Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: BDSFail

Showing posts with label BDSFail. Show all posts

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Google launches program to actually help Palestinians more than all the NGOs combined

What does it mean to be "pro-Palestinian?"

To most people who define themselves that way, it means to be anti-Israel.

Even though NGOs spend tens of millions of dollars in their anti-Israel efforts, writing yet another report finding yet another way Israel is supposedly the worst abuser in the world doesn't help Palestinians one bit.

Google just announced an initiative that will help more Palestinians improve their lives than anything Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, B'Tselem, the UN and the EU does - combined.

Apply to Palestine Launchpad with Google
Future-proof your skills for the digital economy

In our dynamic world, time and technology are vital. The digital and gig economies transcend borders, leveling opportunities for talent and ideas. The Palestine Launchpad with Google equips you with the skills, knowledge, and network to enter the global tech talent pool and become a top earner.

• Fully funded scholarship for a Nanodegree Programme
• Line-by-line code review with personalised project feedback
• Flexible self-paced learning schedule
• Live virtual sessions with top-tier mentors
• Career workshops (resume building, interview preparations, etc.)
• Exposure to freelancing and career growth opportunities
• Networking with local and international employers

💻 Become a Web Developer
🤖 Become an AI Engineer
📊 Become a Data Analyst

You are eligible for this programme if you are

• Currently residing in Palestine
• Looking to be part of tomorrow’s tech-powered economy
• Recently graduated from a computer science related field (or are in your final years of study)
• Want to upskill, reskill, or specialise in the various fields shaping this economy, this programme is your springboard.

They are offering free scholarships for 6,000 Palestinians to learn cutting edge skills where they can make money working for companies worldwide without leaving home.

I have been mystified that the EU and USAID have not prioritized this sort of training - training that would actually help Palestinians more than their other initiatives. The average Palestinian salary is now about $20,000 a year - imagine the impact from thousands making Western high tech salaries quintuple that.

The supreme irony is that while Google is doing more to help Palestinians than any other organization in the world, it is being targeted by BDS because it also does work with Israel.

We've shown that BDS actually opposed Cisco doing a similar program to promote high tech jobs among Palestinians.

Israel doesn't mind Palestinians getting high paid tech jobs. But "pro-Palestinian activists" do!

Which again goes to prove that the anti-Israel crowd really doesn't give a damn about helping Palestinians.

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 good editorial cartoons (for once)

I was looking through a collection of editorial cartoons, and many of them dealing with Israel are horrific - antisemitic, ignorant or both.

But there were a few good ones that hold up..

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!

Imagine if Israel boycotted Palestinian products

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics announced that in March 2023, the Palestinians exported goods worth nearly $150 million.

87% of those goods went to Israel.

In contrast, "only" 54% of Palestinian imports come from Israel; that used to be much higher.

Now, let's imagine if Israel did what the BDS movement wants to see - and shut off all imports and exports to the territories.

The impact on Israelis would be minimal, since Palestinian trade accounts for less than 1% of all Israeli imports and exports.

The impact on the Palestinians would be immediate and drastic.

Which proves yet again that the BDSers don't care about Palestinian welfare. They are willing to fight Israel down to the last Palestinian, and that includes forcing them into poverty - while they themselves use Israeli products and technologies every hour of every day.

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!

Denmark buys Israeli artillery systems, backfilling weapons sent to Ukraine - and upsetting BDSers

ATMOS truck-mounted howitzer

Defense News reported in March:

Israeli defense company Elbit Systems said it won several deals in Europe this month, including a $119 million sale of ATMOS truck-mounted howitzers and a $133 million contract for PULS artillery rocket systems.

The deals, which Elbit said are with a European NATO member country, come as several governments on the continent continue their shopping sprees to resupply their troops, having sent munitions from their own stocks to Ukraine, which is under invasion by Russia.

“We are witnessing a trajectory of an increased demand for advanced artillery solutions from militaries around the world, including European countries and NATO members, as part of their efforts to increase the effectiveness of their armed forces. Our operationally proven systems provide an advanced, cost-effective solution to meet that demand,” said Bezhalel Machlis, the CEO of Elbit.

Although the buyer was not named, it is widely believed to be Denmark, based on an earlier press release that Denmark was negotiating with Elbit for those systems.

I'm surprised that we have not yet seen conspiracy theories that Israel is behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine in order to increase its arms sales to NATO members.

Anyway, the BDSers are livid, because they claimed to have scuttled another contract between Denmark and Elbit in 2015, a claim denied by the Danish authorities. And Mondoweiss blamed the Danish Left for this sale, saying that they were silent during the negotiations, unlike in 2015:

Few voices have raised concerns about the unusual speed this deal has gone through without due process or vigorous political scrutiny from the opposition. Is the Danish left happy to support a deal for weapons tested on the Palestinian civilians in the West Bank? Has the priority of the war in Ukraine meant all debate regarding arms procurement from Israel is frozen? Are Palestinians to remain second-class citizens in the eyes of the international community, only to be exploited for political capital as a means to express one’s ‘humanism’?

Well, you learn something new every day. Israel has been shooting artillery at Palestinian civilians in the West Bank! Somehow the media has missed this entire story, but Mondoweiss figured it out. It is amazing what scoops you can find when you don't know what you are talking about..

This little episode indicates that the 2015 arms sale was not blocked by BDS, and it was just another fake victory they claimed.

And it also shows that while Israel has not been directly supplying weapons to Ukraine, it has been supplying them indirectly, by backfilling weapons being sent from European countries. This way the EU countries get to upgrade their supplies while sending older weapons systems to Ukraine, which needs them badly. Everyone wins.

Except for BDSers and their Russian allies.

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!

04/27 Links Pt2: Israel Is Antiracist, Anti-Colonialist, Anti-Fascist (and Was from the Start); Why the world has turned against Israel; Caroline Glick: An afternoon among the angels

From Ian:

Jeffrey Herf: Israel Is Antiracist, Anti-Colonialist, Anti-Fascist (and Was from the Start)

Nor did support for Israel come only from the Soviet bloc. Liberals and leftists in London, Paris, New York, and Washington heard Jamal Husseini, the representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations, reject a Jewish state in Palestine, because, he said, it would undermine the “racial homogeneity” of the Arab world. Such remarks resonated in a profoundly negative fashion with Americans who had followed the appalling news out of Germany during and after the war. In the Senate, Robert Wagner, a major author of New Deal legislation, extolled the Jewish contribution to the Allied cause. He had already denounced appeasement of the Arabs during the war. With the Allied victory, continuing to appease Arab rejectionism surely made no sense. In the House, Democratic Congressman Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn led efforts to focus attention on Jamal Husseini’s cousin, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who had entered into a written understanding with Germany and Italy to “solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries . . . as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.”

