Thursday, April 27, 2023

04/27 Links Pt2: Israel Is Antiracist, Anti-Colonialist, Anti-Fascist (and Was from the Start); Why the world has turned against Israel; Caroline Glick: An afternoon among the angels

From Ian:

Jeffrey Herf: Israel Is Antiracist, Anti-Colonialist, Anti-Fascist (and Was from the Start)
Nor did support for Israel come only from the Soviet bloc. Liberals and leftists in London, Paris, New York, and Washington heard Jamal Husseini, the representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations, reject a Jewish state in Palestine, because, he said, it would undermine the “racial homogeneity” of the Arab world. Such remarks resonated in a profoundly negative fashion with Americans who had followed the appalling news out of Germany during and after the war. In the Senate, Robert Wagner, a major author of New Deal legislation, extolled the Jewish contribution to the Allied cause. He had already denounced appeasement of the Arabs during the war. With the Allied victory, continuing to appease Arab rejectionism surely made no sense. In the House, Democratic Congressman Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn led efforts to focus attention on Jamal Husseini’s cousin, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who had entered into a written understanding with Germany and Italy to “solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries . . . as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.”

The liberal media also took note. Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis was thoroughly documented in the New York Post as well as in the left-wing publications PM and The Nation, by I.F. Stone, Freda Kirchwey, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Edgar Mowrer, who urged Husseini’s indictment at Nuremberg. Nevertheless, despite extensive State Department files on Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis, the American bureaucracy succeeded in resisting efforts to put him on trial and publish its evidence of his Nazi-era activities.

The brief confluence of Soviet and liberal Western sympathies for the nascent Jewish state was brilliantly exploited by Ben-Gurion. He understood better than anyone that it presented a unique moment to bring Israel into existence, with the assent of the world’s two great powers — and that it was an opportunity that would soon close, as indeed it did. During the “anti-cosmopolitan” purges of the early 1950s, Stalin reversed course, spread the lie that Israel was a product of American imperialism, repressed the memory of Soviet support for the Zionist project, and launched a four-decade campaign of vilification against Zionism and Israel. It was one of the most successful propaganda campaigns of the Cold War.

Stalin succeeded in rewriting American history, too. His insistence that it was the Americans and not the Soviets who had wholeheartedly supported the establishment of the State of Israel carried the day. And yet the records of the Departments of State and Defense and the CIA clearly document their emphatic and consequential opposition to the Zionist project.

The differences between the international political landscape of the late 1940s and the one that emerged first in Soviet and then world politics in the 1950s and 1960s need to be reflected in American-Jewish discussions about the establishment of Israel. Contrary to what we’ve heard at the United Nations for decades, in international BDS efforts, and in academic descriptions of Israel, the Zionist project was never a colonialist one.

Just the reverse. The generation that created the state, and its supporters abroad, viewed it as part of the era of liberal and leftist opposition to colonialism, racism, and, of course, antisemitism. The evidence is clear: Whatever faults Israel may have, its origins had nothing to do with American or British imperialism. The argument to the contrary is a conventional unwisdom that has found a home in too much scholarship and journalism of recent decades. Israel’s establishment was not a miracle that eludes historical explanation. It was an episode of enormous moral and military courage for which space was created by canny and hard-headed political leaders in the cause of historical justice — in particular David Ben-Gurion, who seized a fleeting moment, Israel’s moment, to create an enduring achievement.
Daniel Ben-Ami: Why the world has turned against Israel
From Israel's foundation in 1948 through the 1960s, the left generally celebrated Israel as an expression of Jews' right to national self-determination. By the 1990s, however, Western elites started to reject the idea of national self-determination. Yet the denigration of the right to national self-determination undermines the Palestinian cause, too.

Indeed, many of today's anti-Israel activists aren't really interested in Palestinian self-determination. They are mainly concerned with attacking Israel as a symbol of everything they dislike. This leads them to uncritically endorse Hamas, the leading Islamist representative of the Palestinians, and often Islamism more broadly.

Islamism's goal is not national self-determination, for the Palestinians or anyone else. Rather, it wants to create an international Islamic order. The destruction of Israel - and not the creation of a Palestinian state - is seen as central to achieving that objective. Islamists regard Jews as an expression of "cosmic Satanic evil," who should be physically exterminated if Islam is to flourish.

The Palestinian slogan, "from the river to the sea" (meaning from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean), is popular among both Islamists and Western leftists. Islamists often state openly that they want to murder most if not all of the Jews living there. So when they chant "Palestine should be free," they typically mean free of Jews.
Stephen Daisley: Why I love Israel
[T]here are plenty of reasons for Zionists to be gloomy on this, Israel’s 75th birthday, but there is one reason for optimism that outshines them all: Israel is 75. Israel was created; survived an immediate Arab effort to annihilate it; ingathered the survivors of the death camps; settled the land and built kibbutzim; struggled through the lean and lonely years; triumphed in the Six-Day War and reunited Jerusalem; pulled through the Yom Kippur War; endured two intifadas; rescued Beta Israel and welcomed the refuseniks; lost Yamit, lost Rabin, lost Gush Katif; made the desert bloom with fruits and microchips; and made peace with Arab nations. All of that in 75 years and, despite impossible odds, Israel lives yet.

