12/06 Links Pt2: Jewish Life Is Cheap; How academia omits facts to make Palestinians the perpetual victim; It sucks to be a Jew on the left; Glick: The US liberal Jewish establishment is failing at fighting antisemitism

From Ian:

Jewish Life Is Cheap

For the past five years, the dominant media narrative about race—perhaps the dominant media narrative, period—has built up a hierarchy of racial justice. At the top are the perennially marginalized “BIPOCs,” victim to the lash of the ever-present colonial whip. At the bottom lurks the “white male,” inherently and ineluctably racist, even when (or perhaps especially when) they’re trying hard not to be.

In a manner true to our history, Jews have been sucked into this Manichean whirlpool, cast by radical academics and their media acolytes as an essential, almost distilled element of the global system of racial oppression. We are not just white; we are the plotters and financiers of the entire sysyetm of white supremacy.

Worse still, if Jews are white then they are not, well, Jews. The largely successful effort to assign Jews to the white race means Jews do not have the moral privilege of determining our own identity. The perverse result of dispossessing Jews of their own history is that it grants the mantle of Jewishness to our enemies. Thus Ye, in the same Twitter thread where he threatened to go “death con 3” on Jews, also claimed: “I actually can’t be antisemitic because Black people are actually Jew also.”

When Whoopi Goldberg asserted on The View that the “Holocaust was not about race,” she was advancing a version of the same arguments made by virulent Black Hebrew Israelite hate preachers, professors who insist on the indelible whiteness of Jews, and anti-Zionists who deny the legitimacy of Jewish historical identity. It’s true that only the last two groups tend to have their ideas promoted by the media, but all three share the idea that “Jew” is not a meaningful or legitimate category. Palestinians can be Jews—thus the Democratic political activist and Louis Farrakhan fan Linda Sarsour is invited to participate as an expert in a prominent panel on antisemitism. And by the same logic, Black Hebrews can be Jews. Ye can be a Jew. Only Jews are not allowed to be Jews.

Over and over, Jews have watched this trend play out, and largely we’ve been silent.

In a key scene in the 2014 Oscar-nominated Selma, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leads a group of activists and protesters across a bridge alongside Black civil rights leaders. Not pictured in the scene was a man who walked in that front line of protesters, fighting for civil rights: the great American Jewish rabbi and leader Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Why would Ava Duvernay, the film’s director, compromise the film’s historical integrity to erase one of America’s most prominent Jewish spiritual figures out of the image? The answer is that over the past decade, the anti-racist movement that has been the media’s single most championed social cause has turned a syllogism into a truism: Whites are by definition white supremacists; Jews are the whitest of whites because they falsely hide behind their fake ethnicity; Jews, therefore, are at the top of the white supremacy totem.

The media has actively spread these ideas by turning woke racialism into the defining moral cause of our time, while at the same time ignoring the consequences of this campaign. While Ye was “canceled” for making open threats and affirming his love for Hitler, little more than a week earlier hundreds of Black Hebrew Israelites marched through central Brooklyn, uniformed and in formation, chanting “we are the real Jews.” Save for some coverage in the New York Post and in Tablet’s daily newsletter, The Scroll, the rest of the media was virtually silent. The media is still talking about the alt-right’s 2017 hate march in Charlottesville, treating it as one of the defining events of the modern era, but when hundreds of virulent antisemites march in Brooklyn—the mecca of America’s media establishment—it was crickets. The silence was appalling but also unsurprising given that the same media has largely ignored the routine violent attacks against religious Jews in New York.

Ben-Dror Yemini: How academia omits facts to make Palestinians the perpetual victim

Recently, Prof. Shay Hezkani claimed in an article he wrote for “Haaretz” newspaper that I misled my readers when I wrote that the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine faced an existential threat in 1947 and 1948.

I challenge Hezkani to an intellectual debate. I am even willing to provide him here with some of the arguments at my disposal - shall he answer my call.

