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Monday, December 19, 2022

12/19 Links Pt2: The light of Hanukkah that has continued to shine for 74 years; General Washington’s Christmastime Hanukah Encounter; Children discover 2,000-year-old lamp in the ground

From Ian:

Daniel Greenfield: The light of Hanukkah that has continued to shine for 74 years
A candle is a brief flare of light. A wick dipped in oil burns and goes out again. The Hanukkah light appears no different, but it is.

Two thousand years after the Jews had come to believe that wars were for other people and miracles meant escaping alive, Jewish armies stood and held the line against an empire and the would be empires of the region.

And now the flame still burns, though it is flickering. Seventy-four years is a long time for oil to burn, especially when the black oil next door seems so much more useful to the empires and republics across the sea. And the children of many of those who first lit the flame no longer see the point in that hoary old light.

But that old light is still the light of possibilities. It burns to remind us of the extraordinary things that our ancestors did and of the extraordinary assistance that they received. We cannot always expect oil to burn for eight days, just as we cannot always expect the bullet to miss or the rocket to fall short. And yet even in those moments of darkness the reminder of the flame is with us for no darkness lasts forever and no exile, whether of the body of the spirit, endures. Sooner or later the spark flares to life again and the oil burns again. Sooner or later the light returns.

It is the miracle that we commemorate because it is a reminder of possibilities. Each time we light a candle or dip a wick in oil, we release a flare of light from the darkness comes to remind us of what was, is and can still be.
Israel is one of the most progressive countries in the world
While so-called “progressives” and biased media in the United States level a relentless stream of accusations against Israel, these “critics” uniformly ignore the fact that Israel is one of the most liberal, progressive nations in the world. If Israel’s “progressive” critics really cared about social justice, they would be the country’s most fervent supporters.

Enemies of Israel falsely accuse Israel of white colonialism, apartheid, ultra-nationalism, unfair treatment of its Arab citizens, LGBT “pinkwashing,” theocracy and violations of international law.

In fact, Israel is a mature democracy with high-functioning government and judicial institutions, plus a long track record of moral behavior and the rule of law. It guarantees expansive civil liberties, equal rights and economic opportunities to its citizens.

This includes, of course, Israel’s two million Arab citizens—20% of the population—who share all the benefits of Israeli society.

Israeli Arabs are currently represented in the Knesset by two political parties, one of which is an Islamist party that was part of the outgoing government. An Arab Muslim judge serves on Israel’s Supreme Court. An Arab Christian also served as a Supreme Court justice and was chair of Israel’s Central Elections Committee.

An Arab Muslim is the head of Bank Leumi, Israel’s largest bank. Arabs also make up 30% of the country’s doctors and 50% of the country’s pharmacists.

Thousands of Israeli Arabs volunteer for service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), even though military service is not required of Arab Muslims or Christians.

So much for the myth of Israeli apartheid.
General Washington’s Christmastime Hanukah Encounter
There is a particularly American Hanukah story that occurred when Washington and his troops were at Valley Forge during Christmas of 1777. Dan Adler’s article “Hanukkah at the White House” recounts this tale of George Washington’s encounter with a Jewish soldier: “In December, 1778, General George Washington had supper at the home of Michael Hart, a Jewish merchant in Easton, Pennsylvania. It was during the Hanukkah celebration, and Hart began to explain the customs of the holiday to his guest. Washington replied that he already knew about Hanukkah. He told Hart and his family of meeting the Jewish soldier at Valley Forge the previous year. (According to Washington, the soldier was a Polish immigrant who said he had fled his homeland because he could not practice his faith under the Prussian government there.) Hart’s daughter Louisa wrote the story down in her diary.” Rabbi Susan Grossman has written that, “[l]ike generations of Jews before him, that soldier served as a ‘light unto the nations’ (Isaiah 42:6), bringing inspiration and courage to a nation in its birth pangs. And he did so in a perfectly American way, a way in which a miracle did result, the miracle by which the light from one religion helps give comfort and courage to another.”

