01/16 Links Pt2: How identity politics fuels anti-Semitism; Ken Roth’s Main Contribution is to Antisemitism, not Human Rights; MSNBC Claims Ilhan Omar’s Antisemitism the Fault of ‘Right Wing Hatemongers’

From Ian:

How identity politics fuels anti-Semitism

For several decades, the NUS has been closely wedded to the cultural politics of identity. As an institution, it works as a kind of coalition of identity groups that are all governed by an ideology of victimhood. Within the ranks of the NUS, identities perceived as ‘victims’ enjoy formidable authority.

But the NUS has apparently made an exception in recent years when it comes to Jews. In this, the NUS follows the identitarian mindset now widespread in our culture, which positions each identity within a hierarchy of victimhood – and which inexplicably places Jews near or at the top of that hierarchy.

Among devotees of identity politics, the Jewish identity has lost much of its claim to moral authority. The status held by Jews since the Holocaust has been revised. Jews are once again being portrayed as powerful, privileged and as aggressors. They are equated with the state of Israel and presented as the oppressors of a highly acclaimed victim group – the Palestinians.

In a world in which victim status trumps all others, this shift has had significant consequences for Jews. It is not that identitarians set out to cultivate anti-Semitism. But identity politics has helped to create a cultural and political climate in which Jewishness is increasingly perceived with hostility, as a negative identity. The validation of some identities always implies a devaluation of others – it is a zero-sum game. Today, the Jewish identity is on the losing side of that game.

Jewish identity is gradually becoming what sociologist Erving Goffman, in his classic 1963 study Stigma, characterised as a ‘spoiled identity’. A spoiled identity is one that lacks any redeeming moral qualities. It is an identity that invites stigma and scorn. Today, this is demonstrated by campaigns against the age-old Jewish practice of male circumcision, implying that Jews are perpetuating a barbaric custom. In a similar vein, attempts to ban kosher meat in parts of Europe signal an air of condescension toward Jewish culture, which is viewed as inhumane.

Bigotry has returned through the seemingly innocuous medium of identity politics. Back in March 2021, Politics Live, the BBC’s flagship politics programme, featured a bizarre debate on whether or not Jews are an ethnic minority. Apparently, this was open to question because some Jews have now reached positions of power and influence in British society. For identitarians, Jews have joined the ranks of the oppressors. Jewish privilege is seen as another version of ‘white privilege’.

This identitarian mindset has fuelled the new anti-Semitism. It must be confronted – not just within the NUS, but across British society.

The Baffling Appeal of "Jews Don’t Count"

Though Jews Don’t Count may be a weak and frivolous exercise in moaning, it has nevertheless struck a chord with that section of UK Jewry who, by virtue of their acculturation and success, are best positioned to make their voice heard. Of course, no one is completely immune to the kind of narcissistic self-pity that Baddiel and his guests have to offer, but this popularity is still, at first sight, surprising. Surprising, that is, until we understand its subtext, which contains an attempt to answer the central question of what Shaul Maggid has called “post-Judaism”: what does it mean to be a post-ethnic and post-religious Jew?

In Jews Don’t Count, Baddiel interviews over a dozen Jews, but there are few Israelis, religiously observant Jews, or Zionists among them. He thus deemphasizes or excludes something like 80 percent of the Jewish people from his analysis. The only time we see a yarmulke is in the background when Baddiel visits a New York deli and observes that Jews like pickles. Jews Don’t Count is, in other words, very clear about what Judaism isn’t (religion, Israel, and, of course, being white), but it is silent on the question of what positive content being Jewish has. Baddiel has stated elsewhere that “I’m really interested in and connected to the culture, the comedy, and obviously the identity, which is core to my being.” (Baddiel is, of course, a vocal atheist, and someone who doesn’t even care enough about Israel to oppose it, though he makes no bones about not liking it very much.) But what does that identity, which is the core of his being, consist of? What exactly is Baddiel identifying with?

In lieu of any indication that there is something other than anti-Semitism that Baddiel finds interesting about Judaism, the alarming answer to that question appears to be that Baddiel’s Jewish identity consists precisely of being a member of a persecuted group. The otherwise baffling popularity of Jews Don’t Count indicates he is far from alone. While, historically, many Jews have abandoned their faith and people in order to shed the burdens of being a loathed minority, the post-Jew does the opposite: clinging desperately to that legacy of persecution as the essence of being as a Jew. For some Jews, a denial of God’s existence, the divine authorship of the Torah, or their eternal connection to the Land of Israel is more than just an argument they disagree with: it’s an attack on their fundamental being. For post-Jews, the same blow is received when someone tries to gently point out that they are not a victim of anything but their own inability to quit while they are ahead.

The undeniable link between Anti-Antisemitism and America’s decline - Opinion

The New Antisemitism
The modern rise of antisemitism also known as the New Antisemitism kicked off at the start of the 21st century with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement. With the Islamo Leftist alliance behind it, BDS, with its agenda to demonize the Jewish people and destroy the State of Israel, quickly moved from the fringes of our society and into the mainstream. Civil society organizations, American universities, and far-left politicians would come to endorse the BDS ideology.

Behind BDS, there has always stood a burning hatred of America, its exceptional liberal democratic and capitalist character, and worldwide influence, which is why it has been embraced by the far left and radical Muslims.

With American Jews unable to mount an effective defense against BDS due to our small numbers, division, and aversion to conflict, a door was opened for BDS to get incorporated into the Left’s radical ideologies as they have gained popularity over the past twenty years, normalizing antisemitism as an integral part of anti-Americanism.

Antisemism is now part of the Left Radical Ideologies
BDS and CRT are now intimately intertwined through the left-wing theory of “intersectionality”, and are being aggressively implemented in the workplace and school through CRT-adjacent policies like DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and Ethnic Studies Curriculums. Americans from an increasingly early age are being indoctrinated to view America as intrinsically evil that must be totally remade according to racialized and socialist ‘Woke’ standards.

Although Jews are a major target of these groups, the struggle is not really about us—the ultimate target has always been America.

American Jews need to create alliances with other Americans focused on helping the public to understand that anti-Semitism spreading BDS, CRT, Ethnic Studies and DEI are first and foremost a threat to our core American values. Nothing less than the future of America – and the Jewish American community – is at stake.

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01/13 Links Pt2: Amnesty International’s latest excuse to accuse Israel of ‘apartheid’; Harvard didn’t cancel Kenneth Roth; it decided not to honor an antisemite

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Amnesty International’s latest excuse to accuse Israel of ‘apartheid’

Protests against new government bolster Amnesty and its friends
Israeli demonstrations in which participants compare the new government to the rise of the Third Reich do Amnesty and ilk proud, particularly when Palestinian flags dot the scenery. Those in attendance may profess to be protesting Team Netanyahu’s judicial-reform plan and other policies, but what they’re actually doing is discrediting the essence of the country.

This was evident a few weeks ago at a conference in Damascus, organized by the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds International Institute. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the event brought together Syria-based Palestinian activists and Iranian dignitaries to discuss Israel’s demise.

One noteworthy speech reported on by MEMRI was that of Syrian researcher Shadi Diab. He presented “data” on the “demographic problem facing the [Israeli] entity, and its failure to achieve harmony among its [Jewish] residents, who immigrated [to it] from different parts of the world and have different identities, cultures and languages, different circumstances and widely differing goals.”

This “entity,” he argued, “never managed to achieve a consensus among these sectors, who came from all over the world, and this disparity is evident in the struggle and fierce competition that currently prevail in the political arena and in the government of this entity, between the various political, ethnic and religious sectors, such as the Ashkenazi, Sephardi and haredi [Jews], between Right and Left, between religious and secular people, between the civilian and military sectors, etc.”

It sounds as though his “research” consisted of reading the Israeli press. He couldn’t admit to this, though, since he proceeded to claim that the “Zionist media conceals these struggles and disagreements and prevents [the publication of] any information about them inside and outside the [Zionist] entity.”

This contention is even more hilarious than Amnesty’s definition of free speech. But neither is a laughing matter when seen in a broader context: the holistic effort to annihilate Israel through external means, such as weapons and delegitimization, and contribute to its self-implosion. Due to ongoing Palestinian terrorism against innocent Israelis, the “peace process” was barely mentioned, even by the Left, during the election campaign. The Right emerged victorious by emphasizing Zionism and Jewish sovereignty as values whose positive connotations need to be restored and nurtured.

