Amos

Just two weeks ago, I wrote about the bond between Russia and Israel, the result of their shared experiences with terrorist attacks against their civilians and because of the large number of Russians living in Israel.

Now it turns out that on September 10, a delegation of Hamas terrorist leaders -- led by leader Ismail Haniyeh -- visited Moscow at the invitation of the Russian government. As a matter of policy, Russia does not see Hamas as a terrorist organization and hosted it back in 2020 and Grigory Karasin, chair of the Federation Council's Foreign Affairs Committee, has described Haniyeh as "one of the most moderate and prudent leaders of Hamas."

In 2017, the Russian ambassador to Israel -- Alexander Shein -- explained in an interview why Russia does not recognize either Hezbollah or Hamas to be terrorist organizations:

We do not consider these organizations to be terrorist. True, they are radical organizations, which sometimes adhere to extremist political views...Russian law - the Supreme Court, following an appeal by the prosecution - defines terrorist organizations as such when they intentionally conduct acts of terror in Russian territory, or against Russian interests abroad - installations, embassies, offices, or citizens. [emphasis added]

Apparently, it escaped Shein's notice that the large number of Russians with dual citizenship living in Israel would qualify as "Russian interests" according to his own definition.

Israel and Russia restored full relations between the 2 countries in 1991, 24 years after Russia broke off relations following the Six Day War. During that time, the US displaced the then-Soviet Union as the major power broker in the region. Since the renewal of relations, Russia has not been silent when Israel was targeted by Hamas.

In 2014, Russia came out in support of Operation Protective Edge, Israel's response to Hamas targeting Israeli civilians with its rockets:

“I am closely tracking what is happening in Israel,” Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked in a meeting on Wednesday with a delegation of Chief Rabbis and representatives of the Rabbinical Center of Europe.

...“I support Israel’s battle that is intended to keep its citizens protected,” he [Putin] said about the Israel Defense Forces’ operation to restore quiet to the region and stop Hamas terrorism.

“I also heard about the shocking murder of the three teenagers,” Putin added about the kidnapping and murder of Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrach and Gilad Shaar, three Yeshiva students in Israel. “This is an unconscionable act and I ask that you bring my condolences to the families.”

Despite the condemnation, Russia has not dumped Hamas as a "friend," instead keeping all ties open, much in the same way that China maintains relations simultaneously with both Israel and Iran.

But what is the point of Russia's personally inviting the Hamas leaders for a visit?

JNS hosted a discussion of the possible reasons for the invitation.

One suggestion was that this was Putin's way of dispelling the current image of Russia as an isolated pariah:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has no one who wants to play with him. So he’s happy to invite anyone. And, not surprisingly, it’s going be someone with whom no one wants to play either.

But that can hardly be the whole answer, since hosting Hamas is hardly a way for a leader to establish his legitimacy and demonstrate that he is in demand.

Another, possibly additional, motivation for the invitation could be a rebuke of Israel. Back in May, Hamas was invited to Russia, shortly after then-Foreign Minister Lapid accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine. But if so, it was not clear what Israel did this time to provoke the invitation this time around.

A third possibility, suggested by Jonathan Schanzer of Federation for Defense of Democracies, is that the invitation is part of a growing alliance that Russia is building:

It appears that Putin is building an axis of like-minded governments and entities, Schanzer said. “It really does look like he is working to create a new revisionist axis that already includes the Iranians, includes China potentially, and includes North Korea.”

“The question is whether this is an effort to legitimize and recruit Hamas to be part of that broader coalition. Or is this for show, or something else entirely?”

For its part, Hamas thinks there is a shift taking place among the world powers, and it wants to get in on the ground floor. At a conference this past June in Gaza entitled Palestinian Sovereignty, the Strategic Variables and Future Paths, Haniyeh spoke about 4 variables towards a new strategic vision:

o The "success" of the Sword of Jerusalem campaign during the fighting of May of last year
o  America's withdrawal from the area, a sign of its declining power and influence
o  The Russia-Ukraine war, which supposedly is actually between Russia and the West
o  The Abraham Accords, specifically the military and security alliances with Arab countries

The key variable, according to Haniyeh, is the 3rd one -- the war in the Ukraine:

"This is the broadest and most significant war in the struggle between the world's camps since the end of WWII." Stressing that "after this war the world will no longer be the same," he added: "It will undoubtedly become a multipolar world, and the currently prevailing unipolar era in international and global policy will end. This will certainly be a very important change, and it will impact both our Arab and Islamic region and our [Palestinian] cause and our struggle with the occupation."