Washington “was welcomed at the home of Corporal Michael Hart,” which is described as “a two-story stone building on the southeast corner of the public square, directly opposite the courthouse. His general store was on the first floor, his residence on the second. Michael Hart’s wife, Leah, prepared a kosher meal... in honor of the Hanukah festival, it being the sixth day of the holiday.” (To offer a mild correction, December 21, 1778, was the eighth and final day of Hanukah that year, since Hanukah ran from sundown, Sunday, December 13, 1778, until sundown, Monday, December 21st.)

Further, Louisa Hart would “proudly record” in her diary: “Let it be remembered that Michael Hart was a Jew, pious; a Jew reverencing and strictly observant of the Sabbath and festivals, dietary laws were also adhered to although he was compelled to be his own Schochet [ritual slaughterer]. Mark well that he, Washington, was then honored as first in peace, first in war and first in the hearts of his countrymen. Even during a short sojourn he became, for the hour, the guest of the worthy Jew.”


A Father’s Perspective on Campus Antisemitism
University of Wisconsin students returned to campus this semester to find hateful antisemitic messages chalked onto campus sidewalks. Hillel and other Jewish student organizations were attacked with the age-old antisemitic blood libel trope of “having blood on their hands.”

Elsewhere, a heckler stood outside the main gate to Queens College in New York City, and shouted racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories through a megaphone, at students walking to class. He yelled that Jews “will literally rape your mother in front of your face … they have their own banks …[and] were siphoning the wealth of Germany.” At Wellesley College, the student newspaper editorial board endorsed and encouraged the alarming Mapping Project, which places a potential target on 500 Jewish and Zionist organizations in Massachusetts.

There is no doubt that the experience of being a Jewish college student has changed from when I was in college. Today, being a Jewish student leader can often mean battling antisemitism. It means combating the rise of white supremacist ideology on campus and beyond. It means unprecedented violence in Jewish spaces. And it means countering anti-Israel hatred and attacks on Jews for their real or presumed support for Israel.

The antisemitic chalkings in Wisconsin, the vile verbal assault in New York, and the op-ed in Massachusetts targeted Jews for the imagined sin of supporting the Jewish state. Scapegoating “the Jews” for global challenges is one of the oldest expressions of antisemitism. And Jewish college students are its newest target.

Even if we set aside for a moment the well-documented spike in national antisemitism, the climate on university campuses is something to notice. Hillel International last year recorded more than three times the number of hateful acts targeting Jewish students than it did just four short years ago. In one generation of students, anti-Jewish hate on college campuses tripled.

But the change is measured by more than statistics. It’s also found in the rising level of open hostility facing our students. When campuses re-opened after long COVID-related closures, students returned eager for connection and a resumption of normalcy. Instead, they too frequently found that the hate festering underground had erupted onto the campus quad with unabashed anti-Jewish and anti-Israel rhetoric and actions.


Seth Frantzman: Will Elon Musk Twitter policy flip-flops impact MidEast?
However, there were very real and important changes that Twitter had gone through over the years, along with other social media, to crack down on racism, support for terrorism and then what is called “misinformation.” When it comes to supporting extremism and terror groups, platforms like Twitter did a good job getting rid of large numbers of accounts that had backed groups like ISIS.

This had a major impact on the Middle East because extremists harnessed social media in 2013-2014 to help influence the world. This radicalized many young men and women. Some of those people joined ISIS, part of the 50,000 or more volunteers from around the world who went to Iraq and Syria illegally to participate in the conflict. Some of these volunteers committed genocide against Yazidis and other minorities.

That means the Middle East was deeply impacted by Western social media giants. Those giants may not have done enough to ban inflammatory extremist language in the past. For instance, a lack of Arabic speakers might have meant it was harder to moderate content that uses terms of hate in other languages, such as referring to minorities in the Middle East as “kuffar” or “infidels.” It is thus important that social media giants know what users locally may be saying if they use local terms that can drive extremism. For instance, during the Rwanda genocide in 1994, the code used by Hutu extremists on the radio to encourage the genocide of Tutsis was “cut down the tall trees.” Social media giants today can sometimes be exploited by extremists, as the radio was by extremists in the 1990s.