Israel is a hard country and for many a hard country to love. It is flinty but whiny, eager for the world’s love but diplomatically tin-eared, unsentimental but gripped by existential angst. It is a country that adores its army and reveres military discipline but is so hectically informal that you wonder how it made it to 75 days, let alone 75 years. It also boasts the highest density of rude people in the known universe, although I find that strangely endearing. I have never loved Israel more than the time the manager of a Tel Aviv minimart yelled at me for a) not speaking Hebrew, b) being a foreign journalist, and c) coming in to shop when she was trying to watch TV. Only in Israel, the innovation nation, could they invent the inconvenience store.

If Zionism is the theory, Israel is the practice and like all practical translations of idealism it is compromised, haphazard, sometimes unsightly, and occasionally disheartening. But that tension between Zionism and Israel, between ahavat and ha’aretz, is where the great debates take place and where the course of Jewish history can be set or changed. Israeli independence, as it reaches 75 years, is still a miraculous application of a mundane idea: Jewish self-determination.
Israel Independence Day: Celebrating 75 Years with Natan Sharansky
Former Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky's personal journey reflects that of the Jewish people, and the centrality of Israel in his life and Jewish identity mirrors the experiences of so many Jews around the world.

Sharansky: "The existence of Israel and, in a way, the existence of the Jewish people is the best demonstration of the importance of these two basic desires of people - to be free and to belong."

"For a thousand years, what were we fighting for? For our right to live freely in accordance with our identity. And then Israel was established. It could not be created as a non-Jewish state and it would never have succeeded in gathering all the Jews if not for its freedom." "There is no other nation or any other state which embodies the strength of this connection. And if you look at history and compare us with Israel 50 years ago, we have much more freedom and much more identity. We have far more of a Jewish and democratic state, so that's the direction we're heading in....Our history and our triumphs are the best proof of how important it is for these two things to go together." "I grew up [in the Soviet Union] having zero connection with anything Jewish except through antisemitism....It was Israel that came in a very powerful way to the center of our life, from the Six-Day War, and it allowed us to discover our identity, that we have a history, we are a people and we have a state. That gave us the strength to fight for our Jewish rights and for a better world."

"When people simply want tikkun olam [repairing the world] without any identity...your life is very shallow. Look at how all these Birthright kids - whose bar mitzvah was the last time they've had a connection to being Jewish - suddenly discover that it's cool and even interesting to live inside history....Suddenly, they have energy, meaning and understanding....In this age, there is no better way to quickly give Jews a brief injection of the importance and meaning of discovering their Jewish identity than coming to Israel."


BDS is hurting Palestinians as well as Diaspora Jews - opinion
The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a campaign popular across the Western world, aims to instill political and economic pressure on the Israeli government in order to encourage the state to amend its policies and alleged crimes against Palestinians. Throughout the past decade, this movement has gained enormous traction across academic campuses.

However, the common trend that can be observed is that most people do not take the time to properly analyze the consequences of widespread BDS support, blindly endorsing it in the belief that they are fighting for social justice. In reality, the BDS movement is nowhere near accomplishing its goals and is ultimately worsening the livelihood of Arab-Israelis and Palestinians.

As a result, the BDS movement victimizes the very object of the movement, as well as Jews in the Diaspora. More importantly, as the BDS movement only singles out Israel for censure and opprobrium, it is antisemitic at its core, and its efforts that seek the Jewish state’s dismantlement are replete with Jew hatred.

BDS primarily aims to place economic pressure on Israel by encouraging Western institutions, such as universities, to ban all Israeli products and goods, including textbooks and guest speakers. However, Israel has a diverse and resilient economy that can resist external pressure.

Moreover, Israel is one of the only functioning democracies in the Middle East that affords fundamental rights, such as freedom of religion and expression, to its citizens. For these reasons, other nations and companies maintain their economic alliances with Israel and its industry, looking past the viral and deeply false narratives that paint Israel as an “apartheid” and “colonial” state.
BDS movement’s small-ball strategy seems to be failing
At one point, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel appeared to adopt a small-ball strategy: enough singles, even soft ones, in the court system would knock the pitcher out of the game. No need to swing for the fences.

That strategy, however, which seeks to win narrow injunctions that result in U.S. state legislatures tweaking relevant laws, appears to be a doomed game plan, as evidenced by recent court decisions.

The latest swing and miss came earlier this month when a federal appeals court rejected a challenge to a Texas law that blocks public funds from going to companies that boycott Israel.

In 2021, former Texas state employee Haseeb Abdullah—now a Travis County prosecutor—sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the state’s comptroller, arguing that Texas Government Code 880 infringed on his free speech and threatened his government pension.

“Texas’ anti-boycott law is both constitutional and, unfortunately, increasingly necessary as the radical left becomes increasingly hostile and antagonistic toward Israel,” said Paxton after the appeals court decision.