It’s a shame that the disgruntled losers aren’t open to the possibility that this will be to their benefit, as well. It’s far worse that they’re offering both fodder and hope to those who don’t distinguish between Ben-Gvir and Ben-Gurion.

MEMRI: Empty Vessels Looking To Belong

Sometimes the search for identity can go from bad to worse, whether it be children lamenting having mutilated themselves in bouts of sexual experimentation, the bleak nihilism of American teenage mass shooters, or Westerners desperately shopping for new racial or religious identities. California teen detransitioner Chloe Cole, who had her breasts removed at the age of 15, compares the transition surgery of minors to Nazi medical experiments.[8] There are apparently at least 72 genders to choose from, as well as more than a few cases of white people in America seeking to reinvent themselves into higher-status Black or Indigenous personae.[9]

The challenges are not limited to the West. Urbanization and modernity have been major social challenges in the developing world for decades, and particularly destructive to traditional societies uprooted by rapid change. In Israel, the country's Bedouin population has experienced massive upheaval as they are settled in new towns built in the Negev. Faced with a disruption in their traditional lifestyle, poverty, and crime, many have embraced political Islam as a safe haven in times of uncertainty and upheaval. Proof of this is the large number of mosques that have been built during this accelerated process of urbanization. The Bedouin, who historically have not been characterized by devout Islamism, are mentally crushed by this process, during which they are losing their way of life and their identity. As a result, they cleave to Islam to hold them together from within.

Where it can maintain any sort of real vitality and solidity in the face of our liquid future, traditional religion (or new faiths) will remain somewhat of a refuge from such nihilistic darkness. Ours is a metaphysical dilemma and it requires metaphysical responses. It seems hard to be a centrist when the center does not hold, when the middle ground of supposed liberal reason is excavated out from under you. But one of the risks of opposing the zeitgeist by finding supposed refuges that seem the furthest removed or most intransigent from the spirit of the age is that of extremism.

The controversial, resolutely anti-modern former kickboxer turned misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, now under arrest for human trafficking in Romania, recently described Islam , to which he recently converted, as "the last religion, the last one, because no other religion has boundaries which they will enforce. If you will tolerate everything, then you stand for nothing."[10] Europe-based Islamic reformer Hamed Abdel-Samad, in contrast to Tate, sees contemporary conservative Islam as increasingly "dwindling."[11] Tate seems to have taken a faith journey, if you can call it that in such a singular personality, that went from nominal Christian to Romanian Orthodox to Islam.[12] Still, to be Amish or Benedictine or Chasidic is also to be in clear contradistinction to an unmoored world. But then so is being a white supremacist or a jihadist.[13]

In the United Kingdom, Gen X (she was born in 1968) Sally-Anne Jones went from nominal Christian to punk rock to witchcraft and alternative lifestyles to not just converting to Islam but to becoming a highly successful recruiter for the Islamic State.[14] Less than a decade ago, tens of thousands of other Westerners, both converts and cradle Muslims, were motivated to leave the West and seek to emigrate to ISIS territory, where their lives were in constant danger.

More recently, in 2018, 17-year-old Corey Johnson of Jupiter, Florida decided to become a Muslim by watching ISIS videos and reading the Quran, though he seems never to have actually interacted with a live Muslim. Johnson seems like a Generation Z poster boy for our time – no father, "above-average intelligence but delayed maturity, autism, and severe mental illness," depression, prescription medications, stalking on social media.[15] For the supposed sake of Islam, he stabbed a 13-year-old boy to death and attempted to kill two other people one night during a sleepover. Before Islam, he had been infatuated with Hitler and Stalin, with white supremacists. He supported the Oklahoma City bombing (which took place five years before he was born). He had a swastika on his Facebook profile. During his trial in November 2021 in Florida, his defense attorneys described him as an "empty vessel looking to belong."[16] Despite expressing remorse, he was sentenced to life in prison at the age of 21.

In this new age of fervid identity seeking, the state in the West and many legacy institutions, their own foundations shaken, are mostly either absent or, in many ways, seeking to be relevant by promoting the latest thing. Many will be swept along with the latest enthusiasm, the last mirage, which will constantly need to be reinvented and repackaged to give the impression of progress. The Cult of the New will be regularly appeased. Others will often feel that they are on their own, redundant or alienated, alone before the winds of rapidly accelerating change, alone before the darkness. In them will remain the spark of authentic rebellion. Instead of seeking utopia, the imperative will be a search for communities which seem to offer safe harbor – or the illusion of a safe harbor.

Jonathan Tobin: Harvard didn’t cancel Kenneth Roth; it decided not to honor an antisemite

Roth is a prodigious fundraiser. HRW was rewarded for his calumnies against Israel with a $100 million grant from left-wing billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. Though some on the left treat any criticism of Soros as evidence of Jew hatred, his support for anti-Israel and even antisemitic activism aimed at supporting the Jewish state’s destruction renders their claims risible.

But Roth is also a terrible hypocrite when it comes to raising money. He solicited a $470 million donation from a Saudi billionaire, and in return promised not to advocate for LGBTQ rights in Muslim countries. Many on the left consider those who cite the fact that Israel is the one country in the Middle East where gays have equal rights (Amir Ohana, the new speaker of Israel’s Knesset, is gay) to be “pinkwashing.” But Roth was prepared to sacrifice the rights of Muslim gays in order to get more cash with which to attack the Jewish state’s existence.

An honest assessment of Roth’s record must lead to the conclusion that he isn’t a “critic” of Israel’s, but rather someone who regards its existence as a crime that must be atoned for by its destruction. His lies about Israel and willingness to deny Jews rights he wouldn’t deny to anyone else isn’t merely a controversial opinion; it’s a virulent variant of antisemitism.

He wouldn’t be the only one with such vile opinions to be given a prestigious perch at an elite university. But it is to the credit of Harvard’s Kennedy School that it drew the line at giving him the kind of honor he clearly doesn’t deserve.

Contrary to the arguments of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a group that has stood up in the past for conservatives, the issue at Harvard isn’t the defense of academic freedom, but normalizing Jew-hatred.

In a saner environment than the one that currently exists in academia and the establishment media, it would be the University of Pennsylvania under fire from faculty, students, alumni and the public for honoring an antisemite like Roth. Instead, it is Harvard’s Elmendorf who is under intolerable pressure to reverse his stand and give Roth yet another platform to advance his campaign to treat Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, as racism.

That the organized Jewish community has had little to say about Roth and the attacks on Harvard’s stand against antisemitism also provides more proof of the failure of American-Jewish leaders and their preference for liberal causes that do nothing to protect the rights or the security of the community they purport to represent.

Rather than meekly accept his claims of martyrdom, those who profess to care about fighting Jew-hatred need to put aside political differences and join in an effort to call him out for his lies. If Harvard is ultimately forced to surrender on this issue, it will be a triumph for Roth’s brand of left-wing antisemitism that is a growing threat to the ability of Jews to speak up for Israel and Zionism in the public square, and especially in academia.

Indeed, it isn’t Kenneth Roth who’s being canceled, but all those who are willing to tell the truth about the leftist war on Israel and the Jews.

Shot - Chaser @BostonGlobe @thecrimson @Harvard @Kennedy_School @CarrCenter pic.twitter.com/E7tiXqaAga

— Faith Quintero (@FaithQuintero7) January 12, 2023

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12/23 Links Pt2: The top 10 Jewish stories of 2022; A startup nation for Zionist causes; Norway’s huge sovereign wealth fund said weighing divesting from Israel

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: The top 10 Jewish stories of 2022

It’s been a difficult decade. 2020 was the year of coronavirus-pandemic panic and the general collapse of established norms. This was compounded by the Black Lives Matter riots that set off a moral panic about race, with the mainstreaming of fringe ideas and intersectionality.

2021 was a little better, as the world gradually shook off its COVID paranoia. But it was notable mainly for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that has roiled American politics ever since, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the creation of an Israeli government that combined members of the right, the left and even Islamist parliamentarians.

2022 has been something of a challenge, with war and antisemitism dominating Jewish news just as much, if not more, than in the previous two years. As it comes to an end, here’s a look back at the year with my list—in reverse order—of the top 10 stories and how they’ve shaped the Jewish world.

