Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Cary Nelson and Michael Saenger: When Discourse about Israel Becomes Antisemitic: A Guide for the Perplexed
Cary Nelson and Michael Saenger argue for understanding antisemitic anti-Zionism as ‘a prejudice with definable characteristics’ and of the need for ‘a standard that can help us identify antisemitic bias in articles, books and public statements about the Jewish state.’ In bringing specificity to the broad guidelines of the IHRA definition, Nelson and Saenger provide much-needed clarity by offering a comprehensive list of examples of the types of statement about Israel which cross the line from legitimate criticism to antisemitism.
Any nation can and should be criticised, both by those who live within its borders and those who do not.[1] But heated debates for years have raged over whether and when attacks on Israeli history and national policy actually falsify that history or so misrepresent Israeli policies that they cross a line from reasoned political critique to demonisation and antisemitism. This debate sometimes takes binary form, with some acting as if no criticism of Israel is ever antisemitic, and others behaving as if all criticism of Israel is antisemitic (though the latter belief has waned in public forums). We believe matters can be clarified by supplementing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) influential list of general examples of extreme anti-Zionism with more specific examples of current accusations.
One example of the debate’s binary character is represented by the circulation of the term “whataboutism.” It often serves to dismiss any attempt to contextualise criticism of Israel with comparisons to other countries. On the one hand, “whataboutism” is used to invalidate legitimate complaints about Israeli policy by referencing other, harsher regimes. On the other hand, “whataboutism” is also used to invalidate any comparisons between Israel and other countries, even though such comparisons are normal and necessary practice for international political science.
We need a standard that can help us identify antisemitic bias in articles, books and public statements about the Jewish state. While such a metric will never be perfect or offer definitive guidance, it can demonstrate that antisemitic anti-Zionism is a prejudice with definable characteristics linked to specific arguments. In what follows, we identify common forms of antisemitic bias featured in discussions of Israel. Like the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, we define bias against Jews not as an animus in individual psyches, but rather as the effect of distinct conceptual distortions.
While the examples dealing with Israel are the most contested feature of the IHRA working definition, that document is primarily designed to identify resulting antisemitism in the wider world, whereas we target the perception of Israel itself. IHRA is focused in part on how biased characterisations of Israel are weaponised against Jews worldwide, whereas we limit ourselves to addressing the claims and strategies embodied in hostile characterisations of Israel.
StandWithUs: Northwest Regional Manager of StandWithUs’ H.S Department, John Michael Graves, at Snohomish County
StandWithUs commends Snohomish County, Washington Councilman Nate Nehring and the other councilmembers for voting (5-0) to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism for county agencies on January 18, 2023. Snohomish is the first in the state to take such a strong stand against antisemitism.
John Michael Graves, Northwest Regional Manager of StandWithUs’ High School Department, spoke courageously in front of councilmembers, stating, “Each of the students I educate have a similar story to tell. Antisemitism is happening today and its perpetrators are becoming emboldened at a rate unseen in decades.” Click HERE to read the StandWithUs press release, and HERE to read the press coverage in the Lynwood Times
Richard Goldberg: Woke ‘ESG’ investors guilty of anti-Semitism as they target Israel
Israel boycotters have a new home for waging economic war against the world’s only Jewish state: environmental, social and governance ratings. Federal and state officials should respond by demanding transparency for investors, enforcing existing anti-boycott laws and preventing retirement funds from being weaponized for anti-Semitic purposes.Fighting back against the thuggish ‘ESG’ woke agenda
Take the case of Motorola Solutions, a global leader in two-way-radio systems and command-center software for first responders. Headquartered in Chicago, the company boasts it strives to reduce carbon emissions and increase its workforce diversity. In almost every category, Motorola Solutions looks to be a model ESG-compliant— read “progressive” — corporate citizen.
Yet despite its low overall risk profile, Yahoo! Finance warns ESG-minded investors that Motorola Solutions carries a “significant controversy level” twice as large as its peer average. What it doesn’t disclose is the supposed controversy surrounds the company’s sales of counterterrorism equipment to Israel to stop suicide bombers from blowing up restaurants and buses.
For that level of detail, investors need to subscribe to the data’s source: Morningstar, a company just blocks from Motorola Solutions in downtown Chicago.
The financial-research giant, best known for its mutual-fund and 529-accounts reviews, expanded its ESG work in 2020 by acquiring Sustainalytics, a Dutch ESG-ratings firm.
But Morningstar’s due-diligence team either overlooked or ignored one red flag: years-long accusations Sustainalytics negatively rates Israel-connected companies in alignment with the global campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state.
Morningstar Sustainalytics mars dozens of Israeli companies, including the country’s leading banks and cellphone providers, with significant controversy ratings merely for providing services to Jews living in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
There’s no such thing as blue money or red money. Only the green stuff will pay bills.
On Friday, North Carolina Treasurer Dale Folwell became the latest of officials from nearly half the states across the country — including Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Missouri, Arizona and West Virginia — to protest Wall Street’s blue investment strategy, called ESG.
What is ESG? E stands for environment, S for social justice and G for corporate governance. ESG funds invest in companies that oppose fossil fuels, push for unionization and stress racial and gender equity over merit in hiring and board selection.
That’s a partial definition because at least a dozen rating firms tag companies with an ESG score, often based on subjective and somewhat secret criteria, even including a company’s stance on abortion rights.
State officials are pulling billions of dollars out of Wall Street asset managers like BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, citing ESG’s lousy returns and strong-arming of corporations that don’t bow to the left-wing agenda.