“Though some wish to get rid of the law and see Israel fail, the State of Texas will remain firm in our commitment to stand with Israel by refusing to do business with companies that boycott the only democratic nation in the Middle East,” he added. “In this case, I’m pleased to see the court recognize that the plaintiff lacked any standing to bring this challenge.”
Anti-Zionist critics deny Arabs agency
This article by Shany Mor for the Israel Democracy Institute may be three years old but it is as relevant as ever to analysing the writings of those, like Peter Beinart, who think they are being brave when they criticise Israel. These critics almost always deny Arabs agency, or see Arab oppression as an understandable reaction to Israeli actions: ( with thanks : David)

There was a third development in the early 20th century which upended Jewish life, and this one, even more than the emergence of a global sovereignty norm or the impact of the Holocaust, is the one Beinart most struggles to come to terms with. Antisemitism had always existed in the Arab world, to be sure. But a cosmic hatred of Jews as such a totemic feature of Arab political life is a twentieth century phenomenon. It has made its impact felt not only in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, but throughout the Middle East and throughout the entire world as Jews have been consistent targets for jihadist violence for decades.

This is such a central feature of Jewish life that it’s almost bizarre how easy it is to miss. But when your first intellectual commitment is to the notion that Jews act and Arabs only react, it’s easy to chalk up any anti-Jewish violence to revenge or anger about the occupation or the various defeats in Arab-Israeli wars. This is, to say the least, rather ahistorical. The rise of nationalist sentiment in the Arab world after World War I led to violence against minorities everywhere, and especially violence against Jews — almost exactly as it did in central and eastern Europe. The fall of multinational empires rendered minorities vulnerable everywhere, but the situation was particularly precarious for minorities who were nowhere a local majority.

Pogroms against longstanding Jewish minorities in the Arab world preceded the Arab defeat in 1948 and were carried out before there was even a single Palestinian refugee. Thus it was in Cairo, in Alexandria, in Aden, in Tripoli, and most notoriously in Baghdad. Protecting Jewish minorities in newly independent Arab states in the 1940’s and 1950’s was the manifest interest of all those states. It would have kept in Iraq and Tunisia and Yemen populations that were key drivers of economic development. It would have denied the hated Israeli state a demographic advantage just when one was necessary. And it would have suited the anti-Zionist propaganda claim that the Jews were merely a religious minority and not a people. But, of course, neither the mobs nor the regimes in charge could help themselves. If they genuinely believed that Jews were not a people and that middle eastern Jews had nothing to do with a European settler colonial enterprise in Palestine, then seeking “revenge” against Jewish minorities wouldn’t have been the first instinct. And yet in country after country, that is precisely what it was.
‘Dignity’ of Holocaust Victims Violated by Upcoming ‘Antisemitic’ Roger Waters Concert, Auschwitz Committee Leader Says
The memory of thousands of Jews rounded up by the Nazi regime in Frankfurt in 1938 has been violated by the decision of the city’s administrative court to reverse the cancelation of a forthcoming concert by former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, the head of the International Auschwitz Committee asserted on Thursday.

The Frankfurt Administrative Court’s ruling on Monday to allow the show came two months after the city government — which jointly owns the Festhalle venue where Waters is scheduled to perform with the state of Hesse — canceled the performance, accusing Waters of being “one of the world’s best-known antisemites.” It cited his backing for the campaign to subject the State of Israel to a regime of “boycotts, divestment and sanctions” (BDS) and highlighted the use of antisemitic imagery in Waters’ past concerts, including a balloon shaped like a pig and embossed with a Star of David and various corporate logos.

Waters is currently embarking on his “This is Not a Drill 2023” tour, which includes concerts in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Munich as well as Frankfurt. Politicians and Jewish leaders in all five cities have objected to the concerts, with many calling for their cancelation.

The Festhalle venue is controversial because it was the site where more than 3,000 Jews were forcibly assembled and abused by Nazi thugs following the nationwide pogrom of Nov 9-10, 1938, prior to their deportation to concentration camps.

The court’s ruling argued, however, that the memory of the Jewish deportees would not be tainted by the singer exercising his “artistic freedom.” While the court conceded that Waters use of Nazi imagery in his stage show was “tasteless,” it was also the case that the singer did not “glorify or relativize the National Socialist atrocities or identify with National Socialist racial ideology,” a spokeswoman for the court told local media outlets on Monday. Post–war Germany instituted a series of laws that outlaw pro-Nazi organizations and their associated symbols as well as the denial of the Holocaust.

Rejecting this viewpoint, the vice-president of the International Auschwitz Committee — a voluntary body created by survivors of the extermination camp after the war — charged that the court had insulted the memory of the deported Jews.


Belgian city of Liège passes motion to boycott Israel
The city of Liège, Belgium passed a motion on Monday evening to boycott Israel, The Brussels Times reported.

The motion was presented to the municipal council by the far-left Marxist Workers' Party of Belgium, whose platform calls for a boycott of the Jewish State, along with other smaller local parts who also are in favour of a boycott.

Centrist and liberal parties on the council voted against the motion.

The measure calls for "a temporary suspension of all relations with the state of Israel and the institutions that are complicit until the Israeli authorities put an end to the systematic violation of the Palestinian people,” Le Soir reported.

The motion was seen as largely symbolic as the city has no current official ties to Israel or its Belgian embassy. But it blocks any future relations between Liège and Israel.

The decision was denounced by the Israeli Embassy, with Ambassador Idit Rosenzweig-Abu telling LeSoir that the measure was “regrettable.”