Therefore, the recent month at Twitter can be concerning for those in the Middle East who don’t want to see policy chaos lead to any extremists re-entering the platform. At the same time, confusing policy changes can lead to legitimate accounts being suspended or banned.

It’s important that rules exist. Musk, who watched the World Cup, surely knows the importance of rules and order, because the beautiful game played out between France and Argentina was made possible by rules. Rules keep the game moving forward and also prevent riots by fans or fighting by the players.

Twitter and other social media sites have an important role to play in the region. They can help dissidents find a voice, such as those covering the protests in Iran. But authoritarian regimes also want to regulate what people say on social media, or even try to find out who is behind critical accounts. It is important social media giants play a role in not letting extremists or authoritarians exploit the values and openness that the internet promises.

At the same time, too much of a free-for-all or policy chaos and constant changes can give extremists a window back into social media and can cause chaos in the Middle East and destabilization. All of this is important and there is a balance that can be had between openness and freedom of expression, and not being a place for extremists that can harm minorities or the region.

Musk has now put out a poll asking if he should step down as head of Twitter. This is important, but more important is having the guardrails that make the platform work for its users and also for those impacted by it.
Taking dark comfort in an Israeli Arab’s New York Times lament
As an Israeli-American Jew who has lived in Israel for 20 years, it was with a certain dark comfort that I read Israeli-Arab activist Diana Buttu’s Dec. 13 New York Times column “Israelis Have Put Benjamin Netanyahu Back in Power. Palestinians Will Surely Pay the Price,” in which she laments the election of Israel’s incoming right-wing coalition.

“Well,” I thought, “at least she’s afraid too.”

This is unpleasant stuff, no doubt. Butto and I live in a beautiful country, which we both, I am sure, love very deeply, but when the situation is unpleasant, we become unpleasant with it.

I am not happy that Buttu and her Israeli-Arab friends now feel “it is only a matter of time before we are gone.” But I understand it, because I often feel the same anxiety about my own people. In a terrible way, her fear comforts me, because I now know that we are both in the same boat.

Nonetheless, I am troubled by more than Buttu’s obsidian reverie, because it did and does occur to me that, while I may understand her fears, she most certainly does not understand mine, and appears to have made no effort to do so.

Butto omits, for example, some rather important things in order to convey her sentiments of terror. She describes an “atmosphere of racism” in Israel that she finds unbearable, and blames it solely on Israeli Jews. This is, unfortunately for our country, half the story at best, given that in May 2021, Israeli-Arab mobs went on a racist rampage, seeking out Jews to beat and kill, burning down synagogues and essentially acting little different from the Ku Klux Klan of the old South.
Haaretz Clarifies ‘Disproportionate Punishments’ for Israeli Arabs Is Demonstrators’ Claim, Not Fact
CAMERA’s Israel office today prompted correction of a page-two news article in Haaretz‘s English yesterday which editorialized about the sentences meted out to Israeli Arabs convicted for taking part in violent attacks in May 2021: “The three charged were protesting disproportionate punishments received by Arabs following the ethnic riots during Israel’s Gaza operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021.”
The problematic statement as fact charging that sentences meted out to Arabs convicted for taking part in attacks against Jews in May 2021 were “disproportionate” also had appeared prominently in the digital article’s subheadline: “Three people were detained for brandishing the flags while protesting the disproportionate punishments handed down to Arabs over Jewish-Arab riots that rocked the country last [sic] May.”

Unlike its English-language counterpart, the Hebrew edition carefully qualified the “disproportionate punishments” claim as just that, attributing it to the views of the protesters: “The protesters, from the Hirak movement, demonstrated against what they defined as a discriminatory policy of punishment targeting Arabs for the riots during Operation Guardian of the Walls last year.” (CAMERA’s translation.) In addition, the Hebrew edition’s subheading did not contain the editorializing statement regarding the allegedly “disproportionate punishments.”

