Wednesday, September 20, 2023

09/20 Links Pt2: How NGOs Fabricate the Legal Definition of Apartheid to Attack Israel; The Cult of ‘Antizionism’; Dan Hannan: Remember why they're the Abraham Accords

From Ian:

The Cult of ‘Antizionism’
A group of anti-Israel academics and BDS activists have taken a new step toward rebuilding the long-forgotten Soviet discipline of “scientific antizionism” on American campuses. The “founding collective” of 10 has established an Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, which aims “to support the delinking of the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies” and “to reclaim academia and public discourse for the study of Zionism.” The new institute defines Zionism as a “political, ideological, and racial and gendered knowledge project, intersecting with Palestine and decolonial studies, critical terrorism studies, settler colonial studies, and related scholarship and activism.” This October, ICSZ will hold its inaugural conference titled “Battling the ‘IHRA Definition’: Theory and Activism.”

The ICSZ’s website presents a vision of an overtly academic institution that will churn out politically motivated “research” designed to move the American public toward the idea of doing away with American support for Israel and, ultimately, with Israel itself. Coming at a time when American Jews and Jewish identity are under comprehensive attack within mainstream institutions, ICSZ sounds like bad news—and it is.

American progressives have scored numerous successes in recent years by using the power of tenured academic positions, in-class bullying, and threats of physical intimidation to enforce anti-Zionist culture at American universities and within the elite cultural spaces that employ American liberal arts graduates. Now, they have taken opposition to Zionism a step further, by transforming their hatred of “Zionists” and rejection of the historical dynamics of Jewish self-identification and national self-determination into its own free-standing ideology, which is politically aligned with, but not dependent on, the wider progressive movement.

Anti-Zionists, as part of the broader far left, are eerily reproducing elements of the cultural deformations that once defined the lives of the citizens of the communist bloc: They have introduced Americans to the practices of collective demonization, blacklists, and denouncing friends and colleagues. They have injected political reeducation and oversight committees into workplaces and academic institutions as part of a new cultural revolution that overtly targets “Zionists” as present-day villains and boogeymen, on a par with “white supremacists” and “fascists.” And they have forced colleagues and coworkers who don’t agree with them to either hide their true opinions, or, more often, to stop having opinions at all, in order to keep their jobs.

Within academia, progressives who primarily derive their personal and professional identity from expressing extreme loathing of Israel have notched additional victories. They have reorganized the missions of entire academic disciplines, including Middle Eastern, Jewish, and Israel studies, around demonization of the Jewish state. They have pushed states to introduce radical “liberated ethnic studies” maligning Jews and Israel in K-12 schools. They have coopted countless academics into signing defamatory anti-Israel petitions that are of questionable academic validity and, word has it, are now working to place signatories on the synagogue lecture circuit, as part of their strategy of legitimizing the openly racist, and even genocidal, views at the heart of anti-Zionist ideology by co-opting wealthy Jewish institutions and funders who seek to buy protection from progressives, despite the radical unpopularity of their views among ordinary American Jews.

The establishment of ICSZ marks a new stage in the relentless regressive march of this bizarre progressive movement. How delighted would the institute’s forebears in the Soviet security and propaganda apparatus have been to witness the spectacle of Americans, including Jews, coming together of their own free will to provide academic legitimacy and a Jewish institutional imprimatur to conspiracy theories about Zionism that they spent their entire careers developing, and then inculcating with sympathetic audiences around the globe?

The ICSZ’s founders are known figures in the BDS movement and the movement for the academic boycott of Israel. They include Rabab Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University, who tried to bring convicted PFLP terrorist and airline hijacker Leila Khaled to SFSU; Lau Barrios, who has served as campaign manager at Linda Sarsour’s MPower Change and as a co-organizer of the “No Tech for Apartheid” campaign geared at pressuring Google and Amazon to end their work with Israel; and Emmaia Gelman, ICSZ’s founding director, who serves as a trustee of the Sparkplug Foundation, a funder of IfNotNow and Palestinian Youth Movement, and also a co-sponsor of the ICSZ conference.
We must shun California's radical ethnic studies
What’s wrong with the current state-mandated framework?

The Jewish proponents of ideological ethnic studies argue that the California state model “excludes discriminatory content, and includes two Jewish-American lesson plans and a definition of antisemitism.”

They ignore, however, that the state model is built on a highly ideological, illiberal premise, which emphasizes instilling in children a “critical consciousness” – the supposed ability to see systems of oppression throughout society– and it “critiques empire building in history and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, and other forms of power and oppression.”

The model curriculum further calls for building a “post-imperial life that promotes collective narratives of transformative resistance.” And it exalts radical black leaders like Angela Davis and Assata Shakur but leaves out civil rights heroes such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Congressman John Lewis.

In other words, the model curriculum doesn’t merely lift up the narratives of marginalized communities, as the proponents suggest, it inculcates kids in an ideology that can be, will be, and has been weaponized against Jews. So when a school district teaches social studies through a “settler-colonial lens,” but removes explicit reference to Israel as a “settler colonialist state,” that’s not “justice” and it’s not a victory for the Jewish community. The schools are still indoctrinating kids with an ideology that conditions them to think of Israel, the US, and the West in precisely those terms.

The Jewish proponents of the ideological curriculum say that their “strategy is working” and “just a handful of districts are using or considering curricula we find problematic.”