“Radical forces have managed, through lies, to influence the Liège Municipal Council so that it takes a decision so detached from reality and harmful to the economic interests of Liège, Israel and Palestinians themselves," Rosenzweig-Abu said.


For 2nd time in a month, Barcelona synagogue vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti
For the second time this month, unidentified individuals sprayed pro-Palestinian graffiti at a synagogue in Barcelona.

The latest incident Wednesday, Israel’s Independence Day, was at the Chabad synagogue of the coastal city in eastern Spain. The graffiti on the sidewalk at the entrance to the synagogue read: “Why are they killing Palestinians.”

On April 17, Israel’s Holocaust commemoration day, the façade of a different synagogue in Barcelona was vandalized. The perpetrators wrote then: “Free Palestine from the river to the sea. Solidarity with the Palestinian people.” Both graffiti were in Catalan.

The Jewish Federations of Spain, FCJE, and Barcelona’s Jewish community in a joint statement called out political leaders in Barcelona and Catalonia, the semi-autonomous region whose capital is Barcelona, for allegedly failing to condemn the incidents.

“Mayor Ada Colau, President of the Government of Catalonia Pere Aragonès and the vice president of the Parliament of Catalonia, Alba Vergès, have not condemned those attacks,” the statement read. “They have not visited the sites of the attacks to express any solidarity.”

Colau has led an attempt to nullify a twin city agreement with Tel Aviv, citing Israel’s policies vis-à-vis Palestinians.
Jewish Students Stand Against Hate at UC Berkeley; Will the Staff Join Them?
On Wednesday, February 15, the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) Berkeley Senate met to deliberate on adopting SR-027, a bill proposed by Senator Shay Cohen. The bill calls for the ASUC to formally adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition is the gold standard for identifying contemporary antisemitism; governments, universities, and international organizations have adopted it worldwide.

UC Berkeley has an unfortunate history of antisemitic incidents involving student groups and professors. For example, Hatem Bazian, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley, has been known to promote antisemitic conspiracies. Bazian has retweeted posts accusing Jews of getting away with mass murder, argued that Jewish money controls Congress, and routinely denies the historic Jewish ties and claims to the land of Israel.

Bazian co-founded Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a campus organization with a history of antisemitism.

SJP uses the moniker Bears For Palestine (BFP) at UC Berkeley. Like SJP chapters across the country, BFP is known for targeting Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus, pushing discriminatory divestment resolutions, and spreading anti-Israel propaganda.

Back to the most recent effort to adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism at Berkeley in February 2023.

During the committee meeting two days before the actual vote on the IHRA definition, one of the senators accused a fellow senator, who happened to be Jewish, of supporting the bill because of his Jewish ancestry, labeling him and its supporters as anti-Palestinian. This smear ignored the fact that the Jewish senator never publicly supported SR-027, and in fact, ultimately did not vote in favor of this definition during the final vote.
StandWithUs Condemns Bias and Bigotry in Courses Approved by Santa Ana Unified School District
StandWithUs strongly condemns Santa Ana Unified School District's (SAUSD) approval of an Ethnic Studies: World Geography course which promotes bias and bigotry against Israel and the Jewish people. The course was approved by the SAUSD Board of Education on April 25th, 2023. The SAUSD board also approved an Ethnic Studies World Histories course which includes at least one book that promotes similar bias.

"The ethnic studies courses approved by SAUSD's board falsely portray Jews as colonizers in Israel, erasing 3,000 years of their history and connection to their ancestral home," said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs. "They cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a deeply one-sided and inaccurate way, and completely ignore Jewish refugees who fled or were expelled from Arab states and Iran. This violates the spirit, if not the letter, of California law regarding K-12 ethnic studies, as well as SAUSD policy about how to teach controversial issues."

California Assembly Bill 101 (AB101) states that K-12 ethnic studies curriculum, instruction, and instructional materials must, "Not reflect or promote, directly or indirectly, any bias, bigotry, or discrimination against any person or group of persons on the basis of any category protected" by the state's anti-discrimination laws. It also states that, "it is the intent of the Legislature that local educational agencies not use the portions of the draft model curriculum that were not adopted by the Instructional Quality Commission due to concerns related to bias, bigotry, and discrimination." The courses approved by SAUSD do not use the exact same content that was removed from the deeply problematic first draft of California's Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. However, they do promote some of the same bias and bigotry that led to the above language being included in AB101.

SAUSD Board Policy 6144 states that "all sides" of controversial issues "must be given a proper hearing" and that classroom discussions must, "not reflect adversely upon persons because of their race, sex, color, creed, national origin, ancestry, handicap, or occupation." The courses approved by SAUSD are in clear violation of this policy, in how they cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
BBC promotion of ‘Jewish Voice for Labour’ should not surprise
However the editorial decisions to amplify JVL’s statement would not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the BBC’s promotion of that campaigning group since its formation in late 2017.

