Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: American antisemitism

Showing posts with label American antisemitism. Show all posts

Thursday, December 08, 2022

12/08 Links Pt2: Does Europe Support This? Al-Haq Tells the World to Dismantle Israel; BBC faces parliamentary probe over its coverage of Jews and Israel

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Does Europe Support This? Al-Haq Tells the World to Dismantle Israel

On November 29, 2022, the Palestinian NGO Al-Haq published yet another antisemitic screed dedicated to denying the Jewish people sovereign equality, by defining Zionism and the State of Israel as inherently illegitimate. For 200 pages, the Palestinian NGO – designated as a terrorist entity by Israel in October 2021 over its ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization – extorts the international community to dismantle the Jewish State. To achieve this goal, Al-Haq absurdly distorts Israeli policy and practice beyond recognition, and misrepresents international legal standards.

Central to Al-Haq’s publication is the repetition of the claim that Israel’s existence as a Jewish State represents “apartheid.” This assertion was debunked in NGO Monitor’s 2021 and 2022 analyses: “False Knowledge as Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State” and “Neo-Orientalism: Deconstructing claims of apartheid in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

Al-Haq’s publication is intended to influence the UN Human Rights Council’s permanent Commission of Inquiry’s (the “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel,”) plan to formally declare Israel to be committing “apartheid”; to pressure the International Criminal Court to indict Israeli officials for crimes against humanity; and for third states to apply a wide variety of sanctions against Israel, associated institutions, companies, and individuals.

While broader in scope, this publication echoes the same ideological position expressed by Al-Haq in a formal submission to the COI in May 2022. (For more information, see “Al-Haq’s Antisemitic Submission to the UN’s Permanent COI”)

EU and member states support for Al-Haq
If not for the millions of Euros in support from the EU and its member states Al-Haq has received over several years, the Palestinian NGO would not enjoy nearly the same level of influence and access as it currently does. Despite the organization’s reported ties to the PFLP, and its campaigning to dismantle Israel, Europe has yet to denounce and reject its longtime partner.

While the EU froze financial support to Al-Haq in May 2021 as a result of its links to the PFLP, in June 2022, the organization claimed that this freeze had been lifted – and as yet uncorroborated assertion.

Notably, in May 2022, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra, met with Al-Haq officials in the West Bank – despite the Israeli designation.

Moreover, Al-Haq is listed as an implementing partner on multi-grantee projects funded by the French (€900,000 for the entire project) and Swedish (Al-Haq receives over $2.5 million of the over $8 million project) governments.

John-Paul Pagano: What Is a Conspiracy Theory?

When I began studying Antisemitism two decades ago, one of the first things that occurred to me was its essential nature as a conspiracy theory. While mundane anti-Jewish bigotry is always found, the form of Jew-hatred that is historically salient identifies “the Jews” as a preternaturally powerful, secretive, evil elite which enslaves and exploits humankind. Even a surface examination of conspiracy theories shows that while the identity of the elite changes, this narrative outline is common to all of them. Alternately—and with good reason we will explore later—Antisemitism is sometimes singled out as the ultimate conspiracy theory.

So we can better understand conspiracy theories if we widen our scope to include insights from the much larger literature on Antisemitism. The history of the “Longest Hatred” is an opportunity to examine more than a thousand years of the consistent social practice of a single conspiracy theory. In this vast and detailed record, we will detect patterns and peculiarities that expose the essence of the thing.

The definition I propose hence will leverage scholarship on conspiracy theories and conspiracism, but be situated in the living context of Antisemitism—the up-punching form of racism that is centrally rooted in the cultural heritage of the West and has done so much to shape its social and physical reality. This approach yields a dense definition, but one that is also—after some clarification of terms—comprehensive and empirically legible.

It is, as follows:
A conspiracy theory is a belief that a circumstance or event is a deliberate, connected, and occulted product of the timeless struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, attributable to the malign influence of a secret elite that supernaturally coordinates to enslave and exploit humankind, fabricates false consciousness to hide its activities, and indulges in pleasures and rites of extreme misanthropy.

In upcoming (though not necessarily contiguous) posts, I will clarify the terms I highlighted above and will also discuss three conceptual domains—Manichean, Epistemic, and Magical—in which many of the features and themes of conspiracy theories should be evaluated. I will explain and justify my definition over posts that I will specially mark for this purpose, so they become a series that readers can revisit and reference.

As a variety of racism, the historian Paul Johnson viewed Antisemitism as “so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in a quite different category.” Defining that peculiarity also helps to reveal what is a conspiracy theory—a mode of thought that is in some ways more corrosive than caste-based racism, but against which we’ve mustered no social movement to stigmatize and diminish it.

An open letter to progressives: It’s time to speak out

I wanted to believe perhaps I’d simply missed something. After all, I have always worked in progressive spaces myself. I know how much this movement cares about the safety, dignity, and flourishing of all communities in this country.

But diving into various digital channels and searching through recent public statements yielded nothing. I saw plenty of commendable statements of solidarity aimed at other groups. Perhaps I wasn’t searching hard enough.

It shouldn’t take this much effort to uncover sentiments of support in a time of need.

The progressive movement should be a seamless, natural ally to the Jewish community. But despite the fact that so many Jews in this country find themselves ideologically aligned with the progressive left, for a long time now that movement has behaved as if we are either inevitable supporters – no matter their approach to our oppression – or unimportant ones.