For good or for ill, JNS has covered them all. Stick with us in 2023, as we continue to give you the best in Jewish journalism with news, analysis and opinion you can’t find anywhere else.

10-The U.N.’s and ‘human rights’ groups’ war on Israel escalates
The report of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry (COI) on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, published in June, was a textbook case of antisemitic incitement. In its view, there is no Palestinian incitement, no Palestinian terrorism, no Palestinian rejection of peace. Led by open antisemites like Navi Pillay, the document denied Jewish history and the truth about the century-old war that Palestinian Arabs and their enablers have been waging on Zionism.

Like the rest of the hatred directed at Israel from the world body and so-called “human rights” NGOs, this campaign is often downplayed or ignored by the Jewish world. That’s a mistake, since efforts such as those apparent in the COI report serve as the foundation for the ongoing “lawfare” endeavor to isolate and turn Israel into a pariah state. Far from being insignificant enough to warrant a lack of attention, these undertakings legitimize antisemitism throughout the world and undermine otherwise successful normalization moves between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors.

9-Normalization with the Arab world continues
The second year since the signing of the 2020 Abraham Accords, which led to the normalization of relations between Israel and four Arab and Muslim countries, saw those ties strengthened, with tourism and economic activity continuing to expand in 2022. But, while progress towards full acceptance is slow, the steady rise in trade and the growing signs of security cooperation testify to the Arab world’s belief that it can no longer be held hostage by Palestinian intransigence.

These positive trends might have been even stronger by now, had the administration in Washington prioritized the quest to build on its predecessor’s achievement and expand the circle of peace, especially with Saudi Arabia. But President Joe Biden has botched relations with Riyadh. And though he doesn’t oppose the accords brokered by former President Donald Trump, his foreign-policy team is still more interested in appeasing Iran and the Palestinian Authority.

The European Genizah

The term “European Genizah” refers to thousands of individual pages that were torn out of Hebrew manuscripts centuries ago, and then used to bind books and cover archival files. Sometimes these pages were discovered by chance, and sometimes as a result of a systematic search. They were discovered mainly in Central Europe, in dozens of libraries, archives, and monasteries, and even among private possessions.

The European Genizah is not limited to Hebrew manuscripts. Tens of thousands of manuscripts in Latin, Greek, and other local languages were discarded as worthless throughout Europe, mainly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but also during the medieval era. They were then used by bookbinders and notaries in bindings, to cover files, and occasionally for other uses as well. An unwanted manuscript—whether because the ideas and opinions they contained had been invalidated, because better versions of the works had been published, or because newer and more beautiful manuscripts (or printed books) had been obtained—was removed from the shelves and sold to bookbinders. It goes without saying that ordinary folks had no interest in preserving manuscripts for which they no longer had any use, but even esteemed university libraries did not hesitate to discard thousands of manuscripts, some of which were purchased by craftsmen who used the parchment in bindings and to cover archival files. Parchment is a valuable material, easy to cut but hard to tear, and light (especially in comparison to the heavy wooden bindings that were common then). Therefore, bookbinders found much use for passé manuscripts that no one wished to read any longer. A handful of scholars understood by the middle of the sixteenth century that bookbinders were in possession of ancient manuscripts that should be rescued from their blades, but the phenomenon continued unabated for a long time and throughout Europe. Tens of thousands of such pages have been discovered recently in various countries, some in old bindings, and some in the covers of archival documents.

I will not presently address non-Hebrew manuscripts that have been discovered in book bindings, but I nevertheless note that even these contain, albeit infrequently, information of importance for Jewish history or the history of the Hebrew book. I cite three examples: The first is the remnant of a very old Hebrew manuscript that was discovered by chance within a Latin fragment used in a binding. The second is from a Marseille notary who bound his archival files in the early 1320s with a Latin document that he had written himself a short time before. By then, he no longer needed that document, so he excised and repurposed the parchment. The document contains the account of an investigation conducted by the Inquisition in Toulon, a city near Marseille, against a Jew suspected of helping an apostate Jew return to his original faith. It provides important information about the history of the Jews of that community during this period. The third consists of strips of outdated bills in Latin, which were used in England to bind newer bills. These strips contain information on loans made by English Jews to their Christian neighbors in the thirteenth century.

A startup nation for Zionist causes

Israel is rightly appreciated as a fount of innovation in a vast array of technologies and industries. Being a startup nation demands a mindset that looks at matters afresh, without being constrained by the way things have always been done.

To have a startup nation mindset is to have vision, see the big picture and move towards the fulfillment of that vision. It also entails the willingness to create something new and possibly unprecedented, rather than await approval or direction from others.

Happily, this mindset is not only prevalent in the private sphere, but also – though less visibly – in the realm of organizations seeking to strengthen and defend Zionist values and policies in Israel.

There is a growing coterie of individuals and organizations who understand that the blessings of Zionism, Jewish sovereignty and control of our own land cannot be taken for granted. As Herzl knew, Zionism and its logical extension, the State of Israel, had to be willed into being – "im tirtzu."

But the willing of Zionism and Israel is a constant process, always facing new problems and seeking new opportunities.

The new Zionist NGOs have proven themselves an essential part of Israeli society. Think of the amazing contribution made by groups like Regavim, which call attention to illegal construction. Ad Kan points out the lies of certain Israeli "human rights" organizations. Im Tirtzu and NGO Monitor address foreign government funding of anti-Zionist Israeli organizations. Organizations like B'yadenu have relentlessly pressed for Jewish civil rights on the Temple Mount.

Realistically, if these organizations were not front and center, it is quite likely that the problems they have raised would have gone unaddressed.

These NGOs did not simply emerge fully-formed. They too were willed into existence. In part, this was done by a small fund that has been instrumental in identifying nascent organizations worthy of support and incubating them with seed funding, organizational advice and networking opportunities.

This small fund is the Israel Independence Fund, which since 2007 has had conspicuous success in identifying fledgling organizations with the potential to make a difference in Israeli society.

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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.

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11/26 Links: Second person dies of injuries days after Jerusalem bombing attack; How do human rights orgs operate in the West Bank?; Kanye West's antisemitism inspired by Louis Farrakhan

From Ian:

Second person dies of injuries days after Jerusalem bombing attack

A victim of this week’s terror bombing in Jerusalem succumbed to his injuries on Saturday, raising the death toll from the attack to two.

Tadese Tashume Ben Ma’ada was critically injured in an explosion Wednesday morning at a bus stop at the main entrance to Jerusalem, one of two bombings that rattled the capital.

A statement from Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem said trauma and ICU teams “fought for his life but unfortunately his injuries were too serious.”

“We offer our deepest condolences to the family,” the hospital added.

Ben Ma’ada’s family said they were thankful for the support they’d received since the attack but asked the public and the media to respect their privacy.

Ben Ma’ada, 50, immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia 21 years ago. He leaves behind a wife and six children.

Responding to the reports of Ben Ma’ada’s death, Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu sent his condolences to the family and praised medical teams who had treated him.

“Last week, I visited his dedicated family, who wrapped him with love, and the doctors who bravely fought for his life. I embrace the family at this difficult hour. May he rest in peace,” Netanyahu said on Twitter.

Outgoing prime minister Yair Lapid said he was “heartbroken” to hear of Ben Ma’ada’s death.

The double attack in Jerusalem initially left one person dead and 22 others injured. The first victim was named as 16-year-old Aryeh Schupak, a yeshiva student from Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood, and a dual Israeli-Canadian national.

How do human rights orgs operate in the West Bank?

All the material that journalist Zvi Yehezkeli gathered for the documentary series Double Agent(Shtula in Hebrew), which just began airing on Channel 13, sat in his desk drawer for three years, until it was approved for broadcast.

“I’d gathered 3,000 hours of footage and recorded numerous interviews for which we needed legal approval in order to use them,” Yehezkeli explains. “This type of content involves a great number of individuals, and so the risk of being saddled with international lawsuits is huge. The whole process was absolutely insane. I’d never worked on such a long series before,” he says.

The series Yehezkeli created is being broadcast on TV as the security situation in the West Bank is worsening, just after the controversial gas agreement with Lebanon was signed and while protests over the wearing of the hijab in Iran are escalating.

“If you’ve spent any time with regular people who live in Iran, you’ll see that the story is different from what you hear about the Middle East,” says Yehezkeli, the Arab Affairs correspondent at Channel 13.

