Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: BDSFail

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Friday, October 07, 2022

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.

10/04 Links Pt2: Campus Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Excludes and Targets Jews; Events at Berkeley Law Demonstrate a Campus Crisis on Antisemitism

From Ian:

Armin Rosen: Campus Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Excludes and Targets Jews

In practical terms, a reversal of DEI regimes’ determined obliviousness toward Jew-hatred probably wouldn’t help much. New York University is one of the only institutions that Stop Antisemitism surveyed to include Jews in its DEI efforts; it is also one of three universities in the report to have received formal federal-level complaints from a Jewish student under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Heritage study examined student surveys on the state of campus life at schools with DEI bureaucracies of varying size and found that “there appears to be little relationship between DEI staffing and the diversity climate on campus.” In an April 2021 story, Tablet’s Sean Cooper reported that despite their newfound ubiquity and high cost, there is shockingly little proof that DEI programs result in more tolerant workplaces and college campuses or reduce racism.

The DEI regime is often framed as a brave and honest reckoning with structural racism, educational inequity, individual bigotry, and other abiding sources of establishment shame. In fact, the purpose of DEI, and perhaps of the ideological and quasi-spiritual project underlying DEI, is to delay or deflect hard conversations about how universities operate, or any awkwardly critical assessments of the value of the education they provide, or the kinds of spaces and citizens they now produce. If it had any other purpose but creating a false edifice of reassurance and moral rectitude, campus DEI would have a lot to say about the higher education system’s continuing role as a locus of American antisemitism, rather than nothing at all.

Campus DEI regimes’ total lack of interest in antisemitism makes it obvious that Jews are not seen as part of the social justice mission of the university. Then again, much of the organizational architecture and bureaucracy of the contemporary university, from the stringency of the admissions process, to the emphasis on “diversity” itself, originated with the institutions’ attempts to keep Jews out, as Tablet has been recounting in Gatecrashers, a podcast exploring the history of antisemitism within the Ivy League.

One key difference between now and the 1920s, when the last largescale movement to exclude Jews from American campus life happened, is that Jews now lead and hold prestigious tenured chairs at major American universities, which host entire academic departments devoted to Jewish life and learning. That thousands of Jewish faculty and administrators, as individuals and as scholars, have allowed this resurgence of academic scapegoating and exclusion of Jews from campus life to happen with only occassional bursts of dissent is striking, at least to anyone who doesn’t spend their life on campus.

The institutional world’s hesitation to examine or even acknowledge its antisemitism problem points to a larger academywide fear of confronting institutional sins of the type that have little to do with Harvard’s or Yale’s involvement in the slave trade 200 years ago. Today’s universities are content with being unaffordable behemoths and lifestyle brands for the same reason they remain uninterested in the antisemitism they have historically practiced and indulged. The academy’s flaws, and the literal and figurative costs they arrogantly impose on the rest of American society, fall outside the purview of institutions that are rushing to add thousands of administrators who are supposedly dedicated to making the world a more tolerant and equitable place. In truth, the goal of these universities in a moment of disorienting and unpredictable social and political change is to protect their cartel from the scrutiny it has earned through its glaring inability to productively educate millions of students, and its determination to saddle ordinary taxpayers with the cost of its failures.

The future of American Jews on campus

To today’s college students: You are not the first generation of Jews to endure anti-Jewish animosities. You will not be the last. Do not begrudge these years; they can make you better. Nothing inspires us more than the fight for principle. Moral sentiment and grim resolve lift the heart and stiffen the spine. We get better through moral struggle. Rediscover your Jewish pride. Fight back – and fight back hard. Fight as hard as our opponents. You will find many allies, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Do not ignore the outrages perpetrated against you and fellow Jews on American campuses. We have learned throughout Jewish history that if we allow these anti-Jewish mindsets to fester, eventually antisemitism worsens. To ignore antisemitism is to allow the culture of Jew-hatred to settle in institutions, rendering its eradication much more difficult. Antisemitism devastates not only Jews, but also the institutions and societies that allow or encourage it.

You are the future. My generation will continue for a while longer, but it is you who will determine the destiny of American Jewish life. Whether you are ready or not, whether you even want it or not, we will soon hand the Jewish torch to you, as we received it from our parents. The reason there are Jews in the world today is that the Jews of yesterday willed it and bequeathed Judaism to us. I feel blessed for the privilege of spending a few years in the sun, linking your generation with generations past in our eternal quest for meaning.

When you reach mid-life, Israel will be celebrating its centennial. I hope I will be there with you. In 2048, we expect that two-thirds of the world’s Jews will be living in Israel. There will still be plenty of anti-Zionists. Israel will still have enemies seeking to destroy it. But Jewish anti-Zionism will be an anachronism. The historians of tomorrow will view today’s anti-Zionist Jews as the historians of yesterday viewed past fringe Jewish movements: a streaking comet blazing through the skies of Jewish life, making a dramatic impression in the crazed intensity of these times, but soon disappearing into the vast nothingness of Jewish time.