The liberal media also took note. Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis was thoroughly documented in the New York Post as well as in the left-wing publications PM and The Nation, by I.F. Stone, Freda Kirchwey, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Edgar Mowrer, who urged Husseini’s indictment at Nuremberg. Nevertheless, despite extensive State Department files on Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis, the American bureaucracy succeeded in resisting efforts to put him on trial and publish its evidence of his Nazi-era activities.

The brief confluence of Soviet and liberal Western sympathies for the nascent Jewish state was brilliantly exploited by Ben-Gurion. He understood better than anyone that it presented a unique moment to bring Israel into existence, with the assent of the world’s two great powers — and that it was an opportunity that would soon close, as indeed it did. During the “anti-cosmopolitan” purges of the early 1950s, Stalin reversed course, spread the lie that Israel was a product of American imperialism, repressed the memory of Soviet support for the Zionist project, and launched a four-decade campaign of vilification against Zionism and Israel. It was one of the most successful propaganda campaigns of the Cold War.

Stalin succeeded in rewriting American history, too. His insistence that it was the Americans and not the Soviets who had wholeheartedly supported the establishment of the State of Israel carried the day. And yet the records of the Departments of State and Defense and the CIA clearly document their emphatic and consequential opposition to the Zionist project.

The differences between the international political landscape of the late 1940s and the one that emerged first in Soviet and then world politics in the 1950s and 1960s need to be reflected in American-Jewish discussions about the establishment of Israel. Contrary to what we’ve heard at the United Nations for decades, in international BDS efforts, and in academic descriptions of Israel, the Zionist project was never a colonialist one.

Just the reverse. The generation that created the state, and its supporters abroad, viewed it as part of the era of liberal and leftist opposition to colonialism, racism, and, of course, antisemitism. The evidence is clear: Whatever faults Israel may have, its origins had nothing to do with American or British imperialism. The argument to the contrary is a conventional unwisdom that has found a home in too much scholarship and journalism of recent decades. Israel’s establishment was not a miracle that eludes historical explanation. It was an episode of enormous moral and military courage for which space was created by canny and hard-headed political leaders in the cause of historical justice — in particular David Ben-Gurion, who seized a fleeting moment, Israel’s moment, to create an enduring achievement.

Daniel Ben-Ami: Why the world has turned against Israel

From Israel's foundation in 1948 through the 1960s, the left generally celebrated Israel as an expression of Jews' right to national self-determination. By the 1990s, however, Western elites started to reject the idea of national self-determination. Yet the denigration of the right to national self-determination undermines the Palestinian cause, too.

Indeed, many of today's anti-Israel activists aren't really interested in Palestinian self-determination. They are mainly concerned with attacking Israel as a symbol of everything they dislike. This leads them to uncritically endorse Hamas, the leading Islamist representative of the Palestinians, and often Islamism more broadly.

Islamism's goal is not national self-determination, for the Palestinians or anyone else. Rather, it wants to create an international Islamic order. The destruction of Israel - and not the creation of a Palestinian state - is seen as central to achieving that objective. Islamists regard Jews as an expression of "cosmic Satanic evil," who should be physically exterminated if Islam is to flourish.

The Palestinian slogan, "from the river to the sea" (meaning from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean), is popular among both Islamists and Western leftists. Islamists often state openly that they want to murder most if not all of the Jews living there. So when they chant "Palestine should be free," they typically mean free of Jews.

Stephen Daisley: Why I love Israel

[T]here are plenty of reasons for Zionists to be gloomy on this, Israel’s 75th birthday, but there is one reason for optimism that outshines them all: Israel is 75. Israel was created; survived an immediate Arab effort to annihilate it; ingathered the survivors of the death camps; settled the land and built kibbutzim; struggled through the lean and lonely years; triumphed in the Six-Day War and reunited Jerusalem; pulled through the Yom Kippur War; endured two intifadas; rescued Beta Israel and welcomed the refuseniks; lost Yamit, lost Rabin, lost Gush Katif; made the desert bloom with fruits and microchips; and made peace with Arab nations. All of that in 75 years and, despite impossible odds, Israel lives yet.

Israel is a hard country and for many a hard country to love. It is flinty but whiny, eager for the world’s love but diplomatically tin-eared, unsentimental but gripped by existential angst. It is a country that adores its army and reveres military discipline but is so hectically informal that you wonder how it made it to 75 days, let alone 75 years. It also boasts the highest density of rude people in the known universe, although I find that strangely endearing. I have never loved Israel more than the time the manager of a Tel Aviv minimart yelled at me for a) not speaking Hebrew, b) being a foreign journalist, and c) coming in to shop when she was trying to watch TV. Only in Israel, the innovation nation, could they invent the inconvenience store.

If Zionism is the theory, Israel is the practice and like all practical translations of idealism it is compromised, haphazard, sometimes unsightly, and occasionally disheartening. But that tension between Zionism and Israel, between ahavat and ha’aretz, is where the great debates take place and where the course of Jewish history can be set or changed. Israeli independence, as it reaches 75 years, is still a miraculous application of a mundane idea: Jewish self-determination.

Israel Independence Day: Celebrating 75 Years with Natan Sharansky

Former Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky's personal journey reflects that of the Jewish people, and the centrality of Israel in his life and Jewish identity mirrors the experiences of so many Jews around the world.

Sharansky: "The existence of Israel and, in a way, the existence of the Jewish people is the best demonstration of the importance of these two basic desires of people - to be free and to belong."

"For a thousand years, what were we fighting for? For our right to live freely in accordance with our identity. And then Israel was established. It could not be created as a non-Jewish state and it would never have succeeded in gathering all the Jews if not for its freedom." "There is no other nation or any other state which embodies the strength of this connection. And if you look at history and compare us with Israel 50 years ago, we have much more freedom and much more identity. We have far more of a Jewish and democratic state, so that's the direction we're heading in....Our history and our triumphs are the best proof of how important it is for these two things to go together." "I grew up [in the Soviet Union] having zero connection with anything Jewish except through antisemitism....It was Israel that came in a very powerful way to the center of our life, from the Six-Day War, and it allowed us to discover our identity, that we have a history, we are a people and we have a state. That gave us the strength to fight for our Jewish rights and for a better world."

