May 2023 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

05/31 Links Pt2: Biden’s antisemitism program defends antisemites; J Street isn't as pro-Israel, pro-peace as it claims to be; Tree of Life shooter considered Jews 'a cancer on this planet'

From Ian:

Richard Landes: On Western Media and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

The expression ‘reality-based community’ has a strange genealogy. First used contemptuously by a Bush Administration official in 2004 to describe liberals who objected to their policies with ‘facts’, it quickly became a proud self-referent for liberals. Ironically, as Kurt Andersen puts it in his extensive study of America’s troubled relationship with reality, ‘Neither side has noticed, but large factions of the elite left and the populist right have been on the same team.’ This has become even truer in the six years since Andersen wrote that remark in 2017.

Today we have two loud camps each justifiably accusing the other of substituting post-truth advocacy for descriptions based on hard evidence. In the process, a ‘great divorce’ has occurred between Western information professionals and the realities it is their vocation to understand. The following study examines one aspect of this problem – the conflict between Israel and her neighbours – for the following reasons: a) it was an early harbinger of things to come, b) because the misinformation comes to us from a legacy media that claims to observe professional standards, c) because this misinformation reflects the biases of people who, even as they embarked on this great divorce with reality, were convinced that they were indeed, the reality-based community, and d) because ‘getting it wrong’ on this particular topic has so many grave real-world consequences not just for Palestinians and Israelis, but for democracies the world over.

For anyone with an elementary knowledge of Soviet propaganda, it might seem disconcerting to read collective statements from academics, including Jewish ones, about the Middle East conflict, or even to listen to a news broadcast from an increasingly post-modern legacy media about the Middle East.[1] One does not normally expect a morally and empirically bankrupt propaganda ministry, the subject of savage parodies, to hold such hegemonic sway decades after the failure of the totalitarian system that spawned it. How does a propaganda campaign of cognitive warfare get belatedly adopted by the very culture it targets? After all, one of the reasons the West won the Cold War in the early 1990s was because Soviet propaganda had so divorced the USSR from reality that once Glasnost took hold and that propaganda was challenged, the bottom fell out. And yet, now, in the early 2020s, the central themes of Soviet anti-Zionist, anti-democratic propaganda – Palestinian nationalism and freedom fighting, Israeli colonialism, apartheid, racism, and genocide, Zionism=Nazism – now rerouted through post-colonialism, hold wide currency in Western public discourse, both explicitly, and implicitly.[2]

To some extent, one can explain this in terms of the increasing influence of an intellectual revolution in the West, broadly taken to involve variants of critical theory – post-modern, post-colonial, queer, critical race, victim – and the various identity politics that inform this theorising. This study focuses not on documenting those trends, but the underlying cognitive and psychological factors that drove otherwise welcome post-modern perspectives as contributors to our understanding of reality,[3] in directions that have produced a major wedge between practitioners of the new approaches and the reality they aspire to explore and change for the better.

Mitchell Bard: Biden’s antisemitism program defends antisemites

Ultimately, the president caved into the far left and announced a strategy to fight antisemitism that gives antisemites cover. Establishment Jewish organizations rushed to praise the administration without apparently reading “The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism” or considering its implications.

As I warned in my previous column, the strategy failed at the most fundamental level by refusing to define antisemitism unequivocally. Trying to have it both ways, the document says: “There are several definitions of antisemitism, which serve as valuable tools to raise awareness and increase understanding of antisemitism. The most prominent is the non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism adopted in 2016 by the 31-member states of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which the United States has embraced. In addition, the administration welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document and notes other such efforts.”

This is doublespeak. It does not say that the IHRA is the definition it will use in pursuing its strategy. Worse, as many of us feared, it gives credence to the Nexus Document, which, unlike the IHRA, does not have the support of the international community. It was drafted by a handful of left-wing professors who defend anti-Zionism and double standards applied to Israel.

Since both supporters and critics of the IHRA claimed victory, the administration probably views its formulation as a successful compromise. If opponents of the internationally recognized definition believe they won, however, we have all lost.

Evidence that the administration has no intention of using the IHRA is that it is not mentioned in the White House’s fact sheet accompanying its strategy paper. It is also absent from the U.S. Department of Education antisemitism awareness campaign that was announced simultaneously.

You can’t fight antisemitism if you don’t know what it is.

By refusing to define antisemitism and trying to mollify “progressive” Democrats, the administration created serious doubts as to what it will be fighting against. Most notably, the strategy does not mention the antisemitic BDS campaign. This was undoubtedly to appease the far-left authors of the “alternative” definitions of antisemitism. The effect is to allow boycotts to proliferate and ignore one of the most significant sources of antisemitism on college campuses.

Why does Joe Biden's antisemitism strategy barely mention Israel?

The White House should, as the IHRA advises, draw a clear line on which kinds of public speech and actions are acceptably anti-Zionist and which are explicitly antisemitic and likely to incite violence. Instead, the Strategy says anything goes, so long as you’re pure in heart.

The Strategy is written to firm up the Democratic coalition, not protect American Jews. The White House cannot define the problem because the Democratic left, key groups in the Democratic coalition and heavily pro-Democratic institutions are all part of it. Instead, the Jewish problem is to be wished away. The Jews must blend into an alphabet soup of intersectionality and subordinate themselves to the greater good.

“Those who target Jews also target women, Black, Latino, Muslim, AANHPI, and LGBTQI+ Americans,” the Strategy’s authors claim. This is only partially true, and it is deeply misleading. It masks LGBTQ activism of the “Queers for Palestine” kind and the fact that in polls African Americans, Muslim Americans and Latino Americans express antisemitic views at higher rates than other groups.

Bizarrely, the Strategy recommends that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) advise synagogues on security. CAIR has long been accused of association with the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2014, the UAE added CAIR to its list of terrorist groups.

In 2021, CAIR’s San Francisco executive director Zahra Billoo told members of another radical group, American Muslims for Palestine, that pro-Israel “Zionist organizations”, “Zionist synagogues” and Hillel student groups were “your enemies” who “would sell you down the line if they could, and very often do behind your back”.

The lunatics are taking over the asylum.