When the Labour party suspended Chris Williamson in 2019, BBC Radio 4 turned to JVL for comment and later responded to criticism by claiming that no-one else was available:

BBC R4’S ‘PM’ PRESENTS ONE-SIDED COMMENT ON MP’S SUSPENSION
Earlier, in July 2018, the BBC News channel had brought in a JVL member (who was later herself suspended and subsequently expelled by the Labour party) to ‘explain’ the IHRA working definition of antisemitism to viewers:

BBC NEWS GIVES FREE REIN TO ANTI-ISRAEL CAMPAIGNER’S FALSEHOODS
In August 2018 BBC Radio 4 thought it would be a good idea to have a member of the pro-Corbyn JVL (who was also suspended from the Labour party at one point) as the sole contributor to an item about Jeremy Corbyn:

REVIEWING BBC RADIO 4 COVERAGE OF CORBYN WREATH LAYING STORY – PART TWO
In December 2019 two BBC radio stations interviewed another member of JVL in relation to antisemitism in the Labour party:

As these examples and others show, since its formation just over five and a half years ago, Jewish Voice for Labour has repeatedly enjoyed disproportionate exposure on BBC platforms. This latest example of the amplification of the views of a fringe group which does not represent the Jewish community in the UK is therefore yet another chapter in the long-running saga of unsatisfactory BBC reporting on antisemitism in the UK Labour party.


Jewish Community Horrified by Youths Burning Israeli Flags at Jewish Elementary School on Yom Ha’Atzmaut
Yesterday, as thousands of Montrealers celebrated Israel’s 75th anniversary at Yom Ha’Atzmaut events and rallies across the city, two male teenagers removed Israeli flags from the fences of Hebrew Foundation School, a private Jewish elementary school in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, and subsequently burned them at a different location. The incident happened at approximately 3:30 p.m., after students had been dismissed for the day. The youths, one seen with a Keffiyeh on his head and the other filming, posted the video of the incident as a Reel on Instagram that evening.

Upon becoming aware of the incident, school administration informed both the police and Federation CJA’s Community Security Network (CSN). Originally thought just to be an act of vandalism, the social media video revealed the intention, instead, to be one of hate. The SPVM Hate Crime Unit is investigating the incident.

Today, the SPVM and D.D.O. Security will increase their presence around the school and Federation CJA’s CSN volunteers will be deployed in large numbers around Jewish institutions across the city. Federation CJA and the CSN remain in contact with the SPVM to ensure the safety and security of the community.

In response, Eta Yudin, Quebec Vice President, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, released the following comment: “Yesterday, Montreal’s Jewish community celebrated the 75th anniversary of the founding of the modern state of Israel in the Jewish people’s indigenous homeland. Rising antisemitism across the globe is punctuated by incidents of blatant hatred such as these, reminding the Jewish community of the need for Israel, the world’s only Jewish country, and why it remains as relevant today as it was following thousands of years of persecution, culminating in the Nazi genocide of more than six million Jews in the Holocaust."

“This incident is a sad reminder that youth are being radicalized so young and underscores the need for the Jewish lived experience, antisemitism, and Holocaust education to be included in anti-hate and anti-racism initiatives in schools. Education is one of the most important tools in the fight against hate.”


PreOccupiedTerritory: Activists Rally For Gun Control And For Palestinian People To Resist By Any Means (satire)
A group of demonstrators came together Thursday to buttress public expressions of support for two pillars of their political ideology, namely that people confronting an oppressive regime must fight back even with violent, armed means, and that Americans must submit to restrictions on firearms ownership and the confiscation of those weapons, should the people in charge deem it appropriate policy.

Police estimated that four hundred people rallied in Lower Manhattan Thursday morning opposite the Ted Weiss Federal Building on Broadway. The protesters called for more robust gun-control measures by the government, citing disturbing gun-crime statistics, and decried efforts by conservatives to maintain the status quo on Second Amendment interpretation, and mocking or dismissing arguments that an armed populace serves as a check on governmental tyranny. The participants also voiced their solidarity with Palestinians and defended the right of the latter to resist Israel by any means, including shootings, bombings, vehicular rammings, rockets, stabbings, and other violence, since no one has the right to tell Palestinians how to resist oppression.

“It’s ridiculous that NRA types think they can hold off the military with AR-15s when the military has tanks and attack helicopters,” argued one demonstrator. “Guns in civilian hands are dangerous, especially to People of Color. Civilians shouldn’t own assault weapons. Except Palestinian civilians. They bravely resist the tanks and attacks helicopters of the Israeli military.”

“We need the power of the government to take away or neutralize the guns proliferating through this country in the wrong hands,” insisted another. “Too many innocents are killed. Also, we have to support Palestinians fighting the tyrannical occupation and condemn Israel for the excessive measures it takes allegedly in self-defense against those brave Palestinians forced to kill with weapons proliferating in Palestinian-controlled areas. They don’t have a choice but to shoot Israelis indiscriminately. Some innocent Palestinians will die, too, and that’s unfortunate, but the value of Palestinian liberation outweighs that. Palestinians can’t just remain defenseless against a military force.”
POLITICO Corrects on France24 Arabic’s Antisemitism
Following contact from CAMERA, POLITICO has corrected a misleading characterization of antisemitism from one of Europe’s largest news outlets.

A March 14, 2023 report by POLITICO Europe (“News channel France 24 suspends four journalists over anti-Semitism allegations”) initially claimed that CAMERA has “accused the [France 24] journalists of making references to the Holocaust and of bias in their reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on social media [emphasis added].”