"When people simply want tikkun olam [repairing the world] without any identity...your life is very shallow. Look at how all these Birthright kids - whose bar mitzvah was the last time they've had a connection to being Jewish - suddenly discover that it's cool and even interesting to live inside history....Suddenly, they have energy, meaning and understanding....In this age, there is no better way to quickly give Jews a brief injection of the importance and meaning of discovering their Jewish identity than coming to Israel."

By their own success criteria, BDS has been a massive failure

The website for the BDS Movement has a FAQ section that asks, "What has the BDS movement achieved so far?"

The very top achievement is listed as:

BDS was a major factor behind the 46% drop in foreign direct investment in Israel in 2014, according to a UN report.

How have direct investments in Israel done since then?

If BDS is taking credit for the 46% drop in direct investment in 2014 then the 255% increase since then must be viewed as a huge BDS failure.

Also, the UN report did not say what BDS claims. It quoted a Newsweek article which in turn quoted a YNet article where one of the authors of the report said:

"We believe that what led to the drop in investment in Israel are Operation Protective Edge and the boycotts Israel is facing," Dr. Roni Manos of the College of Management and one of the authors of the report's summary told Ynet. According to her, these are only conjectures that can explain the sharp decline, but there is another reason. "In the past there were large transactions such as Waze and ISCAR Metalworking which boosted investment, but over the past year there were not enough such deals.

So BDS is not only trying to hide the statistics since 2014 that disprove its "victory," it even lied about the reason for the 2014 anomalous decline itself.

The BDS Movement FAQ goes on:

A Rand Corporation study predicts BDS could reduce Israel’s GDP “by 1 to 2 percent” annually over the next 10 years.

That Rand study says, "Historical evidence from other countries suggests that financial and trade sanctions associated with boycott, divestment, and sanctions could reduce GDP by 1 to 2 percent. "

In other words, it was a wild guess for the purposes of making economic forecasts based on various scenarios, not a prediction for Israel.

Rand wrote that in 2015. How has Israel's GDP done since then?

Israel's GDP increased from $314 billion in 2014 to $488 billion in 2021, an increase of 55% and an average increase of nearly 8% a year.

It doesn't appear that BDS has hurt the Israeli economy at all. On the contrary, Israel has thrived and BDS has not affected it in the least.

By the Israel-haters' own standards, on their own FAQ today, BDS has failed.

Now, I have said that economic damage is not really BDS' aim - demonization of Israel is. By that criterion, they have been successful. But part of that success is because they have been lying about Israel to the world and too many people are believing them.

Here we see that they lie repeatedly to make themselves look successful, when by any economic criteria they have been an abject failure.

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!

The haters are now demanding Trader Joe's stop selling matzoh made in Israel

This Mondoweiss article reads like a parody:

Trader Joe’s prides itself on delivering great products at fair prices. And we agree that they deliver on that promise. So, when we saw that our favorite food store is now selling Passover Matzo made in Israel we had to act.

Trader Joe’s also has a reputation for being responsive to customers, so we started this campaign to tell them how disappointed we are in their decision to sell house branded Matzo prominently marked as a “product of Israel” or any other products labeled as “made in Israel.”

In support of the Palestinian Civil Society’s call to boycott all Israeli products, we never purchase Israeli-made products at Trader Joe’s or anywhere else, but that no longer feels like enough. It is important that we tell stores, and the good people who work in them, why we boycott Israel and how badly it reflects on stores when they sell products made in Apartheid Israel.

We hope that many people will join us by printing out this note to Trader Joe’s, signing it, and giving it to a manager in every Trader Joe’s that you shop in:

The funniest part of the Mondoweiss article was a selfie of co-author Seth Morrison smiling in front of the matzoh display with his "Palestine 1948" T-shirt. His smile makes it look like he is promoting the matzoh, not boycotting it!

This is way beyond activism and well into obsession territory. No one on Earth thinks that Palestinians are helped one iota from these ridiculous stunts, and it is obvious to all who care to think about it that this is not animated by concern for Palestinian human rights but visceral hate for the Jewish state.

Trader Joe's sells other Israeli products, including their own branded Bamba snack and "Israeli Feta Cheese." Horrors!

I can't wait for Sukkot when the haters start a campaign to boycott Israeli etrogim.

(h/t Roger K)

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!

The more they campaign to boycott Israeli dates, the more dates Israel sells!

Anti-Israel organizations have been organizing boycotts of Israeli dates every Ramadan for years.

Here's a campaign from 2008.

This year there are anti-Israel date campaigns from CAIR, American Muslims for Palestine, Inminds and many other Muslim organizations.

Let's see how effective these campaigns have been.

In 2008, when these campaigns began, Israel was the fourth-largest exporter of dates in the world, behind Tunisia, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. It had exports of 19 million kilograms with a value of some $50 million.

By 2021, Israel was the top exporter of dates worldwide, exporting nearly 120 million kilograms with a value of $332 million! It maintained that position in 2022.

While Israel does not export as many dates as some other countries, the dollar value is much higher - because the popular Mejdool dates are more expensive and Israel dominates that market.

Here are some charts of the top date exporters in recent years from another source:

It seems that Israel's date industry - which is now Israel's second biggest export crop after citrus - has thrived under the Muslim boycott of Israeli dates.

This is not just a BDS fail - it is a BDS nakba!

For Israeli date growers, it definitely is a Ramadan Mubarak!

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!

Jordanian dental association doing its part to uproot the Zionist entity, but Jordanian dentists don't play along

From Jordan's Ammon News:

The Council of the Jordanian Dental Association (JDA) announced that it will not participate in the AEEDC / Dubai 2023 conference, due to the confirmation of the participation of a Zionist delegation in the exhibition activities.

The JDA Tuesday called on all colleagues not to participate in this event, under penalty of union accountability.

The Council also addressed the Jordanian national companies for dental supplies, the Association of Dental Laboratory Owners, Dental Technicians, and all workers in the dental sector to adhere to boycotting the conference.