Moreover, according to the demonstrators’ signs, the protesters were not merely protesting what they saw as “disproportionate punishments.” The signs applauded those convicted of violent of Jewish citizens as “defenders of the Palestinian people.” The signs also repeatedly call for the freedom, ie the release, of the convicted perpetrators — not a reduced sentence.
Guardian provides free PR to anti-Israel NGO
The rest of the article includes additional unsubstantiated allegations. But, here are few factual clarifications on the excerpts we cited:

There are no “destruction of Arab homes as collective punishments” by the IDF. McGreal is likely alluding to the practice of demolishing the homes of Palestinian terrorists, which can hardly be characterised as “collective punishment” – a term which refers to “action taken against a group in retaliation for an act committed by an individual” – as only the terrorist’s home is demolished.

Also, the amount of military aid Israel receives annually from Washington is $3.8nb, not “$4.9bn”.

As far as the most sensational charge regarding the alleged Israeli “abuse of children”, that likely alludes to a completely discredited report by the NGO Save the Children.

The rest of the article follows the same script, with McGreal uncritically citing the unverified claims of former Israeli soldiers.

We say “unverified” because the soldiers chose to give their testimony to BtS rather than having gone through the normal army chain of command and filing complaints – despite the army’s injunction to report any violation of regulations that results in harm to non-combatants. The claims are unfalsifiable because there aren’t enough details – such as the date, location, etc – of the alleged abuse for the army to investigate or refute them.

In fact, quite tellingly, we learned that McGreal didn’t even bother approaching the IDF for a comment on the soldiers’ allegations.

As CAMERA previously observed, “fact-checking investigations by even sympathetic journalists have shown that many or most BtS claims are either entirely false or grossly exaggerated”. That is the nature of propaganda. Responsible journalists would, thus, be well-advised to accept tales by BtS “witnesses” with the utmost of caution – which helps explain why the Guardian’s Chris McGreal accepts the group’s claims at face value.
NYT publishes crossword puzzle resembling swastika
The New York Times on released its daily crossword puzzle in the shape of swastika on Sunday, Democratic Strategist Keith Edwards pointed out on Twitter. "This is the NYTimes crossword puzzle today on the first day of Hanukkah. What the hell, @nytimes?" the tweet read.

In a later tweet, Edwards pointed out that no major media outlet had covered the incident. "So far not one mainstream media outlet has reported on this," he wrote.
How German It Is: Sentences Suspended for Tormenting a Young Jewish Man
Just to make absolutely sure there would be no further executions of Nazi war criminals, in 1949, the West German government passed a law prohibiting capital punishment. It was, in effect, a way to prevent hundreds of thousands of people involved in mass murder of Jews, prisoners of war, and Resistance fighters all over Europe from ever receiving the punishment they deserved.

Such indulgence brings us to the recent story of three German men who, found guilty of having repeatedly whipped, beaten, and insulted a Jewish man, were nonetheless received suspended sentences. That story is here: “German Elite Fraternity Students Responsible for Antisemitic Assault Receive Suspended Sentences,” by Ben Cohen, Algemeiner, December 8, 2022:
Three German students from an elite fraternity who were charged with beating a Jewish student and subjecting him to antisemitic insults have been handed suspended sentences by a court in the city of Heidelberg.

The three convicted individuals — who all received suspended sentences of eight months and no financial penalties in Thursday’s court verdict — were members the right-wing nationalist Normannia student fraternity. A fourth member of the group accused of involvement in the assault was acquitted.

The incident occurred at a party at the Normannia fraternity’s mansion at the University of Heidelberg on Aug. 29, 2020. A 25-year-old student in attendance who spoke about his Jewish ancestry was berated with antisemitic abuse, whipped with belts and pelted with metal coins by the four assailants.