This is the irony: the struggle against Israel waged by some American Jews, is not really about Israel at all. Israel will survive and prosper with or without them. It is about you. It is about the future of American Judaism. We cannot survive separated from the vast majority of our people. Jews who tell you otherwise are deluded.

Looking back through the centuries, it has been a long, hard, tragic march from Sinai. But the journey has also been filled with exhilarating accomplishment, transcendent meaning, and noble purpose. I hope you feel this, sense this, and are empowered by it. I hope that you, too, will do what our ancestors did: Walk the long and winding Jewish road with faith in the ultimate redemption of our people and all people.

University of Toronto Newspaper Column Refers to Israel’s Creation as “Nakba” – Catastrophe

In a column published on October 2 in the Arts & Culture section of The Varsity, the University of Toronto’s student newspaper, entitled: “Finding a voice through storytelling at the 15th annual Toronto Palestinian Film Festival,” Milena Pappalardo reviews the 2022 Toronto Palestinian Film Festival (TPFF), which ran in late September.

Pappalardo’s commentary was peppered with anti-Israel disinformation, beginning with her background of the TPFF creation in 2008, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, Arabic for the catastrophe, which Pappalardo explains “is a sombre day in Palestinian history that commemorates when Israeli militias terrorized and forcibly removed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people from their homes during the establishment of Israel in 1948.”

This oft-repeated proclamation, made frequently by anti-Israel activists, is extraordinarily misleading.

On May 14, 1948, following the United Nations Partition Plan, Israel declared its independence, marking the rebirth of the Jewish nation-state for the first time in almost two thousand years.

Almost immediately, the tiny reborn country was invaded by surrounding Arab armies, attempting to destroy the nascent Jewish State before it had a chance to defend itself. Living inside the new state were hundreds of thousands of Arabs, as well as Jews, and while it is true that roughly 750,000 Arabs were displaced during this period – similar in number to the 800,000 Jews forcibly exiled from their homes in Islamic lands – Pappalardo has missed the true culprit.

Historian Benny Morris noted that Arab leaders actively encouraged their community members to leave the country as a strategic move. “Arab officers ordered the complete evacuation of specific villages in certain areas, lest their inhabitants ‘treacherously’ acquiesce in Israeli rule or hamper Arab military deployments,” he wrote in “The Birth of the Palestinian Problem Revisited.”

Terror group publishes great list of BDS Fails last month

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) is one of those communist terror groups, like the PFLP, that tries to destroy Israel both with bombs and with BDS. And left-wing "human rights" groups love to conveniently overlook the bombing part.

Anyway, the DFLP published a list of announcements about BDS for August, whether praising pro-BDS actions or condemning "normalization" with Israel. It turns out the list of things it condemns is a great list of BDS failures.

Here is their inadvertant list of good news for Israel in August:

The American Sierra Club returns to sponsoring annual trips to Israel, which includes hiking in a variety of nature and wildlife reserves, as well as walking tours in places such as the Old City of Jerusalem, Caesarea and Jaffa.

An Israeli delegation of investors, technicians and commercial officials visited Indonesia, with the aim of identifying opportunities for investments, projects, start-ups and social impact initiatives, to complement the Israeli initiatives to normalize with a number of Islamic countries.

Israel's El Al Airlines started flying into Saudi airspace.

French channel BFMTV edited out an excerpt from the interview with a French journalist denouncing Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced the resumption of diplomatic relations with Turkey.

Bahraini hotels began to offer Israeli channels.

The UAE is financing the construction of an Israeli sports stadium.

Morocco signed an agreement to build the Israeli embassy in Rabat.

Israel announced the establishment of a joint industrial zone between Israel and Jordan.

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!

David Friedman's "Sledgehammer" -- Should All US Ambassadors to Israel Have Law Degrees? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

From the time that Donald Trump won the election in 2016 -- and even before then -- there was nothing he did or said that was not open to criticism. After all, he had never held public office before and had no experience in government.

A similar criticism was applied to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

An online post on The National Review in 2020 called Kushner "a national disaster":

Perhaps the most stubbornly stuck-on piece of chewed gum on the White House walls has been Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, who, it is always necessary to point out, had no experience in anything like government before being catapulted to one of the most important roles in the administration. [emphasis added]

This was in May. By September, Politico featured a post describing How Jared Kushner Proved His Critics Wrong:

It was assumed to be ridiculous that Trump had tapped the 39-year-old Kushner, not a diplomat or an expert in the region, for this role and assumed that everything he did afterward was ridiculous, if not nefarious.

Rarely has so much mockery been directed at an approach that, in the event, was methodical, creative, and ultimately achieved a breakthrough.

Kushner did not make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, but no one else has, either. What he did was find a path for historic deals to normalize relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, with perhaps other Arab countries to follow. [emphasis added]

In his book Sledgehammer: How Breaking With The Past Brought Peace To The Middle East, David Friedman turns around the issue of experience back at the critics:

The US-Israel policy that existed when we took office was simply beyond repair. It was dominated by self-proclaimed experts with no real-world negotiating experience. [p. 8; emphasis added]

This problem of "experts" lacking the key skill of knowing how to negotiate has been an issue in the Iran deal as well.