Yet as CAMERA pointed out to POLITICO staff, “making references to the Holocaust” is both an incomplete and inaccurate description of what the journalists in question were doing.

As CAMERA’s investigation revealed, one journalist, Joelle Maroun, wrote: “Rise sir Hitler, rise, there are a few people who need to be burned.” That same journalist said of Hitler: “He should have been cloned for a time of need.” She also lamented: “If only Hitler was Lebanese.”

These comments meet the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism that has been adopted by numerous governments and the Obama-era U.S. State Department. They are textbook examples of antisemitism.

Following contact from CAMERA, on April 25, 2023, POLITICO changed their news brief to note that CAMERA has “accused the journalists of making anti-Semitic references and of bias in their reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on social media.”


Antisemitism is threat to democracy, US hate envoy says
Antisemitism is not only a threat to Jews in America, it's also a threat to democracy, Deborah Lipstadt, U.S. Special Envoy for monitoring and combatting antisemitism, told MSNBC in an interview on Thursday morning.

Lipstadt says that Americans have always believed that antisemitism is an "overseas problem." This is no longer the case, she says: "It's here at home and it's overseas." She says that when she discusses the problem of antisemitism with her counterparts around the world, "I can't say we figured it out. It's very debilitating."

The Anti-Defamation League found that the number of antisemitic incidents in the U.S. increased by more than 35% in the past year.

The U.S. antisemitism envoy points out that antisemitism "is not just a threat to the welfare of Jews."

"First of all, it starts with Jews and it never ends with Jews. Equally important, is that it’s a threat to democracy. Because the person who is an antisemite believes in the conspiracy theory. Now we've heard so much about conspiracy theories in recent years," she says.

"I used to have to explain what they were but now people know. And the conspiracy theory of course is that the Jews control the banks, the media, the judiciary the finances, everything. So, if you believe that one group controls everything you believe that democracy is a sham, that democracy is kaput."

Lipstadt recently was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2023 for her work "fearlessly calling on the international community to ensure that Jews everywhere can live safely and practice their faith freely."
‘We Have to Remember’: Cast and Crew of New Miniseries ‘A Small Light’ Talk About Holocaust-Era Heroism
The showrunners and cast members of the new National Geographic and Disney+ eight-part limited series A Small Light talked to The Algemeiner on Tuesday night at the show’s New York premiere about the importance of continuing Holocaust education in new ways for younger audiences and the need to share the little known, true story of the Dutch secretary who tried to keep Anne Frank and her family safe during the Holocaust.

Miep Gies was an opinionated 20-something-year-old and newlywed when her boss, Otto Frank, asked if she could help hide him and his family in Amsterdam from the Nazis after they invaded The Netherlands. Gies agreed without hesitation and for almost two years she risked her life to protect and sneak food to the Franks and other Jews hiding with them in the secret annex behind Otto’s office. She did what she could to make sure the Nazis would not find them until the Franks were ultimately arrested by the Nazis after being tipped off, though it remains unknown by whom.

Gies also kept Anne’s famous diary safe following the Frank family’s arrest and after the Holocaust she returned it to Otto, who published it and shared it with the world.

Much of the cast and crew of A Small Light are Jewish, including executive producer and director Susanna Fogel (The Flight Attendant), Billie Boullet (The Worst Witch) who plays Anne Frank and Ashley Brooke (The Blacklist) who took on the role of her older sister Margot. Brooke’s grandmother was also a survivor of the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.

British actress Bel Powley, who plays Gies, previously said her maternal great-grandparents were Orthodox Jews from Russia who left their home country to escape the anti-Jewish pogroms and ended up in Ireland. Her grandmother spoke Yiddish with a heavy Irish accent and Powley said recently that her partner’s Dutch grandmother hid Jews under their floorboards during the Holocaust. The actress told The Algemeiner on Tuesday night that her Jewish heritage made her want to do A Small Light and she knows her Jewish ancestors “would be incredibly proud of me that I was going to be a part of this series.”
Israeli Researchers Support Professor Who Declared Poles Falsify Holocaust History
Barbara Engelking, a Polish psychologist and sociologist specializing in Holocaust studies, founder and director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research in Warsaw, and the author or editor of several works on the Holocaust in Poland, on April 19, the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, gave an interview to TVN, a Polish free-to-air television station, network and a media and entertainment group, stating that Poles today “falsify history” by exaggerating the role of Poles in helping Jews during WW2.

On Thursday, following a week of relentless attacks on the academic for daring to speak the truth, a group of Israeli institutions for the study of the Holocaust came to Engelking’s aid.

“Jews in the ghetto…were self-sufficient to a large extent, and would have been even more so if it were not for the Polish blackmailers,” she said. She conceded that “people who decided to help Jews really were heroes,” adding, “but there were very few of them. There was reluctance on the Aryan side. There was no atmosphere conducive to hiding Jews.”

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki responded the next day, saying, “What happened yesterday in the TVN program was a grand obliteration of the truth. It was a lie, it was distorting reality, and at the same time it was an insult to those who had to live in that cruel reality.”