These students at what is described as “an elite German university fraternity” regularly greeted each other with the words “Heil Hitler” and used the word “Jew” as a pejorative, according to one of the fraternity’s former members, Karl Stockmann, in an article he published in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. That disenchanted former member of the fraternity described the antisemitism and glorification of Germany’s Nazi past that prevailed at the Normannia fraternity. He left the group, “repulsed” by the behavior of fellow members of the fraternity, citing as an example their habit of drinking heavily while listening to recordings of Hitler’s speeches.

“Almost every day, somebody greeted me with ‘Heil Hitler,’” Stockmann revealed.

Stockmann stressed that the attack on the Jewish student at the fraternity party could not be regarded as an isolated incident.

“When I was at Normannia, the word ‘Jew’ was considered a common swear word in the mansion, comparable to ‘asshole’ or ‘motherf*****,’” he said.

Another commonly-heard slogan was, “We are Hitler’s people, then and now,” Stockmann said.

During the trial, the defendants insisted that the assault on the Jewish student had been light-heartedly intended, claiming as well that the victim knew in advance that the practice of “belting” [i.e., whipping with belts]was a fraternity tradition he might be subjected to at the party, according to German media outlets.

The assault was “light-heartedly intended.” Yes, think of just how light-hearted that victim must have felt as he was beaten with belts, pelted with metal coins, and constantly insulted as “a Jew.” All in good fun, or so his three tormentors claimed. What spoilsports these Jews are –can’t they take a little light-hearted fun without making a big deal about it? Always complaining, never willing to join in the merriment. No wonder no one likes them.
Robbie Williams said set to entertain Israel in summer 2023
British pop star Robbie Willams is set to give a concert next summer in Tel Aviv, according to Hebrew media reports Saturday.

The Walla and Ynet websites both cited industry sources as saying the award-winning performer was booked for a show in Yarkon Park on June 1, 2023.

Walla added that fellow British musician Sam Smith and US rapper Machine Gun Kelly will arrive a day earlier to perform as part of a planned two-day “festival of music.”

Williams, 48, last performed in Israel in 2015 when he gave a concert at Yarkon Park attended by over 35,000 people.

Last month Williams stirred interest in Israel when he posted a video of Israeli singer-songwriter Noga Erez performing her song “Nails” along with a comment “Can this person be the next biggest person pls? Asking for a friend.”

Erez herself responded to the post, writing back, “this person loves you!”
Biden to condemn rising antisemitism at White House Hanukkah reception
US President Joe Biden will condemn growing antisemitism in his remarks at the White House Hanukkah reception on Monday, which will also include a candle lighting and blessing.

The Democratic president will tell guests at the night event that silence is complicity, according to White House officials, and will add that it’s imperative that hate, violence and antisemitism are condemned.

The holiday celebration comes during a spate of antisemitic episodes. Former US president Donald Trump hosted a Holocaust-denying white supremacist at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. The rapper Ye expressed his love for Adolf Hitler in an interview. Basketball star Kyrie Irving appeared to promote an antisemitic film on social media. Neo-Nazi trolls are clamoring to return to Twitter as new CEO Elon Musk grants “amnesty” to suspended accounts.

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, tracked 2,717 antisemitic instances of assault, harassment and vandalism last year, a 34-percent increase over the previous year and the highest number since the New York City-based group began tracking them in 1979.

Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, recently hosted a White House discussion on antisemitism and combating hate with Jewish leaders representing the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox denominations of the faith. At the event, Emhoff, who is Jewish, said he was “in pain right now” over rising antisemitism. The roundtable led to the White House’s decision to establish an interagency

Among those invited to Monday’s White House event are a Holocaust survivor and retired public school teacher, a rabbi at Temple Emanuel in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Michele Taylor, who is US ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council and the daughter of Holocaust survivors.

A menorah has been added to the White House holiday collection this year, lit nightly during the eight-day Jewish festival of Hanukkah. White House carpenters built the menorah out of wood that was saved from a Truman-era renovation and sterling silver candle cups.
In Haifa, Jews and Christian Arabs Celebrate the Holidays Together
Like every year, Haifa, the “northern capital” of Israel, known for the cohabitation between its Jewish and Arab residents, celebrates in a unique atmosphere the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays during the Hag HaHagim festival (“The Holiday of the Holidays” in Hebrew), which takes place this year from December 8 to 25.