Throughout my tenure in progressive environments, I encountered deafening silence through the violence in Pittsburgh, Poway, and Colleyville. I was told my identity didn’t qualify me to join workgroups focusing on diversity, solidarity, and inclusion. I was called a Zionist (I am one – they meant it as a slur). Assumptions were freely and unapologetically made about my political leanings, my perspectives, and my general pleasantness based on the fact that I was born in Israel and that I am a Jew. Throughout it all, I was expected to continue supporting the causes that have always meant so much to me – and I still do. (h/t jzaik)

12/05 Links Pt2: A Blood Libel Against Israel on Netflix; The Navel-Gazing Inanities of MESA; The story of Jewish expulsion from Arab countries must be told

From Ian:

A Blood Libel Against Israel on Netflix

On Dec. 1, Netflix started streaming the Jordanian film "Farha," which depicts fictionalized, heartless Israeli soldiers viciously killing Palestinian men, women and children in cold blood. These events never actually happened and the film admits that it is "dramatized." But that does not mean it will not have an outsized impact on anti-Jewish hate and violence.

The movie offers a fanciful retelling of the 1948 war in which the would-be genocidal Arab armies failed to destroy a newborn Jewish state (and kill all its inhabitants in the process). Those who tried to help them do it are romantically recast as the helpless victims of a horrible catastrophe.

Yet primary sources - from the Arab side - attest to the fact that the vast majority of Arabs who left their homes did so voluntarily, or under orders from the invading Arab armies, not the Israeli armed forces.

This is not a matter of perspective or worldview. A movie that malevolently depicts Israeli forces murdering defenseless Arab children in order to feed the nakba mythology is nothing short of a modern blood libel.

In a world of rising antisemitism, it is dangerous and disgusting for Netflix to feed false and anti-Jewish information to the masses by giving a film like this a platform.

Anger over Netflix film ‘aiming to destroy Israel’

Netflix is under fire for screening a movie depicting Israeli soldiers executing a Palestinian family in cold blood, made by filmmakers who have a track record of inflammatory comments about the Jewish state.

The film, Farha, set in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, is being launched on Netflix in most countries from 1 December, and is likely to be Jordan’s entry to next year’s Oscars.

Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, told the JC that the film was intended to “destroy [Israel] by all means possible”.

He said: “I find it deeply troubling that Netflix has apparently failed to do the most basic due diligence before supporting and promoting this project.”

In an investigation into the filmmakers, the JC and activist group GnasherJew discovered that producer Ayah Jardaneh tweeted last year that “Israel is the real terrorist” and posted a “map of Palestine” that erased all trace of Israel.

She also tweeted that Mike Pence was supporting “an apartheid state, an occupier and Zionism”.

Addressing Mr Pence, she wrote: “If you love them so much give them your land and leave your house live as a refugee and let them live there instead”.

In 2014, Ms Jardaneh retweeted a post that said “Hamas or his firecracker rockets is not a problem, but seven decades of Israeli brutality and oppression is”.

She has also used the hashtag #27027KM, described as “the area of all Palestine from the river to the sea”.

Ms Jardaneh, who works at the Amman-based company TaleBox, is not the only member of the team to have made such controversial statements online, the JC found.

The film director Darin J Sallam @DarinSalla and producers Deema Azar @DeemazTweets and Ayah Jardaneh @AyahJardaneh have all shared or made highly controversial posts, and in some cases, antisemitic social media posts. Details at @JewishChron https://t.co/tzlAcOGRzA pic.twitter.com/Bj3noJpyPD
— GnasherJew®????? #JusticeforMalkiRoth (@GnasherJew) December 5, 2022

Netflix blocks controversial Nakba film for Israeli subscribers

The Jordanian movie "Farha" – which shows Israeli soldiers executing a Palestinian family - became available on Netflix several days ago, but it seems not for all the subscribers of the popular streaming service.

Although many Israelis have expressed outrage and terminated their Netflix subscription after the streaming platform announced that it would upload the film, Israelis who chose to keep their subscription would not be able to view it after it was blocked for them.

Many Netflix subscribers in Israel said that when they tried to upload "Farha" in the Netflix search engine, and could not find it, while others received a message saying "this title cannot be viewed in your country." It should be noted that for some subscribers who had an English interface, the film remained available for them, but still many had an error message and couldn't watch it.

Last week, Far-right lawmaker and destined National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir slammed the new Jordanian film.

"The inciteful Jordanian film that will be broadcast on Netflix demonstrates how hypocritical the world could be," Ben-Gvir said.

"Israel has been attacked by murderous terror before it was even established, this consciousness engineering should be handled by the Foreign Ministry with advocacy that shows the real picture, and who the real bloodthirsty murderers are," he said.

12/03 Links: Happy Nakba Day; Bibi Could Upend Biden’s Weak Foreign Policy; More media excuses for Palestinians and terror; US Jews battle ‘mainstreaming’ and normalization of antisemitism

From Ian:

Happy Nakba Day

The Jewish/Arab conflict in the Middle East is not about the relative merits of Jew or Arab to live on the Land; there is enough land in what was formerly known as “Palestine” for all without Israel giving up any of the area it now possesses. The ongoing war in Israel is the fulcrum of the intellectual/spiritual conflict between the worldviews that oppose G-d’s rule on earth, and its manifestation through the return of the Jews to the Land.