Pinning the vicious and often murderous antisemitism of so many thousands of Poles on the collapse of Polish rule under the German occupation, Morawiecki declared angrily: “It needs to be said loudly that the entire tragedy of the Jewish people started from the destruction of the Polish state. Let these words resonate strongly because some mistake facts for opinions.”

Engelking, for her part, insisted in her interview that “Jews were unbelievably disappointed with Poles during the war. They knew what to expect from the Germans, the enemy…but the relationship with Poles was much more complex.”

“Poles had the potential to become allies of the Jews and one would have hoped that they would behave differently, that they would be neutral, kind, that they would not take advantage of the situation to such an extent, and that there would not be widespread blackmailing,” she continued.

She used the term szmalcownictwa, a pejorative Polish slang expression that originated during the Holocaust, and refers to a person who blackmailed Jews who were in hiding, or who blackmailed Poles who aided Jews, during the German occupation.

“It seems to me that this disappointment plays a role, that Poles simply failed,” Engelking said.
Jewish professional wrestler Simon Miller speaks on antisemitism in wrestling
Simon Miller, a Jewish professional wrestler and one of the presenters of the WhatCulture Wrestling YouTube channel, which regularly posts wrestling-related content to over 2 million subscribers, appeared on the most recent episode of Podcast Against Antisemitism where he spoke on how issues of Jewish identity and antisemitism have been dealt with in the wrestling industry, both on and off-screen.

Mr Miller discussed how the Jewish identity of the wrestling manager and on-screen character Paul Heyman, who currently works in the global wrestling promotion World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and, in a documentary on the WWE Network, revealed that his mother was a Holocaust survivor, has been presented in a positive manner that allows Mr Heyman to playfully draw upon his Judaism.

However, Mr Miller also touched upon the various reported instances in which Judaism and antisemitism were handled poorly.

Remarking on the fact that he read from multiple sources that a “Nazi character” was once pitched as a wrestler, Mr Miller said that he was not entirely surprised, given that this was reported to have occurred at a time “when wrestling was super-duper about stereotypes.”

Mr Miller also gave his thoughts about the way the Jewish identity of the wrestler Colt Cabana was infamously handled, during which, in the mid-2000s, the wrestler had signed with WWE under the character of ‘Scotty Goldman’. Mr Cabana would appear in scripted segments where, in post-edit and reportedly without his knowing, klezmer music and stereotyping sound effects were added in.

The wrestler also alleged that one of the WWE trainers would refer to him not as “Colt Cabana”, but as “Kike Cabana”. To date, WWE has never commented on or disputed the wrestler’s allegations, but neither have they been confirmed.
Florida man arrested for attacking Chabad center in Cape Coral in March
Police have arrested a man who allegedly espoused conspiracy theories about Jews in connection with a March attack on a Chabad center in Cape Coral, Florida.

Maron Mark Raymon was arrested April 20 and has been charged with attempted burglary and criminal mischief to a place of worship, a third-degree felony in Florida. The arrest came more than a month after Raymon allegedly threw bricks at the front door of Chabad of Cape Coral as Shabbat services were wrapping up. Unable to break the glass, he allegedly broke a lock on the front door, before damaging the rabbi’s car and destroying a large wooden menorah on the outside of the Chabad center, housed in a shopping center along a main thoroughfare in central Cape Coral.

Rabbi Yossi Labkowski, head of the Chabad center, said the assailant fled when two people from the synagogue who had seen the incident approached him.

“Thank God we caught the individual, and I guess we don’t have to be worried anymore about this guy,” Labkowski told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Labkowski has lived in Cape Coral, a city of about 200,000 on Florida’s west coast, for 19 years and said he had never before experienced any antisemitism in his city. “Having this incident happen here, it was really out of the norm,” he said.
Israel Independence Day: What is president Reuven Rivlin doing now?
As speaker of the Knesset before his election to the presidency in 2014, Reuven Rivlin used to weep on Israel’s Independence Day each year when hoisting the national flag on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl, he recalled in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post for Independence Day. His grandchildren asked him, “Saba, why are you crying?” and he replied, “I’m not crying tears of sadness. I’m crying tears of joy because I still remember the first time the flag of Israel flew in Jerusalem.”

Only four native sons can be counted among the 11 presidents of Israel. Of the four, only the present incumbent, Isaac Herzog, was born after the establishment of the state, and two of the other three – Yitzhak Navon and Rivlin – can claim descent from multi-generational Jerusalem families.

Ezer Weizman, Israel’s seventh president, was the nephew of Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president; but Chaim Weizmann and his many siblings were born in what is now Belarus, which was then part of the Russian Empire.

Reuven Rivlin: The early years
Rivlin, 83, is a seventh-generation Jerusalemite whose grandchildren are ninth generation. The Rivlins were among 250 families who came from Lithuania in 1809, allegedly at the behest of the Vilna Gaon, who told his disciples that it made no sense for them to pray three times a day for the Almighty to return them to Jerusalem when they could simply board a ship and go there.

That was a logical argument. But what really persuaded, them according to Rivlin family legend, was the Hebrew calendar year Taf Kuf Ayin, which the Vilna Gaon said was the year of the arrival of the Messiah because the three letters suggested the blowing of the ram’s horn to hail his coming.