First, we don’t, and they don’t really know how many of California’s 1,200-plus school districts have embraced the most radical versions or will try to do so in the future. It’s hard enough to know what’s happening in school districts where there is a robust Jewish presence let alone in places where there isn’t.

Second, while the proponents may not find teaching a highly opinionated, radical, power-based, curriculum problematic for California’s children, we opponents do and strongly believe it is the exact wrong form of multicultural education. It will generate more, not less antisemitism and division.

The greatest danger of Jewish proponents of radical ethnic studies paying the price of remaining in the good graces of traditional progressive allies is that they lock themselves in and end up supporting outrageous political positions completely at odds with the traditional Jewish understanding of America and Jewish interests. I get why they do it. But like a corporation that seeks to maximize quarterly earnings to raise the value of its stock, sometimes a short-term win is a long-term defeat.
University of California Urged to Reject Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement Over Antisemitism Concerns
Nearly 100 religious, civil rights, and educational organizations are calling on the University of California (UC) to reject a proposal that would require applicants to schools in the UC system to take an ethnic studies course, arguing that anti-Zionist activists are developing and leading the effort to implement the measure.

The diverse coalition, which includes several Jewish groups and antisemitism watchdogs, wrote a letter this week to UC’s Board of Regents urging them to oppose a proposal that, if approved, would lead to high schools across California offering ethnic studies courses based on the course criteria developed by ethnic studies experts promoting the idea.

“This is a deeply alarming prospect, given the openly antisemitic sentiments of these ‘experts’ and their own contention that anti-Zionism constitutes a core element of ‘authentic’ ethnic studies,” the letter says.

A working group in the UC Academic Senate has been tasked with developing a proposal for the ethnic studies requirement. The idea — inspired by AB 101, state legislation approved in 2021 to make passing ethnic studies a requirement for high school graduation in California — outlines what UC would consider an acceptable ethnic studies course for admission.

Jewish groups initially opposed AB 101, arguing schools would be required to adopt curricula that included anti-Zionist material. However, the legislation eventually gained the support of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus — a voting bloc in the state legislature — which moved to add civil rights measures to the bill designed to prevent schools from teaching any content that promoted bigotry and discrimination. According to critics, however, these changes are no longer holding up with many school districts adopting the very curricula that the guardrails were intended to combat.


How NGOs Fabricate the Legal Definition of Apartheid to Attack Israel
Salo Aizenberg is the author of Amnesty International’s Cruel Assault on Israel: Systematic Lies, Errors, Omissions, and Double Standards (2022) and A Threshold Crossed: Documenting HRW’s ‘Apartheid’ Fabrication (2022). In this essay he explains why, when NGOs extend the term ‘apartheid’ to Israel, they commit ‘three key falsifications of the legal definition and application’ of the term.

Introduction
The charge that Israel is an apartheid regime has become one of the central elements of the lawfare campaigns against the Jewish state. The apartheid label has been falsely applied to Israel for decades, beginning with anti-Zionist propaganda emanating from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. The label was advanced in 1975 when a U.N. General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism included the apartheid term. Another step forward took place at the UN Durban Conference in 2001 when NGOs promoted the demonisation of Israel as apartheid. The final declaration of the conference referenced ‘Israel’s brand of apartheid’ with the stated goal of isolating Israel. The most recent and aggressive effort was initiated by a group of NGOs who coordinated to issue a series of detailed reports that they claimed proved Israeli apartheid. The first reports, which can be considered warm-ups to the main events, were issued by Israeli based Yesh Din in July 2020 and B’Tselem in January 2021. These reports were soon followed by prominent NGOs Human Rights Watch (HRW) in April 2021 (A Threshold Crossed, Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution) and Amnesty International in February 2022 (Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians). A close read of these reports shows significant sharing of methodologies and information, all relying on the same manipulations to falsify the legal definition of apartheid so that it fits the parameters of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

A key goal of these NGOs is to normalise the characterisation of Israel as apartheid so that it becomes part of the accepted discourse. Anti-Israel groups are aware of the potency of the label compared to merely saying for example that ‘Israel commits crimes against humanity’ or operates a ‘brutal occupation.’ Since everyone knows what must to happen to apartheid states – they must be dismantled – these groups intend for the apartheid label to lead to greater international pressure that results in boycotts and sanctions and eventually Israel’s dissolution. The effort is gaining traction. UN officials have begun to adopt the term and media reports now regularly associate Israel with apartheid. A group of over 1,000 Jewish academics and activists recently issued a letter agreeing that Israel is an apartheid regime. While the letter was mainly intended to provide support for the movement against changes in the Israeli judiciary and not as part of a campaign to end Israel as the Jewish state, the signatories were nevertheless comfortable describing Israel as apartheid. As will be demonstrated below, these academics negligently bought into the falsification of the meaning of apartheid by NGOs.

A core contention of these NGOs is that they strictly adhere to international law in branding Israel as apartheid. For example, the Yesh Din report is presented as a ‘legal opinion’ written by lawyer and self-described expert on international law Michael Sfard. As will be proven below it is clear that the legal definition of apartheid cannot be applied to the Israel-Palestine conflict and therefore the NGOs deliberately distort the plain language of international legal documents to fabricate a new definition of apartheid. This article will focus on three key falsifications of the legal definition and application of apartheid.[1] There are hundreds of other errors, lies and misrepresentations disseminated by NGOs regarding the details of Israel’s alleged crimes that underpin apartheid that have been exposed in several detailed rebuttals.[2]
Saudi crown prince says getting 'closer' to Israel normalization
Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in a US television interview that his country was moving steadily closer to normalizing relations with Israel and also warned that if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, “we have to get one.”