They say: "Come, let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel will be remembered no more. The consult together with a united purpose; against Hashem do they make a covenant. The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites. Gival, Ammon and Amalek; Philistine and the residents of Tyre. Assyria is also joined with them; they have become an appendage of the children of Lot, selah. (Psalm 83)

A sovereign Israel is an existential threat to the adherents of Christian & Moslem replacement theologies; it shakes their worldviews to the foundations. A thriving Jewish Commonwealth puts the lie to their system of beliefs. The destruction of the State of Israel and the re-expulsion of the Jews are critical to Christian and Moslem worldviews, in order to correct the “aberration” of the Ingathering of the Exiles, kibutz galuyot. All efforts to hobble and constrict the State of Israel, to push her back to indefensible borders, to murder Jewish women and children, especially new immigrants, are important milestones toward their ultimate goal of rolling back history to the good old days when the Jews were scattered to the four corners of the globe, easy prey for the Jew haters.

So the UN passes yet more Jew hating resolutions. Pish Tush, as Gilbert & Sullivan would say.. Should they ever succeed in uprooting the People of Israel from the Land of Israel, you can rest assured they would trip over themselves building elaborate memorials to the failed Jewish enterprise.

However, Israel and the settlement enterprise will endure because it is the mitzvah she’kol ha’mitzvot t’luyin bah (i.e., living in the Land of Israel is the mitzvah upon which every other mitzvah is predicated). Witness the open miracles in the battles of 1948, 1967, 1973. Nowhere in Biblical Prophecy does it suggest that Hashem will return us to our land only to be expelled again.

In a certain sense, Theodore Herzl was wrong: the establishment of Der Judenstaat has failed to solve the problem of Jew hatred. Israel is now reckoned as the Jew among the nations. But their strenuous objections to the Jewish State serve merely to reinforce the fundamental integrity of our worldview, our mission, and our hopeful vision for humanity.

So let’s celebrate Nakba Day! The proper response to the exasperated last gasps of our detractors is to build, build, build. Build up the Land. Build more houses in Yehuda, Shomron and the periphery.

And finally: let us extend our hand in brotherhood to those gentiles who see the Hand of G-d in historical events, and who wish to join with us to bring us closer to the day when G-d is One and His Name is One in the world.

How did Kohelet Forum become Israel's dynamic think tank?

What is the function of the Kohelet Policy Forum?
The Kohelet Policy Forum promotes Israeli national sovereignty and individual liberty. This makes it a “small c” conservative center. It was founded in 2012 by Prof. Moshe (“Moish”) Koppel, an American-born oleh and a true polymath. A specialist in machine learning and artificial intelligence (specifically, natural language processing), he also has written on the metalogic of Halacha and on constitutional law.

He recently wrote a witty book about Jewish identity in the modern age, Judaism Straight Up, which examines the differences between traditional societies and contemporary cosmopolitan ones.

Kohelet is basically a “libertarian” shop. This means that it seeks to broaden individual liberty and promote free-market principles in Israel. Much of its efforts have been aimed at driving deregulation, cutting government bureaucracy, reforming local and national government bodies, and eliminating impediments to free and fair trade (like tariffs, quotas, cumbersome product standards, and licensing requirements). In this it has been enormously effective.

Kohelet has tackled the (mis-)management of government corporations and pension funds, land use and housing policies, labor and social welfare policies, food cartels, the regulation of cannabis cultivation and export, policies meant to better integrate Arab women and haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men in higher education and the productive workforce, and more.

Kohelet also singlehandedly has put on the national agenda the demand for reform of the legal system and the need to re-balance the anchors of Israel’s democratic system – the Knesset and the courts.

In many ways, legal or constitutional reform is the hottest and most acute partisan issue on the domestic agenda, something akin to abortion as the most piercing issue in American politics. And Kohelet put it there (correctly so, in my view). I am sure that Kohelet’s thinkers and legal experts will play a sizeable role in the coming debate over the contours of judicial reform.

If then-justice minister Ayelet Shaked gets credit for appointing approximately 300 judges largely in a conservative and libertarian mold (out of a grand total of some 800 judges in the entire judicial system), then Kohelet shares part of that credit. Kohelet specialists raised national consciousness about the importance of who gets appointed to the bench and how, and helped Shaked make wise choices.

Kohelet also emphasizes “national sovereignty.” Indeed, Prof. Koppel wrote the very first draft of Israel’s so-called nation-state bill. Working with Avi Dichter MK and then many other parliamentarians on both sides of the Left-Right divide in Knesset, the Forum successfully drove passage of the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.

More media excuses for Palestinians and terror

As could be expected, the media is having a field day criticizing Israel for allowing citizens in a democratic election to choose some despicable characters to represent them in the next government. Outside of those who voted for them, you do not hear much support from Israelis for the views of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. Nevertheless, their inclusion in the government is being portrayed in apocalyptic terms. The media has no such concern for the state of the U.S. government, with antisemites like Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Minn.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) in Congress.

The Washington Post devoted nearly an entire page in its “The World” section to the article, “Palestinians fear for their children after Israeli vote.” Several Palestinians are quoted about their fears to give the impression that Israelis are targeting children. One says he tells his children to be careful around soldiers “because any kind of movement, and they will shoot them.” Similarly, another Palestinian says she won’t let her young children walk to school for fear they will be targeted by soldiers.

Claire Parker mentions Ben-Gvir’s position on giving security forces greater latitude to use live ammunition but provides zero evidence that Palestinian children are in any danger following the election, or that soldiers are shooting children on their way to school or by simply moving in an unthreatening way.

The article references a “spate of Palestinian attacks” but does not label the perpetrators terrorists or mention the number of Israeli civilians who have been murdered this year by terrorists. It does refer to the number of Palestinians killed and injured without any explanation of the circumstances.