It is noteworthy that this refusal to participate in the AEEDC conference by the Jordanian Dental Association (JDA) is the third in a row for the same reason.

As far as I can tell, there are no Israelis even giving talks at the conference. The Jordanian Dental Association is boycotting the conference because two out of 570 exhibitors are from Israel!

Last year, the conference attracted 66,000 participants from 155 countries and the exhibition featured 4,800 products. The event generated some $3.9 billion of business deals.

Is the JDA hurting Israel, or itself, by not attending?

This is part of the old, outdated zero-sum mentality of the Israel haters. They are willing to definitely hurt themselves for an infinitesimal chance that they would hurt Israel. It is a hugely diluted version of the mentality that produces suicide bombers and car rammers.

The article says that the JDA boycotted the event last year as well. But guess what?

Plenty of Jordanians attended anyway!

Note also that many countries that have no relations with Israel had no problem attending.

It appears that the JDA threatened their members in 2021 not to attend as well, and also in 2022, but clearly most Jordanian dentists are not willing to hurt their careers by boycotting major events where they can learn the latest tools and methods.

It is another case of a boycott that pretends to be successful when in fact it fails miserably.

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!

What happens when they call a boycott and nobody cares?

Friends of Al Aqsa started a campaign to convince Pret a Manger not to open up stores in Israel.

It looks like they started their campaign on January 9, asking people to use the hashtag "#PretAPartheid."

It isn't exactly trending on Twitter on Facebook.

But they are trying to make it sound HUGE. So they have enlisted their fellow propaganda "news" sites, Middle East Monitor and Palestine Chronicle, to claim that "pressure is mounting" on Pret a Manger.

They claim that they have sent 350 emails to the company's president so far, which for a week-old campaign is not very impressive. And their social media hashtags are going nowhere.

They aren't giving up, trying to get Israel-haters to hand out leaflets at the store locations on January 28 (naturally, a Saturday.)

This isn't the only boycott that FOA has attempted that went nowhere. They are actually pretending to boycott Coca Cola for having a plant in Atarot - while Coke is enjoyed by Palestinians.

Perception is everything, and over the next couple of weeks you will see Israel haters pretend that this campaign is successful. But in the end it is all a means to get more people for Friends of Al Aqsa's mailing list.

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!

12/19 Links Pt2: The light of Hanukkah that has continued to shine for 74 years; General Washington’s Christmastime Hanukah Encounter; Children discover 2,000-year-old lamp in the ground

From Ian:

Daniel Greenfield: The light of Hanukkah that has continued to shine for 74 years

A candle is a brief flare of light. A wick dipped in oil burns and goes out again. The Hanukkah light appears no different, but it is.

Two thousand years after the Jews had come to believe that wars were for other people and miracles meant escaping alive, Jewish armies stood and held the line against an empire and the would be empires of the region.

And now the flame still burns, though it is flickering. Seventy-four years is a long time for oil to burn, especially when the black oil next door seems so much more useful to the empires and republics across the sea. And the children of many of those who first lit the flame no longer see the point in that hoary old light.

But that old light is still the light of possibilities. It burns to remind us of the extraordinary things that our ancestors did and of the extraordinary assistance that they received. We cannot always expect oil to burn for eight days, just as we cannot always expect the bullet to miss or the rocket to fall short. And yet even in those moments of darkness the reminder of the flame is with us for no darkness lasts forever and no exile, whether of the body of the spirit, endures. Sooner or later the spark flares to life again and the oil burns again. Sooner or later the light returns.

It is the miracle that we commemorate because it is a reminder of possibilities. Each time we light a candle or dip a wick in oil, we release a flare of light from the darkness comes to remind us of what was, is and can still be.

Israel is one of the most progressive countries in the world

While so-called “progressives” and biased media in the United States level a relentless stream of accusations against Israel, these “critics” uniformly ignore the fact that Israel is one of the most liberal, progressive nations in the world. If Israel’s “progressive” critics really cared about social justice, they would be the country’s most fervent supporters.

Enemies of Israel falsely accuse Israel of white colonialism, apartheid, ultra-nationalism, unfair treatment of its Arab citizens, LGBT “pinkwashing,” theocracy and violations of international law.

In fact, Israel is a mature democracy with high-functioning government and judicial institutions, plus a long track record of moral behavior and the rule of law. It guarantees expansive civil liberties, equal rights and economic opportunities to its citizens.

This includes, of course, Israel’s two million Arab citizens—20% of the population—who share all the benefits of Israeli society.

Israeli Arabs are currently represented in the Knesset by two political parties, one of which is an Islamist party that was part of the outgoing government. An Arab Muslim judge serves on Israel’s Supreme Court. An Arab Christian also served as a Supreme Court justice and was chair of Israel’s Central Elections Committee.

An Arab Muslim is the head of Bank Leumi, Israel’s largest bank. Arabs also make up 30% of the country’s doctors and 50% of the country’s pharmacists.

Thousands of Israeli Arabs volunteer for service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), even though military service is not required of Arab Muslims or Christians.

So much for the myth of Israeli apartheid.

General Washington’s Christmastime Hanukah Encounter

There is a particularly American Hanukah story that occurred when Washington and his troops were at Valley Forge during Christmas of 1777. Dan Adler’s article “Hanukkah at the White House” recounts this tale of George Washington’s encounter with a Jewish soldier: “In December, 1778, General George Washington had supper at the home of Michael Hart, a Jewish merchant in Easton, Pennsylvania. It was during the Hanukkah celebration, and Hart began to explain the customs of the holiday to his guest. Washington replied that he already knew about Hanukkah. He told Hart and his family of meeting the Jewish soldier at Valley Forge the previous year. (According to Washington, the soldier was a Polish immigrant who said he had fled his homeland because he could not practice his faith under the Prussian government there.) Hart’s daughter Louisa wrote the story down in her diary.” Rabbi Susan Grossman has written that, “[l]ike generations of Jews before him, that soldier served as a ‘light unto the nations’ (Isaiah 42:6), bringing inspiration and courage to a nation in its birth pangs. And he did so in a perfectly American way, a way in which a miracle did result, the miracle by which the light from one religion helps give comfort and courage to another.”

