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Monday, July 10, 2023

07/10 Links Pt2: David Collier: The BBC blood libel and the shame of a biased media; The Biden Administration's Anti-Semitism Blindspot; Ben & Jerry’s: Two Scoops of Hypocrisy

From Ian:

David Collier: The BBC blood libel and the shame of a biased media
The terrorist recruitment of minors
For decades intelligence services and governments in the west have been fully aware that radical Islamic terror groups recruit children (under 18 years of age). From Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan to the Afghani Shia Fatemiyoun Brigade, hundreds of Islamic forces across the globe bolster their numbers and capabilities by using children.

The recruitment can have devastating results, especially as potential victims may be less suspicious when a child approaches. Here are some recent attacks carried out by young terrorists against Israelis:
March 2023 – Muhammad Bassel Fathi Zalbani, 13 years old. Killed a security guard.
February 2023 – Jaffar Matour, 14 years old. Stabbed 17-year-old Israeli child.
January 2023 – Mahmoud Muhammad Aliwat, 13 yearsold. Shot and wounded two Israelis in Jerusalem.

The list above contains just a few recent examples. In 2015/6 many of the attackers in the ‘Knife Intifada’ were minors, and minors-as suicide-bombers were used dozens of times during the second Intifada. For example, on 1 November 2004, a 16-year-old terrorist killed three Israelis and wounded 30 when in the middle of the crowded Carmel Market in Tel Aviv, he detonated the suicide vest he was wearing underneath his clothes.

BBC and the skewing of news
The BBC, like all western media, is fully aware of the truth. Yet what we witness when it comes to reporting on Israel is a reversal of causality. When children die waving the flag of ISIS, Al Qaeda or Boko Haram, the BBC always points the finger of blame at the recruiting terrorist groups. When a Palestinian terrorist is a minor, the BBC points the finger of blame at Israel. Instead of blaming the terrorist groups for the recruitment and indoctrination of children, the BBC ask the question ‘what has Israel done to make this child so desperate’? And ONLY when it comes to Israel, do the media organisations (the BBC is far from alone in this) use this line.

This is part of a 2015 report from the BBC that discusses an attack on ISIL by the French which killed 12 children. Nowhere in the article is there any criticism of the French forces at all. Rather the opposite is true. The entire article focuses on how awful ISIS is for indoctrinating children.

This next BBC report is about a recent attack by US forces against Al Shabab terrorists that killed 30 terrorists. It does not mention the issue of age anywhere. Yet we know that Al-Shabab’s recruitment campaign is dependent on the indoctrination of children – even opening their own schools to maintain a steady supply. 10,000s of children have been recruited – which makes it highly likely that terrorists under the age of 18 were killed in the attack. It seems the BBC journalist did not care about this issue at all when writing this report:

And in a 2017 BBC article that reports on 1300 ‘militants’ killed by UK forces in just 12 months, there is also no mention at all by the journalist of the fact that children were undoubtedly some of the many victims.

There seems to be a simple rule. If child terrorists die in attacks carried out by US, UK or French forces, it is the fault of the terrorist groups that recruited them. If Israel is involved – then it is not just Israel’s fault, but it is also in some way ‘deliberate’.

The BBC mindset
On November 29 2021, a group of Jewish youth were celebrating the first night of Chanukah on Oxford Street in London, when they were attacked by a group of Muslim antisemites. The BBC report on the incident invented an ‘anti-Muslim slur’ in order to blame the Jewish victims.

These two incidents, the invented Muslim slur, and the more recent ‘happy to kill children’ comment are not accidents. They emerge from a mindset within the BBC that sees the conflict in a very skewed way. On the ground, BBC News and BBC Arabic share the same offices in Jerusalem. The BBC Journalists – like most journalists in Israel, become entirely reliant on Arab runners and fixers – who are in turn an embedded part of the Palestinian propaganda machine. Instead of impartial reporting, over time these correspondents become little more than mouthpieces for Palestinian lies.