“Every week Ben-Dror Yemini tells readers of ‘Yedioth Ahronoth’ about Arab leaders in 1947 who called to throw the Jews into the sea, planning to systematically murder them,” Hezkani wrote in his Haaretz column last week.

“Throughout 15 years of my research, looking into hundreds of propaganda pieces from 1947-1949, I ran into only one case in which Hassan al-Banna - founder of the Muslim Brotherhood – mentions the ‘sea’ and ‘Jews’ in the same sentence - while calling to expel the Jews from Egypt,” Hezkani wrote.

“The quote [used by Yemini and attributed to ex-Secretary General of the Arab League in Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam] is not backed by credible sources in Arabic, and it’s unclear whether or not it was actually ever said.”

I read the Haaretz article and could not believe my eyes. In the book I published titled “Industry of Lies,” I presented a more detailed list of threats made against the Jews, with credible sources, during that time period.

But, Hezkani looked into hundreds of documents and somehow found nothing. It’s a little weird that I did not spent 15 years researching this topic in an academic setting, yet found so much more information. To clear all doubts, prior to publishing the research-backed chapters of my book, they were reviewed by three prominent academics.

It could be that Hezkani has difficulty reading books. So, let’s start with the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who in 1941 arrived at Nazi Germany and called to kill every Jew, before returning to lead the Palestinians.

If Hezkani believes that al-Husseini had changed his mind later on, he should refer us to the relevant sources. In an interview to the “Al Sarih” newspaper, al-Husseini said the Arab goal during the 1948 War of Independence wasn’t to undo the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, but to “continue to fight until the Zionists are dead.”

Hadley Freeman: It sucks to be a Jew on the left

As Hadley Freeman leaves the Guardian for the Sunday Times, she opens up about her Jewish experience

Honestly, what a dumpster fire that whole period was, to the point that it’s almost hard to remember what actually happened. But just off the top of my head, here is a list of things I remember lefty non-Jews saying to me back then:
1. “I don’t think you should write about antisemitism because you obviously feel very passionately about it.”
2. “What, exactly, are Jews afraid of here? It’s not like Corbyn is going to bring back pogroms.”
3. “Jews have always voted right so of course, they don’t like Corbyn.”
4. “It’s not that I don’t believe that you think he’s antisemitic. It’s just I think you’re being manipulated by bad-faith actors. So let me explain why you’re wrong…”
5. “Come on, you don’t really think he really hates Jews.”

All of the above were said to me by progressive people, people who would proudly describe themselves as anti-racism campaigners. And yet. When Jews expressed distress at, say, Corbyn describing Hamas as “friends”, or attending a wreath-laying ceremony for the killers at the Munich Olympics, or bemoaning the lack of English irony among Zionists, we were fobbed off with snarky tweets and shrugged shoulders.

What we were seeing, they said, we were not actually seeing. You could not design an exercise more perfectly structured to cause madness. It was, to be blunt, gaslighting.

Anyway, that’s all in the past now, right? Well it is for me, because I’m walking away. A lot of illusions were broken, and I lost a lot of respect for a lot of people I thought I knew, but it turned out I didn’t. Not really. Not at all. So I have left the garden. And it feels bloody great. (h/t messy57)

A rock star channels Jewish outrage at antisemitism

The antisemitic utterances of Kyrie Irving and Ye (formerly Kanye West) prompted condemnations from many celebrities, both those with Jewish backgrounds and those who weren’t Jewish but who issued solemn pledges of support for their Jewish friends and colleagues. Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon went as far as to tweet, “This is a very scary time,” to which one follower chimed in with an anti-Israel rejoinder.

Solemnity, however, unexpectedly yielded to outrage at the annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles. What was no doubt expected to be one of the evening’s least momentous junctures, the honoring of lawyer-agent Allen Grubman, turned into a consciousness-raising session when rock star John Mellencamp took the stage for a profanity-laden introduction speech.

“Allen is Jewish, and I bring that up for one reason,” Mellencamp said. “I’m a gentile, and my life has been enriched by countless Jewish people.”