What made the article especially galling, and just one more example of anti-Israel bias, was that a short article appeared below it about the protests in Iran. This merited four short paragraphs and did not mention that as many as 63 children have been murdered by Iranian security forces. So, while Iranian children are being killed, the Post devotes most of its attention to the parents of Palestinian children who have not been harmed.

The coverage of the twin bombings in Jerusalem by the Post and others was also problematic. In keeping with past practice, reporters could not bring themselves to use the word “terrorist” to refer to the attacks or the perpetrators. Some stories mentioned that Israelis have been victims of violence numerous times this year but, again, refused to label them as victims of terror. Many also could not simply report the facts about the bombings and were compelled to mention the number of Palestinians who have died in clashes with Israeli forces.

11/29 Links Pt2: What happened to the 1947 UN Partition Plan?; The Failed British Double-Cross of Israel; Kanye walks out of interview after being questioned about antisemitic beliefs

From Ian:

What happened to the 1947 UN Partition Plan?

Today, Nov. 29, 2022, is the 75th anniversary of the 1947 UN Partition Plan – UN General Assembly resolution 181 - which divided the geographical area to the west of the Jordan River, into two states: A Jewish state and an Arab state. In its essence, the Partition Plan was a fundamental breach of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which placed that entire area under the governance of Great Britain, for the sole purpose of creating a Jewish state on all of the land.

The 1922 Mandate for Palestine had already taken the entire geographical area then referred to as “Palestine” and divided it in two: The eastern part of Palestine - the Arab country - was placed under the rule of the Hashemite family and changed its name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The western part of Palestine was to become the Jewish state.

Despite the breach of the Mandate, the Jewish leadership of the day – represented by David Ben Gurion - accepted the plan. The Arab leadership and countries, on the other hand, rejected the plan and immediately started planning how to eradicate the Jewish state before it even came into existence.

75 years later, speaking at the UN, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has now decided to accept the plan and even demand its implementation:
“Therefore, I present today to this UN organization, the title of international legitimacy in this world, with a formal request to implement General Assembly resolution 181, which formed the basis for the two-state solution in 1947…”

[WAFA, English edition, Official PA news agency, Sept. 23, 2022]

In making this demand, Abbas ignores a number of fundamental realities.

First, Abbas is demanding the implementation of a plan that has been defunct for 75 years. Living up to their promises, even before the British Mandate came to an end on May 14, 1948, the Arab countries attacked the nascent Jewish state.

[Boston Evening Globe, May 1, 1948]

While Israel managed to survive and expand in a war in which 6.000 Israeli men, women, and children were killed, a full 1% of the population most of the areas allocated for the Arab state - Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip - were occupied by Jordan (which was not yet recognized by the UN as a state) and Egypt, respectively.

In its original charter from 1965, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is now headed by Abbas, disavowed its connection to the areas provisionally allocated for the Arab state openly declaring:
“This Organization [The PLO] does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area”.

Indeed, while Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria (which it renamed “The West Bank”), from 1948 to 1967, they and the other Arab countries refrained from creating what could have been the “Palestinian” Arab state.

The Failed British Double-Cross of Israel

When the warrior poet Avraham “Yair” Stern founder and leader of Lohamei Herut Israel (Lehi, “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”) who believed that the British had to be forced out with assassinations and bombs and would never leave voluntarily, was killed after being captured and handcuffed by British detectives on Feb. 12, 1942, no Jew could celebrate his death.

But the leaders of the Jews of British Mandatory Palestine, already then led by David Ben-Gurion, viewed Stern’s death as a gain for the national cause rather than a loss—and not only because the poet and his followers were reckless political dilettantes: Some fantasized alliances with Mussolini, even the Nazis, as well as Arab nationalists in a common anti-British cause.

At a time of maximum danger—Rommel seemed to be on the verge of conquering Egypt, with Palestine next—Ben-Gurion and his allies doggedly pursued cooperation with the British in spite of bitter disappointments. Perhaps the worst of these was the May 1939 White Paper which limited the immigration of Jews to 75,000 over five years, sentencing countless European Jews to death at the hands of the Nazis. Yet Ben-Gurion believed, and rightly so, that the British were the least-bad allies the Jews could have.

Nor did Ben-Gurion have much choice. The Americans had refused to enter the war even after the Germans had conquered most of Europe. They still refused to act when the Germans seemed on the verge of defeating Russia, which would soon mean Britain’s defeat, too. On Dec. 2, 1941, German tanks were 14.7 miles from Moscow’s Red Square. America was only at war when Stern died in 1942 because the Japanese had attacked them.

It was unimaginable that the Americans would intervene on behalf of the Jews in the distant Middle East—indeed the U.S. only lifted its total weapons embargo on Israel in August 1962!—to allow the sale of defensive antiaircraft missiles, seven years after the Soviets had agreed to deliver bombers to Nasser’s Egypt (part of a huge Soviet weapons gift package misrepresented as “Czech” at the insistence of the CIA to avert hostility from their own man Nasser: That always-wrong agency was betting on Nasser’s mighty Arab nationalism rather than on seemingly puny Israel).