Actually, the criticism about lacking expertise leveled at Kushner could easily be applied to Friedman as well. He himself readily points out that he was the first US ambassador to Israel with no previous diplomatic or government experience. [p. 49]

But while Kushner brought skills as a negotiator, Friedman was skilled as a lawyer and litigator. Many of the accomplishments of the Trump administration in the Middle East were a result of Friedman's knowledge of the law in general and his legal skills and ability to analyze a problem.

Friedman became the US ambassador to Israel on March 29, 2017 -- and hit the ground running.

He had a meeting in the State Department with the Office of the Legal Adviser -- and asked outright why the US did not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as required by the Jerusalem Act of 1995. In response, he got a lecture on how that law was subject to a presidential waiver and was an option exercised by both Democratic and Republican presidents ever since the law was first enacted.

Friedman's response was to point out that they were wrong, that they failed to see a key distinction:

The Jerusalem Embassy Act permits the move of the embassy to be delayed by presidential waiver. But the recognition of Jerusalem is not waivable--it simply is declared in the statute. [p. 65; emphasis in original]

The State Department lawyers refused to agree, but it is unlikely they had ever had their legal arguments parried by an ambassador before.

And it was only the beginning.

In September 2017, Friedman "began to push the envelope on political issues." In a press interview, he referred to Israel's control of Judea and Samaria as an "alleged occupation." He followed this up with another interview where he said that the West Bank settlements were part of Israel -- based on the fact that the residents serve in the IDF, have Israeli citizenship and are considered Israeli by the government. [p. 90-91]

That month Friedman also visited the UN with Trump. Trump spoke to the General Assembly, and so did Abbas, threatening to prosecute Israelis at the International Criminal Court. When the issue came up the following month, Friedman pointed out that by encouraging the ICC to prosecute Israelis, Abbas went against the diplomacy that the Palestinian mission was supposed to be engaged in -- which was legal grounds for closing the mission.

Rather than push the point and jeopardize the political capital needed down the line to make recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital a reality, he sent a note to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laying out the issue and saying he would abide by his decision. Tillerson started the process of setting the PLO mission on the path to closure. [p. 93-94]

By November 2017, the issue of official recognition of Jerusalem was on the front burner. Besides having to provide all the 'pro-recognition arguments' for a memo drawn up by the head of national security (the memo only contained the risks), Friedman also had to argue for recognition against Secretary of State Tillerson and National Security Advisor HR MacMaster in front of Trump. [p. 98-103]

He won the argument and the US officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on December 6, 2017. In February, the State Department claimed, however, that actually moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would take 10 years and cost a billion dollars. Friedman found a way to open the new embassy in 3 months at a cost of $150 thousand. Trump authorized $500,000 and the US embassy in Jerusalem opened on May 14, 2018 -- the 70th anniversary of Israel's independence. [p. 112]

Before May 14, 2018, the US Embassy was in Tel Aviv and the consulate (established in 1844) was in Jerusalem -- as a mission to the city rather than to the country as a whole. This made no sense once the state of Israel was established, and created conflicts since technically the US ambassador from Tel Aviv was out of his area of jurisdiction in Jerusalem, where he met with Israeli officials. On the other hand, the consulate administered to Jerusalem but did not have any responsibility for the US-Israel relations.

During the summer of 2018, with Mike Pompeo replacing Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, Friedman pursued these finer points of having the US embassy located in Jerusalem. As a result, Pompeo announced on October 18, 2018:

I am pleased to announce that following the May 14 opening of the US Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem, we plan to achieve significant efficiencies and increase our effectiveness in merging US Embassy Jerusalem and US Consulate General Jerusalem into a single diplomatic mission. I have asked our Ambassador to Israel David Friedman to guide the merger. [p. 140-146]

The issue of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights came up a couple of months earlier, in March 2018. It was an issue that Netanyahu was pushing. On the US side, national security advisor John Bolton raised the issue with Friedman, who saw it as an application of UN Security Council Resolution 242 entitling Israel to "secure and recognized borders," a framework which could then be extended to the Vision for Peace being worked on for Israel and the Palestinians. Friedman then raised the issue with Trump, who agreed with the idea. [p. 156-157]

By September 2019, with another round of deadlocked elections in Israel, Friedman addressed the State Department's use of the term "occupied territory." He writes that:

I was willing to go along with "disputed territory" or even "West Bank," but I wanted the nomenclature changed to eliminate the term "occupied." I argued that territory is "occupied" only when the party in control has no rights to the land except by reason of military conquest--and that was not the case here. [p.161]

According to Friedman, following the Six Day War, the captured territory was considered disputed. It was Carter, who saw settlements as an obstacle to peace, who had Herbert Hansell, the legal advisor to the State Department, issue a 4-page memo claiming that they were illegal.