Mellencamp then turned it up a notch. “I cannot tell you how f***ing important it is to speak out if you’re an artist against antisemitism,” he continued. “Here’s the trick: Silence is complicity. I’m standing here tonight loudly and proudly with Allen, his family and all of my Jewish friends and all of the Jewish people of the world. F*** antisemitism!”

Whoa.

What was surprising about Mellencamp’s speech was not his principled stance, but the sheer indignation and the unbottled emotion that gave voice to it. For millions of Jews who have fearfully observed the growing normalization of antisemitic motifs in today’s popular culture, such a righteous outburst was surely a welcome surprise, but it begged a question for the entertainment industry: “Where have you been until now?”

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11/22 Links Pt1: Hold Abbas accountable; NYTs demonstrates why Israelis have turned right; Mossad was behind intelligence tip to UK’s MI5 over Iranian terror threats

From Ian:

Hold Abbas accountable

We should recall here that last March, then-ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced the launch of an investigation into suspected crimes committed in the territories of Judea and Samaria, in east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since June 13th, 2014. Her announcement followed a preliminary investigation in the wake of a Palestinian complaint that determined – contrary to Israel's position – that the court has the jurisdiction to deliberate on such complaints. Israel called this decision a moral and legal disgrace and officially informed the court that it would not cooperate with it.

It should be noted here that ICC investigations enable arrest warrants to be issued against suspects without any public notification. The court's signatories are required to cooperate with the investigation, honor arrest warrants, and hand over suspects located in their territory to the court. Beyond immediate harm to such persons, the opening of processes against could impact its comportment in the international arena and severely damage its international standing. In any event, in practical terms the investigation against Israel has yet to commence and this is also something that the Palestinians wish to advance through the move at the ICJ.

In fact, what Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his people are trying to achieve is a decision that the "occupation" is permanent and that it is in its entirety (not just measures within its framework) is illegal and therefore Israel should be subjected to pressures and a price should be exacted for its continued presence in Judea and Samaria. The ICC will find it hard to ignore an advisory by the ICJ that adopts these conclusions in their entirety or in part.

At present the ICJ should be busy dealing with the war in Ukraine and events in Georgia, Afghanistan, Africa, and elsewhere. But Israel should not count on the court being too busy to deal with it.The ICJ (once the UN General Assembly officially turns to it) will approach Israel, which will be required to answer the question of whether it is willing to cooperate. It would seem that the considerations that in the past led to a decision to turn down any such request, still hold.

Without any connection to all of the above, Israel will have to consider changes to its approach to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. It should weigh measures that will make it clear to Abbas and the PA that there will be consequences to the incessant campaign to negate Israel's legitimacy. The means at Israel's disposal are not meagre. If they don't deter Abbas, they should at the very least encourage a rethink of his approach among leaders who support it.

The history of apartheid proves Israel is not an apartheid state

By contrast, in Israel, there is an official policy of affirmative action administered by the Israeli government aimed at including minority Israelis in all aspects of public life. The Arabs who chose to stay in Israel during and following the 1948 war are Israeli citizens and are entitled to the rights granted to all citizens under the law. Arab Israelis serve in public institutions as ministers, Supreme Court judges, parliament members and governmental clerks. Furthermore, the former parties of the Joint List, an Arab-Israeli political bloc, hold seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. For the first time, in 2019, the Joint List endorsed a candidate to become prime minister of Israel.

It is also common to find many Arab Israelis holding only Israeli citizenship. Between 2011 and 2013, Professor Sammy Smooha, a researcher from Haifa University, conducted a poll among Arab Israelis, asking if they identify as Israeli or Palestinian. More than 20% responded “Israeli” or “Israeli-Palestinian.” Furthermore, according to his findings, when Arab-Israeli participants were asked if they would move to a Palestinian state if it is formed, 65– 77% percent of them replied that they would not.