Today we seem to be in an unacceptable position of accepting the bias as ‘the norm’ and only complaining when it crosses the line in to blatant antisemitism. At no point has the British Jewish community signalled to our communal bodies that this is an acceptable approach.
The Biden Administration's Anti-Semitism Blindspot
Reproach of Israel is not criticism but blame—blame for the aggression against it. Anti-Semitism is the strategy of the pointing finger that keeps negative attention focused on the misdeeds of the Jews and their homeland. Jewish apologetics in the face of such assaults have always been reprehensible, but these American Jews are not asking to be kicked themselves: they are inviting Americans to join them in condemning the Jews of Israel. “Please go on pointing the finger away from us and at the Jews over there and we will excuse you, defend you, lend you support.” The corruptions of exile have reach new heights when this happens in the freest society the Jewish Diaspora has ever known.

With anti-Zionism now receding in some of its places of origin while rising in Western democracies, it is good that the White House has outlined a counter-strategy. However, the NSCA does not address the obvious sources, political agents, financial supporters, and ideological carriers of anti-Zionism. Indeed, rather than calling out organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for fomenting anti-Zionism, it includes them among those expected to implement the strategy, and it supports initiatives that create “a sense of community” among the diversity-equity-inclusion coalitions that have joined together in the past to assail the Jews. The inclusion of CAIR in particular, known as a group with ties to Hamas, systematically engaged in promoting anti-Israel politics, shows how far the administration had to go to accommodate the anti-Jewish elements among its supporters. Whereas President Roosevelt faced the opposition of both parties, today’s anti-Zionism is ideologically centered on the left. The Biden team faces headwinds because, as British author Melanie Phillips observes, “the progressive world to which they belong are themselves the problem.”

Defenders of the administration will no doubt point out that the strategy mentions Israel ten times, that it makes clear that “efforts to delegitimize the state of Israel” should be considered anti-Semitism, that it states bluntly that “the United States has embraced” the IHRA definition, and that American Jews should be grateful we have a government willing to take any steps at all. I have already made clear that the “embrace” of the IHRA definition is effectively undone by the “appreciation” of the Nexus document. So far as the administration’s consideration of anti-Israelism is concerned, it does, to its credit, acknowledge forthrightly that Jews are persecuted “often because of real or perceived views about the state of Israel.” But a closer look at the two key passages shows us something more worrisome:

Although anti-Semitism remains a pernicious global problem, the scope of this national strategy is domestic. The strategy is focused on countering the threat and manifestations of anti-Semitism in the United States of America. The U.S. government, led by the Department of State, will continue to combat anti-Semitism abroad and in international fora—including efforts to delegitimize the state of Israel.

All this is well and good, except that nowhere does the text make any suggestion that the government will take any steps to combat delegitimization of Israel domestically. In effect, it farms out the fight against the greatest source of contemporary anti-Semitism to the State Department, while tacitly committing not to do anything about it domestically.

Worse still is the following: “when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is anti-Semitism.” This clause was tellingly cited by both Kamala Harris and an unnamed administration official (interviewed by Jewish Insider) when asked if the White House strategy pays sufficient attention to the issue of Israel. Read carefully: singling out Israel only amounts to anti-Semitism when it is motivated by hatred of Jews. But it is usually impossible to determine anyone’s motivation, especially when discussing irrational animus. According to this logic, a person can speak and write obsessively about the Jewish state’s imagined evils, accuse it of the most fantastical crimes, and argue that it is the demonic source of all the world’s ills—but, so long as he doesn’t slip and admit that he possesses a general hatred of Jews, he is in the clear. As with the Nexus Document, the White House strategy provides pre-approved excuses for the Jews’ most pernicious enemies.

Most ominously, one fears that the NSCA may be a cover for actions that endanger Israel. One of the simplest ways the Biden White House could combat anti-Semitism would be to invite Benjamin Netanyahu as the newly elected and longest-serving prime minister of Israel for an official visit—without punitive conditions. The democratic leader of the Jewish state is the political protector of the Jewish people and Israel is the most reliable American ally in the Middle East. Such a visit could have been the cornerstone of any genuine attempt to stem the war against the Jews, a message that America gives no sanction or assistance to anti-Zionism, and the president’s failure to arrange it speaks much louder than ten pages of national strategy.