When Avraham Stern was killed, the communists still gave all their loyalty to Stalin. According to Ben-Gurion and the majority of Jewish leaders in Palestine, Churchill was still the best bet the Jews could have, even after the exposure of his crass duplicity toward the Yishuv. Having vehemently condemned the May 1939 White Paper to please his Jewish benefactors while out of office and short of ready cash, Churchill refused to change the policy once he became prime minister—thus denying escape from death to millions, and incidentally preventing my father, mother, two brothers, and myself from leaving Arad, Romania, to reach safety by a comfortable Orient Express ride to Istanbul and thence Haifa. A 5-inch-by-2-inch Palestine entry slip was enough to obtain Bulgarian and Turkish transit visas, but the British refused to issue them, even in 1944—by which point detailed eyewitness accounts and impeccable documentation of the operation of every part of the Nazi killing machine had reached London and Washington.

In spite of all that, on the evidence available at the time, Ben-Gurion was still mostly right and Avraham Stern was still mostly wrong. The British did eventually, and very reluctantly, agree to the U.N.’s termination of their mandatory rule on May 15, 1948, thus allowing the Jews to fight for their state. The qualifier is necessary because a factor in the British decision was the terrorist attacks inspired by Stern, including the July 22, 1946, bombing of the British headquarters in the King David Hotel whose 91 killed set a deadliest-attack record that lasted for decades.

I Was Robbed of 70% of the Land of Israel

Jordan ruled over Judea and Samaria, Egypt ruled over Gaza and Syria ruled over the Golan Heights. For those that do not understand the importance of the sentence above, it means that all the lands that the Arabs call “occupied” were under Arab control between 1948-1967! Was there peace?

It was Jordan, Egypt, and Syria that built the refugee camps and stuck their own Arab brothers and sisters in them to create a refugee problem in order to bash Israel. If creating a new State called Palestine was the goal and all the Arab countries are in favor of such a State, why didn’t Jordan Egypt and Syria help the “Palestinian” Arabs start a State during those 19 years (1948-1967).

Israel liberated Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan from Arab States occupation and it has nothing to do with an Arab people who call themselves (since 1964) Palestinians. We never occupied an Arab place called Palestine and there never was an Arab place called Palestine before Israel that could have been occupied.

You are probably saying this is enough to completely destroy the anti-Israel propaganda, but it gets much better (or worse). Today, Jordan is ruled by a king.

Over 75% of Jordan’s population are Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians”! So why hasn’t the majority of “Palestinians” taken over? Because Jordan does not give them full rights!

In fact, Jordan has the largest “Palestinian” refugee camps!

Where is the UN? Where is UNWRA? Where are the SJWs? Where are all the Leftists who care about Human Rights?

Just to sum up, Jordan sits on 77% of British Palestine and has a majority of over 75% of Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians”. Why aren’t the Arabs, who so want to create a Palestinian State, not fighting over 77% of the Land where they are a 75% majority? Why are they fighting over a small sliver of 23% where they are the minority? The answer is simple.

This has never been a struggle to build a new state called Palestine, it’s a struggle to destroy the one called ISRAEL.

Now, can we start fighting for truth and stop giving into false diplomacy that is based on lies?

#OTD in 1947, Jews around the world celebrated as the @UN adopted Resolution 181 in favor of creating independent Jewish and Arab states.

These are all of the countries that voted in favor:

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/hyXSUgZc1w
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) November 29, 2022

Find out why UN Resolution 181 remains very relevant today for 3 critically important reasons????https://t.co/IbF6B2PsZX
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) November 29, 2022

Jerry Seinfeld went on the Today Show last week and spoke about antisemitism.

Well, not really.

He praised his wife for putting out a generic Instagram message, "I support my Jewish friends and the Jewish people," adding to the graphic, "If you don't know what to say, just say this in your feed."

Seinfeld is not a confrontational comedian, and his comments were that his wife found a non-aggressive way to say what needs to be said. OK.

But then Seinfeld said that most of those types of statements "is going to trigger someone, is going to inflame - we are so quick to inflame, right? Both sides of any debate - women, gender, everything - this is the culture we live in: Flashpaper. Instant, violent, verbiage."

Not to nitpick here, but is being against Jew-hatred a matter of "debate"?

Yes, people will instantly jump on you if they believe that your opinions on abortion or Trump or pronouns are wrong, but most things have reasonable people on both sides disagreeing. To throw being against antisemitism in the same bucket as those issues is saying that supporting Jews as having equal, human rights is controversial. And when one crafts a message of support for Jews it must be done in such a way as to not upset the antisemites.

I'm certain he didn't think this through, but the idea that support for Jews is something that needs to be wordsmithed, to be carefully thought out before saying it publicly, is a tacit admission that the Jew-haters have a valid point, too, and we must not offend them.

We wouldn't say that we must not offend racists or misogynists. Why, with Jews, is there a subtext that support must be nuanced to avoid backlash?

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!

Some 2022 antisemitic incidents you haven't heard about

The ADL keeps a database of extremist incidents, including antisemitic incidents. They list over 1700 so far for this year. I have been looking though their list for 2022, specifically incidents that mention Israel.

Here are only a few of them:

January, Brooklyn NY: Graffiti that read, "Kill Israel and the Jews" was found on the campus of a middle school.

January, Mountain View CO: In response to a Jewish middle school student's presentation on the Holocaust, the teacher harassed the student about the creation and policies of the State of Israel.

January, Seattle WA: The message "It's okay to be a Zionist genocider" was found spray-painted across the Jewish Family Service.

February, Buffalo NY: An antisemitic flier was posted on the campus of the University of Buffalo. The flier depicted Robert and John F. Kennedy with Stars of David etched over their faces, and the words, "Israel and the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers."