Biden’s antisemitism plan is a missed opportunity

Prior U.S. administrations adopted the IHRA definition for some of their agencies’ work (as have the majority of U.S. states). Under former President Barack Obama, the State Department adopted it in dealing with foreign countries’ antisemitic practices. Under former President Donald Trump, an executive order allowed Jews (and Muslims and Sikhs) to benefit from the anti-discrimination protections of Article VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, even though it doesn’t apply to religions, because these religious groups share ethnic and national origins. This 2019 executive order also adopted the IHRA definition for the Department of Education’s use in monitoring federal grants to universities under Article VI.

Unfortunately, the Biden plan punts on this key issue of the definition. The 60-page strategy document devotes one short paragraph where it says “there are several definitions of antisemitism.” It cites the IHRA as the most prominent one, which the U.S. “has embraced,” but also “welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document” and notes other definitions.

The Nexus Document was drafted by American academics to counter what they considered the IHRA’s overbroad inclusion of anti-Israel behavior.

The Biden plan includes many good action steps to be taken by the U.S. Government, especially in the area of education, and pledges from private sector actors. It leaves open the core question of when anti-Israel speech and action crosses the line into antisemitism — a compromise, according to participants with whom I spoke, owing to push-back from left-wing groups who oppose any cross referencing of antisemitism with anti-Israel work.

Thus, the Biden plan has become a lost opportunity for all Americans concerned with the current rise of antisemitism.

Left open are the questions of whether the State Department and the Department of Education will continue to use the IHRA definition. Also left open is whether the forthcoming UN plan on antisemitism will reference the IHRA definition. I suspect U.S. and UN bureaucrats have received sufficient signals of caution from the Biden plan about including anti-Israel behavior.

The Biden plan rightly notes that “there is no higher profile platform than the White House for pushing back against and re-stigmatizing antisemitism.” Let us hope that the president finds the moral courage — which the President of Princeton apparently lacks — to use his platform to point out when antisemitism goes hand in hand with anti-Israel advocacy, as it does in the case of Mohammed El-Kurd.

Palestinians have it easy.

Whenever there is any statistic announced that shows that life for them isn't perfect, they have someone to blame: Israel.

So, for example, when there are some people in Gaza who are food insecure, it must be Israel's fault - even though it is much worse in neighboring Egypt, and even though Israel does not limit food into Gaza at all.

When the unemployment rate in the West Bank is at 14%, that sounds very high. It must be Israel's fault. Except that neighboring Jordan's is at nearly 22%.

Whose fault is that?

To the world, Palestinians have zero responsibility for their own problems. That is mostly because Palestinians insist that this is the case. This way they avoid doing any actual nation-building, and the EU keeps sending experts who do the work for them.

For three decades.

The fact that Palestinians choose to spend about 6% of their budget on terrorist "salaries" and family payments hundreds of millions of dollars that could go to help normal Palestinians - does not faze the rest of the world.

And the fact that Israel employs some 125,000 Palestinians, with salaries more than double their domestic worker counterparts, doesn't mean anything either.

The only narrative allowed - in the media and from NGOs - is that all Palestinian problems come from Israel.

And the world is happy - nay, eager - to believe it.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

This morning, there was a large explosion in a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command location in the Bekaa region in southern Lebanon, near the Syrian border.

The PFLP-GC immediately issued a press release saying that this was an IDF airstrike.

Arabic-language media spread the word about the Israeli aggreesion.

Since then, two things happened:

- The IDF denied doing any activity in Lebanon at all.

- Multiple Lebanese security sources reported what did happen:

Five fighters from a pro-Syrian Palestinian militant group were killed in an accidental explosion at a base in eastern Lebanon, a Lebanese security source said Wednesday.

"An old rocket exploded in an arms depot on the base and five fighters were killed," the security source said, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

In Beirut, a Lebanese military official said the explosion was the result of a blast within the base, adding that there was no airstrike. An official with a regional group allied with the Syrian government, said the explosion was the result of a “human error” that occurred when militants were handling ammunition. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

Yet looking at the last several hours of Arabic media reporting on the explosion and its aftermath, the Israeli denial is barely mentioned on a couple of Western-oriented Arabic sites, and the report about an old missile explosion has been ignored completely.

This is even after wire services like AFP reported on the rocket explosion.

This is not government-level censorship. This is an unofficial policy for Arabic media to censor facts that do not fit the narrative or that can cause unease among some of their readership.

If they even published it as a competing set of claims, as The National (UAE) did in English, any thinking person would see that the PFLP-GC is lying and Israel's denial is truthful - and that means that Arabs are less trustworthy than Jews, which contradicts the mega-narrative of Jews being dishonest and Arabs being honorable and trustworthy.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

05/31 Links Pt1: W.H.O. Singles Out Israel as Violator of Health Rights; Mahmoud Abbas's Two-Palestinian-State Solution; Terror victim Meir Tamari laid to rest

From Ian:

How lies became facts: The Tantura ‘massacre’ returns

The battle over Israel’s legitimacy, of which this story of the great “massacre of Tantura” is but a chapter, is part of the overall war being waged in the West by the progressive camp to impugn the moral foundations of the West as a civilization advancing freedom.

These revisionist arguments echo the ideas of the founder of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci, and his concept of “cultural hegemony.” Progressive thought holds that Western narratives are deliberately constructed around so encompassing a body of myths and so pervasive a structure of institutions that they become the received wisdom and obscure an underlying condition of perpetuated oppression.

Gramsci argued that codes of morality are constructed by dictatorial elites in order to create norms that uphold, validate and deepen the systemic oppression inherent to the capitalist system. Even the concepts of logic, truth and facts—the foundations of Western rational debate—are dismissed as forms of such hidden systems of oppression designed to contain debate into a repressive and misleading straitjacket.

As such, the idea of “approximate truth”—where narratives trump factual records of history—become valid to legitimize a cause or perspective even when the facts would suggest otherwise, because facts are themselves a form of repression.

The story of Tantura—or rather the myth of Tantura—is thus part of this larger assault on Western foundations. It is neither a historical work, a documentary, or even a docu-drama that took some artistic license. It is the intentional obfuscation of fact in an attempt to use the device of the “approximate truth”—something factually wrong but nonetheless representing a desired truth—to actually undermine truth and rewrite the historical narrative of Israel.

It is an attempt through fiction cropped as fact to paint Israel’s creation in such a dark palette that it is exposed as a historic evil born of colonial desire to suppress the Arab and Muslim people rather than as an attempt to correct the historical wrong of the exile of the Jewish people and instead to deliver them finally their liberation and sovereignty after two millennia.