Haniyeh is very keen on this up-and-coming multipolar world:

"Haniyeh stated that the Zionist narrative is no longer current, that Israel's status is not what it once was, and that there are important variables to be based on, including openness to large and influential countries such as China and Russia as well as Islamic Iran and all the countries that are confronting the Israel-U.S. policy in the region... [emphasis added]

Haniyeh's speech seems to dovetail nicely with the suggestion that this new multipolar world is something that Russia itself may be pursuing.

But if Haniyeh was expecting a confirmation of his goals against Israel during his visit to Russia, he was disappointed. The statements issued separately by the Russians and Hamas were very different.

Russia's statement emphasized the need to settle the conflict on the basis of a generally recognized legal framework, but Hamas emphasized that all negotiations with Israel have failed and that "resistance" was the only realistic option remaining:

According to the official statement of the Russian foreign ministry, the talks between the ministry officials and the Hamas delegation focused on "the developments in the Middle East, with emphasis on Palestinian affairs. The Russian side stressed the importance of quickly restoring the Palestinian national unity on the basis of the PLO's political program, as well as the need to settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the basis of generally-recognized legal framework, which is rooted in the relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly and the Arab peace initiative."

...The Hamas statement, on the other hand, emphasized that the delegation had informed the Russian officials of "the Israeli violations" against the Palestinian people and had stressed the Palestinians' right to "resist the occupation by every possible means, until liberation and return [are achieved]."...The statement said further that Hamas "is working to strengthen its ties with its Islamic and Arab surroundings and with influential international elements that support our people," and added: "The hegemonial status of the U.S. in the world order has harmed the Palestinian cause, and we believe that the shift to a multipolar world order based on just principles will benefit our people and our cause."

Publicly, at least, there seemed to be very little to indicate that Russia considered Hamas to be an asset -- let alone a valued ally. Hamas may very well see the value of a "multipolar world," but that does not mean it will get to sit at the same table with these other countries.

But if that means that this whole exercise of hosting Hamas was intended as a rebuke and warning to Israel, it doesn't appear to have had the desired effect.

Just this week, Israel had its own rebuke for Russia in response to its attempt to annex parts of Ukraine

Israel's Foreign Ministry stated on Tuesday that Israel "recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine," as Russia holds its fifth and last day of referendums as a prelude to it annexing four Ukrainian regions.

Israel "Will not accept the results of the referendum in the Eastern districts of Ukraine," the Israeli statement said, in a rare rebuke of Moscow.

Considering the sensitive agreement between Israel and Russia regarding Israeli flights into Syria in response to Iranian threats, the statement was somewhat unexpected -- especially since it preceded any official statement by Russia and the statement itself was apparently not the result of US pressure.

Israel seems to see Russia hosting Hamas as a rebuke -- nothing more.

As for Haniyeh, he may be jumping the gun when he compares the Russia-Ukraine war favorably to WWII as an opportunity for Hamas to reap the benefits of a new world order. He seems to have forgotten about the other world war, WWI.

That was when the Ottoman Empire also saw a new world order in the making -- and joined against the allied powers.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Man Who Won't Hire Visibly-Religious Jews Blames Them For Not Working (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Borough Park family New York, September 29 - A business owner with a bias against employing Haredim also accuses Haredim of living off welfare at the expense of the taxpayer instead of getting jobs, associates of the entrepreneur reported today.

Joseph Corell, 40, of Brooklyn's Midwood neighborhood, has on more than one occasion refused to hire any Jew who adheres to the dress code of the "ultra-orthodox" community, sources indicate, while blaming the same group for miring the next generation in poverty by not working or pursuing education outside traditional Jewish content.

"Parasites," Corell was heard to mutter after rereading a New York Times article on the alleged academic underperformance of certain Hasidic schools. Corell has turned down six Hasidic and "yeshivish" orthodox jobseekers at his air conditioning repair business in the last four years, despite the advertised position requiting no prior training, education, or professional experience, instead waiting until other candidates applied.

The phenomenon recurred this week, a subordinate reported, when the boss faked his absence from the office after a yeshiva alumnus entered to apply for an assistant technician position. Ten minutes after the Haredi Jew departed, Corell reemerged from the kitchenette where he had been hiding and greeted another applicant with no high school diploma or equivalency exam, whom he hired immediately.

"I don't care if you don't have a degree," he stated. "At least you're not a lazy good-for-nothing welfare queen who wants the state to pay for your kids' religious indoctrination. Why won't those people just get a job?"