February, University City MO: In a social media post, a campus Birthright program was the target of an anti-Zionist campaign comparing them to Patriot Front, a White Supremacist organization. The campaign strongly suggested that, like the Patriot Front, the Birthright program should not be allowed on campus and the post included the call "Death to all Settler Colonialism!"

March, Storrs CT: A Jewish college student was the target of antisemitic harassment and removal from a campus community group for their pro-Israel activism.

April, New Brunswick NJ: The Israel Fellow for the University of Rutgers Hillel received multiple antisemitic Instagram comments in response to a video they posted regarding the recent terror attack in Israel. One comment read, "die jews die."

May, Santa Barbara CA: "Zionist the evil Jews have got to go" was written in chalk by a bus stop.

May, Champaign IL: "Death to Israel" and "Israelis kill children" was written in chalk on a college campus.

July, Lakewood CO: A Jewish person was approached by an unknown individual on the street who said, "The Zionists will burn."

July, Boulder CO: "ZIONIST SEX PREDITAR (sic) AREA!" was found written in chalk on a sidewalk.

August, Miami FL: A Jewish institution received a threatening phone call in which the caller threatened violence against the Jewish community on behalf of his "Palestinian Wife" in relation to events in Israel. The caller threatened to cut off the heads of Jewish people.

August, Brooklyn NY: Graffiti said that said, "Antisemitism was invented by a Zionist," "Zionism is Anti Semitism (sic) and "Antisemitism is overrated" was found on a train platform.

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!

Survey shows antisemitism is widespread in the workplace, Jews are less likely to be hired

ResumeBuilders commissioned a survey of antisemitic attitudes of hiring managers and recruiters in the United States, and the results show that discrimination against Jews in the workplace is far more widespread than has been reported.

Nearly one third of the respondents, 32%, said antisemitism is "common" or "very common" at their workplaces.

Over a quarter of them, 26%, say they are less likely to move forward in the hiring process with Jewish applicants.

23% say they want fewer Jews in their industry, and an astounding 17% say that their leadership has told them to not hire Jews.

The recruiters and hiring managers make assumptions on who is Jewish based on the applicant’s educational background (35%), last name (33%), past or current experiences with Jewish organizations (28%), and even their appearance (26%). But some also make their assumptions based on antisemitic criteria, saying their assumptions are based on the job applicant's “voice,” “mannerisms,” or even saying “they are very frugal.”

When asked the reasons for not wanting to hire Jews, the answers were a summary of why people are antisemitic altogether. They included "Jews have too much power and control" (38%), "Jews claim to be the ‘chosen people’" (38%), and "Jews have too much wealth" (35%).

Is this discrimination coming from the political Right or the Left? The reasons given above seem to indicate it is the former, but that is not necessarily so.

The report notes that antisemitism is worse in industries that tend to be more politically liberal and that people traditionally associated with Jews. 48% of hiring managers in both education and entertainment say antisemitism is common at their workplace, while 45% of hiring managers in business say antisemitism is acceptable in their workplace.

Moreover, Resumebuilder has had other surveys done recently of recruiters and hiring managers, and the results showed that they tend to lean left.

More than one-third of hiring managers are more likely to interview applicants who list their pronouns in their resumes. Additionally, 52% believe their company practices “reverse discrimination” in hiring; 1 in 6 have been asked to deprioritize hiring white men and 48% have been asked to prioritize diversity over qualifications.

It may be that the combination of companies demanding a more diverse environment and hiring managers' latent antisemitic attitudes work together to provide a perfect storm against hiring Jews, with diversity being used as a way for the managers to justify their antisemitic practices.

For comparison, studies show less than 10% bias against applicants who appear to be Black. Those results garner major headlines.

It is unclear what the geographic scope of the survey was. Resumebuilder itself is geared towards jobs in the United States. (I requested more data.)

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!

100 years ago or today? "Wave of prejudice against Jews and Negroes sweeping US"

From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 13, 1922:

Then, as now, Jews and Blacks are the top targets of hate crimes.

Then, as now, the hate is spread by propaganda - instead of traditional wartime propaganda, it is social media Right vs. Left propaganda.

Then, as now, Jews are discriminated against in college admissions - then because they weren't white enough, now because they are too white.

Then, as now, some Christian groups like Presbyterians lead the charge against Jews, pretending that their hate is based on a twisted sense of morality and ethics.

It's been a hundred years since this was written. What has really changed?

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!

EoZ book, "Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism," is now for sale!

I am pleased to announce that my book has been released.

Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (EoZPress, 2022) is based on my essays on the blog over the past several years, somewhat expanded and improved.

Today we have updated, and equally fictional, versions of the Tsarist forgery about the Elders of Zion. protocols. The new protocols might not take the same written form as the older forgery, but they are imprinted in the minds of modern antisemites. These protocols include ideas such as: the Jewish lobby controls the American government; Israel ethnically cleanses non-Jews from Israel; Zionism is racism; Israel violates international law in myriad ways; and Jews use the Holocaust to justify their own Nazi-like crimes.

In some circles these new protocols have practically become a religion, and the people who believe the new lies are as fanatic as the ones who believe the old ones.

This book defines and exposes modern antisemitism. It shows how the scourge of Jew-hatred is as virulent as it ever was and how modern antisemites hide their hate behind the pretexts of "human rights" and "international law." Protocols identifies and refutes the arguments of today's haters. It is indispensable to understand how the "world's oldest hatred" has returned and how it tries to disguise itself.