“They want to be like us – they admire us. They don’t care at all about Khamenei and all the complicated politics. This is a generation that grew up after the Islamic Revolution, and they want freedom. They want to be able to make money.

“The intensity of this wave of protests has shown us how stressed out Iranians feel, and that Iran is like a powder keg that is going to explode at any moment.”

The Double Agent series follows a pro-Palestinian Swedish woman who arrives in Israel as a tourist to study architecture. One day she meets a man from the settlement town Eli, who explains the Israeli angle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to her.

“Slowly, she integrates herself into a human rights organization in the West Bank and becomes an intelligence agent for the Israelis,” Yehezkeli explains.

“After a year, she goes to a meeting with senior Hamas leaders, who reveal details to her about their fundraising apparatus, and the connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas headquarters in Europe and the human rights organizations. In other words, the human rights organizations, including BDS, are operated by Hamas personnel.

“This agent ends up uncovering a wealth of intel, including secrets that Hamas operatives told her, some of which are documented in written correspondence.

“So, we started creating a documentary series. It’s extremely complicated, since we used a lot of hidden cameras, and we also need to make sure that our agent remains safe.”

Why German intellectuals link Nakba and Holocaust

It’s not just a shocking exception. This summer, the German Documenta, one of the world’s most important art shows – also publicly funded – was run by an Indonesian curators’ collective that included BDS supporters and presented at least one blatantly antisemitic artwork. Despite ongoing attempts to help them make it right, its organizers proved incapable of issuing a clear apology, taking responsibility, and engaging in a productive debate about what had transpired.

The state-funded House of World Cultures in Berlin is now run by a director who wrote this Facebook post: “They will pay a million fold for every drop of blood in GAZA! Palestine shall be free!” and a Palestinian activist, speaking to an applauding audience at a House of World Cultures event this past June, referred to debates about the Holocaust as “Jewish psychodrama.” Again, these are institutions funded by the German state.

Frequently, such events are framed in terms of postcolonial perspectives on the assumption that Israel is a colonial project that has violated an indigenous people’s rights without even questioning whether that assumption applies (it doesn’t, but it’s obviously a topic that needs to be discussed). Yet that still doesn’t really explain the strange urge to mix in Palestinian narratives when the topic is the Holocaust or Holocaust remembrance. What does the German culture of remembrance, or “Erinnerungskultur” – a broad term that refers to the nation’s historical consciousness or, simply put, to those parts of its history that German society deems worthy of remembering and that is widely used to refer to the Third Reich – have to do with the Nakba, one may ask?

Many Germans think that the State of Israel defines itself as the answer to the Holocaust – that the Shoah is basically its raison d’etre. This incorrect and specifically German take on Israel courses daily through the media, statements by public figures, and cultural events. And that very deeply-rooted German view of Israel comes with an underlying sense of guilt and responsibility towards the Palestinians as victimized by Israel’s status as a reparation for Germany’s crimes. The title of the indefinitely postponed Goethe-Institut event suggests this, too, because it includes the Nakba in the German culture of remembrance.

It would be productive and enlightening to launch a discussion about whether the German culture of remembrance has anything to do with the Nakba at all – to start at the root, so to speak, and to shed some light on the assumptions guiding those who think it does. Why do decision-makers in German cultural institutions think it makes sense to discuss the Nakba together with the Holocaust rather than, say, within the obvious historical context of the war that Arab states waged on the Jewish state after it became independent – also a source of pain from an Israeli perspective? Has the German culture of remembrance taken on the tragedy of the Palestinians to relieve its very own heavy load? Hopefully, after all the scandals of these past months and years, these are some of the questions that will be debated at cultural institutions in Germany in the future.

‘Nabka’ ??

Maybe he meant Babka? Everyone loves a good chocolate babka! pic.twitter.com/4tULEoxh17

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 26, 2022

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11/11 Links Pt1: How to defeat the PLO and UNRWA; Pro-Israel watchdog alleges ‘sham hearings’ by controversial UN commission; Iranians protest nationwide, mark "Bloody Friday"

From Ian:

How to defeat the PLO and UNRWA

Below is a list of doable steps that will make all the difference:
1. Recognize the new paradigm: Fatah can no longer be defined as a "partner for peace."
2. Neutralize COGAT (Israel's Civil Administration), and its blind protection of the PA and UNRWA.
3. Present PA and UNRWA Indoctrination as a primary factor in the war on Israel.
4. Since the PBC (Palestine Broadcasting Corporation) continues to incite, close all Israeli government frequencies used by the PBC.
5. Define PA and UNRWA schools as warlike entities that deserve no support.
6. Reinstate? oversight of all texts and teachers? in PA/UNRWA education.
7. Advocate the repeal of "Pay for Slay" legislation as a condition for aid
8. Disarm all Palestinian Arab entities, including the PSF, trained by US and Israel.
9 Arrest anyone who pays killers who have ?carried out acts of murder.
10. Encourage confiscation of all funds set aside by the PA to pay salaries for life to anyone who kills a Jew.
11. Organize conference of the descendants of the Dalal Mugrabi 1978 terror attack, where 35 Jews were murdered. Dalal is lionized by the PA and in UNRWA education.
12. Advocate harsh conditions in jails for terrorists, because current terror cells have turned into summer camps and universities.
13 Commission new films of UNRWA and PA SCHOOLS. Seeing is believing.
14. Oversee all funding to PA and UNRWA: Demand accountability for cash allocations ?to PA and UNRWA. Hold all PA funders criminally responsible for PA transgressions (NGOs have no diplomatic immunity).
15. Create a new think-tank to monitor and fight Arab terror.
16 Hire a community organization social worker to create a new Arab health and social welfare system, one that is independent of ?the corrupt PA and UNRWA. 17. Transform "victims of terror" into an effective organization to present the human face of those who have suffered the consequences of Arab violence. 18. Launch inquiry into private investments in the PA. 19. Foster an effort for UNRWA policy change - Counter "Right of Return by Force of Arms". Instead, advance the resettlement of Arab refugees from 1948 and their descendants.

That's all it takes, folks.

Israel's democracy is its strength over Gaza -opinion

A good friend drew my attention to the article by the Palestinian publicist Dr. Ibrahim Abrash. A resident of the al-Breij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, formerly the Minister of Culture in the Palestinian government.

Abrash has an education in law and lectures on law and political science. He is a veteran Fatah member, who lives and operates in the ruling districts of Hamas, and despite this, he is known for his independent views and his critical writing.

On Sunday, he published on one of the Palestinian news sites his take on the election results for the 25th Knesset. "You can talk at length about Israel as an imperialist, racist and terrorist entity. You can also talk about the right-wing tendency of Israeli society, and say that the election contest is mainly conducted within the extreme right. Benjamin Netanyahu's return to the prime ministership, in a coalition with extremists like him, portends difficult times."

"But we must recognize that in everything related to the organization of internal politics and the management of the affairs of the regime and the government, a positive thing happened that must be credited to them: the insistence on returning to the public five times over the course of four years to decide who will rule the country, and this without Netanyahu or another political leader, not even the army, contemplating a coup or casting doubt on the election results," Dr. Abrash continued.

In the opinion of the Gazan writer, democracy is one of the reasons for Israel's strength and advantage over others in the region. "This is a card they use to promote themselves in the world," Dr. Abrash explained.

JPost Editorial: Israel's defense diplomacy is just what the Jewish state needs

Reports emerged Wednesday afternoon that the United States has given Israel its approval in principle to export the advanced Arrow-3 ballistic missile defense system to Germany. America has asked – as it has for years – that some battery production be in the US.

These talks came just one week after Defense Minister Benny Gantz held discussions with his American counterpart, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, to discuss the deal.

The Arrow 3, developed by Israel Aerospace Industries as a joint Israeli-US program, is one of Israel’s most advanced air-defense systems. It is capable of intercepting ballistic missiles at altitudes of over 100 kilometers, with a reported range of up to 2,400 kilometers.

This deal – and the hype surrounding it internationally – represents something far greater than any previous defense deal for Israel.

Something far greater than any previous defense deal for Israel
Germany began to eye Arrow-3 earlier this year in March, just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine was in full swing and it therefore increased its budget for defense spending. The concern in Berlin, and in much of Europe, is that the missiles landing on Ukraine could one day land in Germany.

In September, just a few months later, Prime Minister Yair Lapid met in Berlin with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and said that “the future possible deal [on the Arrow 3] has to do with our total commitment to the safety of Germany.”