Subordinates note that in each case of refusing to hire the religious Jew, Corell had a plausible pretext: feigning unawareness of the applicant; "losing" the candidate's contact information; pretending a different applicant came earlier; or making excuses about passing a drug test first, which, while required by city and state regulations, Corell never demands of other applicants, while in the meantime waiting for other candidates to apply and take the job.

Casual conversations with the business owner also featured assumptions on his part that unprovoked assaults on visibly-Jewish residents of the city over the last several years, many of which have been captured on video, must have involved the victims inviting the attacks somehow, despite the footage showing no such impetus. "I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and not jump to conclusions about them just based on what I see, because you can't always trust your eyes," he explained.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

09/29 Links Pt1: Glick: How Benny Gantz killed Israeli-Palestinian peace; Abbas Asked Why There Is No Palestinian State. The Answers Were in His UN Speech

From Ian:

The Women Burning Their Hijabs Want the Iranian Regime to Fall. Does Joe Biden?

Khamenei’s deal-denying obstinacy ought to be viewed as a liberating opportunity by the Biden administration. Why should we allow Khamenei and his regime a guaranteed pathway to bomb-grade uranium and long-range ballistic missiles and let them extort us? Unrestricted oil and gas sales, a bonanza of foreign investment, and big, legal purchases of Russian conventional weaponry will significantly abet Iranian expansionism . . . unless we believe just down the road that the Supreme Leader and his like-minded friends will give way to more reasonable people?

Obama’s nuclear deal never really made sense unless one believed the regime would evolve into something much less malign. But the theocracy has crushed every internal effort at even the most minimal political reform, and, as Masha Amini’s death makes clear, the regime that inspired The Handmaid’s Tale is still very much that regime.

Democrats, who’ve been pushing apologias since Bill Clinton apologized to Iran in an effort to jump-start better relations, have a chance to get more realistic about the nature of the Islamic Republic. Khamenei’s decision to tell Washington to pound sand may finally allow Democrats, who’ve been addicted to arms control with the theocracy, to regain a certain moral clarity about the most aggressive, antisemitic, revisionist state in the Middle East.

Many Republicans should also thank the cleric, who is the most impressive post-World War II dictator in the region. Those who’ve wanted to believe that a “good deal” and better Iranian behavior was possible if Washington just ramped up sanctions enough to coerce the mullahs into moderation are now obliged to ask themselves whether they are willing to argue for military strikes, which could lead to a war in the Persian Gulf. Whatever the timeline was for sanctions working—always just over the horizon—it certainly no longer matches the timeline for Iran to test a nuke.

If most Republicans, too, turn out to be Iran doves, then they can at least try to develop a bipartisan approach to the Islamic Republic that involves, at a minimum, continuing economic pressure. Sanctions won’t stop the mullahs’ nuclear drive, but they can weaken the clerical regime internally and deny it hard currency for its foreign adventures. Americans, Europeans, Turks, Sunni and Shiite Arabs, and, most emphatically, the Israelis would be a lot better off if Washington forestalled the Iranian bomb.

But if Americans no longer have the self-confidence to engage in such military action, if they just don’t believe U.S. hegemony in the Middle East is worth the price, then they can still default to something less delusional and destructive than paying an endlessly lying enemy to forsake the cornerstone of its hegemonic ambitions. We should take a cue from the protestors in the streets: a regime that so easily kills women isn’t one the United States can do business with.

American and European “realists” have never been so wrong. It is the nature of the regime that counts.

Caroline Glick: How Benny Gantz killed Israeli-Palestinian peace

In 2014, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia acted as Israel’s unofficial allies in Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza. Among other things, they blocked the Obama administration from coercing Israel into accepting Hamas’ ceasefire terms.

Their opposition to the Palestinians and support for Israel only grew during Trump’s presidency. Many people who spoke with the Egyptians, the Emiratis, Saudis and Bahrainis during this period understood that they were no longer willing to stand with the Palestinians and were willing to reach a pragmatic resolution of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria that respected Israel’s rights and interests as well as those of the Palestinians.

But blinded by ideology, and guided no doubt by Gantz’s political interest in humiliating Netanyahu ahead of the third round of elections, Eshel and Gantz ignored all of this. They insisted that nothing had changed in the Arab world since 2002, when the Saudi king gave a fake peace offer to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman demanding that Israel surrender to the PLO’s maximalist demands as a condition for Arab-Israeli peace.