It is especially relevant today, as so called "human rights" and "progressive" organizations are twisting the definitions of "racism," "apartheid" and "genocide" specifically against Israel and only Israel - a perfect example of how the Jewish state has replaced the Jewish people as the stated target of the world's oldest hatred.

The book is divided into five parts.

After defining what antisemitism is, I describe different manifestations of the hate that comes from the Left, the Right, the Arab world and others.

Section 2 looks at what international law really says, not what Israel haters claim. I also show how international law itself has been hijacked by those who hate Israel. Topics include how the media gets basic human rights law wrong in various Gaza conflicts, how NGOs redefine "human shields" to exonerate Hamas, the "right of return" and who is a refugee under international law.

Section 3 looks at how supposed experts and pundits keep getting Israel wrong, and why. It also looks at how anti-Israel thinkers have been against the Abraham Accords, actually rooting for them to fail.

Section 4 includes my takedowns of the most articulate and clever demonizers of Israel, and how they use propaganda techniques to make their lies harder to recognize and counter. I take on Peter Beinart, Judith Butler, Noura Erakat and more.

Finally, Section 5 reviews how "human rights organizations" have been using their platforms to attack Israel. I show in detail how they use half-truths to give an overall false impression of Israel. It is very relevant today in the wake of Amnesty's and Human Rights Watch's accusations of Israel as guilty of apartheid. I could write an entire book twice as long as this one just taking apart their reports since 2009. (Maybe I should!)

The people I sent advanced copies to - all academics and prestigious authors - have enthusiastically endorsed Protocols. Examples:

Elder strikes again. Incisive, insightful, illuminating, and overall devastating essays on topics of deep concern to Jews and their allies today: antisemitism, anti-Zionism, the left's turn against the Jews, the abuse of "international law," the dishonesty of many Israel-haters, etc. Elder's work is truly substantive, not only displaying greater intellectual breadth and depth than so many of the "academics" who weaponize their work against the world's only Jewish state but decisively shredding their webs of dissimulations and lies. If only there were a committee of Elders of Zi(y)on running the world....

-Andrew Pessin, Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College, editor, Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS

This is a brilliant and forceful book about modern antisemitism—except that it is really an anti-propaganda weapon of war. Our venerable Elder of Zion has written a witty, pithy, and yet comprehensive work; his argumentation and documentation are superb, smart, and based on a knowledge of Judaism, history, warfare, and propaganda. He skewers Jew haters/anti-Zionists with such skill that the reader is prompted to laugh, cry, and/or fly into a rage—and all at the same time. Elder exposes all the “word games” with which journalists confuse legal reality, the Big Lies, about “racism” and “apartheid,” the quadruple standards by which Israel alone is judged by the “academic fraudsters,” and by the NGOs, the UN, the churches, the media, the Palestinian terrorists, and by all the many Masters of the zero sum game. Dare I say, that this work is a Bible of sorts and should immediately be translated into Arabic and distributed all over the Middle East—as well as read into the record, annually, at the United Nations.

- Phyllis Chesler, author, The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It

Antisemitism is both the oldest hatred and the newest, and in exposing the lies behind the modern embodiment of the infamous "Protocols", Elder of Ziyon has written the essential reference handbook. In tackling the broad range of hate campaigns, from manipulating the slogans of international law and human rights in the United Nation, to the fake media experts and the NGO anti-Zionist jihad, the New Protocols is a concise and fact-filled response.
-Professor Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor

Right now the book is available as paperback and e-book. In the near future I hope to have a hardcover edition as well as well as extended distribution beyond Amazon so it can be ordered from all major booksellers.

If you like this site, you will love this book!

Israeli philosophy journal publishes article by an antisemite claiming Jews control Western culture to gain evolutionary advantage

Daily Nous, a philosophy news blog, writes:

Have Jews insinuated themselves into positions of power and influence in politics and culture because they are innately gifted with higher IQs, or is it also because they are ethnocentric and hypocritical networkers good at using non-Jews in their self-serving mission of “transforming America contrary to white interests”? Race science and/or conspiracy theory? This—pardon the editorializing—outrageous question is currently under discussion in the pages of the academic philosophy journal Philosophia.

Welcome to 2022.

January 1st saw the online publication of “The ‘Default Hypothesis’ Fails to Explain Jewish Influence” by Kevin MacDonald, who is described on Wikipedia as an “anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, white supremacist, and retired professor of evolutionary psychology.” MacDonald’s 32-page article is a response to a piece by Nathan Cofnas, “The Anti-Jewish Narrative,” that Philosophia published last February, and which is one of a series of pieces in which Cofnas critiques McDonald.

Both MacDonald and Cofnas are preoccupied with the question: “Did Jews create liberal multiculturalism to advance their ethnic interests?” (Cofnas, p.1332).

The summary may be a bit unfair to Cofnas. Let's backtrack a bit.

Kevin MacDonald is described in Wikipedia as "an American antisemitic conspiracy theorist, white supremacist,and retired professor of evolutionary psychology at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). In 2008, the CSULB academic senate voted to disassociate itself from MacDonald's work."

In one of his books, he has a chapter called " "National Socialism as an Anti-Jewish Group Evolutionary Strategy". In other words, Nazism arose as a logical counter to Jewish supremacy, and antisemitism is justified as an evolutionary counter-strategy for the supposed Jewish evolutionary strategy of dominating non-Jews.

However, MacDonald is influential among the modern alt-Right as an intellectual support for their bigotry and antisemitism.