Iran declares its unambiguous intention of creating a nuclear bomb to eliminate Israel and to add its menace to those of China, Russia, and North Korea. Yet the Biden administration is once again eagerly approaching Tehran, and is said to be about to unfreeze billions in Iranian assets in hopes of making a deal. Its attempt to circumvent the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act that requires prior submission to Congress for any such negotiation is already facing opposition from Republicans and parts of the media. Buying off the Jews with the NSCA is a cheap way of preventing their opposition to a deal with today’s genocidal schemers.

Without questioning the good intentions of many who crafted the counter-anti-Semitism plan, they do more harm than good if they do not honestly confront the evil strategies of those ranged against the Jews. This initiative advertises its strenuous effort while giving the aggressors every sign of acquiescence. The Evian precedent warns that appeasement is transparent to all but those willing to be deceived.

America and the Jews face myriad challenges. There are white supremacist groups and lone shooters who go after Jews and other minorities. Racism, homelessness, poverty, the “breakdown” of society, all call for redress. But those who organize grievance against the Jews are usually after a larger political conquest, using Jews as the pretext to bring down democracy. This is what the National Strategy should be marshaling federal power to prevent; but instead, it does nothing to deter these enemies of America and its Jewish citizens. Roosevelt’s America missed the danger signs. Biden’s America risks the same threat—to itself.
The Egyptian story reminds us how quickly things can change
It’s an all-too-familiar story for Jews, that a community of 100,000 mostly fled within a 10-year period, and can today be counted on one hand.

My parents considered themselves fully Egyptian growing up. They spoke Arabic natively and had generations of ancestors buried there. Jews were accepted and even embraced. My mother’s father led the design and construction of Egypt’s power grid. My father’s father was a top statistician for the census bureau. Both worked in an office building, still there, on Cairo’s famous Tahrir Square.

Zionism and Israel’s birth created some tensions but it did not alter the fundamental acceptance of Jews as Egyptians. But when Gamal Nasser came to power in 1952, via a coup, everything changed. To him, Jews were foreigners. Businesses were confiscated, Jews were barred from many jobs and schools. After the 1956 war with Israel, many were jailed, accused of treason or spying, and expelled. My uncle was a medical student in France, and received a letter one day that his Egyptian passport and citizenship were invalidated.

With no future, Jews started leaving en masse. During the 1967 Six-Day war, the few remaining Jews were arrested, thrown in prison camps and mistreated, sealing the fate of a 2000-year- old community. By the time a peace treaty with Israel was signed, promising to improve treatment of Jews, it was too late.

The Egyptian Jewish community was incredibly diverse and historic. It included the most prominent community of Karaites, a once numerous sect that despite some theological disagreement with “Rabbanite” Judaism, has a rich and fascinating scholarly history.

My parents thought they would never come back, but I was proud to be there with them, along with my two brothers and one niece, for this restoration and dedication of the Karaite synagogue and cemetery. No one has any illusion about a revival of Jewish life here, at least anytime soon. But still, this was a chance for them to preserve a small piece for the future. A chance to tell part of the story of Jews living in Egypt for 2,000 years.

As an American Jew I am incredibly lucky to live in a place that by-and-large accepts me. But the Egyptian Jewish story is yet another reminder of how quickly that can change. And with anti-semitism rising, it’s a reminder that we should not dismiss it, because our Jewish acceptance in the US can disappear far more quickly than we’d like to believe.


Ben & Jerry’s: Two Scoops of Hypocrisy
Ben & Jerry’s is at it again. The ice cream company’s gripe is not with Israel this time but instead with the United States.

On July 4, America’s Independence Day, Ben & Jerry’s posted a blog article on its website that discusses the alleged theft of land from Native Americans. The blog focuses on Mount Rushmore, as it was a sacred mountain taken from the Lakota Sioux “to honor their colonizers, four white men—two of whom enslaved people and all of whom were hostile to Indigenous people and values”.