In his book, Friedman lists "basic errors" in the Hansell Memo.

o It fails to acknowledge that Israel's legal right to the "West Bank" was confirmed by both The Balfour Declaration and San Remo Resolution and incorporated into the League of Nations resolutions that were the legal basis for restructuring the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

o Hansell claims Israel is a belligerent occupant in relation to Jordan, but fails to show how that is relevant when Jordan itself had no legal claim to the territory.

o He claims the settlements are the result of illegal "forced transfer" when in fact Israel did not force anyone to move.

o The memo also does not account for the fact that the Six Day War was a defensive war.

o Hansell does acknowledge that belligerent occupancy would no longer apply if the state of war would end between Israel and Jordan -- and it did, making the Hansell memo irrelevant.

For his part, Friedman asked a group of lawyers to provide support for the Trump administration's view that the West Bank was not occupied:

I'm asking the question because in the circumstances you have outlined, where legitimate arguments can be made on either side of an issue, I would think you would want to act at the direction of your client...

Guys, when Jimmy Carter wanted an opinion from his State Department legal adviser that settlements were illegal, he got it from Hansell. Not a dissertation on the various positions or an acknowledgement that things could go either way. He got a full-throated finding of illegality. Why isn't Mike Pompeo entitled to the same courtesy, assuming what he's asking for is intellectually honest?

Friedman is not making an obscure point.

Carter did not ask Hansell for a legal decision evaluating the different sides to the issue. What he asked for was legal justification for a position that had already been made by the Carter administration and given to Hansell to support.

Here is the beginning of the Hansell Memo:

Dear Chairmen Fraser and Hamilton:
Secretary Vance has asked me to reply to your request for a statement of legal considerations underlying the United States view that the establishment of the Israeli civilian settlements in the territories occupied by Israel is inconsistent with international law. Accordingly, I am approving the following in response to that request. [emphasis added]

Friedman was asking for the same courtesy from the lawyers, that given the different sides to the issue, they should support the position of the administration.

And that is what he got. On November 19, 2019, Pompeo announced:

After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate, this administration agrees with President Reagan. The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.

By saying the settlements were not per se illegal, the door was left open that individual settlements may be open to "local competing claims," but as a whole, the settlements were disputed, not occupied. [p. 161-165]

Earlier, in August 2019, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib announced their plan to visit "Palestine" -- a plan that the Israeli government resisted facilitating, because of their plans to exploit the trip against Israel. Israel had passed a law a year earlier, prohibiting tourists from advocating boycotts or sanctions against the country.

Friedman explains the nature of Israel's law:

Nothing prevented Israelis or Palestinians from engaging in this activity--the law simply prohibited foreigners from advocating boycotts of Israel on Israeli soil.
Many liberal Americans were opposed to this law. They argued that principles of free speech were paramount in balancing the issues. This argument missed the point. Israelis and Palestinians had free speech. But Israel had the right to control its borders and had no moral obligation to facilitate visits for those who sought Israeli's destruction. [p. 168; emphasis added]

When Friedman got a copy of the planned itinerary of Omar and Tlaib's trip, he saw that the visit was entitled "US Congressional Delegation to Palestine" and that the visit was focused exclusively on the West Bank with no meetings with Jews.

He considered this as crossing a line regarding US law and policy:

Not because it's my business who Israel lets into its borders, but because here were two isolated members of Congress seeking to establish a new foreign policy of the United States. The United States did not recognize a state or even a place called Palestine, and this end run around our policies and our values should not be tolerated.

The decision of what to do was Israel's to make, and Israel decided the visit violated Israeli law. When the decision was announced and there was an uproar in response, Friedman released a statement, which read in part:

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel is not free speech. Rather, it is no less than economic warfare designed to delegitimize and ultimately destroy the Jewish State. Israel properly has enacted laws to bar entry of BDS activists under the circumstances present here, and it has every right to protect its borders against those activists in the same manner as it would bar entrants with more conventional weapons.

...the Tlaib/Omar Delegation has limited its exposure to tours organized by the most strident of BDS activists. This trip, pure and simple, is nothing more than an effort to fuel the BDS engine that Congresswomen Tlaib and Omar so vigorously support.

Like the United States, Israel is a nation of laws. We support Israel’s application of its laws in this case.

By October 2020, one of the last things that Friedman wanted to accomplish was recognition by the State Department that US citizens born in Jerusalem would be recognized as having been born in Israel, and have that fact reflected in their passports. While it seemed a natural outgrowth of US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the State Department -- then still under the direction of Rex Tillerson -- blocked such a move.