"Every day we get closer," the crown prince told Fox News according to excerpts of an interview to be shown later on Wednesday, when asked to characterize talks aimed at long-time foes Israel and Saudi Arabia reaching a landmark agreement to open diplomatic relations.

The conservative US network’s interview with the crown prince, widely known as MbS, comes as President Joe Biden’s administration presses ahead with an effort to broker historic ties between the two regional powerhouses, Washington’s top Middle East allies.

The normalization talks are the centerpiece of complex negotiations that also include discussions of US security guarantees and civilian nuclear help that Riyadh has sought, as well as possible Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.

“For us, the Palestinian issue is very important. We need to solve that part,” MbS said when asked what it would take to get a normalization agreement. “And we have a good negotiations continue until now.”

“We got to see where we go. We hope that will reach a place, that it will ease the life of the Palestinians, get Israel as a player in the Middle East,” he said, speaking in English.
Dan Hannan: Remember why they're the Abraham Accords
Like the Patriarch, Israelis finally have the chance of settling peacefully among their neighbours - assuming that all sides are brave enough to show some magnanimity


Lyn Julius: Nazism’s legacy in the Arab world
Arab antisemitism is not a response to the creation of Israel, it is the driving force behind the Arab-Israeli conflict. Too many people reverse cause and effect. They blame the antisemitism suffered by world Jewry on the existence of Israel.

This is the central thesis in Matthias Küntzel’s book Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East, newly published in an English translation.

Küntzel, a German political scientist and historian, holds that the 1948 Arab-Israeli war was an aftershock of World War II and a direct result of antisemitic Nazi propaganda. In effect, the Nazi war against the Jews became the Arab war against Israel. This issue is worth revisiting in the light of new studies—notably by Professor Jeffrey Herf—into the impact of Nazi propaganda on the Arab world, as well as work that explores the role played by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al-Husseini.

Küntzel covered some of this territory in his previous eye-opening book Jihad and Jew-Hatred. In that work, he explained how the Germans financed both the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Mufti’s activities during the 1930s. From small beginnings, by the end of World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood had a million men under arms. After the war, ideologue Sayid Qutb provided the intellectual underpinnings for the Muslim Brotherhood’s antisemitism in his book The Struggle Against the Jews.

Antisemitism was at the core of the Muslim Brotherhood’s reactionary mass movement against modernity. The agents of this modernity, the Brotherhood believed, were the Jews. As a result, the war against Israel marked the end of what Küntzel calls Islam’s liberal phase, a time when Arab elites tried to reap the benefits of modernity. The end of this phase found expression in the mass exodus of Jews from the Arab world.

According to Küntzel, barrages of antisemitic propaganda were broadcast day and night over the entire six years of World War II from the Zeesen station in Germany. It had a considerable effect on an impressionable and largely illiterate Arab world, which continues today. As the great Middle East expert Bernard Lewis wrote, “Since 1945, certain Arab countries have been the only places in the world where hardcore, Nazi-style antisemitism is publicly endorsed and propagated.”

It is hard to gauge the extent to which Nazi propaganda translated into actual antisemitic violence during World War II. When the Nazis were winning, they and their Arab allies were preparing for the battles to follow. Nazi propaganda is often cited as one of the main causes behind the 1941 massacre of Iraqi Jews known as the Farhud. But even when the Allies reversed the tide of the war in Nov. 1942, antisemitic propaganda could have been a factor behind violence against Jews in North Africa.
Israelis Object as UNESCO Declares Biblical Jericho a 'Palestinian Heritage Site'
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has declared ancient Jericho as a “Palestinian Heritage” site, and some say that eradicates the biblical connection to the city.

Considered the “oldest city in the world," Jericho is most commonly known for its biblical history. The book of Joshua describes how the Children of Israel crossed into the Promised Land and then encircled Jericho for six days, according to the commandment of God. On the seventh day, they circled the city seven times, blew the trumpets (shofars) and the walls came down.

“On Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year, one of the holiest days of the Jewish year, UNESCO passed a resolution recognizing as a Palestinian heritage site, the ancient city of Jericho – and at the same time, erasing all references to the city’s ancient Jewish and biblical history,” Prof. Eugene Kontorovich at George Mason University Scalia Law School told CBN News.

Israeli Foreign Ministry officials were quoted as saying they “see the decision as another sign of the Palestinians’ cynical use of UNESCO and the politicization of the organization.”

The Palestinian Authority welcomed the UNESCO decision to recognize Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan as their heritage site.
Jonathan Tobin: Delegitimizing Israel’s government only helps foes of the Jewish state
The howls of outrage were heard on both sides of the Atlantic. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a shot at protesters who were planning to sabotage his trip to the United States and appearance at the U.N. General Assembly this week, he gave full vent to his resentment at their activities. He described the opposition groups that have projected an image on the side of the world body’s headquarters and who will be not just dogging him every stop on his trip but also demonstrating at the U.N. building itself as “joining forces with the PLO and Iran.”

He shouldn’t have said that—or at least not in that way. But those blasting him for it are ignoring the implications of their own actions, which, like it or not, are providing ammunition to those who don’t want merely to delegitimize Israel’s government but destroy the Jewish state.