The blog even links to a petition advocating the return of the iconic Mount Rushmore to the Sioux.

Although their sentiments are strong, Ben & Jerry’s is not going to act on them, least of all by boycotting the United States, where in 2022, Ben & Jerry’s sold over $280 million of ice cream and has hundreds of stores nationwide. Despite admonishing the country for what it says is the mistreatment of a native population, Ben & Jerry’s will continue to sell ice cream in the US.

By contrast, ironically and hypocritically, Ben & Jerry’s went against a different native people in 2021 when it tried to stop selling ice cream to Jews in the West Bank.

Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria continuously for more than 3,500 years. The Bible and historical record are replete with Jewish history in the sacred sites of Shiloh, Hebron, Bethlehem, Shechem, and other places in the territory that Ben & Jerry’s wanted to cut off from its business.

Indeed, the Jews are native to Israel, and more than that, their land was also stolen. Many, many times.

Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Muslim Caliphs, Crusaders, Ottomans, and British – they all controlled Israel at different points throughout history. Mosques, churches, and administrative buildings were built on the rubble of sacred Jewish sites, and the Jewish people were deprived of sovereignty and freedom in their native land for nearly 2,000 years.

Nevertheless, Ben & Jerry’s holds a double standard when it comes to native people. In the case of the Sioux, they spread messages of support and back their claims to their territory and sacred sites. In the case of Israel, they sought to ally with the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign and embroil themselves in a large, class-action lawsuit to stop doing business on native Jewish land.
The video that Israel-haters don't want you to see:



Globe And Mail Publishes Column Calling For 1-State Solution And The Tacit Elimination Of the Jewish State
Such a ‘solution’ would render the end of Israel for other reasons. Israel is a small country, home to about 9.5 million people, roughly 7.5 million of whom are Jews. Should a binational or similar state come to fruition, the Palestinian leadership would undoubtedly welcome millions of Palestinians who descend from refugees who were displaced in 1948. In due course, such a massive influx – even into the Palestinian half of a binational state – could easily jeopardize Israel’s existence in sheer demographic terms, rendering Jews an even smaller minority in their own country.

While the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is complex in many respects, in other regards, it is remarkably simple. While Israel has repeatedly made painful concessions for peace with the Palestinians, most notably the 2005 Gaza Disengagement, where it forcibly removed all Israelis from the coastal enclave, the Palestinian leadership has repeatedly refused to negotiate in good faith with Israel. In fact, worse than that, while Hamas in Gaza wages ongoing low-level war against Israel, the Palestinian Authority in Judea & Samaria (called the “West Bank” by the news media) incites its population against Israel and actively funds terrorism which murders innocent Israeli civilians.

In his column, Slayton mentioned Israeli communities in Judea & Samaria as being a main stumbling block preventing a Palestinian state, thus necessitating a bilateral option, but this too is a red herring. In 2000, Ehud Barak, Israel’s prime minister at the time, famously offered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat eastern Jerusalem, all of Gaza, and virtually all of Judea & Samaria, and in the case of Israeli communities there, mutually-agreed upon land swaps. The offer was rejected, Arafat launched the Second Intifada, and more than two decades later, little has changed.

If the Palestinian leadership truly wanted a Palestinian state, it could achieve it by sitting down with Israel, and by opening up negotiations in good faith. While there are many elements of disagreement between the two parties, they can only be solved with openness, compromise and collaboration.

For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said that he is happy to negotiate with the Palestinians “anytime, anywhere, now, without preconditions.”

No matter what any future final status agreement between Israelis and Palestinians looks like, any proposal which eliminates full sovereignty and self-determination for Israel, in its historic homeland is simply not a serious suggestion, nor a potential solution to the protracted conflict.


Israeli tech warriors code a solution to fight online antisemitism
In an unprecedented collaboration between Code for Israel, a volunteer movement dedicated to Israeli high-tech endeavors, and Final, an Israeli technology company, the employees of Final have voluntarily devised a specialized algorithm for the non-profit organization Fighting Online Antisemitism (FOA).