W.H.O. Singles Out Israel as Violator of Health Rights

Deviating from its focus on public health emergencies, the annual assembly of the UN’s World Health Organization held a special debate on May 24th to single out Israel, which was condemned by Iran, Syria, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela and Cuba, for allegedly violating the health rights of Palestinians and the Druze population in the Golan Heights.

By a vote of 76 to 13, with 35 abstentions, the world health assembly adopted a resolution submitted by the Syrian and Palestinian delegations requiring the WHO to hold the same debate at next year’s meeting, and to prepare another report on the “Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.”

Co-sponsors of the resolution included Syria, Libya, Algeria, Cuba, Pakistan, Somalia, Venezuela and Yemen. No other country received a special agenda item at the 76th World Health Assembly, which concluded yesterday.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, an independent non-governmental organization that monitors the UN, condemned the “cynical politicization of the world’s top health agency at the expense of focusing on urgent health priorities affecting hundreds of millions around the globe.”

WHO Singles Out Israel, Ignores Russia, Syria, Afghanistan, Ethiopia

“Out of 25 items on the current world health assembly’s agenda,” said Neuer, “only one focused on a specific country — Israel.”

Bassam Tawil: Mahmoud Abbas's Two-Palestinian-State Solution

The "right of return" is not actually a "right," especially if you are the party who started the war and then lost it, as took place in 1948.

The "right of return" is, rather, a demand: that all the Palestinians who fled their homes during the war of 1948 – and all their descendants – be allowed to return to what is currently the State of Israel.

Thousands of wealthy Arabs left their homes in anticipation of a war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders' calls to get out of the way of the advancing Arab armies. A handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the crossfire as the Arabs waged war in response to the establishment of Israel.

"There is a limit to how far Abbas should go to appease Israel." -- Saudi commentator, mepc.org, 2012.

[A]n extensive letter to Abbas, signed by 78 Palestinian organizations, contained a semi-veiled death threat.

It has now become clear that when Abbas says he supports the two-state solution, he is actually talking about one Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, and another one that would replace Israel.

In Israel, there are currently about seven million Jews and two million Arabs. An influx of untold millions of Palestinians would mean, literally, the end of Israel. This appears to be exactly what Abbas and other Palestinians are hoping to achieve.

In pursuing this hardline push for the "right of return," Abbas desires a two-state solution: two Palestinian states, one in the West Bank and Gaza, and the other in all of Israel.

The only 'partisan' here, is you @KenRoth - a partisan of blind Jew hatred and relentless obsession with Israel. https://t.co/tu8KK58KQ3
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) May 31, 2023

Hezbollah-linked newspaper is really obsessed with Jews

An article in Al-Khanadeq, which appear to be a pro-Hezbollah mouthpiece, writes about three examples of decades-old financial scandals that were associated with Jews.

And it concludes, "Many are the scandals of the Jews, who practiced usury, smuggling, and committing atrocities, without any moral scruples or deterrents. In the United States, which provided a lot for them, they circumvented laws and engaged in fraud, and tax evasion. There is no doubt that Jewish racism and fraud makes the Jew feel that he is a hero in being outside about the law."

It turns out that Al Khanadeq writes about how terrible Jews are quite often.

One article claims that Yiddish is a secret language that Jews used in order to commit fraud without gentiles knowing about it.

Another claims that Jewish fundraising is a nefarious plot that steals money from innocent people.

But it is not only the articles themselves that are rabidly antisemitic. The illustrations for the articles are, too:

The author of all these articles is Nassib Chams, a Lebanese writer who has written for other Hezbollah and Arabic sites.

Jew-hatred is in their mother's milk.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Raja Abdulrahim has become an expert on how to write slanderous, one-sided articles about Israel while carefully adhering to the journalistic standards that supposedly ensure "fairness" of the New York Times.

As the Khoswan family slept, the Israeli military dropped three GBU-39 bombs into their sixth-floor apartment. One of the bombs exploded just outside the parents’ bedroom, leaving the apartment looking as if a tornado had swept through, killing three family members.

But they were not the stated target of the attack earlier this month.

The Israeli military had dropped the bombs into their home to assassinate a commander of the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad who lived in the apartment below.

Jamal Khoswan, a dentist, Mirvat Khoswan, a pharmacist, and their son, a 19-year-old dental student, were killed in the strike as well as the Islamic Jihad commander who lived downstairs, Tareq Izzeldeen, and two of his children, a girl, 11, and a boy, 9.

“Commanders have been targeted before,” Menna Khoswan, 16, said this month at a memorial service for her father at the hospital where he served as chairman of the board. “But to target the commander and those around him, honestly this is something we didn’t expect.”

Israel says that it conducts “precision strikes” aimed at taking out armed groups’ commanders or operation sites, and that it does not target civilians. But the airstrikes are often conducted in heavily populated areas, and many Palestinians in Gaza say they amount to a collective punishment aimed at making them fearful about who their neighbors might be.

Israel also destroys entire residential buildings or towers if it believes an armed group has an office or apartment there, although it usually issues an evacuation warning beforehand.

Six senior leaders of the armed group that Israel said had been responsible for rocket attacks on Israel were killed before a cease-fire was reached on May 13. The Israeli military said that Islamic Jihad had launched nearly 1,500 rockets indiscriminately toward Israel over the course of several days. Two people were killed in Israel, including an Israeli woman and a Palestinian worker from Gaza.

Members of the Khoswan family say they knew that an Islamic Jihad commander lived in the apartment below them and worried that he could be the target of an Israeli strike. Israel has designated Islamic Jihad as a terrorist organization — as have countries including the United States and Japan — and has regularly targeted its leaders and fighters.

Yet the Khoswans never thought their apartment would be hit while they were inside, Menna said, describing the shock of being awakened by the explosions ripping through her home.

There is nothing inaccurate here in this in-depth article. There are no lies in the text itself.

But the bias and innuendo is stark to the point of slander.

The suffering Palestinian families are given paragraph after paragraph of detailed sympathy, while the victims in Israel are nameless statistics.

The article includes ten photographs of damage in Gaza and grieving victims. When was the last time you saw any newspaper article show ten photographs? Those photos give the impression of widespread damage in Gaza, when in fact the amount of damage was very limited - and far, far less than other wars.