Although no deal has been signed yet, Germany has requested that the first Arrow system be operational in the country by 2025.

The deal is supposedly still on the table and being negotiated, as both Israel and the US have to approve it in order to move forward.

Nevertheless, the fact that this has reached an advanced stage shows, above all else, that Israel has made itself a leader of the pack in terms of the development of defense systems.

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11/04 Links Pt2: Kanye West, Louis Farrakhan and Anti-Semitism; The Hijacking of Middle East Studies; Why is conservative media defending anti-Semitism?

From Ian:

Abe Greenwald: Kanye West, Louis Farrakhan and Anti-Semitism

What lessons can we learn from the rubbish-cluttered mind of Kanye West? We can start by drawing some important distinctions.

Mr. West’s is a particular kind of anti-Semitism. The left-wing activist Shaun King writes in Newsweek that “you don’t have to be white to be a white supremacist,” and that “Kanye West is now a full-blown white supremacist.” This is a category error.

The “white extinction” conspiracy theory promoted by white supremacists holds that Jews promote integration, miscegenation and civil rights as part of a plot to replace the white race. Mr. West appears to believe the opposite. “Jewish people have owned the black voice,” he said on a recent podcast, later speaking of black Americans “being signed to a [Jewish-owned] record label, or having a Jewish manager, or being signed to a Jewish basketball team, or doing a movie on a Jewish platform like Disney.”

That sort of talk sounds very much like the ravings of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, the world’s foremost black anti-Semite. “You can’t do nothing in Hollywood unless you go by them”—the Jews—Mr. Farrakhan said in a 2010 speech. “You a hip-hop artist? You can’t do nothing, you gotta go by them. You want to be a great sports figure? They own that plantation. Children of Israel, they got you jumping through hoops.”

Similarly, Mr. West’s claim that Planned Parenthood was founded by Jews to control the black population is the inverse of the white-supremacist notion that Jews have promoted abortion to eradicate whites. Again, Mr. West was merely echoing the Nation of Islam, which has long implicated Planned Parenthood in a supposed black “depopulation agenda.”

IMDB: Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America

Trivia
Film was included on a recommended viewing list by the Congressional Black Caucus at the request of long time Democrat Party supporter Louis Farrakhan

Why is conservative media defending anti-Semitism?

Kanye West’s descent into anti-Semitic hysteria has been a clarifying moment for American Jews. We have found out who our friends are from their reaction or non-reaction to Kanye’s appalling statements. Unfortunately, not enough conservative and Republican leaders have spoken out. The Daily Wire’s Candace Owens’s incoherent defense of Kanye, who is a friend of hers, was disappointing. Hopefully she will reconsider and put some distance between herself and Kanye.

Much worse, however, is the case of Jason Whitlock. A black Christian conservative with 600,000 followers on Twitter, Whitlock works at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze and frequently appears on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. He is not only defending Kanye’s anti-Semitic outbursts, but also engaging in anti-Semitism himself, attacking Jewish people with rhetoric one would expect to find only on a fringe neo-Nazi website.

In an article at The Blaze defending Kanye’s comments about Jews having too much power and controlling black lives, Whitlock wrote, “I’m not going to entertain the lie that progressive secular elites—black, Jewish, LGBTQ or feminists—wield no power in the United States. Miss me with that ‘trope.’ Denial of the mass power they’ve collected is just one of the many lies they use to avoid accountability.”

“On the surface, progressive secular black people, Jewish people, LGBTQ and feminists seem united in their hatred of white people,” he continued. “It’s not white people. It’s a hatred of Christianity that unites them. That hatred compels them to try to destroy anything that Christianity created, including the patriarchy, Western civilization and the United States of America.”

Blaming Jews for trying to destroy Christianity is one of anti-Semitism’s oldest libels, and it has led to centuries of Christian violence against Jews. Moreover, why single out Jews for promulgating left-wing policies that Whitlock believes are harming America? Are there no progressive Christians or Muslims in the U.S. who wield political power? Has Whitlock ever heard of former President Barack Obama? Current President Joe Biden? Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi? They all routinely cite Christian doctrine to promote left-wing values.

How Theodore Roosevelt Embarrassed an Anti-Semite While Protecting His Freedom of Speech

In 1892, Hermann Ahlwardt was elected to the German parliament on an explicitly anti-Semitic platform. Three years later he broke off from his party to found the “Anti-Semitic People’s Party.” Dovi Safier and Yehuda Geberer tell the story of his brief tour of United States in the same year, in which he was feted by the newly formed Anti-Semitic Society of America. At the time, Theodore Roosevelt was New York City’s police commissioner. Safier and Geberer cite the future president’s description of what followed:
“While I was Police Commissioner of New York City, an anti-Semitic preacher from Berlin, Rector Ahlwardt, came to New York to preach a crusade against the Jews. Many Jews were much excited and asked me to prevent him from speaking and not to give him police protection. This, I told them, was impossible; and, if possible, would have been undesirable, because it would make him a martyr. The proper thing to do was to make him ridiculous. Accordingly, I sent a detail of police under a Jewish sergeant, and the Jew-baiter made his harangue under the active protection of some 40 police, every one of them a Jew.”

Safier and Geberer add:
As a result, his U.S. tour wasn’t overly successful, and the American press was full of derision for his stated mission. When he arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey to deliver an address at the local anti-Semitic society, he was berated and beaten by the young Jewish crowd, causing him to draw his (illegally obtained) pistol and wave it at the crowd. This act landed him in prison for disorderly conduct and carrying a concealed weapon. Borrowing a page from Commissioner Roosevelt’s playbook, the authorities in Hoboken placed him in a cell together with his assailants—who surely didn’t file a complaint about overcrowding.

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11/02 Links Pt2: The Holocaust Is Not Your Metaphor; The Balfour bogeyman; AOC’s ‘obsession’ with Israel is ‘shameful’; LA Council Passes IHRA Definition of Antisemitism

From Ian:

The Stories She Never Told

My mother loved to talk politics, real estate, and cooking. She’d happily offer intelligent insights on nearly any subject except one: her own life. With stops in prewar Hungary, Auschwitz, the Sorbonne, Mexico, and finally Manhattan, my mother’s life was extraordinary, but she kept it to herself. I hated that, but I knew why. So tender-hearted that news of terrorist attacks or natural disasters brought her to tears, she needed to distance herself from the pain of her own past. Still, as her child, I needed to understand her and the world that created her.

As a teenager and young adult, I plied her with questions, but I was only partly successful. I uncovered the scaffolding of her past but not its interiority. My mother is gone now, but my curiosity remains. I still search for her by immersing myself in stories of prewar Hungarian Jewry. Surprisingly, a new book about a Sephardic Holocaust survivor has opened a window into my mother’s inner life.

One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World, a Natan Award winner, is a Tuesdays with Morrie-style recollection of journalist Michael Frank’s conversations with nonagenarian Stella Levi, who grew up on the island of Rhodes. My mother was born thousands of miles and a universe away in the Romanian city of Satu Mare, the small Romanian city better known by its Yiddish name Satmar—the birthplace of the Satmar Hasidic sect—yet their lives seem to mirror each other.

They were born within two years of each other in the mid-1920s; both grew up in religiously observant but non-Hasidic families (prewar Satmar was home to many non-Hasidic Jews), and both belonged to the last generation of Jews to feel deeply rooted in their European birthplaces. My mother’s forebears had lived in or around Satmar for more than two centuries. Levi’s family had been part of the Juderia, Rhodes’ Jewish district, since the Spanish Inquisition. Both grew up in the embrace of aunts, uncles, and cousins in a world that moved to the eternal rhythms of the Jewish calendar.

Living within a 5-mile radius in Manhattan, both Levi and my mother viewed themselves as consummately modern women, yet both were intensely nostalgic for their childhood homes. Levi spoke of “a place where old women sat outside and told stories … took dishes to be baked in the communal oven … and where a granddaughter learned to prepare her grandmother’s sweet and savory dishes.” Unable to access the right words, my mother expressed her longing to recreate the flavors of her childhood and by carrying a crumpled photograph of her doomed aunts and cousins inside of her wallet.

Daniel Greenfield: The Holocaust Is Not Your Metaphor

"A production of Romeo and Juliet for non-binary performers"

This is what happens when the Holocaust becomes universalized, a free-floating metaphor and finally woke kitsch.