Netanyahu’s statement was denounced by his political opponents at home as well as by the Israeli press as an outrageous slander. They spoke of the demonstrators as “patriots” who deserved respect, not comparisons to those forces wanting an end to Israel.

And to some extent, the criticisms were justified. Those Israelis who hate him and who have done all in their power to try to topple his government since it took office at the end of December are not the same thing as terrorist murderers or Islamist theocrats bent on the annihilation of the Jewish state. At best, Netanyahu’s comments were intemperate partisan hyperbole. At worst, they were an example of how the battle over judicial reform and the composition of the current government has crossed over into the sort of culture war that threatens the social fabric of the nation.

But the idea that it is Netanyahu who crossed the “red lines” that should exist in a democracy to ensure that political debate remains at least somewhat civil is absurd. Even if it would have been more statesmanlike for Netanyahu to try to rise above the fray, the protests being conducted during his visit to the United States are far worse than anything he said. Indeed, the entire tenor of the anti-Netanyahu demonstrations and the efforts by his opponents to sabotage the economy and national security in order to get their way are not the actions of a loyal, let alone civil, opposition.

By falsely branding the prime minister as an authoritarian and the efforts by the coalition to enact a program of reform of Israel’s out-of-control and power-mad judiciary as a “coup,” the protesters have crossed over from political debate to a campaign of delegitimization that is incompatible with a functioning democracy.
Reform opponents cross red line by bringing dispute to US, critics charge
Lauri Regan, a board member of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) and one of the chief organizers of a counter-demonstration set for Thursday outside the Loews Regency New York where Netanyahu is staying, characterized Gutelzon’s remarks as “disingenuous.”

“My response is: I’m sorry you lost the last election [in November 2022]. Elections have consequences. We have to live with them. That’s democracy,” she said. “Next, you go to the voting booth. You don’t block the Knesset from functioning. You don’t block hospitals. You don’t threaten to shirk your responsibility in the military.”

Regan noted that Israelis from across the political spectrum have called for judicial reform for years, including former Prime Ministers Yair Lapid, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, who are among the leaders of the anti-reform protests. “Yet, now that Bibi’s doing it, it’s a threat to democracy. Their message is anti-Bibi, under the guise of ‘democracy.’”

Protesters have imported an Israeli domestic issue to the U.S., she said.

“Americans for the most part are not deeply engaged in Israeli politics. They only know what they’re reading in The New York Times, or mainstream media, which is not covering this passionately. So they’re being dragged into a conflict that they hear nothing about for the sake of an ideology which lost the last election in Israel.”

For Regan, “the saddest thing” is that at a time of growing antisemitism and anti-Israel animus globally, the protesters have chosen to target their “democratically elected prime minister.” This was the impetus that moved her and others to organize a counter-rally.

“The protest is going to be very positive. While their message is very negative—’Bibi is destroying democracy’—we’re going to have videos showing Israel intervening in tragedies across the world,” she told JNS.

“Israel is a beautiful, powerful force for democracy and peace in the world. And Israel has contributed unbelievably to the world. It needs to be recognized in the face of what I think these really ugly people are doing in the streets of New York,” Regan said.


Pro-Israel rally in NYC to counter anti-reformists hounding Netanyahu
Organizers are gearing up for a large demonstration in support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government scheduled for Thursday evening in New York.

The Stand With Israel gathering will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. outside the Regency Hotel at 540 Park Ave., where Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, are staying during the U.N. General Assembly’s annual general debate.

Sponsoring organizations include AMCHA, Americans for a Safe Israel, Mothers Against Terrorism, The Legion, the Zionist Organization of America, Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), Americans for Peace and Tolerance, the Israel Independence Fund, the Jewish Leadership Project and Americans Against Antisemitism.

The counter-demonstration is being held while anti-government protesters hound the prime minister during his weeklong U.S. trip that took him to California and New York.

On Sunday, protesters from the UnXeptable movement projected an image of Netanyahu behind bars onto the abandoned prison on Alcatraz Island offshore from San Francisco. The image read: “Welcome to Alcatraz Bibi!”

Last week, they projected a message onto the U.N. headquarters in New York reading: “Don’t believe Crime Minister Netanyahu. Protect Israeli democracy.”

“The slogan projected on the U.N. building wall is just a small taste of what is awaiting the indicted defendant Netanyahu on his visit to NYC,” the protesters said in a statement. “We will be waiting to greet him. In the air, on land and at sea. The whole world will know that Netanyahu is a liar. We will not allow him to disgrace Israel and deceive world leaders with his speeches.”


Ehud Barak warns some overhaul opponents could die but predicts no civil war
Former prime minister Ehud Barak warned of potential casualties among protesters demonstrating against the government’s judicial overhaul, but forecast that the tensions current roiling Israel over the proposed measures to curb the judicial system’s powers will not devolve into civil war.

During an interview Tuesday in New York, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting for the UN General Assembly, Barak said Israel was entering a period of “civil, nonviolent disobedience,” while touting the weekly mass protests against the proposed shakeup of the judiciary since the start of the year.

“[The protest movement] will not stop. We will block this attempt on the life of Israel as a democracy and we will win this battle,” Barak told the CBS television network. “It might take time, some people might lose their lives along the way. I told the people we will have to face toil and sweat and tears, hopefully no blood, but there might be some violence; [it] always comes from the right-wing.”