It says that there were 9-12 civilians killed - but doesn't mention that they were killed in the course of targeting and killing over 20 terrorists. This makes the ratio of innocent victims killed one of the lowest in the history of airstrikes.

The article pretends to be even-handed by quoting Israeli responses - usually adding a "but" to dismiss what they say.

Abdulrahim generously uses quotes from families of victims that contain bald-faced lies - but the New York Times is not obligated to factcheck a quote or an opinion. For example:

“What kind of precision is this when you kill civilians?” said Asmahan Adas, referring to a strike on the home of her next-door neighbor, Khalil al-Bahtini, another Islamic Jihad commander, that also killed her two teenage daughters. “When Israel wants to kill someone, they can find many different ways to kill, but they want others to die along with their target.”

Or the subhead: "Palestinians in Gaza say that Israel’s strikes against Islamic Jihad amount to a collective punishment aimed at making them fearful about who their neighbors might be."

Abdulrahim even quotes an Islamic Jihad terrorist whose lies are clear - but doesn't call them out:

Khaled al-Batsh, an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza, said his group’s members lived in their own communities in the tiny enclave that is home to more than 2.3 million people.

“Where should we go? Should we flee Palestine? Can we go set up a military base in Colorado?” he said. “They target the civilians so they can pit people against us.”

Given that Israel killed Islamic Jihad leaders who lived in apartments next to civilians, obviously al-Batch is lying. And he is just a obviously lying saying that Israel chooses to murder innocent people. But the article doesn't call out these lies, and lets a terrorist speak without any opposition. Unlike quoting Israeli sources, there is no "but" here.

That is the message that the New York Times is spreading with this article, that Israel could have avoided civilian deaths and chose to murder innocent people anyway. It is slanderous. But the article never says this directly, instead letting the quotes from Gazans stand alone as if they were factual.

This is some of the bias in the article's contents. But that is only a small part of how this article is lying in effect.

The main way that this article gives an entirely wrong message while adhering to a narrow set of facts is by omitting a huge amount of context - context that a fair reporter would seek out.

It doesn't mention that under international law, the existence of civilians around a military target does not make that target immune from attack. In other words, Israeli airstrikes on major Islamic Jihad leaders are perfectly legal under international law of armed conflict. Instead, Abdulrahim quotes an Amnesty report claiming (falsely) that Israel violated international law in previous conflicts in Gaza.

It doesn't mention that the ratio of civilians killed compared to militants is perhaps the lowest in any airstrikes on urban areas where the targets live among the people in history.

It doesn't mention the huge amount of time and money, not to mention the number of legal checks, that Israel uses before choosing a target.

It makes it sound like Israel could have somehow killed only Islamic Jihad targets without hurting any civilians - but does not say exactly how.

It does not interview any military experts. It does not interview any international law experts.

The entire article is meant to give an impression on readers that Israel is acting wantonly, that it is violating international law, that it either doesn't care about or deliberately chooses to target civilians, without saying those things explicitly and without giving any easy-to-find facts that would undermine that entire narrative.

(This article has not yet been published in the print edition. I anticipate this will be a front page news story in tomorrow's paper - which ensures that disparaging posts about Israel on social media will be widespread both today and tomorrow.)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Nicholas II (Antoniou) is the current Archbishop of Hermopolis and Exarch of Aegyptus Primus, part of the Church of Alexandria, Egypt.

Egyptian newspaper Dostur discusses a recent statement from "His Eminence:"

Nicholas Antoniou, the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Tanta and Gharbia and the church’s official spokesperson and agent for Arab affairs, spoke about the role of the Jews in the crucifixion, and their attempt to acquit themselves, claiming that by crucifying Christ they had fulfilled God’s will, and had it not been for them, this will would not have been fulfilled, and therefore they are not guilty. He refutes this with Timothy the Catholic: “The Jews did not crucify Christ according to his will, but for the sake of hatred towards him and towards the One who sent him. For this reason they crucified him, that is, in order for him to die and perish on earth. "

He also quoted Ammar al-Basri, an Arab Christian writer from the ninth century, who said: “The Jews did not intend to kill Christ deliberately for the good of people, but rather due to their ancient tyranny, their family envy, and their malicious habits of killing God’s prophets and saints and his messengers.”

This is doubly antisemitic. Besides the ancient charge of deicide, the archbishop adds that Jews try to fool Christians into giving them credit for killing Jesus so he could die for their sins.

He then adds a dollop of classic Muslim antisemitism that Jews habitually kill or attempt to kill prophets and "messengers" like Mohammed.

This was also reported in the Arabic language Copts Today.

So a major religious figure went on an antisemitic rant, invoking the lie that has been responsible for the murder of countless Jews throughout history.

Which means this is just another day in Egypt.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

05/30 Links Pt2: Biden's antisemitism strategy not enough to end Jew-hatred; How Religious Jews Became Official Scapegoats of COVID Policy; Air Force marks 75 years since its 1st-ever strike mission

From Ian:

Biden's antisemitism strategy not enough to end Jew-hatred

We Jews cannot solve this gargantuan age-old problem alone. If we could, antisemitism would have been eradicated long ago. Instead, it is rearing its fury-filled, ugly head, across the United States with frequency. This battle requires the masses to stand up and work together to combat this hatred.

Israel’s Ambassador to the US Michael Herzog tweeted his appreciation to the Biden administration: “I would like to congratulate the Biden administration for publishing the first-ever national strategy to combat antisemitism. Thank you, @POTUS, for prioritizing the need to confront antisemitism in all its forms. We welcome the re-embracing of @TheIHRA definition which is the gold standard definition of antisemitism. Less than a century after the Holocaust, rising antisemitism in America and across the globe is cause for alarm. This report is an important first step in the long fight against this venomous hate.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, has said: “As the US Jewish community is experiencing antisemitism at levels not seen in generations, we deeply appreciate that the White House has stepped up and delivered this significant, comprehensive strategy.

“It’s particularly notable that this approach recognizes that antisemitism is not about politics – it’s about principles. We are pleased that this strategy comprehensively addresses hate and antisemitism on campus, online and from extremists on both the far-Right and the far-Left.”

Jean-Paul Sartre, in his still powerful and insightful essay “Antisemite and Jew,” explains that the antisemite has created the Jew as a target of hate. The Jew represents everything that the antisemite loathes. That hatred is so deep and profound that even though they might love democracy, the antisemite does not even realize that their hatred is destroying the very society they love.