But Mike Pompeo, on the other hand, was supportive -- but asked Friedman to work with the Legal Advisor to the State Department, the same office that had supported Tillerson in blocking the passport change. Friedman wrote a lengthy legal analysis showing that recognition had created a legal certainty that Jerusalem was in Israel. But the State Department lawyers responded that Jerusalem remained a final status issue. He offered a compromise, where US citizens born in Jerusalem had the choice to list Israel as their place of birth while retaining the option to list Jerusalem instead. With Pompeo's help, this was found acceptable. [p. 223-224]

As Trump's term started to draw to a close, Friedman addressed 3 bilateral agreements between the US and Israel -- and the "dirty little secret in the State Department." These agreements, The Binational Science Foundation, the Binational Industrial Research & Development Foundation, and the Binational Agricultural Research & Development Fund all contained the same limitation:

Projects financed by the Fund may not be conducted in geographic areas which came under the Administration of the Government of Israel after June 5, 1967, and may not relate to subjects primarily pertinent to such areas. [emphasis added]

In other words, the US government was officially boycotting research and development projects it was conducting with Israel in the West Bank. Fixing the problem required dealing again with lawyers was well as several government agencies and their insistence that no amendment could be made to the agreements without renegotiating them -- despite the fact that all that was at stake was deleting the one sentence.

Friedman arranged a special signing ceremony with Netanyahu at Ariel University for October 27, where the amending of the agreements would be formalized --

And I informed everyone involved that the necessary, and only the necessary, approvals must be obtained prior to October 27 or I would inform the secretary of state of all those who stood in the way of the ceremony and contributed to a diplomatic embarrassment. [p.225-226]

Problem solved.

One last problem addressed in November 2020 centered on how products made in the West Bank were labeled. Before the Oslo Accords, under US law such products could be labeled "MADE IN ISRAEL" -- but afterward, the labeling had to specify "WEST BANK," including products made in Area C, which were under Israeli control.

Friedman discussed the issue with the head of US Customs and Border Protection, whose main focus is avoiding confusion, rather than getting into geopolitics:

I explained to them that the term "West Bank" was itself misleading, as a product emanating from that area could be made under the authority of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, or the State of Israel. You can't get more confusing than that!

They came to an agreement where the labels would specify "Gaza" for the Gaza Strip, "West Bank" for the territory in Judea and Samaria controlled by the PA and "Israel" for the areas under Israeli control. [p.227-228].

Reading about the various issues that Ambassador Friedman focused on and was able to resolve, it is hard to believe that someone without legal training could have pinpointed the key points and pushed the legal arguments necessary. It would not have been enough to be pro-Israel. The proof is the fact that these issues were not resolved by the experienced US diplomats who preceded David Friedman. It also helped that he was not content with the status quo and was determined -- with Trump's backing -- to make necessary changes.

Friedman's knowledge and abilities as a lawyer helped, just as Jared Kushner's background and negotiating skills helped bring about the Abraham Accords.

But that is a different book.

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!

Activist who says Google demanded her relocation as retaliation for anti-Israel activities is lying

From The New York Times:

A Google employee who became the most visible opponent of a company contract with the Israeli military said on Tuesday that she would resign after claiming Google had tried to retaliate against her for her activism.

The employee, Ariel Koren, a marketing manager for Google’s educational products arm who has worked for the company for seven years, wrote a memo to colleagues announcing her plan to leave Google at the end of the week.

She spent more than a year organizing against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion agreement for Google and Amazon to supply Israel and its military with artificial intelligence tools and other computing services. Ms. Koren, 28, helped circulate petitions and lobby executives, and she talked to news organizations, all in an effort to get Google to reconsider the deal.

Then, in November, she said, came a surprising ultimatum from Google: Agree to move to São Paulo, Brazil, within 17 business days or lose your job.

Ms. Koren marketed educational products to Latin America and was based in Mexico City before moving to San Francisco during the pandemic. But, she said, there was not a clear business justification for the mandated move or its urgency, and a supervisor in Brazil told her that employees in São Paulo were working from home because of the pandemic.

But then we see this lone sentence:

Google and the National Labor Relations Board investigated her complaint and found no wrongdoing.

The NLRB dismissal letter shows that Koren's entire complaint is baseless - because Google's decision to move her role to Brazil came before she started her complaints about Israel and Project Nimbus: (I inserted her name in the redacted area.)

(I was skeptical at first, but this is definitely the correct dismissal letter, since that case number was linked in an article about Koren's complaint in March.)

The New York Times not mentioning this important fact is journalistic malpractice. It upends the entire point of the article.

Koren and the BDSers have been masterful at gaining outsized publicity since the Project Nimbus protests started.

The number of Google employees who protested the project is minuscule, but they still got their open letter published in The Guardian.

Then the BDSers pretended that there was a "shareholder revolt" which was similarly grossly exaggerated - but it generated a headline at The Intercept.

After that fizzled, the BDSers asked US students to sign a "pledge" that they will not accept internships at Google and Amazon, and again very few signed - but it was enough for them to trumpet it as a victory.

Koren's false claim that Google is retaliating against her was chapter four in this monomaniacal attempt to demonize Israel and pressure Google. Since there have been a number of similar retaliation complaints against Google in recent years, this one has received more publicity than the others did. Check out this March Los Angeles Times headline:

Koren's quitting Google is chapter five. After all, if her work environment was so toxic, she would have left Google long ago. But she wanted to squeeze out one more wave of anti-Israel articles - and the New York Times is happy to do its part.