“We will put an end to it, whatever the price will be,” he added.

Despite Barak’s forecast of continued unrest, the onetime Labor party leader said he was “confident that against all warnings, there will be no civil war in Israel.”

“No way. Bibi Netanyahu doesn’t have troops and he doesn’t have the will or capability to do it. We will win, through the most nonviolent protest ever,” he said, using the nickname of his former political partner and rival.


Re the Jew-hating, Israel-bashing event at Univ. of Pennsylvania
(1) University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) receives federal funds, and is therefore required to provide a harassment-free learning environment for its Jewish students under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The “Palestine Writes” festival incites harassment and attacks on Jewish and pro-Israel students. Holding “Palestine Writes” is therefore a civil rights violation that may result in UPenn losing its federal funding.

(2) The university cannot guarantee protection of Jewish students in an environment influenced by the unabashed antisemitic operatives speaking at this event, including:a convicted Palestinian-Arab terrorist; many speakers who support designated terrorist groups, including Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Turkish terror group IHH, the Fatah/PLO Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades; many speakers who support and have assisted convicted terrorists; many speakers who incite and call for Intifadas (terror wars against Jews, in which thousands of Jews have been murdered and maimed); and notorious antisemites, such as Roger Waters, who uses Nazi imagery to malign Jews.

(3) Removing this event from U. Penn would not inhibit free speech. “Free speech” does not require the university to host or support hate speech, or speech that it disagrees with. The university has the right to decide who to sponsor and who uses its facilities to speak.

(4) UPenn has already set the precedent of punishing speech that it disagrees with, contradicting its claim that it is unable to exercise any authority over the “Palestine Writes” event. Another event also makes clear that Penn is selective about which “free speech” it protects. For example, UPenn has taken, or tried to take, actions against Professor Amy Wax, M.D., JD due to her controversial statements about Black law students’ achievement. The university took a class away from her, tried to sanction and fire her despite her tenure, and harassed her. We are not saying that we agree with Wax’s views but the University never defended Amy Wax’s controversial statements under their freedom of speech thesis. UPenn is therefore obligated to take action against the “Palestine Writes” hate-fest, or else must admit to endorsing antisemitism and accept the consequences, in accordance with U.S. law.
Lipstadt: No bias in State responses to Abbas, Israeli ministers
Lipstadt was among the global antisemitism envoys who denounced Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s latest anti-Jewish and Holocaust-denying screeds.

JNS noted differences between the Biden administration’s high-level, public condemnations of statements from Israeli officials that it deems hostile to Arabs, which often come from the secretarial or even presidential level, and its lack of similar response to hatred from Abbas, of which Lipstadt’s was the lone condemnation.

Lipstadt denied that the State Department operates with a double standard.

She told JNS that she reports directly to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “That’s the chain, and my statement came with the backing of the Near East office and the office of Palestinian affairs,” she said. “It wasn’t just me speaking. We had gone through a clearance process, and it took us a couple of hours to get it.”

Lipstadt claimed that she wasn’t just speaking for herself. “They all agreed with us, and the White House supported our making that statement,” she said. “It wasn’t just me out there by myself at all.”

Still, the State Department has placed boycotts on certain Israeli ministers for their rhetoric, while it continues to present Abbas as a moderate partner for peace.

“I’m not sure he’s seen as a moderate,” Lipstadt said. “I think his statements were decidedly antisemitic. There’s no question about it. He was even criticized strongly by close to 150 or 200 Palestinian academics, many of them based here but who still feel very strongly in terms of the Middle East and Palestinian issues.”
Imran Ahmed: Elon Musk's embrace of antisemitism, hate speech is a danger to Jews - opinion
Elon Musk is opposed to fighting antisemitism and makes Jew-hatred easier

Elon Musk has shown that he not only stands in direct opposition to this view, but his actions since taking the helm of X have additionally made it easier for extremists and neo-Nazis to publish and spread the anti-Jewish hatred, lies, and conspiracy theories researched in our new report.

The return of Kanye West to X – a decision reportedly taken by Musk personally – is one of those actions that led to the proliferation of hate, much of which is antisemitic, on the platform since the acquisition.

Musk has been casting around for a reason to blame others for his own failings as CEO. But we all know that within months of his takeover of the platform, he put up the Bat Signal to neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and known spreaders of disinformation, welcoming them back to X with open arms. Musk has decided that Ye, who has an inglorious track record of posting hate speech, deserves to be on his platform.

Last week, Musk declared his intention to sue the ADL, America’s oldest organization working to counter antisemitism, claiming its criticism of X for allowing a boom in anti-Jewish hate on the platform negatively impacted its advertising revenue. X Corp is already suing CCDH, having filed a lawsuit against us on July 31, over our reporting of the proliferation of hate and disinformation on the platform under Musk’s leadership. Interestingly, with both CCDH and the ADL, the decision to threaten us with legal action came just days after chief executives of those organizations met Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, and urged her in private meetings to do better at enforcing their own rules on hate speech.

Today, advertisers are under more pressure than ever before to protect their brands and keep pace with rapidly changing cultural shifts. People want to see and feel that the brands they support reflect their values and the way that they feel about the world. It’s no wonder that having their ads appear next to swastikas and pro-Nazi content on X has caused advertisers to flee the platform.

Our research shows that the majority of the public understands the need for greater safety, transparency, accountability, and responsibility – what we call our STAR Framework – on social media platforms. It’s time that either social media companies change or that laws are put into place to ensure they can be held accountable when, for example, their decisions undermine the safety of Jewish people across the US.