Washington “was welcomed at the home of Corporal Michael Hart,” which is described as “a two-story stone building on the southeast corner of the public square, directly opposite the courthouse. His general store was on the first floor, his residence on the second. Michael Hart’s wife, Leah, prepared a kosher meal... in honor of the Hanukah festival, it being the sixth day of the holiday.” (To offer a mild correction, December 21, 1778, was the eighth and final day of Hanukah that year, since Hanukah ran from sundown, Sunday, December 13, 1778, until sundown, Monday, December 21st.)

Further, Louisa Hart would “proudly record” in her diary: “Let it be remembered that Michael Hart was a Jew, pious; a Jew reverencing and strictly observant of the Sabbath and festivals, dietary laws were also adhered to although he was compelled to be his own Schochet [ritual slaughterer]. Mark well that he, Washington, was then honored as first in peace, first in war and first in the hearts of his countrymen. Even during a short sojourn he became, for the hour, the guest of the worthy Jew.”

Of course boycotting the Kiasma museum is antisemitism

From Algemeiner:

More than 200 artists have signed a statement pledging to boycott Finland’s leading gallery of contemporary art because of its links with a Finnish-Israeli philanthropist, in a move denounced as “antisemitic” by the Bishop of Helsinki and other public figures.

In the statement, the signatories pledged to “refuse to sell our labor and art” to the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki as long as it maintained links with the Zabludowicz Art Trust, an initiative of Chaim “Poju” Zabludowicz, a London-based billionaire who holds dual Finnish and Israeli citizenship.

Responding to the statement on Thursday, Helsinki’s Lutheran Bishop charged the artists with having adopted an antisemitic stance.

“If an individual Jew is held responsible for the actions of the state of Israel, or if an individual Jew is prohibited from supporting Israel, or if Israel as a state is required to do something more than other democratic states, we are guilty of antisemitism,” Bishop Teemu Laajasalo told Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat news outlet.

In a separate tweet, Laajasalo commented that “antisemitism has many faces. A neo-Nazi or an Islamist is identifiable. It is more difficult to recognize the Jew-hatred of the Academy or [among] culture workers.”

What, exactly, are the boycotters accusing Zabludowicz of?

Artforum writes:

Citing Zabludoiwcz Art Trust cofounder Chaim (Poju) Zabludowicz’s position as CEO of the private investment organization Tamares Group—a company founded by his father that indirectly supports the Israeli state via its stake in Knafaim, a provider of maintenance services to the Israeli Air Force—BDZ accuses the art trust and its subsidiaries (including the Zabludowicz Collection, Zabludowicz Art Projects in London, and Daata Editions) of “artwashing” what it describes as Israeli state policies of racism and apartheid by using “art and cultural activities in the UK to enhance the image of Israel.”

There is no doubt that Zabludowicz is a Zionist. But the boycotters need to exaggerate links between the museum and the IDF to justify boycotting the entire museum, so here is how they inflate it.

The Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art has eleven board members. One is Zabludoiwcz.

He is the head of many institutions, including owning a hockey team. He has given millions to art initiatives as well as medical research. He is also head of the Tamares holding company, which mostly invests in real estate (it owns 40% of downtown Las Vegas.)

Tamares has equity stakes in at least 25 companies covering a wide range of interests, including entertainment and technology. One of them is Kanafaim, which is in turn another holding company that has four business units, including El Al Airlines and Maintenance Wings. The latter provides maintenance services for the Israel Air Force.

This is a minuscule part of his holdings and the relationship between the museum, Zabludowicz's art ventures and Maintenance Wings is nonexistent.

Boycotting the museum because of this tenuous link makes as much sense as boycotting every company that includes Vanguard Funds as one of its major investors because Vanguard also invests in defense contractors.

Anyone can find an excuse to boycott any Jew they want if they look hard enough for a reason. And that is exactly what the boycotters here are doing - including every one of the 200 artists.

Every major art gallery and museum can find a patron that also invests in companies that are involved with ventures that some will consider unethical - if one is willing to dig for them.

But the interest in finding such links begins and ends with rich Jews.

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!

12/07 Links Pt2: Every Time You Wish Someone ‘Happy Hanukkah’ You Acknowledge The Historic Jewish Claim On Jerusalem; Israel is 5th safest country in the world for tourists

From Ian:

'Herzl is our George Washington and Thomas Jefferson all wrapped in one'

"Today, Theodor Herzl is best known for his beard, not his books," laments Gil Troy, editor of "The Zionist Writings of Theodor Herzl," in his introductory essay to a new edition of Herzl's diaries.

Troy, a professor of history at Canada's McGill University now living in Israel, wants to make Zionism's founders come alive for the next generation. His latest effort is a three-volume collection of Herzl's writings.

The brainchild behind the series is Matthew Miller, owner of Koren Publishers, a Jerusalem publishing house producing mainly religious texts. Drawing inspiration from the Library of America, a publisher of notable American classics and historical works, Miller decided to create a Library of the Jewish People to bring together the best writings from Jewish history in the fields of religion, the arts and politics.

"The Zionist Writings" are the first titles in that ambitious effort. They include a fairly comprehensive collection of Herzl's diaries and other works, including his play "The New Ghetto" (1894), of which Herzl biographer Alex Bein said, "Herzl completed his inner return to his people"; Herzl's 1896 manifesto "The Jewish State"; and important essays, like "The Menorah" (1897), showing how, through Zionism, Herzl reconnected with his Judaism.

The series uses translations from the original German made by historian Harry Zohn in the 1960s. Other works, like "The New Ghetto," are newly translated by Uri Bollag.

Troy, who spoke to JNS the day after the book launch at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, said the Herzl series is his fourteenth book project and the first where he stood before an audience and said "Shehecheyanu" – a Jewish prayer to give thanks for special occasions – both to mark the 75th anniversary of the date the UN General Assembly voted in favor of a Jewish state (Nov. 29, 1947) and to celebrate the launch of Library of the Jewish People.

"It's an attempt to invite the Jewish people to build a bookshelf, because we've been building a bookshelf for thousands of years, but most of us don't know the Jewish texts, the Jewish canon," he said.

Troy sees no better place to start than Herzl. "He's our George Washington and our Thomas Jefferson all wrapped in one," said Troy. "Washington's diaries are interesting, but they're not ideological. That's why, when talking about Herzl in American terms, we say he's a cross between Washington and Jefferson, because he's also a conceptualizer."