A walk through the streets, shopping malls and hospitals of Israel will permit one to see and appreciate the integrated society that exists within all of Israel. People of all religions, all races and all beliefs are treated with respect in all public places; have access to all religious places; are protected in their right of prayer and assembly; have full access to healthcare treatment without regard to their race, religion, sexual orientation or beliefs; and enjoy freedoms not known anywhere else in the Middle East.

Where South Africa intended to and did impose a segregationist regime and called it apartheid, the allegation that Israel is similarly an apartheid state originated not from fact or from governmental policy but from Israel’s enemies as an intentional distortion of her commitment to building a wholesome society where diversity is cherished and rights are protected by the rule of law. Applying the moniker of apartheid to Israel today is another example of an antisemitic double standard applied exclusively to the Jewish state and ignores much greater injustices suffered by minority ethnic and religious groups around the world.

To put it bluntly, the attempt to equate Israel with South Africa is defamatory and disingenuous. Moreover, calling Israel an apartheid state under these circumstances does great injustice to Israel’s vibrant democracy and further disrespects the real and genuine struggle against the racism of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Moreover, the accusers against Israel who are in the Palestinian territories are obligated to look at their own leadership, and to look inward, as they essentially call for the future Palestinian state to be judenrein—free of Jews.

Who is it that is practicing apartheid?

'The New York Times’ demonstrates why Israelis have turned right

From Abdulrahim’s previous dispatches for the Times, it is clear that she has visited Gaza. That means either she is suffering from hallucinations that Israel is “controlling” things there, or she is fully aware that it is not, but wants to give the impression that it is in order to blame Israel for the Gaza fire.

Either of those two possibilities should be grounds for immediately firing her.

Not that Ms. Abdulrahim’s journalistic misbehavior relieves her editors of any responsibility. After all, they knew what they were getting when they hired her earlier this year. She had previously received awards from the anti-Israel organization CAIR after she wrote a letter denying that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations.

A staff reporter for one of the world’s most influential newspapers maliciously smears Israel with a blatant falsehood, and her editors look the other way.

This is one reason Israelis have been turning more hawkish in their voting preferences. No matter how many concessions they make, no matter how many risks they take, no matter how many territories they withdraw from—they still get blamed for anything and everything.

You can’t blame Israelis for feeling like, no matter what they do, they just can’t win. Israel’s critics will never play by the rules. They will lie and smear in order to turn public opinion against the Jewish state. They want to see Israel isolated, hated and harangued. And when Israel is threatened, they want the international community to stand idly by.

That leaves Israelis to conclude that their only hope for survival is to strengthen their military resolve and fortify their security policies—in other words, to vote for parties on the political right.

Israel’s critics complain that such thinking represents a “siege mentality.” Maybe that’s because Israel really is under siege—including in the information war, where combatants such as Raja Abdulrahim, pretending to be journalists, hurl dart after dart at the Jewish state without the slightest regard for the facts.

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11/15 Links Pt2: O Ye of Little Faith: The Anti-Semitism of Kanye West; Another Palestinian BDS fail; Smearing Israel from the Ivory Tower

From Ian:

A New Legal Approach to Jew-Hatred

It’s what makes Jews one people even if they speak different languages, have different color skin, and observe Judaism with different practices. And so, the concepts and terminology that the anti-Israel left chooses to employ now actually pit anti-Israel zealotry against American anti-discrimination laws.

We counsel an updated application of Natan Sharansky’s famous Three D’s test. “Criticizing” Israeli Jews for being white colonizers does not merely aim to delegitimize Israel; it delegitimizes Jews by severing them from their constitutive national symbols, holy books, and beliefs. It demonizes Jews by casting them as “white occupiers” who exploit non-white people. And it engages in rank double standards against Jews by singling out for scrutiny, among all the nations of the world, their interrelated claims to their ancestral homeland and national unity.

Just imagine the uproar if whites on university campuses told Afro-Caribbean students that they were not really black and could not share the banner with black students from other parts of the world. The victims of such harassment would quickly and rightly have administrators in their corner. The school could lose its federal funding for allowing an out-group to tell an in-group who they are and who they are not, and which national bonds emerging from the mists of time are sufficient to confer unity. Yet that is what happens every time activists deploy the indigeneity canard to demonize Zionism as a colonialist project.