Sartre argues that this hatred is a passion and a deep-seated emotion. He explains that to the antisemite, the hatred is not an idea in the common sense of the word: it is not a point of view that is rational. “It is first of all a passion.”

Sartre tells the story of his high school friend who was livid that he had failed the French poetry test and the Jew, a son of Eastern European immigrants, had passed. The young man’s anger was vicious and so very visceral. He wonders how a Jew could understand French poetry better than he – a true Frenchman.

And then, the truth. Sartre gets his classmate to admit that he failed because he did not study and that it had nothing to do with the Jew. Rather than accept the blame he alone deserved, he transferred his anger and frustration to the ready scapegoat, a Jewish classmate.

Jew-hatred will not disappear, but the more non-Jews who join in the battle, the more likely it is that Jew-hatred will become socially unacceptable and even banished from polite conversation and public interaction.

That is truly the goal of this initiative.

Jonathan Tobin: Asking the wrong question about Biden’s flawed antisemitism plan

Those who have sought to defend the strategy by accusing its critics of quibbling over details are not just demonstrating poor judgment. They are failing to ask the most important question about antisemitism in America. The real query that needs to be posed is what role is this administration—even as it engages in a massive exercise in antisemitism virtue signaling—playing in enabling the growth of a form of Jew-hatred that is considered acceptable in political discourse, academia and popular culture?

The unfortunate answer is quite a lot.

This is, after all, the same administration that has mandated the implementation of the new secular religion of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in every government department and agency.

The woke DEI catechism is rooted in critical race theory, which divides all Americans into two immutable groups: victims and victimizers. It is also directly connected to intersectional myths that treat Jews and Israel as white oppressors.

Biden’s embrace of this toxic ideology and his decision to make it official government policy are among the most momentous things he has done in the White House. In comparison to that awful decision, the publication of a strategy paper on antisemitism is relatively insignificant. This was reflected in the largely negligible coverage of the document’s unveiling in the secular media.

The Biden report did say that modules about antisemitism would be included in government DEI indoctrination. But anyone who thinks that this will temper the damage being done is forgetting that the DEI commissars who are implementing this doctrine of permanent race conflict throughout academia, the business world and now the government are exactly the same people who fought for the alternative to the IHRA definition. The only way to prevent the spread of this noxious form of left-wing Jew-hatred is to stop DEI, not to make minimal attempts to alter it.

The organized Jewish world was played perfectly by the Biden White House. As a result, the bulk of American Jewry, already inclined to support anything put out by the Democrats and to believe antisemitism is primarily a problem of the right, has had its preexisting biases confirmed.

By allowing themselves to be distracted by a clever information operation and thereby gulled into avoiding a confrontation over the most important detail about the document, mainstream Jewish leadership has once again failed its constituency. An administration that is enabling antisemitism can’t be trusted to fight antisemitism no matter what its purported strategy on the issue might claim to be.

Jonathan Tobin: Don’t call promoting anti-Zionism to Jewish youth ‘dialogue’

American Jews have always been addicted to interfaith dialogue. Jewish groups jump at any opportunity to engage in interfaith programs to foster alliances with other minorities. When applied to dialogue between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, dialogue programs, which are usually sponsored by groups that are critical of Israel, are generally even less productive than other kinds. All too often, they involve Arabs complaining bitterly about Israel and the Jews agreeing with them. While these engagements are well-intended and praised for their idealism, they often do more harm than good since they can serve to reinforce the unwillingness of Palestinians to give up their demented fantasies about the demolition of the Jewish state.

But now we’ve been given an example of a form of Jewish-Arab dialogue that goes well beyond that. The newest model that is being tried involves bringing American Jewish students together with people who are openly anti-Zionists, bent on Israel’s destruction to make them better informed about the Palestinian narrative.

That’s the conceit of a program launched by Ezra Beinart, a high school junior living in New York City who has been recruiting fellow teens to learn more about the Palestinian side in the conflict. And they are certainly getting that in the series of Zoom programs he’s led that have featured, among others, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a vicious opponent of the Jewish state and a supporter of the antisemitic BDS movement.

If his last name sounds familiar, it should. He’s the son of journalist Peter Beinart, whose well-chronicled personal and ideological journey began as a neo-liberal hawk, then a left-wing dove and self-proclaimed liberal Zionist to his current guise as an outspoken anti-Zionist who supports the elimination of the Jewish state, a position he advocates in publications like The New York Times and as a commentator on CNN.

I have often criticized Beinart’s work. And I debated him once in person several years ago when he was still playing the role of liberal Zionist. That was before he abandoned the cause of Jewish self-determination because, to his surprise, the people of Israel stubbornly refused to listen to his advice to make suicidal concessions to those who plot their destruction.

But while I make no secret of my disdain for his writing and statements—and am appalled at the way he uses his Jewish identity to give undeserved credibility to his attacks on Israel—I bear neither him nor his family any personal ill will. And under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t think of publicizing, let alone publicly criticizing, his son’s high school projects.

Saudi astronauts Ali al-Qarni and Rayyanah Barnawi

Muslim media is discussing how Saudi astronaut Ali Al-Qarni is doing his prayers on the space station.

He made a video saying that he puts his feet in some sort of attachment so he can stand still and try to prostrate himself, although that is very difficult.

But he doesn't say whether he tries to face Mecca - which would be difficult, because the space station travels around the Earth every 90 minutes, and if prayers take ten minutes, Mecca will not be close to where it was when he began. Nor does he discuss how he calculates prayer times and whether he prays five times every circuit around Earth!

These are similar questions to what Jews have been asking about space flight since Apollo days.

I found a summary from Harvard's Divinity School of the general consensus on these topics, based on a fatwa by Malaysian scholars in 2007:

The scholars produced a fatwa, or non-binding Islamic legal opinion, intended to help future Muslim astronauts, which they translated into both Arabic and English. They wrote that in order to pray, Muslims in space should face Mecca if possible; but if not, they could face the Earth generally, or just face “wherever.” To decide when to pray and fast during Ramadan, the scholars wrote, Muslims should follow the time zone of the place they left on Earth, which in Dr. Shukor’s case was Kazakhstan. To prostrate during prayer in zero gravity, the scholars stated that the astronaut could make appropriate motions with their head, or simply imagine the common earthly motions.