Pay attention to these officials’ warnings, because ESG is also hurting small investors. In fact, even if you don’t invest at all but you pay taxes, ESG puts you at risk. You’ll be on the hook when states invested in ESG funds incur losses and have to come to taxpayers for more money. New York City taxpayers, beware.
Folwell calls ESG “wacktivism,” warning that “a focus on ESG is not a focus on returns.”
The Man Who Saved My Grandfather
Milan Hucko understood why his aunt begged his father to stop hiding the Jews. The anti-Nazi uprising in Slovakia was failing, and the occupying German army was a constant presence in his village. Everyone knew the penalty for hiding Jews: The invaders or their collaborators would kill you and your entire family. “I can understand, not everyone was willing to die,” Milan says.Tripoli, 1967: the mob was chanting ‘kill the Jews!’
Milan was 14 in the summer of 1944, when his family hid my grandfather from the Nazis. He was 89 years old when I went to Slovakia to interview him in November of 2018 and ask him why they decided to help save his life. I wanted to ask Milan what my grandfather had been through during a war that’s now almost beyond living memory.
But my curiosity went beyond my family’s history. Milan, I thought, could also explain what compels a person to risk everything to save a stranger in a time and place where neighbors kill one another and behaving with basic humanity can be deadly.
I have spent much of my career in conflict zones. For over a decade, I have covered war and violent social collapse, often reporting on conflicts inflamed by ethnic and sectarian divisons, usually in the company of other journalists, aid workers, academics and analysts. We grasped for whatever thin logic or meaning appeared in the spasms of violence we witnessed. We were like the journalists in Sarajevo described by Peter Maass in Love Thy Neighbor, his seminal work on the Bosnian civil war: “They were possessed by war, by the madness of war and by the presumption that they were acquiring the ability to see into people’s souls. It was true. They were getting closer to the truths of human nature, dark and horrible.”
I sought these dark and horrible truths in places like Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, the Central African Republic and Gaza. I tried to find something that could explain how people can embrace death and destruction on such an unfathomable scale. But in the course of my reporting, I would sometimes meet those on the opposite side of the moral spectrum: the minority willing to risk everything to rescue total strangers
Wars are propelled by an internal logic that becomes nearly impossible, and often actively dangerous, for the people caught up in them to reject. Ancient hatreds bubble to the surface. Lost territory must be reclaimed, old insults avenged. Crippling poverty, a changing world, dwindling resources, a rising demagogue—all can push entire populations to a violent breaking point. Not everyone, though, is willing to go along. Who has not asked themselves what they would do in such a situation? Who has not told themselves, or hoped, that they would be one of the few to resist the madness?
Milan held a very personal answer to these questions. The heroism of him and his family is literally the reason I exist. And, in a way, it was the reason I had been drawn into life in conflict zones.
It was in 1967, when violent riots broke out during the Six Day War, that Doris Nachum and her family were forced to leave Tripoli, Libya for good. Doris’s testimony was one of dozens collected by JIMENA as part of their Oral History project. Her story has now been re-published in Niv magazine:Avi Abelow: Speaking with International Human Rights Lawyer Irwin Cotler, in #Israel Parliament
It was June 5 1967, the start of the Six-Day War. Doris Nachum was eight years old. Her house was built on top of a synagogue, in a part of Tripoli minutes from the port and sea.
“Whenever something happened in Israel,” Doris said, “it would not even be five minutes and there would be Arabs out in the street rioting and looking for Jews.”
On that day almost 20 Jews would die and house after house would be burned. The population of Libyan Jews in 1948 is estimated at nearly 40,000. By the time of the Six-Day War that number had dwindled to 7,000. Many left after a series of pogroms in 1945 and 1949, and after Libya gained its independence in 1951. Today not a single Jew remains.
When the news of the war broke out on the airwaves, a neighbour yelled for Doris’s mother, Julia, to turn on the radio. The announcer said 60 Israeli planes had already been destroyed. Julia knew what this meant and yelled down to her husband who was in the synagogue praying. She told him to have all the other men leave and hide, and told him to lock the doors to the long hallway and come upstairs.
Doris’s father ran up the stairs to the attic, where he met Julia and all six of his children.
“Our home was the first target,” Doris states. She pauses, trying to collect her thoughts; her words falter. “They were banging at the door. My mother knew our doors were strong but not strong enough.”
Doris’s father moved past the children and pulled the ladder up. “My mother told him to pull it up so they wouldn’t know we were home.” Doris’s father froze when he heard the mob break in through the door, and began praying.
Doris and her family later hid in their neighbour’s attic with the neighbour’s family. Below them lived an Arab who Doris’s neighbours had begged to protect them from the mob. When the rioters wanted to go upstairs and tear through the house, he told them that it was his right to refuse them. Surprisingly, the mob turned their attention elsewhere.
Gil Troy: Harvard Deserves Kenneth Roth — the Master of Human Wrongs
In his sustained, decades-long, anti-Israel fury, Roth derailed Human Rights Watch and mis-educated the entire human rights community. Most outrageously, he blurred the important distinction between open and closed societies. Human Rights Watch, Robert Bernstein explained, always “sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights.”ILF CEO Arsen Ostrovsky interview on surge in antisemitism on campus
Liberty-loving students committed to defending freedom globally need to understand that democracies like Israel and the United States have corrective mechanisms that dictatorships lack. In rushing to demonize Israel, Roth sacrificed that fundamental tool distinguishing between imperfect but fixable free countries, and perfectly awful regimes.