Yes, that’s the problem there.

This production, which has now been canceled, comes on the heels of things like the various Anne Frank revisions, including the Latino/ICE one. The underlying problem though is the use of the Holocaust and Hitler as a metaphor for everything bad.

The Holocaust is not a lens. It’s certainly not a lens for whatever woke nonsense is trying to appropriate Jewish history to make claims about the “rise of fascism” today.

There, is to a much lesser degree, similar objections to Netfix’s Dahmer movie which distorted and rewrote the history of the murders to score political points.

Treating real events, especially the murder of people, as a metaphor reduces the dead to the means of a political end while robbing them of their voice, their history and their identity.

The Holocaust is not slavery, slavery is not the Holocaust, whatever some sexual minority is upset by is not either one, and real events are not interchangeable. Neither are real people.

The Balfour bogeyman

In the eyes of the Palestinian Authority, one historical act is attributed with all future Palestinian suffering. That act is the Balfour Declaration, issued today, Nov. 2, in 1917. The declaration was the first contemporary, internationally recognized expression of the right of the Jewish people to establish a national homeland in the geographical area known as “Palestine”.

“His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

As exposed by Palestinian Media Watch, the PA Ministry of Information called the Balfour declaration: “The greatest crime in the history of mankind,” and the official PA daily called it “The crime of the century.”

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who also serves as the PA’s Supreme Shari’ah Judge recently claimed that the Balfour declaration violated international law:
“Israel’s very existence contradicts international law. On what right do you bring people who have no connection to this land and plant them here and tell them: This is your national home? Who gave Britain a right to give a national home? Was Palestine the land of [former British Foreign Secretary Arthur] Balfour’s father?”

[Facebook page of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Oct. 10, 2022]

So how then, can one answer the PA’s claim?

While the Balfour Declaration was an important statement of policy on the part of the UK government, it certainly did not have the ability to bring about the creation of the Jewish state without wide international consensus.

Historically, the declaration was issued as part of a new regional order that was born out of World War I and the demise of the Ottoman Empire, which, inter alia, had controlled most of the Middle East for centuries. As part of the new order, new borders were drawn and countries were, for the first time, carved out.

In the Ottoman Empire, “Palestine” as the separate national country and identity, as the PA claims, never existed. Rather, the region was merely just another region of the empire with no specific definition.

Abbas’ advisor: Israel’s existence contradicts international law

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10/26 Links Pt2: After West Jerusalem shift, will Australian Labor also turn on Israel at the UN?; Will canceling Kanye West turn the tide on anti-Semitism?; What Explains Ireland's Extreme Antisemitism?

From Ian:

Dave Sharma: After West Jerusalem shift, will Labor also turn on Israel at the UN?

The government’s signalling that it no longer considers Israel to be sovereign over West Jerusalem leads to some odd conclusions.

Far from advancing the cause of peace, which Labor professes to support, this reversal only sets peace back. The only states and entities that assert Israel has no claim to West Jerusalem are the same ones that assert Israel has no entitlement to a sovereign state whatsoever: Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is very odd company for the Labor government to be keeping.

Will Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong now refuse to meet Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as countless of their Labor predecessors have done, and as the UAE Foreign Minister did just in September? If Labor considers West Jerusalem to now be disputed territory, this is the only feasible conclusion.

Of equal importance, does this presage a larger shift in Labor’s attitude towards Israel in international forums?

The Howard government in 2004 altered Australia’s voting position on a number of annual, one-sided UN General Assembly Resolutions that single out Israel as the obstacle to peace, whilst remaining silent on the obligations of other parties. Under the Rudd/Gillard governments, many of these positions were reversed, before being reversed again under subsequent Coalition governments. It appears likely that the Albanese government will once again shift these votes.

The bigger question though is whether the government will follow through on the commitment in the ALP’s official platform to unilaterally recognise a state of Palestine, absent the usual criteria for statehood. In 2021, in a motion introduced by Wong, Labor’s national conference adopted this as official policy.

If the Albanese government goes through with this, it would separate Australia from some of its closest allies and partners, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand, France, Germany and Canada.

A profound shift such as this would not make the emergence of a future Palestinian state any more likely. But it would break a strong Labor tradition of support for the state of Israel, and harm one of Australia’s closest and most valuable relationships in the Middle East.

Foreign policy should proceed on the basis of established facts and national interests. Labor’s approach risks ignoring both.

Sky News corrects claim that Australia 'recognised Tel Aviv' as capital

We tweeted several Sky News [UK] editors and journalsts before one responded, upholding our complaint regarding an Oct. 19 Sky News article, written by Amarachi Orie, falsely claiming that Australia recognised Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital. The article in question focused on news that officials in Canberra had rescinded the previous government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

However, the country’s decision to no longer recognise Jerusalem didn’t mean that it therefore recognised Tel Aviv as the capital – as the official government statement on the matter from the foreign ministry shows.

David Collier: What Explains Ireland's Extreme Antisemitism?

Collier said there are different causes behind the virulent anti-Zionist/anti-Israel atmosphere in Ireland. The first is the "distinct anticolonial strand going through the whole of Irish politics" which is evident in the rise of Sinn Fein, "historically the Republican Independence Movement" political party. Many Irish people, who "hate England," mistakenly believe "Britain gave the Jews Israel" and are convinced that the Jewish State epitomizes "settler colonialism." Ironically, as Israel was being established post-1945, the Zionists fought to oust the British from its mandate in Palestine.

The second cause of rampant antisemitism in Ireland is found in the country's "strand" of "classic antisemitism," now seen coming from both the "far left and the far right." Collier pointed out that even though the Irish were "officially independent" during World War II, "many of the Irish Republicans sided with the Nazis." The third cause of Irish antisemitism is rooted in the second — particular "ideologies within Christianity", which are "very strong in the Irish Catholic Church." The church is replete with belief in "replacement ideology, supersessionism, or the idea ... the Christians are the new Jews."

That the Jews have returned to their ancient homeland in Israel creates a "major ideological problem" for the Catholic Church, driving it to align with the Palestinians. Collier said that Christian charities will donate to anti-Israel non-governmental organizations (NGO's), some of which are affiliated with Palestinian terrorist groups. He said an exception in Ireland to the widespread antisemitism is that Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and whose predominantly Protestant citizens identify with the British, tend to be pro-Israel.

The fourth and final issue driving Irish antisemitism, Collier said, is attributable to "Islamist extremism." Whereas the U.S. and England experienced Islamist attacks after mistakenly, over the past three decades, "placing the bar for extremism far ... too high," he said Europe is "paying a deep price for it now." In Ireland, which has not experienced a large influx of Muslim migration, the antisemites there share the same "anti-colonial, anti-imperial" messages with Islamists, whom "they've accepted ... wholesale." The Islamists, essentially, are "coming in speaking the same anti-colonial, anti-imperial messaging, that the Irish do." Collier said, "anti-Zionist rhetoric," unabashedly rife on Irish streets, also creates a "hostile environment" for Jewish students on campuses. He said there are mosques preaching hate, Irish universities with Islamist academics, and the local church, all in league "bashing the state of Israel."

Collier believes that Sinn Fein's growing popularity will be accompanied by an "escalation" of antisemitism in Ireland, which he tracks through social media. He is dismayed at the trends because he said Hitler and the Holocaust "didn't just happen." Rather, their emergence can be traced back to "European antisemitism and beyond it, Christian antisemitism."

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10/24 Links Pt2: An Inconvenient Truth: The Jewish People Never Left the Land of Israel; Bari Weiss: Kanye West's Dark, Twisted Fantasy And Jewish reality

From Ian:

An Inconvenient Truth: The Jewish People Never Left the Land of Israel

I just finished reading former US Ambassador David Friedman’s recent article, in which he makes the point that Judaism and Zionism are inseparable. It is a fine article and I agree with him, but I wonder if it places too much emphasis on the return of the Jewish people to their homeland after a lengthy absence. I have the same concern with an upbeat review of Israel’s achievements in a recent article by David Weinberg, which refers to two millennia of Jewish dispersion.

To imply that the Jews left the Land of Israel for 2,000 years, after the fall of Masada, is not accurate. It feeds into the view that the modern state of Israel is a European colonial enterprise with no historical connection to the land. What’s more, the Jewish return did not originate with the modern Zionist movement in the early 1880s. Aliyah has been continuous throughout the ages.