The bolded part is the same ruling that Jewish scholars have given for Jewish astronauts, specifically for the late Ilan Ramon's disastrous 2003 trip. It is based on a 19th century rabbinic ruling that a traveler who enters the Arctic Circle where there is no sunrise or sunset should use the same times as his point of departure.

Other opinions have been given, but this one seems to be the Jewish consensus, if there ever could be such a thing.

There are other questions for which Jews and Muslims diverge. For Jews, the question is when to observe Shabbat. The answer seems to be the same, to use the times for the place of liftoff. But i saw one opinion that as long as it is Shabbat anywhere, then the astronaut should observe it - which would lead to a 48 hour Shabbat, which does not seem practical. (Obviously any tasks she or he have that are critical for the mission would override Sabbath restrictions.)

For Muslims, the other major issue is Ramadan - whether to fast at all and if so, for which times during the "day"? The Malaysian scholars gave the same answer - the times of the place the astronaut left the Earth - but it seems to me that there might be exemptions for fasting altogether. For one thing, Muslims can make up missed fast days; for another, at least some have an exemption for travelers - and one cannot be much more of a traveler than someone going around the Earth 18 times a day.

A Jew in space for a major 25-hour fast day? I imagine they would have to fast using the same clock as the point of departure.

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The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics announced that in March 2023, the Palestinians exported goods worth nearly $150 million.

87% of those goods went to Israel.

In contrast, "only" 54% of Palestinian imports come from Israel; that used to be much higher.

Now, let's imagine if Israel did what the BDS movement wants to see - and shut off all imports and exports to the territories.

The impact on Israelis would be minimal, since Palestinian trade accounts for less than 1% of all Israeli imports and exports.

The impact on the Palestinians would be immediate and drastic.

Which proves yet again that the BDSers don't care about Palestinian welfare. They are willing to fight Israel down to the last Palestinian, and that includes forcing them into poverty - while they themselves use Israeli products and technologies every hour of every day.

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05/30 Links Pt1: Terror Attack Victim Identified as Meir Tamari, Father of Two Young Children; Stop the lie: Israel never ethnically cleansed Palestinians

From Ian:

Stop the lie: Israel never ethnically cleansed Palestinians

Today’s Palestinian leaders virtually never acknowledge that Arab communities in 1947-48 who negotiated peace with Israel in advance of the war—and those who remained neutral—were not touched.

Abu Ghosh, a town just west of Jerusalem, for instance, reached an agreement with Israeli authorities not to get involved in the fighting. Nazareth also negotiated its neutrality, leaving the city relatively unscathed.

Today, these non-combatant cities are part of Israel’s thriving Arab community of more than two million—20% of Israel’s population. These facts completely disprove the accusation that Israel ethnically cleansed its land of Arabs.

Tragically, Palestinian leaders, leaders of other Arab countries and the United Nations continue to perpetuate the misery of the Palestinian people by discouraging them from integrating into the societies of other countries and building new lives.

This is exemplified by the fact that every Arab country except Jordan has refused to give its Palestinian refugees citizenship.

Today, more than 1.5 million Palestinians still live in squalid refugee camps, where they are fed the false promise that one day they will be able to return to their “homes.” Millions more Palestinians the world over still consider themselves refugees, though their displaced parents and grandparents have long passed away.

This promise of return is unrealistic, because Israel will never allow millions of descendants of deceased Palestinian refugees into its territory. Doing so would mean the end of the Jewish state. The Palestinian leadership knows this, yet one of their primary conditions of peace with Israel is this so-called—and non-existent—“right of return.”

Meanwhile, tens of millions of people displaced in other wars have gone on to build new lives in new countries. This includes 800,000 Jews who fled or were expelled from Arab countries after Israel’s birth—most resettled in Israel.

In addition, history gives us countless other examples of war-time refugees building new lives in new countries. Germans from Sudetenland, Hindus from Pakistan, Greeks from Turkey—all experienced displacement, but did not obsess or resort to terrorism over ejection from their former homes. Instead, they chose to rebuild and thrive elsewhere.

In fact, the most successful peoples in the world—even the stateless—are those who seek freedom and prosperity and work diligently to achieve it.

It’s time the Palestinians shift from their narrative of victimhood and look to a future in which they can thrive by building lives in new countries or by finally saying yes to peaceful coexistence with Israel and building a country of their own.

The UN Must Not Repeat Its ‘Nakba Day’ Farce

Abbas’ ugly performance was unhelpful to the well-being of Palestinians. It’s a moral imperative to separate humanitarian compassion for Palestinian refugees and their descendants — who have been used as pawns by Arab leaders — with Nakba Day, a cynically politicized creation aimed at undermining Israel’s legitimacy.

The Nakba Day ceremony underscored how ridiculous the UN’s institutional anti-Israel obsession has become. There are two permanent UN committees devoted to demonizing Israel and promoting the Palestinian narrative, plus a “Division of Palestinian Rights” in the UN Secretary-General’s office and a new, unprecedented permanent inquiry against Israel in the UN Human Rights Council.

This year’s UN calendar will now have two Palestinian “special days” — Nakba Day, and also the annual Day of International Solidarity with the Palestinian People (Nov. 29). The UN has no other “special day” to express “solidarity” with or commemorate the history of any other national group.

The US, Canada, Australia, and dozens of other countries deserve credit for steering clear of the Nakba Day spectacle. By declining to attend, these countries upheld the international consensus to support two states for two peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, achieved through direct peace negotiations — meaning you cannot treat the establishment of one of those states as a crime and a disaster.

President Abbas’ speech was a strong reminder why there is no two-state peace today. Negotiations are the only way forward, but Abbas’ speech demanded the UN force Israel to concede Palestinian claims without negotiations — typical of a totally counter-productive Palestinian strategy over recent years of rejecting all talks and focusing instead on demonizing Israel in international forums.

Abbas has called upon the UN General Assembly to make Nakba Day another permanent day to “commemorate the Palestinian plight.” For the UN, whose credibility is at an all-time low, Abbas’ vile speech hopefully caused enough embarrassment that the Nakba Day hate-fest won’t be repeated.

West Bank Terror Attack Victim Identified as Meir Tamari, Father of Two Young Children

The Israeli man who was murdered in a terrorist shooting attack in the West Bank on Tuesday was identified as Meir Tamari, the father of two children aged one and three.