What serious academic would want some zealot teaching students how to trash facts, ignore subtleties, and eradicate useful distinctions in the name of human rights? Foisting this truth-twister on the Kennedy School undermines its stated mission ‘to improve public policy and leadership, so people can live in societies that are more safe, free, just, and sustainably prosperous.” This dishonorable honor also dishonors Harvard’s motto: “Veritas,” which used to mean “truth.”
Once again, we see how poisoned a sea the academic world has become. Just because Roth bashes Israel, he was hailed as a truth-seeker and defended as a martyr. Meanwhile, the self-appointed guardians of the media-academia complex decided that any criticisms of him could not possibly be rooted in a rigorous concern for Harvard’s integrity; it just had to be all about the kosher Benjamins.
Now, Roth is making the circuit, still whining despite winning, playing the woe-is-me role of the silenced Israel critic — whose spin is featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, etc. etc. etc. Rather than falling for his faux martyrdom, intelligent observers should once again note the rot in academia, as universities become propaganda factories rather than truth-seeking centers of critical inquiry.
On second thought, given what Harvard and so many elite universities have become, I withdraw my objections. I can think of no more appropriate a candidate for today’s poisoned Ivy League than that master of human wrongs, Kenneth Roth.
ILF CEO Arsen Ostrovsky interviewed on ILTV about the explosive surge in antisemitism on campuses across United States, including calls for intifada at University of Michigan, exclusion of Zionists at UC Berkeley and Harvard offering fellowship to former HRW head Ken Roth.
Republicans Have a Higher Opinion of Jews Than Democrats Do
Republicans have a more favorable opinion of Judaism than Democrats do, according to a YouGov poll released last month.
Republicans by 23 net points said they have a favorable opinion of Judaism, the poll found. Democrats had a favorable opinion of Judaism only by single digits—9 points. When it came to Orthodox Judaism specifically, Republicans had a 13-point net favorability rating. Democrats on the whole have an unfavorable view of Orthodox Judaism, by 3 points.
The finding is "not surprising," Center for the Future of Liberal Society associate director Mike Watson noted on Twitter—though it "doesn't quite fit the media narrative." Even as anti-Semitic attacks in the United States are at record highs, Democratic officials last year rallied with anti-Israel speakers, while left-leaning universities saw a "pervasive and relentless assault on Jewish identity," the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The mainstream media have nevertheless attempted to paint Republicans as anti-Semitic. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough notably invited on notorious anti-Semite Al Sharpton to say Donald Trump and Republicans are "bigots, biased, anti-Semites, racists."
Democrats literally have a more favorable view of wicca/witches than of Orthdox Judaism/Jews. pic.twitter.com/O2FjkAAqMv
— David Bernstein (@ProfDBernstein) January 24, 2023
Aside from being noxious, conspiracy theory spinning anti-Semites who have such contempt for the pro-Israel American public that they pretend it doesn't exist, Tom and Pete are also stupid.
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) January 25, 2023
Shame on Bibi for being hated by University of Wisconsin?
A puddle is more profound. https://t.co/0FnUih3Aha
Dems mobilize to defend Omar in face of GOP defections
House Republicans are already facing defections over a leadership push to oust Rep. Ilhan Omar from her committees. Democrats plan to make the vote even more painful.
The Minnesota Democrat and her caucus allies have begun to mount a robust defense of the progressive “squad” member, who Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his allies have repeatedly threatened to kick off committees once the GOP took over the House. While they’ve focused on Omar’s past comments about Israel — some of which divided her own party at the time — Republicans loudly protested last Congress when Democrats booted a pair of conservatives from committees.
Democratic leaders are working to have no defections on the vote to remove Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee when it comes up for a full House vote as soon as next week. And even Democrats who have vocally taken issue with her stance on Israel are now urging colleagues on both sides of the aisle to allow her to remain on the panel.
“She will be the first to tell you that we both disagree on a lot of things. I love Israel, and I will defend it wholeheartedly. She’s deeply troubled by the Israeli government. But that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a voice on the Foreign Affairs Committee, even if it is painful for me,” said Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips — a Jewish Democrat who in the past spoke out against some of her remarks, for which she later apologized.
Asked about whether his Democratic colleagues would come to the same conclusion: “I think some are struggling, but I ultimately believe yes.”
Taking Omar off panels only requires a simple majority vote, but even that could prove difficult for a House GOP with a historically slim margin — and a second public defector emerging Tuesday, as Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) joined Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) in declaring that she wouldn’t vote for yanking Omar.
Says @ishaantharoor, an ardent defender of racist BDS movement, supporter of Ilhan Omar, who obsessively spends his columns vilifying the Jewish state. You will forgive if we do not take advice from him … https://t.co/cCKDmWUYLC
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) January 25, 2023
Senate Republican Blocks Biden Pick of Soros BDS Activist
Biden has stacked his administration with assorted extremists, including those linked to Soros, but this is one he didn’t get.Anti-Israel Activist Tapped for State Department Role Withdraws Name From Consideration
It took a while, but under two years later, her nomination has been pulled.
President Joe Biden’s nominee for a top human rights position is withdrawing from contention in the face of unrelenting opposition from a Senate Republican who questions her support for Israel.
Questions her support? She pathologically hates Israel.
“At present, I don’t see a path forward for confirmation, and after 1 ½ years, it’s time to move on,” Margon said in the statement. “I will continue to work on democracy and human rights, and am grateful to President Biden and Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken for their confidence in me and the honor of a nomination.”