The abstract of a 2021 article in Antisemitism Studies titled "A New Protocols: Kevin MacDonald's Reconceptualization of Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory" says,

Kevin MacDonald is a key figure in shaping contemporary antisemitism for the Alt-Right. He repackages classic antisemitic beliefs for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by cloaking them in a language of evolutionary psychology. His most important innovation is to reject The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as factual but retain them as a metaphor for Jewish anti-white activism. By arguing that it is Judaism itself as “a group evolutionary strategy” that leads Jews to tear down white society (European-derived Christian majority states in the Western world), he is able to present an image of the Jews akin to that of The Protocols, but one that obviates the need for any actual conspiracy. Once Jewish culture and genetics become the driving force of this effort to destroy white society, one only needs to show that individual Jews are acting on its behalf, not that they are conspiring together to do so.

Nathan Cofnas, who works with the philosophy of biology and ethics at Oxford, decided to write a full paper in Philosophia - which is an Israeli journal - last year to rebut MacDonald's arguments from within the evolutionary psychology framework that MacDonald uses. He defends his choice to treat MacDonald seriously and not dismiss him as a crackpot in an earlier 2018 article in Human Nature:

There are at least three reasons to give MacDonald a hearing.

First, some respected psychologists and evolutionary theorists have reported that they found value in MacDonald’s work. For example, David Sloan Wilson endorsed the ideas in A People That Shall Dwell Alone and strongly criticized the representatives of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society who rejected MacDonald: .... This amounts to at least some degree of prima facie evidence that MacDonald’s theory should be considered.

Second, it is an undeniable fact that, in the past few hundred years, Jews have had a disproportionate influence on politics and culture in the Western world, if not the whole world. It might be worthwhile to investigate this phenomenon from a biosocial or evolutionary perspective.... The idea that Jewish influence resulted, at least in some cases, from their pursuit of a group evolutionary strategy cannot be dismissed a priori. Since MacDonald has defended this theory, he seems to provide a starting point for anyone wishing to investigate the understudied issue of Jewish influence. If he is wrong, it may be useful to know why and how.

Third and perhaps most important, though, is that MacDonald’s work has been influential—enormously so—in a certain segment of the lay community, namely, among anti-Semites and adherents of the burgeoning movement known as the “alt-right.” It is hard to overstate his influence among this group. Some years ago Derbyshire (2003) called him “the Marx of the anti-Semites,” and with the advent of the alt-right his audience has grown substantially. Richard Spencer, whom the New York Times calls “the leading ideologue of the alt-right movement” (Goldstein 2016), introduced MacDonald at a conference with one sentence: “There is no man on the planet who has done more for the understanding of the pole around which the world revolves than Kevin MacDonald” (Spencer 2016). Andrew Anglin, who runs the most popular alt-right/neo-Nazi website, says in his “Guide to the Alt-Right” that “MacDonald’s work examining the racial nature of Jews is considered crucial to understanding what the Alt-Right is about” (Anglin 2016). ...

Cofnas does not repeat this argument in the newer paper.

Now, Kevin MacDonald himself has written his own response to Cofnas' paper in the current issue of Philosophia.

And now an antisemite has been mainstreamed as a respectable philosopher.

How could have this been handled better?

I admit I only skimmed through the papers, but at first glance it appears that Cofnas made two errors. While his 2018 paper did an admirable job in showing how MacDonald was not intellectually honest - cherry picking sources, ignoring counter-proofs or even misrepresenting them as supporting his theories - he does not "go in for the kill" in that paper and point out that MacDonald's errors are a direct result of his antisemitism. Anyone can find support for any position if they only choose to report the evidence that supports their position, or misrepresent other facts as doing so. This is propaganda. We see this all the time with anti-Israel propaganda. The reader is still left with the impression that MacDonald's theories have some merit, even if he has clear biases.

The other error is that Cofnas presented his own alternate theory as to why Jews are disproportionately influential in Western culture. This now makes his theory a target for MacDonald - who indeed attacks that theory in the new Philosophia issue - and now MacDonald looks again like he has a valid viewpoint. He gave the opening for MacDonald to attack rather than put him on the defensive, and now it looks like a "he said, she said" debate.

Making MacDonald's antisemitism mainstream.

By not looking at and emphasizing the entire context of MacDonald's antisemitism, Cofnas let MacDonald control the framing of the debate giving him an advantage to promulgate his antisemitic theories as legitimate.

Of course, Philosophia should not have published MacDonald at all, but in this context, of the pretense of pure philosophical debate, it would have ad a hard time denying a response without giving MacDonald more ammunition about how the Jews are controlling the debate.

These people might know philosophy, but they don't understand the nature of antisemitic propaganda. And now the damage is done - an Israeli journal and an eminent academic have, without meaning to, spread an antisemitic theory.

Daily Nous adds:

Philosophia is edited by Asa Kasher (Tel Aviv). In response to questions about the publication of these articles, he wrote that the papers were refereed prior to publication, but that it was “a mistake” to publish them, explaining that he was “not aware of the general background of the debate” and that he is “sorry for treating the discussion as an ordinary philosophical debate.” He added that further comments from him may be forthcoming.

Yesterday, Moti Mizrahi (Florida Institute of Technology) who was until last night the associate editor of Philosophia, wrote on Twitter: “I had nothing to do with the publication of this [McDonald’s] paper in Philosophia. I’ve asked the EiC to reconsider its publication in Philosophia.” Later in the day, he announced his resignation from the journal.

So this is turning into a major debacle.

(h'/t Dan)