The health of our society depends on it.
US Jewish Groups Slam Trump Over Social Media Post Attacking ‘Liberal Jews’
US Jewish groups strongly condemned Donald Trump’s recent social media post slamming “liberal Jews,” while largely refraining from direct accusations of antisemitism against the former US president.

“Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed false narratives!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. “Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward! Happy New Year!”

The image was accompanied by a text that misspelled the word “Nazi” as “Natzi,” as well as a list of what many Trump supporters view as his administration’s key achievements regarding US relations with Israel and the security of the US Jewish community.

“Wake Up Sheep. What Natzi/Anti Semite [sic] ever did this for the Jewish people or Israel?” the text stated.

Among the achievements listed were the 2018 decision to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and Trump’s signature on the “Never Again” bill, which allocates funds for Holocaust education. The post did not mention that the legislation was the result of a bipartisan initiative, with Democratic Sens. Jacky Rosen (NV) and Richard Blumenthal (CT) joining Republican legislators Marco Rubio (FL) and Kevin Cramer (ND) as sponsors.

Responding to Trump’s post lambasting “liberal Jews,” Jonathan Greenblatt — CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) — said in a statement on Monday that it was “dangerous and wrong,” adding that “even as an organization that supported many of these policy decisions, ADL doesn’t believe that our community needs to be lectured about how to vote.”

The American Jewish Committee separately tweeted that “[C]laiming that American Jews who did not vote for Mr. Trump voted to destroy America and Israel is deeply offensive and divisive.”
Diane Abbott lashes out at ‘fraudulent’ Labour probe over her letter claiming Jews do not suffer racism
Diane Abbott has lashed out at a “fraudulent” Labour investigation into a letter she wrote to the Observer arguing that Jews do not suffer from racism.

The MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington was suspended over the letter, which said that while “Irish, Jewish and Traveller people” experienced prejudice, this was not the same as racism.

In a statement posted on Twitter/X on Tuesday, Abbott, whose constituency has a large strictly Orthodox Jewish population, said: “I will not get a fair hearing from this Labour leadership.”

Following a furore over the letter, which was published in April, Abbott apologised and withdrew it. The Labour Party suspended the whip from her pending an investigation.

In a statement, she wrote: “The internal Labour Party disciplinary against me is fraudulent. I was told by the Chief Whip to actively engage with an investigation. But the Labour Whips are no longer involved – it is now run entirely out of the Labour Party HQ, which reports to Keir Starmer- and there is no investigation.”

Abbott’s letter had been her response to an article written by Tomiwa Owolade in the Sunday newspaper about a report on inequality in Britain, which showed that Jews and Travellers face more racism than black people.

Abbott wrote that Jewish, Irish and traveller communities did not experience racism but only “prejudice”, claims that Sir Keir Starmer branded “antisemitic”.

The errors, she explained, “arose in an initial draft being sent. But there is no excuse and I wish to apologise for any anguish caused”.
Dalia al-Aqidi again seeks to unseat Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar
Dalia al-Aqidi, who sought to unseat Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in 2020 but suspended her campaign before the Republican primary, is running again for the Republican nomination in the state’s 5th Congressional District, she announced on Monday.

“Many people assume that because Ilhan and I are both female, Muslim refugees, we must think alike,” al-Aqidi, who immigrated to the United States from Iraq in 1993, told JNS. “We couldn’t be further apart.”

Al-Aqidi is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for Arab News. She previously told JNS that the U.S. House of Representatives was right to remove Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee due to her history of antisemitic and anti-Israel remarks.

“Ilhan accuses American Jewish citizens of dual-loyalty while I stand against the growing antisemitism she promotes,” al-Aqidi told JNS. “She suggests Israel shouldn’t be allowed to exist as a Jewish state, while I support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and its right to live in peace.”

The media adviser ended up securing 4.7% of the vote in the 2020 Minnesota Republican primary. Omar received 103,535 votes (58.18%) in the Democratic state primary and went on to win in the general election with 255,924 votes (64.27%).

On her campaign website, al-Aqidi commits to fighting for lower inflation and government spending; making downtown Minneapolis safer; promoting school choice; eliminating critical race theory from classrooms; making the United States a net energy exporter; and securing its borders and strengthening its alliances.

She sees Omar as the rule, rather than an exception, in the Democratic Party.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Omar, Tlaib Denounce Spate Of Bomb Threats Against Synagogues; ‘Mere Threats Not Enough’ (satire)
Several prominent legislators in Congress castigated the yet-unknown perpetrators of harassment crimes across the country targeting Jewish houses of worship over the last several weeks, in which anonymous persons sent messages to those houses of worship to the effect that an explosive device had been planted on the premises – the lawmakers stated that such unacceptable methods cannot continue, and that only genuine explosive devices, and not just talk of them, can accomplish anything.

Congresswomen Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) denounced in a shared press conference the recent spate of bomb threats against synagogues around the US, asserting that true progress in the pursuit of justice cannot occur if such threats remain in the realm of threats only.