Troy, who pored through 2,700 pages of Herzl's diaries, described them as "a political-science version of an artist's sketchbook."

"Herzl draws in the contours of the Jewish state. He plans different dimensions from a flag to the architectural aesthetic, from labor-capital relations to the dynamics between rabbis and politicians," Troy writes in one essay.

Every Time You Wish Someone ‘Happy Hanukkah’ You Acknowledge The Historic Jewish Claim On Jerusalem

On Hanukkah eve, I tweeted out a somewhat reductionist thought commemorating the bloody Maccabean rebellion against the Seleucid Empire and their traitorous Hellenized Jewish accomplices. It seemed to upset some of my followers.

Every time you wish someone a Happy Hanukkah you are acknowledging the historic Jewish claim on Jerusalem. — David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) December 12, 2017

Why are you politicizing such a pleasant holiday? Does wishing someone a “Merry Christmas” now mean that you accept Jesus as your lord and savior?

Well, first of all, the story of Hanukkah isn’t pleasant. Violent, brutal, and passionate, maybe. But not pleasant. And of course wishing someone a “Happy Hanukkah” isn’t an endorsement of any theological position, any more than wishing someone Merry Christmas is (although we appreciate the recognition of the Jewish presence in ancient Bethlehem). Mostly it’s convention and good manners. Thank you.

Fact is, there isn’t a ton of theology to worry about. Hanukkah is not a Jewish “yom tov,” which in the literal translation means “good day” but in religious terms means the holiday was not handed to the Jewish people through the Torah. Unlike Passover or Yom Kippur, there are no restrictions on work. The two books that deal with the Maccabees aren’t Jewish canon. The “miracle of the lights” — which you might be led to believe is the entire story of the holiday — is apocryphal and was added hundreds of years later in the Talmud. (To be fair, the story of miraculous oil is far more conducive to the holiday gift-giving spirit than, say, the story of the Jewish woman who watched her seven sons being tortured and slaughtered by Antiochus because she refused to eat pork.)

But whatever reasons you have for offering good wishes, Hanukkah itself is a reminder that Jews have a singular, millennia-long historic relationship with Jerusalem. By the time Mattathias rebelled against Hellenistic Syrian king Antiochus, who had not only ordered a statue of Zeus to be erected in the Holy Temple but that swine be sacrificed to him, Jerusalem had likely been a Jewish city for more than 1,000 years. As some readers have suggested, Hanukkah might be the only Jewish holiday that celebrates events confirmed by the historical record. The Hasmonean dynasty, founded by Mattathias’ son Simon, is a fact.

11/06 Links: Melanie Phillips: How Jew-hatred has to fit the narrative; ADL creates 'more antisemitism,' divides Jews, black people -Candace Owens

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: How Jew-hatred has to fit the narrative

Last week, a Palestinian Arab terrorist murdered 50-year-old Israeli Ronen Hananya and injured 5 others. But Hananya was murdered in Kiryat Arba in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, and so was considered a “settler”. Since such Israelis are thus blamed for their own murder, Hananya’s killing went unreported by western media.

It was part of an escalating campaign of Palestinian Arab terror attacks in which 27 Israelis and others have been killed so far this year. Who can be surprised? For Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, has been calling on social media for “an escalation against the… settler herds”. That is, Israeli Jews.

Nazi-style antisemitic tropes demonising Jews constantly pour out of the PA. None of this is reported by the western media, which instead turns the Palestinian Arabs into martyred victims and the Israelis into their oppressors.

The watchdog Honest Reporting has revealed that a letter published last month on the Jew-baiting website Mondoweiss, signed by more than 300 Palestinian and Arab reporters, supported several journalists who had posted pro-Hitler messages on social media.

One signatory herself compared the Israel Defence Forces to Nazis. Another likened Jews to “dirt and rats” and, in response to a tweet about the death of a young Palestinian, replied: “Do you still ask why Hitler killed the Jews?”

Read anything about that in the mainstream media? Of course not. It doesn’t fit the narrative.

West’s views about Jews haven’t appeared in a vacuum. He’s channelling Jewish conspiracy theories and links between the Jews and Satan pushed by Nation of Islam’s leader Louis Farrakhan, as well as claims by the Black Hebrew Israelite group that black people are the real Jews and that “so-called” Jews have stolen their identity and birthright.

These views are commonplace in America’s black community. Yet Farrakhan is still indulged by the Democrats, and you won’t hear a peep about black antisemitism from the mainstream media.

Instead, everyone is “shocked” by a rapper’s Jew-hatred, while a murderous attack by an antisemite on a public figure is turned into a political football.

As if antisemitism weren’t bad enough, this makes it truly heartbreaking.

ADL creates 'more antisemitism,' divides Jews, black people -Candace Owens

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) creates more antisemitism, political commentator Candace Owens said on Saturday night in the wake of the Kanye West and Kyrie Irving antisemitism scandals, sharing a tweet by an anti-Israel activist claiming that the NGO created Jewish insecurity to justify Zionism.

"I think the ADL is like BLM [Black Lives Matter] and the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]. They create more antisemitism just like BLM created more racism." wrote Owens, explaining why she shared The Grayzone News editor Max Blumenthal's tweet. "They work only to further divide groups—in this circumstance, black and Jewish people."

In the tweet shared by Owens, Blumenthal had written that "White American Jews are living through a golden age of power, affluence and safety," and that "Acceptance of this welcome reality threatens the entire Zionist enterprise, from lobby fronts like the ADL to the State of Israel, because Zionism relies on Jewish insecurity to justify itself."

He added that Irving and West did not threaten American Jews in any concrete way, and the result of the ADL's attempt to justify its existence was "Jewish paranoia and Black humiliation is the result."
You are about to get into a lot of trouble for stating this.
Reminds me of when I said something similar about the NAACP and BLM way back when.
When you disrupt the trauma economy and call out the not-for-profits that benefit from it, you become their next target. https://t.co/gNbl9YsoZZ
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) November 5, 2022
Owens warned Blumenthal that he could "get into a lot of trouble" for his statements, and that she had experienced backlash over similar statements about BLM.

"When you disrupt the trauma economy and call out the not-for-profits that benefit from it, you become their next target," she said.

The US political commentator further called upon Americans to "fix fractured relations between Jewish and black Americans." She decried the cancel culture response to Irving and West.