Utilizing an external interface facilitated by Cyabra, an entity that coordinates content across various online platforms, the innovative algorithm enables efficient and instantaneous monitoring of anti-Semitic expressions within the network, thereby enhancing the capacity to report and remove such posts.

Presently, the algorithm is being implemented within FOA's systems, empowering its trained volunteers to monitor, report, and eliminate nearly tenfold more instances of online antisemitism. This distinctive system automatically aggregates content through an external interface, and leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI), each post undergoes assessment to determine its degree of anti-Semitic potential.

The content identified as most heavily influenced by anti-Semitism is then transmitted to FOA's Israeli and international volunteers for further examination, subsequently prompting them to report the offensive content to various social media networks, including Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, accompanied by an urgent request for its removal.
Jews, Muslims come together to commemorate Srebrenica massacre
Jews and Muslims come together in Bosnia on the eve of the 28th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since the Holocaust, to talk about ways they can use their shared pain to help rid the world of hate and bigotry.

More than 8,000 Bosniak — mainly Muslim — men and boys were killed in July 1995 in Srebrenica, after Bosnian Serb troops took hold of the eastern town. The carnage has been declared a genocide by two UN courts.

“It is absolutely critical for the future of both the Jewish people and the (Muslim) Bosniak people for us to join forces in remembrance in order to make sure that these type of atrocities not be allowed to occur in the future,” Menachem Rosensaft, the general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, tells The Associated Press.

Founded in 1936, the World Jewish Congress, or WJC, is the leading international organization connecting and protecting Jewish communities globally, in more than 100 countries.

Rosensaft is leading a delegation of Jewish scholars and young diplomats attending a conference co-organized by the WJC and the Srebrenica Memorial Center on preserving the collective memory of genocide victims and confronting Holocaust and genocide denial.

The day-long conference, held in Srebrenica as part of this year’s commemoration ceremonies, serves as a forum for the two communities to talk about living with the pain of being the victims of the ultimate crime of bigotry.

“If we as Jews and as Muslims understand that we are also joined by that pain, we can build on that constructively to also forge the world beyond suffering in which (genocide) becomes unimaginable,” says Rosensaft, who is the son of two Jewish survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camps.
US Neo-Nazi Group Takes Antisemitic Flyer Campaign Over Border Into Canada
The American neo-Nazi group responsible for distributing virulently antisemitic flyers in residential neighborhoods across the country is increasingly active over the border in Canada, police in Ontario reported over the weekend.

Police in the city of Peterborough are investigating after 19 residents reported receiving flyers promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories and white supremacist propaganda, marking the third time in three months that such flyers were distributed to various neighborhoods in the city, the Toronto Star reported.

The flyers are produced by a US-based organization calling itself the “Goyim Defense League (GDL)”, which claims to be alerting white people — whom it describes using the pejorative Hebrew term “goyim” — to a sinister Jewish conspiracy. Leaflets distributed by the group to homes in California, Texas, North Carolina, Idaho, Vermont, Alabama, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida and other states have blamed Jews for the COVID-19 pandemic and denied the Holocaust.

Peterborough Mayor Jeff Leal condemned the flyers. “It’s just not acceptable that our brothers and sisters in the Jewish community have been targeted for this kind of vile hatred,” he said.

“For some reason, Peterborough seems to have become somewhat of a hotbed of extremist right-wing sentiment,” Ron Molnar, a spokesperson for the Jewish Community Centre of Peterborough, said in a statement shared with Canadian media outlets.

“But the Jewish community itself has not been specifically targeted, just tarred with the same brush, or by inference, a slightly larger brush,” he added.
Team Israel scoops Tour de France stage win in 'one of the best days ever'
Canadian cyclist Michael Woods has won Israel-Premier Tech’s first Tour de France stage of the 2023 race, becoming one of the oldest men to ever take a stage victory.

Woods, who only turned to cycling nine years ago at the late age of 27, won the ninth stage of the famous race atop the mythical Puy de Dôme, an 11,000-year-old dormant volcano in the Massif Central region of France becoming the first athlete ever to have both run a four-minute mile and won a stage of the Tour de France.