“The Palestinian cause demands more than rhetoric, even scary rhetoric,” insisted Tlaib, herself of Palestinian heritage. “Palestinians have had enough rhetoric over the last eight years. So many promises that fellow Arabs would push the Jews into the sea in 1948; so many bombastic speeches by Egyptian and Syrian leaders that the end of Zionist project, and the liberation of Palestine from the pig-dog Jew usurper, lay just around the corner. We need action. And not impotent action such as a few Scud missiles,” in apparent reference to then-President of Iraq Saddam Hussein’s attempt to alienate Arab allies of the coalition arrayed against him in 1991 by firing at Israel to provoke them into response that would divide those opposing his forces. The dozens of missiles failed to kill even a single Israeli.
Responding to Palestine Writes: Why we should call out hate speech
Next week, Penn will host Palestine Writes, a festival with the noble purpose of “celebrating and promoting cultural productions of Palestinian writers and artists.” I, for one, was excited for the festival; I’ve read Darwish, and Said, and others, and looked forward to the possibility of experiencing Palestinian literature on Penn’s Campus. I rejoiced at hearing Susan Abulhawa, the executive director of the festival, saying “no one at our festival is an antisemite” in an article from The Daily Pennsylvanian on Thursday.

Unfortunately, it appears that Ms. Abulhawa and I have differing views on what constitutes antisemitism. The festival may be about Palestinian literature, but the event organizers are bringing speakers to Penn who have repeatedly attacked and demonized Jews. I could write about the speakers’ support of terrorism, their calls for intifada, or their calls for the destruction of Israel, but whether those stances constitute antisemitism is debatable. What is not debatable is the explicit antisemitism, unrelated to Zionism, expressed by some of the festival’s speakers.

A recent op-ed in the DP stated that Palestine Writes is a chance to “honor our ancestors, celebrate the culture they created over millennia and bequeathed to us, and learn from our thinkers, writers, and artists who graciously agreed to speak and share their cultural productions.”

Why, then, is Roger Waters a speaker at the event? Last I checked, he’s not Palestinian. This is the Roger Waters who recently appeared in a Nazi-style uniform in front of a crowd in Germany and compared the death of Anne Frank, a Jewish teen murdered in the Holocaust, to the death of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian journalist killed accidentally (according to the United States Department of State) during an Israeli military operation in the West Bank. This is the Roger Waters who has been condemned by the State Department for his use of antisemitic tropes, and who has talked in interviews about the “Jewish Lobby.” Not the Israel lobby, specifically the Jewish lobby. I struggle to see the connection between Roger Waters and Palestinian literature.

What of Refaat Alareer, a professor initially scheduled to speak at the festival, who tweeted “Are most Jews evil? Of course they are." I don’t claim to know exactly where the line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism is, but I’m quite sure tweeting “most Jews are evil” is well outside the realm of constructive dialogue.

Guest columnist Tara Tarawneh, the author of the aforementioned op-ed, argues that the critics of the Palestine Writes convention are “spurred by colonial racism,” and interprets criticism of speakers like Waters and Alareer as an attack on the Palestinian and Arab community. This is not true. The Jewish community on campus embraces animated debate and discussion about Israel, but draws the line at the rhetoric espoused by speakers that goes far beyond critiquing Israel and into antisemitism.

Ms. Tarawneh writes of how we must make Penn a safer place for Arab students. I wholeheartedly agree. However, making Penn a safer place for Arab students does not need to be done at the expense of other students. Furthermore, it seems like a stretch to say that Roger Waters’ presence on campus in any way promotes that goal.


Adidas boss defends Kanye West's antisemitic tirades
The CEO of Adidas has defended Kanye West after saying he was going to go “death con 3” on Jewish people.

Gulden said he doesn’t think West “meant what he said” when the rapper made a series of antisemitic comments last year.

West’s frequent anti-Jewish tirades in interviews began with the “death con 3” tweet in October last year.

His comment led to him being dropped by Adidas after a viral public campaign and by his talent agency and attorney.

In late November, he had dinner with former President Donald Trump and Nick Fuentes, a right-wing provocateur and avowed antisemite.

Several days later, he spent three hours as a guest on “Infowars,” the streaming show hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in which West proclaimed multiple times that he loved Adolf Hitler.

West has kept a relatively low profile since making the antisemitic comments.

Speaking on the Norwegian podcast In Good Company, Gulden said of West: “I think Kanye West is one of the most creative people in the world both in music and what I call street culture.

“He’s extremely creative and has together with Adidas created a Yeezy line that was very successful.
Men dressed as SS Nazis told to leave 1940s festival
A group of men dressed as members of the SS were allegedly kicked out of a 1940s festival in Norfolk after clashing with guests at the event.

The group of ten men attending Sheringham’s Second World War-themed weekend, which attracts up to 25,000 people, allegedly clashed with locals in the Norfolk town.

Some of the men, part of the Eastern Front Living History Group, had SS markings on their collars, badges featuring the 'death's head' symbol and swastikas.

Witnesses said the group congregated outside a local pub where they were confronted by locals telling them they were not welcome.

Event marshals apparently stepped in to ask the men to leave and police also intervened to shepherd the group away from the crowd.

Police have launched an investigation into the incident after one man had reported being assaulted.

German military clothing from the period is not currently banned - although the North Norfolk Railway, which ran an associated event over the same weekend, banned such garments.

The incident prompted calls to ban Nazi uniforms from future events and the town council has agreed to discuss proposals to make the event Allied-uniform only.
Germany bans neo-Nazi group to send ‘signal against racism and antisemitism’
Germany has banned a neo-Nazi group after raiding the homes of its leaders across the country, in a move the government said “sends a clear signal against racism and antisemitism.”