While Kushner seems to reject Eshel’s version of events in his recently published memoir, in a way, the veracity of Eshel’s story is less important than the fact that he takes so much pride in his version of events that he chose to share it with the Israeli public. Eshel clearly never considered that he may have been mistaken, and as a result of his own ideological blindness and political interests, he had destroyed Israel’s chance of permanently securing its national and strategic interests in Judea and Samaria.

Eshel’s blindness is a testament to the most glaring and dangerous characteristics of the left, both in Israel and throughout the Western world today. For leftists from Tel Aviv to Washington to Paris, the world is a static place where the 1960s anti-colonialist slogans that blamed all the troubles of the developing world on the West and the Jewish state are truths etched in stone—a progressive Ten Commandments. And the tablets will never be broken. Anyone who rejects these slogans, or permits reality to seep into their policymaking at any level are enemies far worse than the likes of the PLO or the Iranian regime or any terror group or regime that bases their claim to legitimacy on anti-colonialist precepts. On the other hand, unelected elites who live and die by these precepts are “objective professionals,” who protect our societies from riff raff that actually take into consideration facts, events, statements and political forces that stand these anti-Western principles on their heads.

From the progressives’ collective slobberfest over Islamic terrorists from Ramallah to Tehran, to their political and legal wars against anyone who disagrees with them, all over the West, our ability to make informed decisions, whether as voters or policymakers, is under assault. Elites who insist that their catechisms to the anti-colonialist gods are the beginning and end of all legitimate policymaking are damning us to policies that cause our nations to fail perpetually.

The Trump peace plan, including the sovereignty plan, was the first pragmatic blueprint for Israeli-Palestinian peace ever presented, because unlike all of its predecessors it was not based entirely on anti-Israel mythology. Eshel and Gantz didn’t just kill the sovereignty plan when they scared Kushner with their myths. They killed the entire concept that reality should form the basis of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians.

In his memoir and in subsequent interviews, former ambassador Friedman has said that whatever one thinks of the Trump peace plan, it was an opportunity for Israel to begin having a serious discussion about what it wants to do with Judea and Samaria. Obviously, so long as Israel’s left controls the discourse and blocks reality from entering the discussion, no such discussion will be possible.

Abbas Asked Why There Is No Palestinian State. The Answers Were in His UN Speech

PA President Mahmoud Abbas asked the UN General Assembly on Friday why the Palestinians do not yet have a state. I found the answers to Abbas' questions were in his speech as well.

He claimed to genuinely want peace with Israel, but made clear that he rejects Israel's very legitimacy. He described Israel as a colonizing power for 75 years - that is, since its historic rebirth in 1948. He airbrushed Judaism out of his "eternal" Jerusalem, in which there are only Muslim and Christian holy sites.

There was no mention that Israel dismantled its settlements and withdrew all its soldiers from Gaza in 2005. No hint that Hamas took over, and has provoked conflict with Israel ever since with indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel, teaching Israel that relinquishing adjacent territory merely empowers the forces that seek our destruction.

Abbas devoted some of his speech to Nasser Abu Hamid, whom he described as a heroic martyr who was now dying in jail of cancer, failing to note that Abu Hamid is serving multiple life terms for the murders of seven Israelis and the attempted murders of 12 more. Abbas championed the killers of Israelis - to whom his Palestinian Authority insists on paying salaries, thus nurturing the next generations of murderers.

Abbas ignored the "one condition" Prime Minister Yair Lapid set on Thursday for the implementation of a two-state solution: "That a future Palestinian state will be a peaceful one. That it will not become another terror base from which to threaten the well-being and the very existence of Israel."

Lapid offered Abbas a one-sentence formula for Palestinian independence: "Put down your weapons, and there will be peace."

On Monday, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas sent Rosh Hashanah greetings to Israel's President Isaac Herzog and to Defense Minister Benny Gantz. (For some reason, he did not send any such greetings to Prime Minister Yair Lapid.)

Naturally, the Palestinians are upset.

Felesteen quotes angry analysts who are convinced that New Year greetings are yet another sign of how Abbas is collaborating with Israel.

Politicians believe that the congratulations of PA President Mahmoud Abbas to the leaders of the Israeli occupation on "Jewish holidays and occasions" reflect the extent of the state of political weakness that the PA has reached in front of Israel, and proves that "its president tweets outside the flock."