Margon faced opposition from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Republican, Jim Risch of Idaho. Risch, citing past tweets of hers, accused Margon of supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which targets Israel due to its policies toward the Palestinians.
Good for Senator Risch. Politico can cry as hard as it likes, but this is a win for actual human rights.
Margon denied supporting the BDS movement, but her attempts to clarify the tweets didn’t sway Risch. Neither did a letter of support from a bipartisan group of foreign policy professionals, some of them prominent in the Jewish community, who dismissed the anti-Israel allegations against Margon.
Who could that have been? The letter was signed by the head of Soros’ J Street hate group, Rosa Brooks and Ben Rhodes. Yasser Arafat’s rotting corpse apparently wasn’t available. If there’s anyone word we can take on antisemitism, it’s the enablers of antisemitism and the murder of Jews.
An anti-Israel activist who supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and was tapped by the Biden administration to fill a critical State Department post withdrew her name from consideration due to Republican opposition.The Holocaust is a myth, a quarter of Dutch younger generation agree
Sarah Margon on Tuesday announced her decision to withdraw after a protracted Senate fight with Republicans who saw her as unfit for the job due to her years of anti-Israel activism. Margon is the former Washington, D.C., director at Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit organization that criticizes Israel and accuses it of engaging in "crimes against humanity." The Biden administration in 2021 tapped her to serve as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor—a post that would have given her power to target Israel.
"At present, I don't see a path forward for confirmation, and after one and a half years, it's time to move on," Margon said in the statement first published by Politico. "I will continue to work on democracy and human rights, and am grateful to President Biden and Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken for their confidence in me and the honor of a nomination."
Margon's decision to withdraw her nomination is a win for Senate Republicans who stalled her nomination over her support for the anti-Semitic BDS movement, which wages economic warfare on Israel. Margon praised the travel website Airbnb when it made the 2018 decision to remove listings in disputed areas of Israel that Palestinians consider occupied land. And in a September 2021 confirmation hearing before the Senate, Margon said, "I believe the private sector across the board has an important role to play in not promoting or pursuing discriminatory policies."
Sen. Jim Risch (R., Idaho), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement to National Review, "There are many qualified people on both sides of the aisle for positions in government, and I look forward to thoroughly reviewing the nominees the president sends to the Senate."
A new study published on Thursday finds significant gaps in Holocaust knowledge and awareness in the Netherlands, as well as widespread concern that Holocaust denial and distortion are problems there today. The study found that almost a quarter (23%) of Dutch millennials and Gen Z respondents believe the Holocaust is a myth, or that it occurred but the number of Jews who died has been greatly exaggerated – the highest percentage among these cohorts in six countries that were surveyed.
According to the surveys done previously among these age groups, the percentage of young citizens that think the Holocaust is a myth is as follows: 16% in Austria and Canada, 23% in France, and 15% in the UK and the US.
The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) commissioned Schoen Cooperman Research to conduct a comprehensive national study on Holocaust knowledge and awareness in the Netherlands. It conducted 2,000 interviews across the country.
It was also found that 29% of Dutch respondents, including 37% of Dutch millennials and Gen Zs believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Moreover, despite the fact that more than 70% of the Netherlands’ Jewish population perished during the Shoah, a majority of Dutch respondents (53%), including 60% of these two cohorts, do not cite their country as one of those where the Holocaust took place. Finally, more than half (53%) of Dutch respondents believe that something like the Holocaust could happen again today.
As we lead up to #HolocaustMemorialDay we will post some things that historically we must never forget which should be taught in all schools, colleges and universities. Again involvement of Amin Al-Husseini his collaboration with Adolf Hitler urging him for a Final solution pic.twitter.com/WyMSJl3nO3
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) January 25, 2023
Jewbotinsky: Jesus was NOT a Palestinian!
And everyone who thinks so is an idiot. Here's the evidence.
Can Kanye West enter Australia amid antisemitism? It's unclear
US rapper Kanye West may not be permitted to enter Australia due to his extreme antisemitic comments, a senior Australian government official told the local Channel Nine on Wednesday.New Billboard About Antisemitism Sparks Debate in Berkeley
Australian Education Minister Jason Clare said that people who have made comments like West's - including praise for Hitler and theorizing that Jews control the music industry - have been denied visas to Australia in the past.
West recently married Bianca Censori, an Australian native who joined West's company "Yeezy" as an architectural designer in 2020. Recent reports have stated that he plans to travel to Australia soon to meet his wife's family.
"I don’t know if he’s applied for a visa yet, but Google it, you will see that he seems like he’s a pretty big fan of a person who killed six million Jewish people last century," Clare told a morning talk show in Australia. "People like that who’ve applied for visas to get into Australia in the past have been rejected. I expect that if he does apply, he would have to go through the same process and answer the same questions that they did."
Clare's comments came mere days after the Anti-Defamation Commission's chairman, Dr. Dvir Abramovich, called on Australia to block West from entering the country.
ADC: Block Kanye West from entering Australia
"Calling for violence and hate must have consequences, and Australia should not put out the welcome mat and provide a platform to a hatemonger who spews threats against the Jewish community and peddles conspiracy myths about Jewish power, greed and control," he said at the time.
Several Jewish organizations have since spoken up and called on Australia to block West from entering the country.
Several new billboards in Berkeley meant to raise awareness about antisemitism are also raising new debate, with some saying the message is only further dividing the community.Rewarding anti-Israel radicalism at San Francisco State University
The new billboards are spread throughout eight different parts of Berkeley and are hard to miss.