I'll bet that Koren has been job searching for months and has another position lined up - but is framing her changing jobs, among Silicon Valley's constant employee turnover, as a principled decision to resign from Google.

(h/t Michael Starr/Jerusalem Post, David Bernstein, David Litman)

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Roger Waters opposes "occupation" - except when he supports it. A real mystery.

Israel-hater and antisemite Roger Waters is in the midst of a North American tour. The Times of Israel writes about the concert and the protesters outside his New York show on Tuesday.

Waters puts political messages on a massive screen, and among them are messages about how awful "occupation" is.

Waters became a spokesperson for BDS in 2011, so it is safe to say that he held these opinions for over a decade.

Moreover, Waters has said that any artists performing in Israel endorse the Israeli government.

If all that is true, then how come he performed Pink Floyd's "The Wall" in 2013 - in Istanbul, Turkey? You know, the country that occupies part of Cyprus?

Waters, in his own words, must endorse the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus.

Which means Roger Waters, human rights activist, endorses occupation.

And indeed he does. After all, Roger Waters has said that he supports Russia in the current war in Ukraine, which is a war of occupation, and he supports Russia's occupation of Crimea.

How to reconcile these two opinions about occupation?

When he says "FUCK OCCUPATION," he must mean "...but only if it can be blamed on Jews. Otherwise, carry on!"

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The Arab League calls to restart the Israel boycott. (They do this every year.)

From KUNA, the Kuwait News Agency, July 31:

The Arab League called on the Arab States on Sunday to reactivate the boycott of Israel, describing it as a peaceful resistance to press Israel to abide by international resolutions.
The League Assistant Secretary-General for Palestine and the Occupied Arab Territories Affairs Saed Abu Ali made the remarks at the 95th meeting of the Arab boycott offices in Cairo.
He said Israel's international boycott had achieved success at both popular and official levels.

Compare with an Arab League press release from October 24, 2017:

The Arab League (AL) called on Arab States on Monday to reactivate boycott of Israel, describing it as a peaceful resistance to press Israel to abide by international resolutions.
AL Assistant Secretary General for Palestine and the Occupied Arab Territories Affairs Saed Abu Ali made the remarks at the 91st meeting of the Arab boycott offices in Cairo.
He said that the international boycott of Israel had achieved success at both popular and official levels.

Yes, they are practically word for word the same.

And the idea of an Arab League boycott is now a joke with direct trade relations between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain and the UAE, and indirect relations with who knows how many others.

But the Arab League Boycott Office continues with its annual or semi-annual meetings, and they have to justify their existence, so they call the reactivate the boycott. Again and again.

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IfNotNow says Judaism has no intrinsic meaning. Which is pretty much the definition of antisemitism.

Yesterday, IfNotNow published a "havdalah service" for people who were campaigning for Andy Levin in Michigan - "Jews for Andy."

Havdalah is meant to separate the Sabbath from the weekday, but for these people, it was done in broad daylight, which is something we have seen anti-Israel groups do before.

This was also done in a "Jews for Rashida" "Passover seder" held in 2020 where the entire idea of a seder was subverted and perverted for political ends.

In this case, though, IfNotNow tried to pre-empt any criticism with this tweet:

To all the trolls ready to dunk on a Havdalah ceremony while there’s still light out — you’re just telling on yourself when you police others’ Jewish practices.

There’s no right or wrong way to be Jewish.

It didn't work out for them. As of this writing, this tweet has been "ratioed" 3-1, one of the relatively rare cases where far more people comment negatively to a tweet than click on "Like." My comment was, "So I can light a Christmas tree and call it a Chanukah menorah? I can have a Yom Kippur feast and call it a fast? I can replace a shofar with a kazoo?"

Yet the tweet says a great deal about the Israel haters who claim Jewish legitimacy and their relationship with Judaism.

To these "progressives," anyone can declare themselves to be anything and this must be respected because it is "their truth." But that cheapens and ultimately makes worthless the religion they claim to respect. If there are no rules, then being Jewish means nothing. It is as absurd as saying that there is no right or wrong way to be a vegan, or no right or wrong way to play soccer, or no right or wrong color of a stoplight to decide to go.

But Judaism isn't completely worthless to these "progressives." To them, it is a prop - declare themselves Jewish, do something that vaguely resembles a Jewish tradition, tie it to a political cause and then discard it.

This isn't "pick and choose" Judaism. This is claiming that Judaism simply has no value or meaning except for selfish political reasons.

And if you proclaim that Judaism has no intrinsic value, then you are an antisemite.

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100 years of the antisemitic boycott movement

(From a Twitter thread)

BDS in 1922.

The American Israelite, Cincinnati, Ohio, 09 Nov 1922 (JTA)

BDS in 1923.

The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, 30 Mar 1923 (JTA)

BDS in 1925.

The Tablet, Brooklyn, New York, 11 Jul 1925

BDS in 1929.