The Jewish people never really left the Holy Land. Certainly, many were killed or expelled at the time of Masada and later, but many Jews continued to live in “Palestine” (the name given by the Romans after the Bar Kochba revolt, 132-135 CE) for a considerable time afterward. The evidence is clear from the extensive archeological sites visible today, such as those at Beit Alpha, Beit She’arim, Tzippori (Sepphoris), Baram, and many others. Jews formed a majority of the population of Palestine until at least the fifth century CE, and an autonomous Roman-recognized Jewish patriarchate in Palestine existed until 429 CE.

Archeological ruins point to the establishment of more than 80 synagogues, particularly in the Galilee, during the six centuries after the destruction of the Temple. After Masada, the Jewish population was substantial enough for three serious revolts against Roman or Byzantine rule to occur; the last one, against the Emperor Heraclius, was in the seventh century.

Evidence from the Cairo Genizah, and the writings of the Spanish-Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela, indicate that Jews continued to inhabit a number of towns, including Jerusalem, after the Byzantine defeat by the Arabs under Omar Ibn Al Khattab in 637, and even during Crusader rule. In fact, the 12th century witnessed an upsurge in Jewish immigration from Europe; 300 rabbis from England and France, including a number of prominent Tosafists, immigrated to the Holy land in 1211, while the noted Spanish rabbi and philosopher Nachmanides (the Ramban) made aliyah in 1267.

David Collier: Pete Gregson’s campaigns. Just where are the Scottish police?

A Holocaust denying antisemite created a partnership with a Gazan scammer who has family links to proscribed Islamic terrorist groups. They are still taking £1000s from people in Scotland for increasingly dubious and unbelievable campaigns. Why is it left to an independent Jewish journalist to investigate them? Just where are the Scottish police?

The unfortunate Mohammed Almadhoun
Mohammed Almadhoun is either scamming the people of Scotland or he is the unluckiest man alive.

About 18 months ago his house was bombed, and he ran a campaign to raise funds to rebuild it. The image he used for his ‘bombed-out’ house was a bombed out Hamas bank and had been swiped from the internet:

Mohammed Almadhoun houseTwo years before this he claimed that a school he teaches in was also bombed out – and once again he tried to raise funds to have it fixed. This time Almadhoun used an image of a school in Syria bombed during the Syrian civil war:

Mohammed also claimed he needed back surgery at the time – and once again ran a fundraising campaign to raise money to help him:

None of this was real – but nor did Mohammed succeed in raising much cash. What he lacked was a ‘sponsor’ in the UK so blinded by antisemitic hate – that he would promote every story that Mohammed gave him. Enter Pete Gregson – an antisemite who has bought into almost every conspiracy about Jews that can be found.

So earlier this year Gregson tells everyone that Mohammed would go to jail unless he could pay his debts – raising funds to help him. This despite the fact Almadhoun is a relatively wealthy man from a very powerful clan. Gregson was campaigning for a bogus story – and I told him so. Since then, things have only got worse.

London Centre Study of Contemporary Antisemitism: Alvin Rosenfeld: ‘The Jews are Guilty’: Contemporary Echoes of Old Religious Tropes

Alvin H Rosenfeld, the Director of the Indiana University Bloomington Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism talks about how centuries old tropes of religious antisemitism are being recycled and expressed in today’s America.

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10/18 Links: Australia revokes recognition of western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; Ruthie Blum: Donald Trump’s justified critique of American Jews; Who waived US law to allow an “alien engaged in terror activity” into the US?

From Ian:

Australia revokes recognition of western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital

The Labor Party-led Australian government on Tuesday officially revoked the country’s recognition of western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, confirming a Guardian report the previous day revealing that Canberra had walked back the language adopted by former Liberal Party prime minister Scott Morrison.

The Australian Cabinet instead agreed that Jerusalem’s eventual status must be resolved via peace negotiations with the Palestinians that lead to a two-state solution.

“We will not support an approach that undermines this prospect,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong was quoted by the Associated Press as saying on Tuesday.

The Labor Party, with Anthony Albanese as prime minister and Wong as the top diplomat, rose to power in May 2022.

According to Monday’s Guardian report, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade recently dropped the following two lines of text from its website:
“Consistent with this longstanding policy, in December 2018, Australia recognized West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, being the seat of the Knesset and many of the institutions of the Israeli government.

“Australia looks forward to moving its embassy to West Jerusalem when practical, in support of, and after the final status determination of, a two-state solution.” The lines were deleted after the Guardian Australia asked the current government questions about the matter.

In response, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid denounced Canberra’s move, saying in a statement that, “Jerusalem is the eternal undivided capital of Israel and nothing will change that.

“In light of the way in which this decision was made in Australia, as a hasty response to an incorrect report in the media, we can only hope that the Australian government manages other matters more seriously and professionally,” Lapid added.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry announced that it would summon Australia’s ambassador over the issue.

Has Australia's Jerusalem reversal harmed Israel? - analysis

Even the United States failed until recently to recognize that Jerusalem was part of Israel. US citizens who wanted to register the birth of their children in that city could not have Israel as the country of birth on their passports.

Barack Obama, when he was president, might have flown to Jerusalem to eulogize veteran Israeli leader Shimon Peres. But the text of the speech he delivered at Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery in the western part of the city, did include Israel as the location in which the address was delivered.

Former US president Donald Trump’s decision in 2017 to declare that Jerusalem was Israel’s capital and to relocate the American embassy there from Tel Aviv in 2018 was seen as a significant step in support of Israel’s hold on its capital city.

Only three other countries have followed the US example; Guatemala, Honduras and Kosovo. Liberia, Togo and Malawi are expected to open embassies in Jerusalem.

Australia’s decision in 2018 to declare that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel helped shore up that move, even if the embassy remained in Tel Aviv. To shore up that declaration it opened a trade office in the city. Some eight other countries have done so as well, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia.

Prime Minister Yair Lapid as well as his predecessors Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett, all campaigned to change Jerusalem’s status in the international arena, with what appeared to be initial successes.

Last year, for example, support for the Jerusalem resolution at the UN dropped; it passed with only 129 votes.

Strong statement by Israeli PM @yairlapid, condemning #Australia’s reversal on #Jerusalem decision and the inexcusable manner in which @dfat @SenatorWong went about it (denying it earlier - when that was flat out lie). #AUSPOL pic.twitter.com/41ZgrlLzw9

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 18, 2022

Australia drops recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Michael Danby, Former Chairman and Member of the Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee of Australian Parliament, says the hasty decision by the Australian cabinet to revoke its recognition of west Jerusalem as Israel's capital was driven by local political considerations.

Israel slams Australia on 'hasty' Jerusalem reversal

Israel is slamming Australia the administration reversed its recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel - a decision made by former prime minister Scott Morrison.

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10/13 Links Pt2: How Ken Burns Misuses the Holocaust; How Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Berkeley and Wellesley mainstream anti-Semitism; The Wedding Canopy in Abu Dhabi

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: How Ken Burns Misuses the Holocaust

Yet contrary to the film’s conclusion, the Holocaust tells us little or nothing about what to do about America’s contemporary immigration debates or the current American problem with Jew-hatred. Any attempt to frame the Holocaust as a representative moment in the history of human intolerance is a moral calamity. Burns demonstrated this in a CNN interview to promote the film. He spoke of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s decision to ship illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard—whose affluent liberal residents advocate open borders but prefer to have border communities deal with the humanitarian crisis this has engendered—as if it deserved to be mentioned in the same conversation as the subject of his documentary.

That Burns, a longtime supporter of the Democrats and liberal causes, would be guilty of playing along with such an inappropriate Holocaust analogy demonstrates that the filmmaker’s efforts to frame the question of American guilt in this context should be viewed with suspicion. The same is true of his attempt to claim that current political opponents of open borders—such as Trump, DeSantis, and their supporters—are figures who conjure up the threats that America and the Jews faced in the past.

Anti-Semitism isn’t merely a collection of hateful sentiments; it’s a political organizing principle that has attached itself to a variety of different ideologies, from Nazism to Communism to Islamism. The answer to such threats isn’t open borders for America, amnesty for illegal immigrants, or even ensuring that more people read The Diary of Anne Frank. The only way to deter another genocide of the Jews is Jewish empowerment and our ability to defend ourselves, something we would gain only after the war with the creation of the State of Israel.