Many attractions are offered to hundreds of thousands of visitors at different locations in the city in an atmosphere that mixes the scent of the east and the tradition of Santa Claus.

During walks in the market of the Arab quarter of Wadi Nisnas, where many churches are nestled, in the German Colony and along Ben Gurion Avenue which extends the famous Bahai Gardens, it is not uncommon to see groups of young Israeli Arabs dressed as Santa Claus and dancing in groups to eastern music with contagious joy.

“For us, Christmas is a way to commune and celebrate with all the inhabitants of the city. Everyone is welcome here. That way, tourists can see how we Arabs know how to party,” explains Saber, a young man who works in the Wadi Nisnas market.

In addition to the large Christian Arab community in the city, many Jews from the former USSR grew up with a conception of Christmas that was not Christian, but secular, considering the celebrations above all a “national holiday.”

Strengthened by the religious mix that characterizes Haifa, it is only natural that the “Hag HaHagim” festival was inaugurated there 29 years ago, on the initiative of the Arab-Jewish Cultural Center – Beit Hagefen.
Egyptian Jews on brink of extinction mark Hanucah
Nine years ago, Magda Haroun organised a Hanucah service at Cairo’s Adly St synagogue. But in the absence of a rabbi she turned to Google to find instructions on how to lead the service, she tells CBS News. Now the ‘community’ she heads in Cairo is composed of three elderly women. Magda claims to be continuing her father’s legacy of love for heritage and country, but the latter mortgaged his family’s future, and indirectly caused the death of one daughter, by stubbornly remaining in Egypt.

Haroun is worried that, within a few years, there will be no Egyptian Jews left in the country, so she has worked with officials to ensure the country’s Jewish heritage, including some major historical sites, will be cared for after she’s gone.

“All synagogues now are under the umbrella of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, so they will be protected and not destroyed,” she told CBS News. That includes the Ben Ezra Synagogue, the oldest maintained in the Middle East. “We did an inventory of each synagogue, with photographs and numbers, so nothing will disappear, I hope.”

She also works closely with the Drop of Milk Foundation, a century-old organization that aims to preserve Jewish heritage in Egypt, which recently, with the help of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, restored a portion of the Jewish Cemetery of Basatin, the second-oldest Jewish cemetery in the world.

Haroun told CBS News she was doing it for her culture, and for her father, whom she said taught her an “unconditional love” for both her faith and her country.

“I owe him that I have an identity,” she said. “I am an Egyptian Jew, and nothing will change this.”


Ukrainian Jews celebrate Hanukkah amid blackouts
Rabbi Mayer Stambler, Head of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine tells us about the meaningfulness of celebrating Hanukkah in war-weary Ukraine.




Children out for a stroll in north discover 2,000-year-old lamp in the ground
A group of children recently found a 2,000-year-old oil lamp at Kibbutz Parod in the northern Galilee region of the country, shedding light on the ancient Jewish community that lived in the area, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement Monday.

The 4th-grade students — Alon Cohen, Liam Atias and Rotem Levnat — from the kibbutz’s Nof Hagalil School, made the discovery as they were out for a walk about 10 days ago.

The trio said they noticed something poking out of the ground, and at first they thought it was just an unusual stone.

However, after carefully pulling it out they realized it was a complete oil lamp made of clay.

The students took the lamp to their parents, who informed the Israel Antiquities Authority, which was able to confirm the age of the object, the statement said.

It surfaced close to a site where the IAA is conducting a dig ahead of the planned construction of a new neighborhood in the kibbutz.

IAA archaeologist Haim Mamliya noted the importance of the fact that the lamp was found outside the area of the dig.

“Discovery of the lamp may give us a clue as to how far the borders of the ancient site reached,” he said. “If it weren’t for the children, we wouldn’t know this. There is no doubt that the find sheds new and interesting light on the excavation.”




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