Lansing State Journal, Lansing, Michigan, 19 Dec 1929,

BDS in 1936.

The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, 30 Oct 1936

BDS in 1937.

Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, the Evening News, 18 Feb 1937

BDS in 1945.
The Daily Telegraph, London, 04 Dec 1945

BDS in 1946.

AP, July 16, 1946

BDS in 1947.

AP, October 16, 1947

BDS in 1950.

AP, May 16, 1950

BDS in 1956.

St. Louis Jewish Light, 27 Jul 1956

BDS, 1963.

The Boston Globe, 10 Dec 1963

BDS, 1975.

Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi (AP), 13 Feb 1975

And even as late as 1986, it was obvious that the Arab boycott was against Jewish goods and services - not "Zionist."

The Daily Telegraph, London
31 Jan 1986,

All of these articles are clear that the boycotts were against Jews, not "Zionists" or "Israelis." And it became even more obvious after 1948, when Arab nations asked potential partners whether they had any Jewish officials before doing business with them.

BDS today claims not to be antisemitic, but as these news clips show, it is a direct extension of the older boycotts.

And BDS today does not boycott Arab Israeli businesses - only Jewish.

The BDS movement is a century-old antisemitic movement.

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The BDS Cult protesting Israeli team at Tour de France

It turns out that the BDS movement has been energetically calling for the Tour de France to ban an Israeli team, with multiple protests at different venues of the event.

Outside BDS social media, no one has noticed.

BDS France has been spending hours on protests that are not noticed by anyone, at each stage of the event.

Their major "victory" was to paint their message where the cyclists would speed by at the start of the race in Copenhagen:

They placed a Palestinian flag on a beach adjacent to another stage in Calais on July 5, where again no one noticed.

In fact, they are planning protests every day at different spots:

July 8: 7th stage Tomblaine – La super Planche des Belles Filles, 176.3 kmJuly 9: 8th stage Dole – Lausanne (Switzerland), 186.3 kmJuly 10: 9th stage Aigle (Switzerland) – Châtel, 192.9 kmJuly 11: rest in Morzine12 July: 10th stage Morzine – Megève, 148.1 km13 July: 11th stage Albertville – Col du Granon, 151.7 km14 July: 12th stage Briançon – Alpe d'Huez, 165.1 km15 July: 13th stage Bourg d 'Oisans – Saint-Etienne, 192.6 km16 July: 14th stage Saint-Etienne – Mende, 192.5 km17 July: 15th stage Rodez – Carcassonne, 202.5 km18 July: rest in Carcassonne19 July: 16th stage Carcassonne – Foix, 178.5 km20 July: 17th stage Saint-Gaudens – Peyragudes, 129.7 km21 July: 18th stage Lourdes – Hautacam, 143.2 km22 July: 19th stage Castelnau-Magnoac – Cahors, 188.3 km23 July: 20th stage Lacapelle- Marival-Rocamadour, 40,7 km (individual time trial)July 24: 21st stage Paris La Défense Arena – Paris Champs-Elysées, 115.6 km

Each of these actions take hours to organize, all for a few seconds of shouting, as can be seen in this video:

One gets the impression that the point of these protests isn't so much to attract people to the cause, or even to garner news coverage.

It is to keep their members in their cult.

Psychology Today describes how cults work:

Cult leaders want people who will be obedient to them and their rules. They look for ways to “break” people; they want people who will work hard and long hours for little or no pay. They want “willing” slaves.... When the mind is controlled, a victim may appear happy and willing to suffer for the profit or benefit of the leader/group.

For members, happiness comes from "good" performance within the group, along with elitist thinking—believing they have the "truth" or the the best way of life. But strict obedience is required.

Cult leaders must spend at least as much time keeping their members from defecting as they do in attracting new members. To do this, they need to use mind control techniques, such as forcing their members to work hard at activities that keep them from thinking about anything else but their cause and having them engage in repetitive chanting.

When you look at these protests from that perspective, it all makes sense. Latent antisemitism helps recruit people to the cause, but cult techniques keep them there.

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Hamas Understands Israel Has A Means Of Deterrence That May Be Even Stronger Than Iron Dome (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Last week, Israel announced plans to build an industrial zone next to Gaza, creating thousands of new jobs for Palestinian Arabs. This news comes at a time when the number of Palestinian Arabs working in Israel has been increasing.

In an article for The Algemeiner, Elder of Ziyon notes data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics indicating that the number of Palestinian Arabs working in Israel has jumped:

The number of Palestinian workers in Israel and the settlements skyrocketed from 153,000 to 204,000, an increase of 33% in a single quarter. Of those, the number of workers in settlements — which the Palestinian Authority opposes — went up from 22,4000 to 31,000, an increase of 38%. [emphasis added]

Despite the PA's official disapproval of Arabs working in Judea and Samaria, historically they have had to admit that they cannot offer an alternative to employment in the settlements. Already in 2011, Shahar Saad, Secretary-General of the Palestinian Workers' Union

stated that despite the desire to implement the decisions of the PA leadership regarding the boycott of products and workers in the settlements, the implementation of that decision is difficult. According to him, the Palestinian Authority does not produce enough alternative jobs. [adapted from Google translation from Hebrew]

For Israel, creating jobs and providing employment for Palestinian Arabs makes sense, though the motivation differs between creating jobs for West Bank Arabs and Arabs from Gaza.

