One of the responses was most illuminating, but not in the way that the tweeter intended.
The surest way to know I've hit a nerve with the anti-Israel crowd is when they respond with anti-Israel tweets that have nothing to do with the original tweet. They are so incensed that anyone could give a perspective on the conflict that doesn't make Israel into an ogre that they want to ensure that their lying narrative of unrelenting Israeli evil overwhelms any other perspective.
In this case the tweeter clearly didn't even read the Haaretz article he was referring to. It is a very interesting account about how many Nazis were employed by everyone after the war - the US, England, the Soviets, and a significant number made their way to Syria and Egypt to continue their unfinished war against Jews. One who was expelled from Syria was then convinced to give the Mossad intelligence about Syria, intel that would save the lives of Jews. Another was recruited to help Israel hurt Egyptian plans for rockets that would be used against Jews in Israel. In that case, the ex-Nazi asked to be immune from any future Israeli reprisals for his activity during the war, and the Mossad refused to give that to him.
At any rate, one recruits spies from one's enemies. That's how spycraft works.
(The article also shows how the same Mossad that sometimes decided that an ex-Nazi might help save Jewish lives also went after Nazis, sending letter bombs in attempted assassinations, for example. )
What do you call it when Jews are expected to adhere to imaginary moral standards that the rest of the world is not expected to? Yes, that is antisemitism. Of course, so is any claim that Israel has nothing to do with Jews - no one can disagree that a Hebrew speaking state with a Jewish majority on the historic land of the Jews has something to do with Jews.
Normally I would ignore this stupidity, but the PhD in his name made me look at his profile.
This moron is a professor?
Sure enough, he is a part-time professor at American Military University and full-time professor at Indian River State College in Florida.
I looked up some of his publications, and didn't see anything particularly offensive. However, Shelby recently wrote a book about US policy in the Middle East during the Johnson administration and it took me seconds to find both his bias and his sloppiness with facts when it comes to Israel:
The 1947 partition plan gave the Negev to the Jewish state, not the Arabs. And the Arabs didn't reject partition because of the distribution of land - they rejected the idea of a Jewish state on any borders, as they made quite clear in all their public statements at the time.
This is propaganda to minimize Arab intolerance, not history.
So we know that Alex Shelby, who is of Palestinian ancestry, is a poor researcher and that his tweet to me showed he has an antisemitic double standard. But is he really an antisemite?
This pair of tweets, from April 2022 and April 2023, show clearly Shelby's blatant disregard for honesty and consistency as well as his antisemitism.
The first tweet is just sloppy - Byzantines built a church on the site.
But Shelby changes his theory about the Temples that he admits existed in 2022 and then in 2023 claims not only that there is no evidence that they existed, and that Jews "abandoned" it for "over 3000 years."
A history professor claims, against all evidence from the Bible to Josephus to hundreds of First and Second Temple artifacts found there to the different sections of the Temple Mount itself that testify to the dates of its building and expansions, that there is "no empirical evidence" that is ever existed?
That's merely enough to entirely discredit any credentials he has as a historian. But he goes beyond that, claiming that Jews "abandoned" their holiest spot, when for 2000 (not 3000) years we have been praying three times daily towards that exact spot for the restoral of the Temple
No, these are not simple mistakes. This is not a simple example of lying about history This is an attack on Jews today, meant to offend Jews today, about our history and prayers, our art and poetry, all centered on Jerusalem, Zion and the restoration of the Temple. And the earlier tweet about the Temple proves that Shelby knows he is lying but his desire to attack Jews overwhelms his desire to write anything accurate about history.
This is what makes him an antisemite. And Indian River State College as well as American Military University should carefully consider whether they want to employ someone who is so filled with hate that he is willing to lie about history just to offend Jews.
They should at least wonder what other lies he is telling his students.