Israel-Premier Tech’s team owner, the Israeli-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams, said that while there would be celebrations at the team hotel that evening, the team would be looking to not just equal last year’s record of two Tour stage wins but eclipse their previous best race result.

“I’m so happy for Mike,” Adams said. “It’s a great feeling to finish the first week of the Tour with a victory. There will be quite a nice celebration at the hotel tonight, and the rest day tomorrow will certainly be festive. And, we have two more weeks to hunt for more success. We won two stages last year. How nice would it be to exceed that lofty result?

"Due to my long personal relationship with Mike and the other Canadians on our team, I couldn’t be more proud. One of the best days ever for the team. Y’alla!”

Woods was part of a large group that escaped up the road to fight for the stage win, who then had to successfully claw back and catch the lone leader American Matteo Jorgenson.

In Woods’ support car behind as he climbed the volcano, the team’s sports director Rik Verbrugghe bluffed and told the Canadian he was only one minute behind Jorgenson, not the actual two minutes, to avoid the 36-year-old losing hope.

Israel - Premier Tech arrived at the Tour this year with the goal of winning at least one stage, no easy feat for a relatively new team.
UAE-Israel land bridge through Saudi Arabia planned
A proposal to create a land bridge connecting the United Arab Emirates to Israel through Saudi Arabia and Jordan to facilitate the movement of goods is being advanced.

The U.S.-backed “Land Connectivity by Trucks” project would enable trucks to transport cargo between the Gulf of Dubai and Israel’s Haifa Port while significantly cutting costs and time, even before the normalization of relations with Riyadh, Ynet reported.

The land corridor, which would later expand to Bahrain and Oman, is initially intended for cargo. In the future, it would serve passengers, including tourists.

Currently, trucks leaving the UAE reach Haifa Post via the Allenby Bridge from Jordan, but they face bureaucratic procedures, including required driver changes, paperwork and lengthy wait times. Another option for shipping goods is by ship through the Suez Canal and then to European ports, which is also costly.

The current proposal would reduce the time of the journey from several weeks to two or three days, saving up to 20% in shipping costs, according to a study conducted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the U.S. government cited in the report.
Breaking a leg in Jerusalem: How Arab-Israeli kindness challenged my assumptions - opinion
I broke my leg in two places a little more than a week ago in Jerusalem. It was a freak accident, brought on by exhaustion, jet lag, dehydration and, if I am to be honest, a glass of champagne. Fortunately, the accident occurred at the home of close friends, who quickly got me to Shaare Zedek Medical Center. Unfortunately, it was Friday night.

As I waited on a gurney in the hallway for my turn with a doctor, my fears of socialized medicine slowly eased. Things were moving along at a slow but steady pace. I settled in for a long night. If anything, I thought to myself, I’ll learn some new medical words in Hebrew.

As the night dragged on, with the help of X-rays and other tests, I came to terms with the fact that I would need surgery back in the United States. But what I was slower to comprehend: five out of my six doctors were Arab Israelis. And they were fabulous.

Arab-Israeli doctors excel in medical care, defying misconceptions
My American orthopedist later told me that they set my leg perfectly, and even took the extra step of cracking my newly dried cast to allow for pressure to release on my flight home. They gave the right amount of anticoagulant injections to keep me safe from blood clots until I got back to Washington, DC. And they perfectly explained all the steps that would soon follow.

As I lay on my gurney, I watched as they juggled calls from multiple cellphones and landlines from other offices in the hospital, as well as incoming ambulances. From my vantage point, as the city of Jerusalem shut down for Shabbat for a full 25 hours, these medical professionals were keeping the eternal capital of the Jewish people in good health. And they weren’t even Jewish.

The notion that Arab Israelis are a “fifth column” is something I will never tolerate hearing or reading again. It’s a somewhat common refrain among the Israeli Right. Not only is it wrong. It’s insulting. The Israeli Arab community is diverse and complex. Simplistic generalizations are dangerous and misleading.




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