The attack occurred near the entrance to the Hermesh settlement, in the northern part of the West Bank, around 11:30 in the morning. Meir arrived to the settlement, where he married his wife Tal, four years ago. The couple has just finished building a house a few days ago.

According to Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency services, the 32-year-old victim was wounded in the shoulder. A helicopter was sent to evacuate the patient to a nearby medical center, where he succumbed to wounds.

i24 News - Israelis opposed to the planned judicial overhaul by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to...

“Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the medical team, the team had to pronounce him dead. The family has been notified,” the hospital’s statement said.

Israeli forces have launched a manhunt for the terrorist, and erected roadblocks in the area. The attack was reportedly carried out from a passing vehicle, which cut off the victim’s car and opened fire.

The Tulkarem Battalion, a new wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group, claimed responsibility for the attack.

“Our soldiers were able to carry out a quality operation on the road to Hermesh settlement. They opened fire at a vehicle carrying a settler, and we confirm that he was hit directly,” the group’s statement said.

Another own goal at the "Museum of the Palestinian People"

There aren't too many things to see in the virtual tour of the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington DC. But several of the objects on display that show the paperwork behind lifecycle events of Palestinians are interesting - unintentionally.

There are two marriage certificates and one birth certificate.

Outside of the handwritten description of the father of the baby having a nationality of "Palestinian," none of these documents, issued by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, say anything about Palestine.

There is also a pair of passports issued in 1946. They don't say "Passport of Palestine." They say "British Passport - Palestine" and there is Hebrew inside along with Arabic.

This same museum proudly shows a 1938 National Geographic map of the Middle East called "Bible Lands" that uses "Palestine" as a clear English translation of Eretz Yisrael, but the museum considers this "proof" that there was a nation called Palestine. But that is a map that had no official function. Every document in the museum from a government proves that there was no such nation.

Why would a museum of the Palestinian people show paperwork that contradicts the idea of a Palestinian nation? And what happened to the parts of Palestine under Jordanian control in 1949?

Palestinians accuse Israel of erasing their Palestinian nationality from before 1948, but....what about Jordan? We see that Jordan did not call keep any vestige of "Palestine" in the areas it illegally annexed. Jordan literally erased Palestine. Why did no Palestinian Arab protest about this?

Yet it appears that Jordan did maintain records of which citizens came from Palestine and who did not - with the aim of potentially disenfranchising the Palestinians by forcibly "returning" them to a Palestine that never existed. Moreover, the family that donated these documents were never refugees - the father was born in Nablus in the 1930s.

The museum documentation doesn't mention any of this, of course. Because it isn't interested in the real history of the Palestinian people, a people created in the 1960s purely to paint Israel as a Goliath. The museum's entire purpose is to delegitimize Israel by not only placing all the blame of the Palestinian "diaspora" on Israel, but also in erasing the entire Jewish history in the Levant as it carefully curates pottery and artwork to avoid any mention of any Jewish presence on the Land.

A careful look at the "Museum of the Palestinian People" shows that there was never a Palestine.

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"Tantura massacre" is a conspiracy theory

The Guardian reported last week:

An investigation into a massacre in a destroyed Palestinian village carried out by Israeli forces in the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation has identified three possible mass graves beneath a present-day beach resort.

Palestinian survivors and historians have long claimed that men living in Tantura, a fishing village of approximately 1,500 people near Haifa, were executed after surrendering to the Alexandroni Brigade and their bodies dumped in a mass grave believed to be located under an area that is now a car park for Dor Beach. Estimates have ranged from 40 to 200 people.

In recent years, a growing body of evidence for the Tantura massacre has generated significant controversy in Israel, where atrocities committed by Jewish forces in 1948 remain a highly sensitive subject: an Israeli-made documentary about what happened in the village faced widespread backlash on its release last year.

The extensive new investigation by the research agency Forensic Architecture identifies what it says is a second mass grave site in the former village of Tantura, as well as two more possible locations, in the most comprehensive research yet.

There is a difference between history and conspiracy theory. In legitimate historical research, you start with all the facts that then look for larger historical patterns that the facts lead to. With conspiracy theories, however, you start with the theory, and then look for the facts (or half facts) that support the theory and ignore or disparage anything that contradicts them.

The Forensic Architecture "analysis" of Tantura, like their others, is a conspiracy theory dressed up as scientific research.

Historian Benny Morris has dismantled the Tantura massacre myth, using the tools of a historian. Morris has documented every major event that happened in 1948, including what would be considered war crimes today. In every case the Arab victims and victims of relatives spoke about the events in real time, loudly, to whomever would listen. Yet, he notes:

If there was a massacre of 200 to 250 people at Tantura, it was the largest of the 1948 massacres. But there is no available document from 1948 that mentions a massacre at Tantura, apart from one document, which I’ll come back to below, that deals with the execution of a handful of Arab prisoners of war on the fringes of the village. Strange, very strange, because all the massacres perpetrated by Jews in 1948 are at least mentioned, if not described, in documents from 1948. These include documents of the Haganah, the main Jewish militia until the end of May 1948, the Israel Defense Forces, the UN (which had observers on the ground from May 1948), the Red Cross (whose officials operated in the country from April 1948), as well as records by the British and the Americans, whose representatives reported from Israel to London and Washington about the wartime events.

Deir Yassin, Burayr, Ein Zeitun, Lod, Hunin, Dawayima, Eilabun, Arab al-Mawasi, Majd al-Kurum, Saliha, Jish, Safsaf, Bi’na-Deir al Asad – the massacres perpetrated by Jews in these places and others are all mentioned in contemporary 1948 documentation, and in some cases are described in detail. Just not Tantura, not one mention.

Not that Haganah/IDF officers ignored Tantura in 1948. Accounts of the battle, the expulsion, the demolition of buildings afterward, all appear in the documents. Just not a massacre. On June 18, during the war’s First Truce, under the supervision of the International Red Cross and the United Nations, more than a thousand refugees from Tantura were transferred in an army convoy to Tulkarm, then under Iraqi army control. A document in the Haganah Archives sums up Arab radio broadcasts of that period (Haganah Information Service, “E.I. [Eretz Israel, Mandatory Palestine], June 21-22, 1948”): “An Arab woman from Tantura… relates that the Jews are raping Arab women and demolishing the place.” But according to the report, the woman did not mention by so much as a word that the Jews also massacred hundreds of her fellow villagers. (A slightly different version of this report states that the woman related that the Jews “raped women in addition to the acts of robbery, theft and arson.” Again, no mention of a massacre). These items were broadcast on Radio Ramallah.