The red signs come with a message directed to UC Berkeley’s School of Law. It reads: "You don’t need to go to law school to know anti-Zionism is antisemitism."
The billboards were posted by the nonprofit group "JewBelong" as a response to a student group. At the law school, they recently voted to ban “pro-Israel” and “zionist” speakers from giving lectures on campus.
The non-profit co-founder Archie Gottesman hopes the message challenges students and the community to fight against antisemitism.
“To be out there with this just really hateful rule is incredibly scary. It’s scary for jews and scary for people, who are not Jewish, who want to have freedom of speech,” Gottesman said.
Jessica Pearlman, who identifies as Jewish, said she hopes the message will start a conversation.
“I think people really think they are absolutely two different things and that they are never mistaken for another and I think it’s important to see those two phrases together,” she said.
But the billboards appear to be fuel for another debate as one billboard has already been vandalized with someone spray painted the words “Free Palestine.”
In 2018, outgoing SFSU President Leslie Wong apologized to Jewish students and faculty for his chronically disappointing record on addressing anti-Israel and antisemitic activism on campus. He publicly proclaimed that, contrary to his past statements, Zionists are welcome at SFSU.Left-wing charity appears to fundraise illegally for Palestinian terror-linked group: Experts
That small step at “normalizing” Zionism was too much for Abdulhadi. She flew into a rage and pronounced, “I consider the statement … from President Wong, welcoming Zionists to campus, equating Jewishness with Zionism … to be a declaration of war against Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians and all those who are committed to an indivisible sense of justice on and off campus” (emphasis added).
Just in case anyone might draw the wrong conclusion from her hateful rhetoric, Abdulhadi clarified, “I am anti-Zionist. I’m not anti-Jew. So don’t call me antisemitic.”
In 2017 and 2018, separate lawsuits against SFSU stated that the university “has not merely fostered and embraced anti-Jewish hostility—it has systematically supported these departments and student groups as they have doggedly organized their efforts to target, threaten and intimidate Jewish students on campus and deprive them of their civil rights and their ability to feel safe and secure as they pursue their education.”
Clearly, the antisemitic climate at SFSU is not only the result of student activism. The ideological reign of terror fostered and encouraged by SFSU faculty in general and Abdulhadi in particular is an even more important factor.
MESA’s award to Abdulhadi reveals the organization’s complete lack of moral clarity. It celebrates an activist pseudo-scholar who has waged an ideological war against Israel, lauded terrorists who sought to murder Jews and demonized Zionism, Jews and Israel itself as manifestations of white supremacy and racism.
All of this simply confirms MESA’s pathological hatred of Jews and how debased and academically irrelevant the organization has become.
A left-wing charity in Arizona is raising money for an anti-Israel organization closely affiliated with a terrorist group, which could open the group up to criminal inquiries and penalties, multiple lawyers tell the Washington Examiner.PreOccupiedTerritory: Scientists Isolate Shortest Interval: Time From Any Palestinian Death To Accusations Of Israeli War Crimes (satire)
Alliance for Global Justice, a purportedly "anti-capitalist" charity, is actively fundraising for the France-based Collectif Palestine Vaincra, which is partnered with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an international Marxist–Leninist faction the U.S. designates as a terror organization. The maneuver could spell major legal trouble for the charity, which has been slammed in the past for allegedly acting as a "front" for the PFLP, lawyers say.
"The penalty for providing material support to terrorist groups can be as high as 20 years in prison," Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative watchdog, told the Washington Examiner.
"Raising funds for a terrorist group is a criminal violation, and this is being done indirectly through the proxies, which is still a crime," added Kamenar, who is calling on the Justice Department and Congress to investigate the charity for possibly violating a criminal statute related to U.S. groups providing material support to terror groups.
The charity lists several groups on its website with ties to the PFLP that it fiscally sponsors, meaning it provides them services such as payroll, health insurance handling, and donation processing. One organization that the charity sponsors is the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an Israeli-designated terror group that major credit card companies blocked in 2020 from receiving donations.
Collectif Palestine Vaincra is a member of Samidoun's coalition, which Israel's government has said "plays a leading role" in recruiting anti-Israel activists for the PFLP and "complements" the group's violent activities. The group was founded in 1967 and has been responsible for hijacking airplanes and, for instance, the 2001 assassination of Israeli Minister of Tourism Rechavam Ze’evi.
Alliance for Global Justice and Samidoun are currently fundraising on behalf of Collectif Palestine Vaincra, which PayPal banned from having an account, according to its website. Donors can mail a check to Alliance for Global Justice's Tucson, Arizona, address or pay through a credit card, according to Collectif Palestine Vaincra.
"Donations are tax deductible in accordance with the law," says Collectif Palestine Vaincra on its website. "The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is a fiscally sponsored project of the Global Justice Alliance, a 501(c)(3) organization. Please note that your credit card statement will indicate that this is a donation to the Alliance for Global Justice."
Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research announced today the results of a raft of experiments aimed at defining the briefest possible unit of time in physics, that conclusively showed it to be the interval between the violent or premature death of any Palestinian and the emergence of propaganda blaming the Jewish State and either its security apparatus or “settlers” for causing it.BBC News website reporting on Silwad incident
Known by its French acronym CERN, the scientists analyzed data from the Large Hadron Collider and other sources. Their initial report came out Wednesday; it contains an explanation of the experiments and their outcomes, with the clear indication that the smallest measurable unit of time, less than which means events can be considered simultaneous, is the time between the death of a Palestinian and accusations that Israel committed war crimes in causing that death.