Member of the Future Electoral List, Hatem Shaheen, considered that the PA President's congratulations to Gantz and Herzog show the state of disregard and humiliation of the rights that the authority has reached, at a time when the occupation is escalating its violations in the occupied territories. Shaheen explained to Felesteen that such a position constitutes an affront to our people and our capabilities, and is completely rejected, because of what our people suffer from Israeli crimes. "Abbas's congratulations to the leaders of the occupation express a state of weakness, lack of self-esteem and confidence, and a lack of belief that we are able to extract our rights in the future, and it represents begging."

Writer and political analyst Khaled Sadiq said: "Abbas' contact with Gantz and Herzog comes within the framework of the relationship with the occupation, which he is trying to strengthen with the aim of returning to the negotiating table." He cautioned that "this congratulations encourages the occupation and its leaders to commit more violations and crimes against our people and realize its ambitions, so that the authority appears to be a partner in the tragedies and crimes that the occupation causes against our people, and attempts to change the reality in Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

However, Abbas knows that Israel has nothing to offer the authority. Sadiq continued: "The positions of Abbas and the PA do not reflect the will of the Palestinian people, but rather reflect the positions of the personality of the PA president, to maintain his presence at the head of the PA, to please Israel and to return to the path of settlement and achieve personal gains."

The researcher and writer Magdi Hamayel stressed that the congratulation on Jewish occasions reflects the state of contradiction in the head of the Palestinian Authority. While he calls at the United Nations to protect the Palestinian people from the violations of the occupation, he contacts his leaders to congratulate them on the arrival of a new Hebrew year. He pointed out that the state of anger among the Palestinian people is supposed to be accompanied by the anger of the presidency and the authority, and to take a political position commensurate with the sacrifices it is making against the occupation, and the president of the authority must be in harmony with the position of the Palestinian street and the revolution in Jenin. Hamayel stressed that "Abbas is still gasping for the leaders of the occupation and the mirage of the settlement project," and this will not make him gain anything, as the occupation wants to control all of Palestine.

Abbas regularly sends greetings on other countries' national holidays; in fact such greetings take up at least half of the press releases from his office.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Rashida Tlaib, the Lion's Den, and the ubiquity of Jew-hate across political boundaries (plus comic)

Last week, member of Congress Rashida Tlaib said at a Palestine Advocacy Day event, “I want you all to know that among progressives, it becomes clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values yet back Israel‘s apartheid government.”

The formulation asserts both the lie that Israel is an apartheid state and that people cannot be both progressive and support Israel.

One does not see similar litmus tests for progressives. Indeed, the virtually unanimous support that the anti-Israel crowd has for the emphatically Islamist, regressive groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad shows the absurdity of the idea that these supposed progressives support only progressive causes.

This was already evident back in 2006 when gender theorist Judith Butler said, "Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important."

If Hamas is part of the global Left, and an Israel where there are equal rights for Arabs and women and gays is cast as part of the bigoted far-Right, then the terms have lost all meaning.

But there is another political theory that is far more powerful than the arbitrary Left/Right divide.

Jew-hatred explains the obvious contradictions between what "progressives" claim to believe and what they actually believe.

And it works both ways. Far right Jew haters, who are far more willing to take pride in their bigotry, regularly pretend to be pro-Palestinian - happily quoting the most far-Left personalities. The racist shooters at Overland Park and Pittsburgh were partly fueled by the antisemitism of the Left.

The far-Right pretense of caring about Palestinian human rights is as transparently false as the far-Left pretense of caring about women's and gay rights while supporting Hamas.

Another proof that antisemitism trumps Left/Right politics comes from the new West Bank terror group, called The Lion's Den. As Khaled Abu Toameh reports:

This is the first organized armed group that consists of gunmen belonging to a number of Palestinian factions – including Fatah, Hamas, IJ and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The PFLP is a Communist group. Islamic Jihad and Hamas are Islamist groups. How can they work together?

Because for antisemites, there is no Right and Left. Those political affiliations are excuses for their hate of Jews, not the reasons for it. Arab antisemites are far less wedded to their supposed Leftist or Islamist Rightist causes than they are to hating Jews - but it is the exact same logic that allows Western "progressives" to be as hypocritical as Western white supremacists who pretend to love Palestinian Arabs.

The only consistency is Jew-hate.

Perhaps it is time to resurrect the political parties like the late 19th century Deutschsoziale Antisemitische Partei whose primary ideological basis was antisemitism, so these people on the Right and Left can join together and enjoy consistent political positions.

The Lion's Den is a model for how today's antisemites can put aside their differences for the greater good of ethnically cleansing Jews from the planet.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!