Some who attempt to use the Holocaust as an exhibit in contemporary immigration-law debates are actually indifferent to the security of Israel and, indeed, support appeasement of an Iran that seeks nuclear weapons to possibly perpetrate another Holocaust. This makes it hard to take them seriously when they lecture Americans about the murder of 6 million Jews in the past century.

The Holocaust was a chapter of history marked by American failure. But whatever one may think about Franklin Roosevelt and his indifference to Hitler’s victims, the responsibility for the murder of 6 million Jews still belongs to the Nazis and their collaborators. It was a crime the United States may not have had the power to deter, but one this nation could have done more to stop had its political leadership been willing to do so. This is a disturbing fact for many who lionize Roosevelt. But Burns and others who clearly wish to apply the lessons from this failure to complicated 21st-century political debates, while ignoring real-time genocides or potent threats to the security of millions of living Jews, shouldn’t pretend they have learned anything from the past or have anything to teach us about it.

Jonathan Tobin: How Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Berkeley and Wellesley mainstream anti-Semitism

At what point does a rise in anti-Semitism stop being viewed merely as a series of isolated, troubling occurrences and start being treated like an emergency? When mass- media programs mainstream hatemongers who target and seek to delegitimize Jews? When elite academic institutions behave as though it’s acceptable conduct? When Jews are attacked in the streets?

The ongoing epidemic of violence against Jews in New York City is mostly ignored, both by the media and much of the organized Jewish world. This is not only because the victims are Orthodox Jews who are easy to pick out. They’re also not the sort of people with whom opinion leaders, and even most American Jews, identify or associate.

But the mainstreaming of anti-Semitic attitudes on major campuses around the United States is harder to dismiss. Even more difficult to ignore are the widely disseminated programs that embrace open anti-Semites as legitimate voices worth considering.

Indeed, what is unfolding, inch by inch, is the normalization of anti-Semitism in the U.S. in a manner unprecedented in the post-Holocaust era. Nor is it confined to a specific segment of society or particular end of the political spectrum.

Indeed, as the events of the past week illustrate, Jew-hatred is thriving on both the left and the right. Individually, each of these instances—the legitimization of the BDS movement and targeting of Jewish institutions at Boston’s Wellesley College; the establishment of a Jew-free zone by student organizations at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law; the appearance of BDS advocate Roger Waters on the Joe Rogan podcast; and the featuring of the rapper formerly known as Kanye West on the Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight”—can be unpacked, denounced or rationalized and then forgotten, before the public’s attention is diverted to new controversies.

Taken together, they represent a trend that ought to set off alarms about the way insidious ideas that normalize hatred for Jews and Israel are gaining a foothold in mainstream forums. More than that, the growing tolerance for them and lack of consequences for those responsible bode ill not just for Jews, but for the future of civil society.

Roger Waters: Israeli policy is the mass murder of Palestinians

Roger Waters, British rock musician and founding member of band Pink Floyd has expressed his strong opinions about the relationship between Israel and Hamas in a recent appearance on commentator Joe Rogan's popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.

"The Israelis seem now to have a policy of ... murdering so many of them that they are absolutely trying to create another intifada. So they can make it an armed conflict...so they can just kill them all," he said, adding that Israel is provoking the Palestinians into an armed conflict in order to manufacture an excuse to destroy them.

Waters started out his statements by reminding Rogan that Hamas is actually "the democratically elected government of Gaza." He quickly added that "there is an armed wing and whatever..." and then began speaking about occupation and the Geneva convention.

Rogan pressed him, asking whether or not the elections in Gaza were corrupt. Waters responded saying, "I have no idea, I wasn't there...Has there been an election since then? I don't know. ...I can't really answer that question because I'm not there and I don't know."

Touching on the subject of rockets fired into Israel, Waters asserted that rockets fired from Gaza "almost never do any damage because they're very ineffectual."

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10/07 Links Pt2: Spanish top court says Israel boycotts are always discriminatory; Leftists Most Likely To See Judaism As ‘Incompatible’ with French Values

From Ian:

In landmark ruling, Spanish top court says Israel boycotts are always discriminatory

Over the past several years, dozens of Spanish courts have rejected Israel boycotts by nonprofits, municipalities and other groups. Now, the country’s top court has ruled that the movement to boycott Israel represents “discrimination” that “infringes on basic rights.”

Separately, the Spanish parliament on Wednesday passed legislation that bars public funding for organizations that “promote antisemitism.” The law uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which cites as examples of antisemitism some forms of Israel criticism.

The ruling by the Supreme Court of Spain, which was issued Sept. 20 and published on Tuesday, was about an appeal that a pro-Palestinian nonprofit, Associacion Interpueblos, filed contesting a lower court’s 2020 ruling that called a specific action to boycott Israel discriminatory.

ACOM, a Spanish pro-Israel nonprofit that has sued multiple entities for discriminating against Israel, claimed the ruling as a major win. Spain was once a hotbed of efforts by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, known as BDS. A slew of lower-court rulings in Spain had curtailed that trend, but they had pertained only to individual cases and thus had a limited impact, the group said, but the Sept. 20 ruling will function as a legal precedent applicable to all cases going forward.

Prior to the appeal, pro-Palestinian groups in Spain had not escalated appeals to the top court for fear of losing and creating precedent. “Also, it was a risk for us, but our legal team worked hard and turned that risk into an historical opportunity,” an ACOM spokesperson wrote in an email to JTA.

This judicial policy is similar to the one practiced in France, where attempts to boycott Israel resulted in the 2003 adoption of a law that declares any attempt to single out countries discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Leftists Most Likely To See Judaism As ‘Incompatible’ with French Values

A survey has found that those who support left-wing parties in France are far more likely to believe that Judaism is not compatible with French values, while also being the most likely to claim Islam is compatible.

The “French Fractures” survey, which was carried out by the polling firm Ipsos and the consulting firm Sopra Steria for the newspaper Le Monde, the Jean-Jaurès Foundation and Cevipof, found that those who support leftist parties were far more likely to find that Judaism is incompatible with the values of French society.

Among supporters of the far-left France Insoumise (FI) party, only 75 per cent stated that they believed Judaism was compatible with French values, while every other party saw 80 per cent or more believe that Judaism was compatible with French society, including 90 per cent of the supporters of the centre-right Republicans.

When the same question was asked of Islam, the left-wing FI supporters were the most likely to state that Islam was compatible with France, with 64 per cent agreeing, while those on the right overwhelmingly disagreed as just 17 per cent of supporters of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally believe Islam is compatible with France, and just eight per cent of the supporter of conservative pundit Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest! party.

Overall just 40 per cent of the respondents stated that Islam was compatible with French society, with people under the age of 35 being far more receptive to the idea than those over 60.

More than 90% of slanted articles in top U.S campus papers were biased against Israel—report

Between 2017 and 2022, 92.82% of the articles in leading U.S. college newspapers that strayed from journalistic objectivity were anti-Israel, according to a report from Alums for Campus Fairness.

ACF surveyed 75 leading college and university newspapers. Of all the articles about Israel exhibiting a bias, 181 were biased against Israel and 14 portrayed it positively.

Coverage spiked during periods of tension between Israel and Hamas, including in November 2018, May 2019, November 2019 and May 2021. There is an intense fixation on Israel, with nearly 1,500 stories on the topic, the researchers found.

Avi Gordon, executive director of ACF, told JNS that the increase in “hatred towards Jewish and pro-Israel students standing up for the truth” reflects the fact that Israel has become a “divisive topic.” Israel is always considered newsworthy, which fosters a culture of saturation coverage in which bias against the Jewish state is popular, he explained.

Large public universities produced the most content about Israel. While liberal arts colleges produced less, small private colleges exhibited the most anti-Israel bias. The Claremont Colleges, a consortium of seven private institutions in Claremont, California, and Swarthmore College in Pennslyvania, for example, produced 31 articles over a five-year period.

Gordon said there has also been a shift in the general discourse on Israel. “Whereas it used to be, ‘I am not anti-Semitic—I am anti-Israel’ or ‘anti-Zionist,’” this distinction is increasingly becoming meaningless.

“Jewish students are more afraid to share their Judaism or their love for Israel” openly, he noted, describing instances of people who are scared to wear a yarmulke or IDF shirt on campus, or to share their culture and faith.

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