Last year, The Times of Israel reported that Israel was distributing 16,000 new work permits, in an effort to support the Palestinian economy which faced reduced international aid and a difficult year due to the pandemic. But more than shoring up Abbas,

“This measure will strengthen the Israeli and Palestinian economies, and will largely contribute to the security stability in the area of Judea and Samaria. Economic stability is the key to preserving security in the region,” said COGAT head Ghassan Alian in a statement.

That's all well and good for Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, but is Israel creating this new industrial zone in order to shore up Hamas in Gaza?

Back in 2020, The Associated Press reported that Israel was increasing the number of work permits for Gazans from 5,000 to 7,000. According to the article, this was part of an unofficial truce negotiated by Egypt between Israel and Hamas in exchange for a reduction in rocket fire from Gaza and in the number of weekly protests along the border.

But the following year, when additional permits were distributed, the rationale was different. There were 3,000 more work permits made available, bringing the number of permits up to 10,000. And this time the reason for the new work permits was clear:

COGAT said the permissions are “conditional upon the continued preservation of the region’s security stability for the long term.” [emphasis added]

Haaretz puts this into perspective.

In April, the paper claimed that according to Israel's military intelligence assessment, Hamas was not prepared for war and was unlikely to respond with its own violence in response to clashes between Arabs and Israeli forces in Jerusalem. But the reason for Hamas's reluctance was more than just because it was still recovering from the fighting last year. There are approximately 15,000 Gazans working in Israel, providing important support for the Gazan economy. But there is more to it than that:

These workers have become a powerful lobby in Gaza, and Hamas' leader in the enclave, Yahya Sinwar, is said to take their position into consideration. Any hasty action by Sinwar against Israel could prompt harsh criticism from this group.
...Sinwar, who was nearly deposed in an internal vote for Hamas' leadership last year, is now also taking credit for major infrastructure projects in Gaza. A war would endanger any progress the Gazan economy has made, and therefore, Israeli officials say, Sinwar would like to refrain from escalation. [emphasis added]

This would explain Sinwar's change in tactics, from inciting Gazans against Israel to inciting Arabs in Israel, claiming that Hamas is the defender of Al Aqsa and calling on them to attack Jews in order to defend it.

But Gazan employment in Israel is apparently not the only source of pressure on Sinwar.

Last week, Hamas announced that the health of one of the 2 Israeli hostages it holds is in danger. The terrorist group is trying to use them as bargaining chips to gain the release of terrorists and the periodic updates about their health is psychological manipulation towards that end. However, both of them suffer from mental illness, and because of the sympathy that creates, the Hamas exploitation of the hostages is not getting the leaders the response they expected.

And that is another problem for Sinwar:

Hamas needs a deal because of the important status of the security prisoners in the eyes of the Palestinian public, and because of a pledge that hasn’t been fulfilled: When Sinwar was released from prison in 2011, in the Shalit deal, he promised his associates who remained behind that he would help get them freed. [emphasis added]

When it was first suggested that Hamas should be included in the 2007 elections in Gaza, it was suggested that having the responsibilities of government would have "a moderating influence" on the terrorist group. The current situation is not a confirmation of that suggestion. The issue of Gazans working in Israel is not a moderating influence -- it is pressure applied by Israel on Sinwar to maintain calm in order to protect his position and stay in power, even as he tries to take credit for this boost to the economy. His "campaign promise" to his fellow terrorists, on the other hand, applies pressure on Sinwar to foment violence.

Al-Monitor claims that Israel is in fact taking a degree of risk every time it takes steps to either create new jobs for Palestinian Arabs or distributes additional work permits. According to this view, these workers could potentially be recruited to carry out attacks inside Israel. Such concerns are all the more credible in light of the violence we have seen Hamas instigate.

The same article also claims that while Hamas instigating attacks on Israel could threaten the employment opportunities for Gazans in Israel and ultimately harm the Gazan economy, there is an external threat to those jobs as well. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there has been an influx of Ukrainian immigrants to Israel. In March, Interior Affairs Minister Ayelet Shaked said in an interview with Al-Monitor that "between 100,000 and 200,000 Jews could immigrate to Israel in the coming months.” It remains to be seen if Ukrainian immigration will put a dent in the number of jobs available for Palestinian Arabs, though that industrial zone being built in Israel adjacent to Gaza would indicate it might not.

For years, Hamas terrorist leaders have been exploiting Gazans as human shields for protection in order to evade the consequences of their actions. Yet, regardless of how they feel about Israel, Gazans are practical enough to work there in order to make a living -- and they expect Sinwar and the other Hamas leaders not to mess up their opportunity to support their families, something that Hamas on its own is consistently failing to do.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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