The Hammerskins, a local spinoff of a group founded in the United States in the late 1980s, are accused of promoting criminal activities and of opposing the German constitution. According to a recent report from Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the group was the only remaining neo-Nazi organization active nationwide.

“The ban of the Hammerskins Germany is a hard blow against organized right-wing extremism,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Tuesday. “With this ban, we are putting an end to the inhumane activities of an internationally active neo-Nazi association in Germany… This sends a clear signal against racism and antisemitism.”

The German group, founded in the 1990s, reportedly has only 130 known members but is considered influential in the neo-Nazi scene. German police raided the homes of 28 suspected leading Hammerskins members in 10 states across Germany on Tuesday.

It is rare for Germany to ban a political organization, thanks to postwar guarantees of free speech and assembly. Exceptions occur when an organization threatens the democratic state, or if it denies or glorifies the country’s Nazi past.

The Hammerskins are reportedly the 20th right-wing extremist organization that Germany has banned. For example, in 2007, Germany banned Collegium Humanum, its member organization Bauernhilfe and the Association for the Rehabilitation of Those Persecuted for Denying the Holocaust” as “reservoirs of organized Holocaust denial.” In 2020, the government banned the groups Combat 18, Nordadler, and Sturmbrigade 44/Wolfsbrigade 44; and in 2021, they banned Nationale Sozialisten Rostock and its spinoff, the Baltik Korps.

But in 2017, to the disappointment of Jewish groups in Germany, the supreme court rejected a ban on the far-right party NPD — the National Democratic Party of Germany, which changed its name this year to “The Homeland” — saying they were not dangerous enough to warrant such an extreme response. The NPD never succeeded in gaining parliamentary seats on the national level.
Bavarian Antisemitism Scandal Sounds Alarm for Jews in Germany, Jewish Student Leader Warns
The recent scandal in Germany over a viciously antisemitic leaflet allegedly written by the deputy prime minister of Bavaria when he was a schoolboy graphically “represents the German constitutional state’s lack of response to the antisemitism at its heart,” the head of the country’s Jewish student union has declared.

Writing in the Judische Allgemeine news outlet on Wednesday, Hanna Veiler — president of the Union of Jewish Students in Germany (JSUD) — offered a scathing analysis of postwar Germany’s response to the widespread antisemitism that persisted following the defeat of the Nazi regime in 1945.

The scandal involving Hubert Aiwanger — Bavaria’s deputy prime minister — “makes clear what little space Jewish concerns and anger actually receive in political decisions,” she stated.

A report last month in the the Munich-based Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) news outlet alleged that Aiwanger was behind a typewritten leaflet mocking the Holocaust distributed at the Burkhart Gymnasium in the town of Mallersdorf-Pfaffenberg in 1987, when he was 17.

The leaflet parodied national history competitions through demeaning references to the Holocaust. For example, the “prize” for the best answer to the question “Who is the greatest traitor to the fatherland?” was “a complimentary flight through the chimney at Auschwitz.”

Similar “prizes” were offered for answers to other questions, among them a “lifelong stay in a mass grave,” a free shot in the back of the neck,” “a ticket … to the entertainment quarter Auschwitz,” and a “night’s stay in the Gestapo cellar, then a trip to Dachau.”


7 Egon Schiele portraits to be returned to heirs of Jewish cabaret star murdered in the Holocaust
Seven artworks by Egon Schiele will be returned to the heirs of a Jewish cabaret performer who had owned the pieces before being murdered in the Holocaust.

The works, most of them portraits of Schiele himself or his wife, were part of a massive art collection owned by the Viennese performer, Fritz Grünbaum, and are estimated to be worth a total of approximately $9.5 million. Grünbaum’s collection also included works by Albrecht Dürer, Auguste Rodin and Camille Pissarro, along with a total of 81 pieces by Schiele, an Austrian expressionist painter active in the early 20th century.

Before being seized by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office earlier this year, the works were in the possession of several prestigious institutions, including New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, Morgan Library, Vally Sabarsky Trust and Ronald Lauder Collection, as well as the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. All seven portraits were seized and voluntarily surrendered by the institutions after they were shown evidence that the works were stolen by the Nazis.

The restitution announcement was made on Wednesday by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Ivan J. Arvelo, a special agent in charge at a branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The effort by Timothy Reif and David Frankel — heirs and co-executors of the Grünbaum estate — to reacquire the Schiele paintings has lasted more than 25 years and has been marked by legal battles due both to statutes of limitations and disputed claims. One claim alleged that the paintings were never stolen, and were instead in the custody of a relative of the Grünbaum family for the duration of the war, until they were sold to art collectors.

Last week, three other Schiele works believed to have come from the Grünbaum collection were seized by Bragg’s office from the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in Ohio.

Schiele’s work was popular among Jewish art collectors, and was considered “degenerate” art, along with a wide range of other modernist works, by the Nazis. In October 2022, two of Schiele’s paintings, previously in Grünbaum’s collection, were auctioned for charity by Grünbaum’s descendants through Christie’s to support up-and-coming performing artists from underrepresented backgrounds.
Archaeologists find ancient stonemason’s workshop in Jerusalem outskirts
Defense Ministry archaeologists announced they have discovered the remnants of quarries and a stonemason’s shop on the outskirts of Jerusalem, during work to expand a highway in the West Bank






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

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