I think the ADL is a partisan hack organization, too. But RTing Max Blumenthal, who spends his life covering for Jew-haters and stumping for Israel's destruction, makes the conversation significantly worse. It's garbage. pic.twitter.com/Y5hr6RwfjJ
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 6, 2022

10/19 Links Pt2: Why I think the Golden Age for Jews in America is coming to its end; The UN needs to be reimagined and reformed; Peter Bergson – The Unintended Hero of the Holocaust Era

From Ian:

Why I think the Golden Age for Jews in America is coming to its end - opinion

The New Antisemitism is becoming violent
The decline in the favorability of mainstream American views toward Israel has coincided with a rise in antisemitic violence, particularly in large metropolises, promoted by Islamo-Leftist groups. In New York City, more than half of hate crimes in 2019 targeted Jews. During the last major conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in May 2021, terror groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad launched more than 4,000 rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians. At the same time, we witnessed stunning and unprecedented scenes in New York, Los Angeles, and other American cities of Jews being assaulted by mobs of anti-Israel activists. This surge of anti-Jewish hate also included harassment, vandalism and online abuse.

With many Jews in America now fearing walking the streets in their kippot or wearing other items that identify them as Jewish or Zionist, or even speaking Hebrew in public, we are sliding in the direction of our European Jewish brethren—in fear and under siege, requiring more and more layers of security.

Meanwhile, many American Jews serve willingly as useful idiots for groups that despise us, divided our community, and weaken our resolve, under the pretext of legitimate critique of the Israeli government policies.

The end of the story for American Jewry?
While we undoubtedly face grave challenges as American Jews, we must not give up. Until now, due to lack of information and fear of rejection and persecution, many American Jews have been complicit as anti-Zionism morphs into the new antisemitism. Now is the time to stand up, fight back with all our remaining might and hold antisemites accountable.

We must form alliances with groups that share the same Judeo-Christian values of freedom and democracy, inspire today’s Jewish youth to be proud of their people and the Jewish homeland, and bring Israel back to the center of our Jewish life in the diaspora.

We must embrace Zionism as an integral part of our Jewish identity. We must engage in renewed efforts to strengthen the homeland of the Jewish people, ask Israel to empower and defend Jewish communities worldwide, and take stock of the strength our community possesses.

We must collectively demand a rejection of all forms of antisemitism, including and especially anti-Zionism.

James Kirchick: Calling Out an Antisemite

When I learned that Alice Walker and I would both be speaking at the same literary festival, I seized the chance to expose her views.

Fully a third of the Freedom Riders who risked life and limb to desegregate interstate bus travel in the early 1960s were Jews. So were many of the young men and women who took part in the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign to register black voters in Mississippi. The town of Philadelphia will always be remembered as the place where Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, two such Jewish activists from New York, and James Chaney, their black colleague from nearby Meridian, were murdered by white supremacists. President Barack Obama posthumously awarded them the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. An individual about whom I knew nothing until visiting the museum is Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, a civil-rights activist who earned the distinction of being the first white clergyman to have his home and congregation bombed by white supremacists in 1967.

The history and contemporary state of black-Jewish relations has been weighing on me since August, when I visited Jackson as a guest of the Mississippi Book Festival. I was there to present my book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, as part of a panel entitled “(Re)shaping Public Discourse,” alongside professors Eddie Glaude and Imani Perry, both of Princeton University, and the authors of books about James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, respectively. Also invited to address the festival, immediately after our panel, was Alice Walker, one of America’s leading African-American writers, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple—and a well-known antisemite.

Walker evinces her antisemitism primarily not through her own words, but in her enthusiastic promotion of David Icke, the ex-footballer and prominent proponent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion who simultaneously denies the Holocaust while claiming that the Jews perpetrated it against themselves. In 2013, Walker told the BBC’s Desert Island Discs that if she could keep only one book it would be his Human Race Get Off Your Knees, which purports to reveal the “sinister network of families and non-human entities that covertly control us from cradle to grave.” Asked by the New York Times what books were on her nightstand in 2018, she included in her response Icke’s And the Truth Shall Set You Free. In an exhaustive inventory of Walker’s antisemitism published in Tablet magazine, Yair Rosenberg observed that this tract alone contains the word “Jewish” 241 times and “Rothschild” 374 times. “These references are not compliments,” Rosenberg wrote.

John Ware: Rewriting history: Corbyn’s Labour Party, antisemitism and ‘Panorama’

The UK is facing economic meltdown. The world may be heading for nuclear Armageddon. Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, have been preoccupied with salvaging his reputation over the antisemitism crisis that dogged his leadership for more than four years.

Did Corbyn or his office interfere politically in antisemitism disciplinary cases when he was Labour leader — or did they not?

Disciplinary cases were meant to be determined by officials at Labour Party HQ independently of the Leader or his political advisers.

In April 2020 Corbyn supporters found vindication in a leaked internal report by Corbyn staffers which, perhaps unsurprisingly, concluded allegations of interference were “entirely untrue.”

Six months later, the statutory investigation into Labour by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) concluded there had been interference: “We found evidence of political interference in the handling of antisemitism complaints throughout the period of the investigation”, thereby unlawfully discriminating against Jewish members. The EHRC blamed a “lack of leadership” within Labour “which is hard to reconcile with its stated commitment to a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism.”

Then, last summer, Corbyn’s supporters were buoyed up by a report by the barrister Martin Forde KC which accused the mainstream media of being “entirely misleading” in how we reported allegations of interference.

So where, in this attritional battle for the truth, does the truth actually lie?

I must declare an interest because I presented the programme most often mentioned in the Forde Report: BBC Panorama’s “Is Labour antisemitic? ”transmitted in July 2019

A fortnight ago, the “Investigation Unit” of the Qatari-based Al Jazeera TV network piled in. Its central allegation against the BBC came from Corbyn’s Director of Strategic Communications, James Schneider.

He claimed to have “exposed” how Panorama had misleadingly presented evidence to suggest there was “unwarranted meddling” by Corbyn or his office “in antisemitism cases.”

Days after killing soldier, fugitive gunman shot dead attempting another attack

A Palestinian gunman suspected of killing an Israeli soldier in East Jerusalem earlier this month was shot dead on Wednesday evening, after opening fire at security guards near the entrance to the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim.