“It’s an exciting moment in science,” gushed team chief scientist Shav Rirshniya. “It undercuts the previous understanding of the shortest possible interval in physics, which was the time between the traffic signal turning green and the driver behind you honking his horn. We propose that the former smallest unit be called the honkosecond – really, I’m surprised no one had named it already – and the newest discovery, the actual smallest unit, we propose to name the Rothosecond, in honor of [former Human Rights Watch director] Kenneth Roth, who manifests the phenomenon with remarkable consistency.”
Knell does not provide any evidence to support that latter claim. Under the “Procedures for Dealing with Complaints Concerning Operational Activity”, the MAG carries out a fact-finding assessment and then decides whether the findings meet the requirements for a criminal investigation.In CBC Interview, Former PLO Spokesperson Diana Buttu Claims That “Every Single Day, Israel Is Going To… Kill A Palestinian.”
“Following a criminal investigation (or investigation by an Investigative Officer), the file is transferred back to the Office of the Military Advocate for Operational Affairs for review. After this review, the MAG decides whether to initiate criminal or disciplinary proceedings.”
The penultimate paragraph of Knell’s report uncritically promotes Palestinian Authority talking points:
“The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry strongly condemned what happened as a “heinous crime of execution”.”
Knell closes her report with what has become a standard – yet unhelpful – formula for portrayal of Palestinian casualties.
“In total, 18 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the first three weeks of this year, including militants and civilians.”
Once again, BBC audiences are not informed that the vast majority of those killed were involved in terrorism or violence at the time (including the latest casualty), with a significant proportion being linked to terrorist organisations.
In recent weeks, Israel’s new government has proposed sweeping new judicial reforms. Since then, large-scale protests have erupted, with critics voicing opposition to the Netanyahu government’s plans, as is their right in a liberal democratic state such as Israel.The Washington Post’s One-Sided Reporting Continues
On the January 19 edition of The Current, a CBC Radio program hosted by Matt Galloway, three guests were featured to discuss their views on the Netanyahu government’s proposed changes, including Dahlia Scheindlin, a fellow at a Tel Aviv-based think tank, and Eli Lipshitz, spokesperson and first secretary for public diplomacy for the Embassy of Israel in Canada, based in Ottawa.
But it was the third guest, Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), whose statements to Galloway were filled with vitriol and disinformation.
Buttu began her conversation with Galloway with an anti-Israel diatribe, accusing the Jewish State of wanton murder and occupation.
“We know that every single day, Israel is going to either kill a Palestinian, most of them have been children, by the way, or that they’re going to steal some Palestinian land, that they’re going to try to pass some legislation that is racist that targets Palestinian citizens of Israel…or that they’re going to build a new settlement or that they’re going to demolish Palestinian homes or evict Palestinians from their homes,” Buttu said in her opening remarks.
While Buttu’s denunciation was heavy on invective and hyperbole, it was sorely lacking in facts. While it is sadly true that the start to 2023 has seen violence between Israelis and Palestinians, there is simply no evidence whatsoever for her suggestion that Israel sets out to “kill a Palestinian,” who she depicts as innocent civilians.
As for Buttu’s assertion that most of the Palestinians killed in recent violence “have been children,” some who were “targeted,” this is extremely misleading, and serves to grossly oversimplify all Palestinians as innocent victims of a bloodthirsty Israeli war machine.
For example, in early January, a 16-year-old Palestinian was killed in clashes with Israeli troops, but beyond the headlines, Israeli forces reported that they fired in response to the lobbing of explosive devices, including Molotov cocktails. Another Palestinian, a 19-year-old, attempted to murder an innocent Israeli farmer, lunging at him with a knife and managing to stab the victim in the head before being killed in self-defence by a witness. Meanwhile, on January 22, Israeli police arrested a 13-year-old Palestinian teen carrying a knife, thwarting a terror attack and saving countless lives.
The Washington Post’s Jerusalem bureau has become increasingly prone to editorializing. Regrettably, a recent dispatch (“Netanyahu assured the U.S. he’d curb the far right. Has he already lost control,” Jan. 19, 2023) is no exception.
Ostensibly, the Post seeks to examine fissures in the new governing coalition in Israel. But the newspaper is incapable—or perhaps unwilling—to offer straightforward reporting. Instead the article is replete with value judgments and questionable sourcing.
The bias is evident from the very start. Reporter Shira Rubin writes, “…critics say [that] Netanyahu’s far-right coalition has already begun to veer off course — swiftly advancing measures that seek to weaken Israel’s judiciary system and eliminate any remaining prospects for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Yet, uncritically repeating the claim that proposed judicial reforms would “weaken Israel’s judiciary system” is editorializing. And the assertion that the new coalition would “eliminate any remaining prospects for a two-state solution” is as disingenuous as it is dumb.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), the entity that controls the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and rules over the majority of Palestinians, has refused numerous U.S. and Israeli offers for a two-state solution in exchange for peace with Israel, including in 2000 at Camp David, 2001 at Taba and 2008 after the Annapolis Conference. All of these refusals have been well documented. Indeed, PA apparatchiks and official media have proudly hailed them—just as they’ve celebrated their insistence on paying tax-deductible salaries to those who murder and maim Jews. Surely, rejecting offers for statehood while financing terror should count as “eliminating any remaining prospects for a two-state solution,” as the report puts it.