In addition, as far as I was able to discover, the archives of the UN and the Red Cross – whose officials organized and escorted the move of the Tantura refugees to Tulkarm and reported frequently to their headquarters – contain no mention of a massacre at Tantura. Does it stand to reason that among the thousand deportees, who were no longer under Jewish control, not one bothered to tell the Iraqi officers or the UN and Red Cross officials that, by the way, they had endured a horrific massacre of their fathers, brothers, sons, as described by Katz and Schwarz and their supporters? It is simply inconceivable, if a large-scale massacre that they had eyewitnessed or at least heard about had indeed occurred.

Morris admits that there is evidence that the Israeli troops killed between 8-10 snipers in the village. That's it. No civilians.

He brings plenty of other evidence that the modern blood libel is false and that the current "researchers" are knowingly lying.

Forensic Architecture, however, is looking for a huge massacre. And when you start from that perspective, just like with 9/11 "truthers" or Holocaust deniers, it is easy to find "evidence" that fits your preconceived notions.

In this case, the entirety of the "evidence" they discovered are two shadows in 1949 aerial photos that they didn't see in 1947 photos.

According to them, the only possible explanation for these shadows are that they are man-made earth mounds that would be the site of mass graves. They even do some helpful math:

We believe that if bodies were laid shoulder to shoulder and oriented northwards in a single layer, there could be around seventy bodies under a mound of this size. Were the bodies to be layered on top of each other, as one testimony suggests, the total number could be double that, up to approximately 140 bodies. Thus, our assessment is that the total number of bodies contained in a mass grave site such as this would be in the range of seventy to 140.

... As we did with Earthwork 1, we used the measurements of the mound to calculate the likely number of bodies which could be buried there. Our assessment is that the total number of bodies in a mass grave of this size is in the range of forty to eighty.

Ta-da! Shadows have now become proof of the murder of 240 people, coincidentally the highest amount that people made up fifty years after the event!

At times, FA doesn't even pretend that they are merely guessing. In this diagram, they refer to the supposed earth mound they claim the shadows indicate definitively as a mass grave, no questions asked:

So what if decades of research since this "Tantura massacre" allegation first appear in the 1990s have not uncovered the name of a single victim? We have shadows!

It's science!

There are two years between the two photographs they are comparing. As is obvious, there are other changes between the 1947 and 1949 photos besides these shadows - new buildings and roads being built. Israel did move quickly in 1948 to build new villages to house immigrants, and Tantura was one of the spots where there was building activity (Palestine Post, August 2, 1948).

All of those require moving earth.

The Nachsholim settlement was built there.

But Forensic Architecture knows that those shadows were created on May 24 or 25, 1948, and not in the months before or afterwards. How?

Because, like all conspiracy theorists, they aren't considering any other possibility, and will not admit that any other theory is possible.

Let's say that they are correct and that these faint lines really represent two long 85 centimeter high earth mounds. What could be the reason?

Maybe the animals in the village who were not being fed died and needed to be buried. Maybe the graves of the snipers really are there and there are only 10 or so people buried separated by three meters out of respect. Maybe the kibbutzniks decided to build a fence between the trees and the field and cleared the area with a bulldozer. Maybe the leftover earth cleared for the new buildings and road was, for some reason, deposited on the edge of the field perhaps as a marker. Maybe there was a garbage dump that was attracting insects or animals that needed to be buried.

The point is that when you only are willing to accept the most obscene explanation at the outset, you aren't engaging in research - you are just looking for proof of a conspiracy theory.

And only antisemites would assume that the most likely explanation for two shadows is the existence of mass graves that contain some 240 people murdered by Jews whom no one can name and whom no one heard about until 50 years later.

No amount of 3D reconstruction can make up for the fact that the "researchers" at Forensic Architecture are anti-Israel bigots who consistently start their "research" with their conclusion and then connect the dots to reach it after the fact.

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Again, Palestinians use Israel's preservation of Islamic antiquities as proof of Israel destroying Islamic antiquities

The Palestinian Safa news agency "reports:"

The Israeli occupation authorities are still continuing their efforts to obliterate the Islamic and Arab features of Al-Aqsa Mosque, including the Umayyad palaces area, falsifying its identity and ancient history, and stealing its antiquities and historical stones, in order to impose an alleged biblical narrative, and prepare for the establishment of the alleged "Temple".

With its ancient stones and ancient buildings built by the Umayyads, the Umayyad palaces represent an Arab Islamic heritage, and a symbol of Islamic civilization in Palestine, which refutes the claims of the occupation that it discovered Jewish antiquities and assets in the region during its excavations over the past years.

The Umayyad palaces were shown during the early Islamic conquest as a house for the emirate, palaces for the Muslim caliphs and Islamic institutions for managing the affairs of Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa Mosque and Palestine about one thousand four hundred years ago.

In 1967, the occupation took control of this area, and tried to confiscate it under the pretext of the so-called "Holy Basin", in order to suffocate Al-Aqsa Mosque from the southern and western regions, and also turned it into museums, shrines, and Talmudic manifestations, to narrate the biblical Talmudic narrative.

Settlement organizations claim that the palaces are built in the "Holy Basin" area of the "Temple", but the excavations that lasted more than 40 years with the participation of Jewish archaeologists have proven that the buildings are Umayyad palaces and an emirate house, and there is no evidence indicating their relationship to the "Temple" or anything else.

This is a funhouse mirror version of history that ends up not even close to reality.

We've discussed the Umayyad palaces before. They were discovered by Jewish archaeologists and they are being preserved by Israel. If it wasn't for Jews, the Arab world would not even know they ever existed.

The site is there today for visitors. It is preserved by the State of Israel and the Jerusalem municipality. No one is claiming that the Umayyad palaces were never there or that they were Jewish-built. No one is damaging the site.

The real question is why we don't see more Muslim visitors to the area, since it is clearly a major historical Muslim site.

And it is hardly the only Islamic site preserved by Israel in Jerusalem, open to all, with clearly marked signs explaining the importance of the site.

The Safa article also lies in its claims that there is no evidence of any Temple on the southern areas surrounding the Temple Mount. For example, there are dozens of ritual baths in the area which pre-date the Umayyad structures, and the only reason for so many would be if masses of people were preparing to visit the Temple Mount.