Police officials confirmed that Udai Tamimi, who they say killed Sgt. Noa Lazar, 18, and seriously injured a civilian guard on October 8 at a checkpoint near the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, was killed while carrying out another attack.

A security guard, 24, was taken by the Magen David Adom ambulance service to the Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, with an injury in his hand. He was listed in light condition, the hospital said.

Security camera footage of Wednesday’s attack showed a lengthy exchange of gunfire between Tamimi and the security guards.

Tamimi, 22, fled the scene of the attack earlier this month. He was thought by police to have been hiding in the Shuafat refugee camp since then.

Prime Minister Yair Lapid hailed the killing of Tamimi, and sent well wishes to the guard wounded in Wednesday’s attack, in a statement published by his office.

10/15 Links: Top Law Firms Fund Anti-Semitic Campus Groups at Berkeley; White House ‘deeply disappointed’ after Abbas tells Putin he doesn’t trust US

From Ian:

Nation’s Top Law Firms Fund Anti-Semitic Campus Groups at Berkeley

A host of the nation’s premier law firms are financially supporting organizations at Berkeley Law School that are accused of fostering anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel, according to a campus watchdog group.

Student groups at the elite law school, led by Law Students for Justice in Palestine, adopted what they called a pro-Palestine bylaw earlier this month pledging to ban all speakers who support "Zionism" or "the apartheid state of Israel." The resolution primarily targets Jews who identify as pro-Israel and support the Jewish state, fueling accusations of anti-Semitism among Berkeley law students.

An analysis by StandWithUs, a nonpartisan pro-Israel organization that combats anti-Semitism on campus, indicates that half of the student groups that backed the resolution are funded in part by some of the country’s most elite law firms, including Latham & Watkins, Jenner & Block LLP, and Cooley LLP. StandWithUs is demanding these firms pull their support from the student groups, but, as of Friday, none have committed to do so. A Washington Free Beacon request for comment to 10 of the law firms named by StandWithUs was not returned by press time.

Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs’s CEO and cofounder, told the Free Beacon that she is hopeful once these law firms learn that they are financially backing anti-Semitism, they will pull their support.

"It is hard to fathom that such distinguished law firms would knowingly sponsor student groups that support anti-Semitism by punishing Jewish students for aspects of their identity," Rothstein said. "We are hopeful that as these firms learn about what their grantees have done, they will publicly and rapidly condemn the antisemitic action and cease further sponsorship of groups who are perpetrators of such hate."

Analysts offer pros and cons on Lebanon maritime deal but agree it will not make Israel safer

Opponents of the deal, among them opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, also complained that the agreement was a capitulation to Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy and the most powerful force in Lebanon. In July, the terrorist group launched three unarmed drones at an Israeli gas rig, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned that “no one” would drill gas as long as Lebanon’s “rights” to extract gas were not upheld.

Amidror said his central question was how Nasrallah would react. “What will be the assessment of Nasrallah? … If, sitting with his people, he says, ‘Guys, we won. Israel collapsed under the pressure. … The Israelis retreated because they don’t want another war with Hezbollah, and let’s think what will be the next space in which we can blackmail them.’… it might lead to escalation,” Amidror said.

David Schenker, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs during the Trump administration, shared Amidror’s concern during the JINSA webinar. “The big question for me is whether this agreement makes Israel safer. And this is what we’re hearing from the Israeli government. This is what we heard from the IDF. I think it’s to be determined. It could go either way. And the problem of Hezbollah doesn’t go away because of this agreement. It could potentially exacerbate the problem,” he said.

Schenker also offered a positive note, saying the deal would essentially turn Hezbollah and its Lebanese Christian allies into Israel’s business partners. “The Israeli government got … [them] … to sign off on a document that essentially recognizes Israel. This has never been done. … This discredits Hezbollah at home [and] undermines a little bit the resistance narrative,” Schenker said.

Amidror said proponents of the agreement have argued that what matters is that Israel can start drilling immediately, something “more important than all the symbolic lines in the sea.” He agreed that with the threat from Hezbollah at least temporarily shelved, oil and gas companies will more readily agree to explore in the area.

The U.S. has agreed to mediate between French oil giant TotalEnergies and Israel. TotalEnergies will drill in Lebanese waters and as part of the deal, Israel is to receive a percentage of revenue from gas that extends over the Lebanese line into Israeli waters. The U.S. also said that it would guarantee Israel’s security and economic rights should Hezbollah challenge the agreement. The U.S. provided Israel with a letter to that effect, Israeli sources said.

“It’s a PR paper. Legally, no one is obliged to fulfill it,” Amidror said. Schenker agreed, saying, “This letter, if it exists, doesn’t have any legal weight.”

Both analysts expressed concern that some of the funds from an offshore gas windfall could end up in the hands of Hezbollah. “I think the Lebanese already fear that this money will disappear into the abyss of corruption,” Schenker said. “There’s no transparency. The state does not have a sovereign wealth fund. Already there are contracts … by Total and others to shell companies that are partially owned by some of the most corrupt political elites in Lebanon.”

“We can expect that not only will it help Hezbollah’s allies benefit, but that Hezbollah to some extent will benefit as well,” he said.

Majority of Israelis Support Maritime Deal, Poll Shows

The majority of Israelis support the maritime border deal with Lebanon, believing it was the appropriate measure notwithstanding the coincidence with the election, according to an opinion poll released on Friday.

For 47 percent of respondents to Channel 12‘s survey, the signing of the agreement some three weeks before a general election represents the right decision, while 36 percent oppose it and 17 percent have no opinion on the matter.

On a separate topic, 47 percent of respondent believe that Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s main motivations for concluding the agreement were of a “political” nature, while 41 percent say the leader was guided by considerations of what is best for the security and economy of Israel.

In addition, 57 percent of those polled believe that former premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to the agreement and his harsh criticism of Lapid are political, compared to 31 percent who believe that his positions are motivated by Israel’s security and economy.

Israel’s security cabinet voted on Wednesday afternoon in favor of the maritime border deal with Lebanon. The text is now subject to approval by the parliament.

Lapid hailed the Lebanon deal on Wednesday, saying it was “a great achievement for the state of Israel, for Israel’s security and for Israel’s economy.”

Netanyahu meanwhile accused the government of caving in to external pressures and putting Israel’s security at risk.