The Post, however, is nonplussed. The newspaper’s refusal to even acknowledge the numerous documented instances of the PA rejecting peace and financing terror is, at this point, part of the Post’s brand. As CAMERA has documented, the Post has steadfastly refused to report this long history of rejecting peace. Despite numerous reports about the “death of the two-state solution,” it has been more than half a decade since the Post has acknowledged Palestinian culpability—or, for that matter, independent agency. Few omissions mislead more than writing about the “lack of two-state solution” while failing to note that one party has consistently—over the course of decades—rejected it.
#AhlamTamimi orchestrated the 2001 Sbarro suicide bombing that killed Israeli & US citizens.
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 25, 2023
Despite being one of the US's most wanted terrorists, Tamimi lives freely in #Jordan, which refuses to hand her over.
When will the media bring attention to this shocking injustice? pic.twitter.com/Z1o8hTtjDp
More than half of the 67 journalists' deaths occurred in just 3 countries: Ukraine, Mexico & Haiti.
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 25, 2023
Yet in an attempt to paint Israel as the world's #1 threat to journalists' safety, @USATODAY chose ???????? photo of Shireen Abu Akleh to illustrate the story.
Obsessed much? pic.twitter.com/mOCgERPjiQ
Haaretz will no longer carry the column of my friend @GadiTaub1. Just as in the United States, the self-styled defenders of tolerance have no tolerance for opposing views. https://t.co/YJRwYfkFC1
— Mike (@Doranimated) January 25, 2023
Hey @AP @IsabelDeBre, is there a reason why you state that the Temple Mount compound is the third-holiest site in Islam but fail to mention that it is also the holiest site in Judaism?
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 25, 2023
It's an important and significant fact. Please add it to the story.https://t.co/qB6GTmJVQs pic.twitter.com/fnjv3PO6qy
WZO report shows drop in antisemitism for first time in a decade
The worldwide increase in antisemitic incidents has been curbed for the first time in a decade, a report from the World Zionist Organization shows.Holocaust denier Fuentes reinstated to Twitter, then banned again within 24 hours
The WZO’s annual report on the state of antisemitism was sourced from local and international studies, research bodies, local police, Jewish communities and other bodies.
Although the researchers found a decrease in antisemitic incidents around the world in 2022, the WZO emphasized that the phenomenon remains alarmingly widespread. An average of 10 antisemitic incidents was reported globally every day. Furthermore, there was broad evidence that most incidents of antisemitism are not reported.
The report also noted a consistent rise in media coverage of antisemitic incidents, with a focus on social media. It further stated that this trend is particularly concerning as it indicates the growing visibility of antisemitism in the digital sphere. The WZO suggested that this increase in media coverage may be linked to the overall rise in reported incidents.
Yaakov Hagoel, the chairman of the World Zionist Organization, expanded on the connection between digital antisemitism and physical hate crimes saying, “Antisemitism on social media is increasing at an alarming rate and unfortunately, as history has taught us, it will also lead to physical acts.”
The report also noted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has played a significant role in the proliferation of propaganda and conspiracy theories that target Jews. This has led to an increase in the number of antisemitic incidents in countries that have a large Russian-speaking population or have close ties to Russia.
The white supremacist and far-right provocateur Nick Fuentes was reinstated to Twitter on Tuesday and returned to the social media platform with a volley of antisemitic posts and comments, including praise for Hitler.
Within 24 hours of being reinstated, his account was once again suspended from the platform.
Fuentes is a Holocaust denier who first gained prominence after participating in the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and was banned from Twitter in July 2021, amid the platform’s crackdown on far-right extremists, particularly in the wake of the insurrection at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He burst back onto the public stage in November, when he and Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, had dinner with former president Donald Trump shortly after Ye embarked on an antisemitic spree on social media and in interviews.
Fuentes’s reinstatement came as Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter last year, restores the accounts of many people who had been banned for advancing far-right extremist ideas on the platform. A coterie of far-right figures, including the Jewish Republican Laura Loomer and Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, had publicly lobbied for Fuentes’s reinstatement after their own accounts were restored.
Fuentes made clear upon his return to Twitter on Tuesday that he planned to pick up where he left off, posting a series of comments reflecting the brand of antisemitism that he has continued spreading in spaces that have provided refuge for far-right extremists after Twitter and Facebook cracked down on them. (Ye, too, returned to Twitter with an allusion to his criticism over antisemitism.)
Update: Nick Fuentes has been suspended (again) https://t.co/v8m4NNxjG7
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) January 25, 2023
Atlantis Police arrest man in connection to distributing antisemitic flyers. He is a member of the Goyim Defense League. Unfortunately throwing the antisemitic flyers on lawns is not a crime, but evading police after littering is. https://t.co/2KAg8hwhsm
— Ari Ingel (@OGAride) January 25, 2023
The UEJF denounced the presence of numerous antisemitic tags found on the facades of stores in the 9th arrondissement of Paris.
— Adam Albilya - ??? ??????? (@AdamAlbilya) January 24, 2023
- "The whole neighborhood is covered in Stars of David, the word 'Jude',& the phrase 'I am racist' in large white letters," said the org yesterday. pic.twitter.com/M6Zyrp4xcT
‘Salt Bae’ to open new restaurant in Israel’s Tel Aviv
The restaurant will become Nusret’s 12th venue around the world
Famous Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe known on social media as “Salt Bae” will open a new restaurant in Tel Aviv, central Israel, media reported on Monday.
The venue will be located in the eastern part of the city, in the ToHA tower titled “The best office tower of the world” and “The best skyscraper in the Middle East and Africa.” The restaurant will become Nusret’s 12th venue around the world.