Rivlin used to joke that when the family arrived in the Land of Israel, they used to go to bed with their shoes on, so that if the Messiah came, they could run to greet him.
Jewish students hold massive celebration in Miami for Israel’s 75th anniversary
Some 6,000 students from more than a dozen different Jewish schools in South Florida came together at Miami’s loanDepot Park to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Israel’s creation Wednesday.

Students filled the stands for what organizers said is the single most attended Israeli anniversary event in the entire world.

All 22 Jewish schools from Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties took part in the celebration.

In addition to experiencing interactive games and musical performances, students also got the chance to take part in a grand parade, where every school represented a different Israeli city.

Organizers said they spent more than a year putting the event together.

One said that the goal was to give students the chance to feel a sense of community as they also come together to celebrate their heritage on a historic and monumental occasion.

“Honestly, it’s all about the kids because grownups are already very set in their ways,” event organizer Tina Falic-Levi said. “Our idea is to create that feeling inside of them of love and passion, of solidarity and of unity.”

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, the county’s first Jewish mayor, was scheduled to address the celebration.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to appear in a video message.
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Ariel Levin-Waldman examines how Israel's economy has grown from Jaffa oranges to tech giant since Israel declared independence 75 years ago.




Israel library’s ‘Operation Diary’ collects 40 personal accounts from 1948 era
A campaign to collect diaries and other personal stories from the 1948 era has already yielded 40 diaries for the National Library of Israel’s collection.

“The idea is to tell the story of the State of Israel from a collective point of view,” Matan Barzilai, the library’s head of archives and special collections, told JNS. “Not only from the point of view of historians, military commanders and political policymakers, but of the many people who lived here in Israel or in the Diaspora in the 1940s and 1950s, and were partners in the Zionist enterprise.”

The library is partnering in the project, “Operation Diary: The Founding Generation,” with Israel Hayom and the Jerusalem nonprofit Toldo Yisrael.

Among the “everyday” people the project documents are Yehudit Antin, who handled messenger pigeons as a young girl, and Asher Fisher, a tailor whose journal records measurements for dress uniforms he sewed, including for the likes of Israeli notables such as David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan and Yigal Yadin.

Yael Shimron wrote of cutting class to hear violinist Bronislaw Huberman, who founded the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, perform. Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories

The growing collection taught Barzilai that “there was a real culture of documentation and diary writing in Israel. Not only at school were the children taught to write diaries, but in the army as well.”
Senators Cruz, Cardin Introduce Bill for Golda Meir Commemorative Coin
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) on Wednesday introduced bipartisan, bicameral legislation to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding by minting a commemorative coin of Golda Meir, Israel’s 4th Prime Minister.

“Golda Meir was a towering figure and left an incredible legacy,” Cruz said in a statement. “She signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence and was its first female prime minister. She did enormous work deepening the U.S.-Israel alliance, which is critical to the national security of both our countries and the safety and security of Americans. I am proud to join Senator Cardin in introducing this legislation to recognize her leadership on Israel’s 75th anniversary.”

Meir was born in Ukraine in 1898 but became a naturalized US citizen after she immigrated with her family to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1906. She made aliyah to Israel in 1921 and served as Israel’s first female prime minister from 1969 to 1974, leading the country through its response to the 1972 Munich massacre and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Meir died in 1978.

“No recognition of Israel’s modern founding and rich 75-year history would be complete without particular mention of the outsized role of Prime Minister Golda Meir,” Senator Cardin said. “I am proud to be leading this legislation with Senator Cruz that will recognize her crucial role in building and strengthening the Jewish state and the enduring U.S.-Israel partnership.”
Caroline Glick: An afternoon among the angels
The best time to visit Mount Herzl Military Cemetery on Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day for the Fallen of Israel’s Wars) is in the afternoon. The morning rush has ended. The ceremonies are over. There are no jostling crowds craning their necks to see, no politicians, no photographers looking for the perfect picture to encapsulate the day.

The late afternoon is when my husband and I go every year to visit his friends who fought with him in the First Lebanon War in 1982.

I didn’t shoot a photo that would have encapsulated the day. But I wish I had. I saw one.

As we walked up the stairs to leave the Lebanon War section, I took a last look down, and saw a young couple we met as we stood by the grave of a soldier my husband didn’t know, but whom we visit each year all the same. He is buried not far from my husband’s friends, and we happened upon his resting place, and his story, a couple of years ago, as we walked among the rows of young men who fought in Lebanon 41 years ago.

The picture I didn’t take is of a young man named Zvi Besser, holding his infant son Mickey. Zvi is crouched in front of the grave of Cpl. Avraham Shmuel (Avi) Grogan. He is whispering Avi’s story into Mickey’s ear. Zvi’s wife, Kayli, is standing back, at the head of the grave, watching them.

Avi Grogan was a combat medic in the Golani infantry brigade. He was killed in a battle in a southern suburb of Beirut called Bourj el-Baranjeh. On August 4, 1982, Avi’s unit came under massive artillery assault. Instead of ducking for cover, he ran into the fire and began evacuating the wounded. According to the Ministry of Defense’s record, “Avi ran between the shells and evacuated the wounded one by one until he was hit himself. Even after he was mortally wounded, he continued telling his comrades how to give first aid to the wounded until he died from his wounds.”




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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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