And this is how progressives tantalized by the success of the postcolonialist anti-racist movement in the United States have badly overplayed their hand. They have run headlong into the Civil Rights Act. Lawyers up to the task of defending Israel and American Jews can and should sue institutions that fail to protect Jews. The lawyers must identify and explain the horrific and patently anti-Semitic implications of calling Ashkenazi Jews “white”—not because there is anything wrong with being white, but because it is maliciously inaccurate—and calling Israel a colonialist state.

When campus activists call Israel “colonialist” or Israelis “white Europeans,” they trace Jewish history back only to Europe. But history is more than a millennium old, and Jews can trace their heritage back much further, all the way to Jerusalem and Beersheba and Yavneh, well before the Romans first renamed Judea “Palestine” to sever the Jewish connection to the land. Referring to Arabs as “indigenous” or “native” similarly rewrites history and the Jewish tradition by erasing the Jewish national and religious connection to the Land of Israel—possibly the most foundational element of Jewishness no matter how abstractly defined.

As elite institutions adopt the trendiest, crassest anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the Jewish legal defense creates itself. Indigeneity may be a silly value to champion, but if that is the framework that progressives insist on, it will collapse under the weight of its own bankruptcy and hypocrisy. Postcolonial anti-Semitism will fall apart as soon as Israel’s defenders expose its delegitimization, double standards, and demonization for what they are: the oldest form of hatred, going by its latest name.

Antisemitism and Jew-hatred are not the same - opinion

Jew-hatred is on the rise in the US. I’m not talking about antisemitism, I’m not calling it antisemitism. I’m talking about Jew-hatred. Antisemitism and Jew-hatred are not the same.

Jew-hatred is a visceral hate. It is emotional, it is not at all rational. Other than diving into the dark corners from which it emanates, there is almost no true response or method to combat Jew-hatred.

The only way to confront Jew-hatred is to make it unacceptable in public spheres. Like other behaviors that are unacceptable in public, Jew-hatred needs to be rejected. Racism is unacceptable, and so is Jew-hatred. Xenophobia is unacceptable, and so is Jew-hatred. Homophobia is unacceptable, and so is Jew-hatred.

Decent people need to step up and say a loud and clear “no” to those promoting and professing Jew-hatred. They need to say “stop” no matter how subtle the message. They need to send out their message on social media and in person.

There is no logic to Jew-hatred. And because it is illogical, there is no reasoning with Jew-haters. A Jew-hater cannot be convinced that he/she/they are wrong. There is only shaming. Shaming – public shaming and private shaming – is the only language they understand. It is the only message they will receive and internalize.

What is the difference between Jew-hatred and antisemitism?
Plain and simple, that is the difference between Jew-hatred and antisemitism. Antisemitism is a philosophy. Antisemitism is based on principles. It is wrong – but it is not visceral. It is based on a set of ideas.

Today’s Jew-hatred is filled more and more with anger and vitriol. Today’s Jew-hatred smacks of medieval-style Jew-hatred, which was deeply seeded in religious hate.

Social media allows for and even permits the free flow of this hatred. It goes unchecked. It flourishes.

O Ye of Little Faith: The Anti-Semitism of Kanye West

In response to a series of anti-Semitic outbursts, several fashion companies severed their business dealings with the rapper Kanye West, as did the agency that represented him. Elliot Kaufman cautions against seeing this reaction as evidence of civic health:

The naïve view is that the refusal to defend West marks a sea shift in black attitudes toward Jews, transcending the impulse to defend the indefensible just because it was done by a fellow African American. The cynical view is that if West hadn’t first angered black people with his comment that slavery was “a choice,” and betrayed black leaders with his decision to put on the MAGA cap, the reaction would have been entirely different.