“Salt Bae” announced the opening on his Instagram account, which has over 50 million followers. He listed Tel Aviv among the future locations for his venues along with Paris, Ibiza, Madrid, Milan, Sao Paolo, Mexico city, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and Cairo.
The 40-year-old chef opened his first restaurant in Turkey’s Istanbul 12 years ago. He now owns a chain of meat restaurants called Nusr-Et around the world, including Dubai, Abu Dhabi, New York and Qatar. Nusret, who is also a butcher, became famous on social media six years ago after a video of him salting meat became viral on Twitter.
Not wasting any time, here is @AusAmbIsrael showing Israelis the proper way to eat Vegemite! https://t.co/V3g3j38A4w pic.twitter.com/tRBi6hnAMC
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) January 25, 2023
Blues legend Buddy Guy plans Israel shows as part of farewell tour
Blues virtuoso Buddy Guy is coming to Israel as part of his final tour, Damn Right Farewell, with shows this July in Caesarea and Tel Aviv.‘Fauda’ Season 4 Becomes Most Watched Netflix Series in Lebanon; Makes Top 10 List in 21 Countries
The octogenarian guitarist will play the Caesarea amphitheater on Wednesday, July 19 and Tel Aviv’s Heichal Hatarbut auditorium on Thursday, July 20, with opening acts by American vocalist Tom Hambridge.
Guy’s five month tour begins in mid-February with shows in the US and he’ll continue performing around the world for the next five months.
The eight-time Grammy winner will focus on music from his 19th studio album, “The Blues Don’t Lie,” released last September.
Guy is ranked 23 in Rolling Stone’s list of 100 greatest guitar players, and described by Eric Clapton as the best guitar player alive.
He was born to sharecropper parents, and learned how to play the guitar using a homemade two-string diddley bow made from strings of baling wire pulled taut between two nails on a board and over a glass bottle, often used as a starter instrument in the Deep South.
The fourth season of the hit Israeli television series Fauda is currently the most streamed Netflix show in Lebanon and has made Netflix’s top ten list of the most watched non-English shows around the world less than a week since its premiere on the streaming service.Israeli to Sing UAE National Anthem at Dubai Holocaust Event
Season four of Fauda, which premiered on Netflix on Jan. 20, was the seventh most watched foreign language show on Netflix from Jan. 16-22. It is also among the top 10 non-English television shows in 21 countries on Netflix, including Jordan, Qatar, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Serbia.
The 12-episode action series shows Doron, an undercover Israeli operative who was forced out of his combat unit, return from retirement to hunt for a Palestinian terrorist he thought he’d killed. The operation takes him and his team around Lebanon, the Israeli city of Ramla, Brussels, and the Palestinian city of Jenin in the West Bank.
The show, which is Israel’s longest-running action series, was created by Lior Raz, who plays Doron, and Avi Issacharoff. The latter said last year that every television studio turned him down when he first approached them with the pitch for Fauda more than a decade ago.
An acclaimed American-Canadian-Israeli singer is on her way to Dubai to perform in Arabic at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony.
The non-profit organization “Together—Vouch For Each Other,” led by Israeli-Arab activist Yoseph Haddad, will host an International Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony for the Arab world on Thursday.
Hundreds of leaders from Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Syria, are expected to attend, the organization says.
Emirati singer Ahmed Al Hosani is slated to perform the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah,” while Nicole Raviv will sing “Ishy Bilady,” or “Long Live my Country,” the UAE’s national anthem.
Raviv, raised in Montreal by Israeli parents, made aliyah last year. She is well-known in the U.S. for national anthem performances at sporting events. She’ll be part of an Israeli delegation of 20-30 people heading to the UAE for the ceremony and surrounding events in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
“The main goal of the ceremony is to increase awareness and to bring Holocaust education to the forefront in the Arab world since the Abraham Accords. And this is supposedly the first time this is happening,” Raviv told JNS.
The ceremony will include a eulogy, the lighting of memorial candles and collaborative performances.
Raviv, whose maternal grandparents are Holocaust survivors,
101-year-old Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer has worked tirelessly to ensure the horrors of the Holocaust are not forgotten by sharing her story.
— German Embassy London (@GermanEmbassy) January 24, 2023
Yesterday, she received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.pic.twitter.com/LR1Ko02jAd
Ancient moat and enigmatic hand imprint uncovered in Jerusalem
A mysterious hand imprint carved into a thousand-year-old rock-hewn moat that was part of the ancient fortifications of Jerusalem has been uncovered next to the Old City’s northern wall, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Wednesday.Archeologists uncover 1,000-year-old rock-hewn moat
The discovery, which is part of a defensive moat that surrounds the city walls and is likely to date to the 10th century CE or earlier, was made along Sultan Suleiman Street ahead of planned city infrastructure work, the state-run archaeological body said.
The bustling eastern Jerusalem street is built directly over the huge moat measuring at least 10 meters (33 feet) wide and 2-7 (6.5-23 feet) meters deep, whose function was to prevent an enemy besieging Jerusalem from approaching the walls and breaking into the city, said Zubair Adawi, the excavation’s director.
He noted that moats, particularly in Europe, are usually filled with water but the one in Jerusalem was dry.
The impressive walls and gates of the Old City were built in the 16th century at the direction of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire.
You can zoom in and examine the intricate details here: https://t.co/MwCIg1rsyH
— National Library of Israel (@NLIsrael) January 10, 2023
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