West now simply has reason to paint himself as a victim of Jewish power. Meanwhile, Kaufman writes, the forms of anti-Semitism that have particular purchase among African Americans are not going anywhere:

Any confrontation with black anti-Semitism incurs risk for Jews, but it is necessary. First, black anti-Semitism places traditional Jews in physical danger every day on the streets of Brooklyn and not only there. Many Jews have moved to neighborhoods where they can usually avoid being mugged by such a reality, but some won’t—or can’t afford to. They are owed practical, moral, and political support, including against progressives whose policies release criminal Jew-haters to the streets, where they can attack again.

Second, black anti-Semitism has a unique ability to strike at the heart of liberalism, the older kind that has often made exile in America seem for Jews like a vacation from history. Jewish success and prominence in America—taken by some as a standing insult—have hinged on liberal principles of merit, equality before the law, pluralism, free expression, and individual rights, as opposed to group privileges. Black anti-Semitism, in denying the legitimacy of Jewish success and prominence, is also an assault on those ruling principles. Its deeper meaning is to call the American system a fraud, a manipulation, and a conspiracy.

MEMRI: Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan on Kyrie Irving, Kanye West Antisemitism Scandals

In a speech livestreamed on The Collective 9 YouTube channel on November 10, 2022, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan spoke about the accusations of antisemitism that NBA star Kyrie Irving and rapper Kanye West have been facing recently. Farrakhan said that the Anti-Defamation League should look into the “horror” that their parents have done to blacks in America and throughout the world, and he said that Jews consider 1,000 black lives to be worth less than the fingernail of one Jew. He said that the Jews have not apologized to African Americans for the transatlantic slave trade or for the killing, raping, castration, and enslavement of blacks. He also claimed that the Jews are responsible for African Americans seeing themselves as “Tarzan”, as “blackies”, and as “little black sambo”. In addition, Farrakhan said that the Nation of Islam’s views on the Jews are based entirely on quotes from Jewish rabbis, scholars, and historians.

The MEMRI Lantos Project exposes anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the Middle East region and Middle Eastern communities in the West with the aim of supporting legislation and educating media and the general public.

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10/24 Links Pt1: UN report on human rights in West Bank and Gaza serves only terror supporters; Israel should stay out of the war in Ukraine; Iran thinks it beat 'Zionists,' US hegemony in Lebanon maritime deal

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: UN report on human rights in West Bank and Gaza serves only terror supporters

How can Pillay, Kothari and Sidoti be appointed to a committee scrutinizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Well, everything is possible when it comes to Israel.

The report’s findings correspond well with the views of the three. Gaza, the report reads, is under occupation. The reason? The closure in the border crossings between Gaza and Israel.

Since the committee is working under the UN, the report could have mentioned the offer the UN itself presented to Gaza leaders - open borders in return for adherence to international rules of conduct.

Other offers could’ve also been mentioned, like that of the EU, which offered Hamas a reconstruction of Gaza in exchange for demilitarization. Hamas rejected every one of them. This is the reason the so-called blockade has still not been lifted. The report has no mention of this, it doesn’t need to because it wants to draw a target on Israel.

Hamas, which is undoubtedly happy with the report, is not even mentioned in it. Other words not mentioned in the report include: “Jihad,” “terror” and “rockets”. The committee’s information sources include many radical Israeli far-left organization and outlets, such “B'Tselem” - mentioned 17 times, “Peace Now” - 12 times, and “Haaretz” - 10 times.

Occupation is the report’s focal point, and it is becoming permanent, the authors claim. Maybe they have a point. But as usual, they ignore every peace offer tabled in front of the Palestinians in recent decades, and no mention of the Palestinians refusing all of these offers.

But not everything in the report is an anti-Israeli propaganda. The criticism against Jewish settlements in the West Bank is justified, but the subject is under great scrutiny inside the Israeli society already. There’s no need for them to take part in it.

Sometimes you need and have to wonder about the ease with which international bodies, among them the UN, cultivate hostile views of Israel, using the excuse of human rights. This new report sets a new bar.

The report is written in a legal manner, featuring notes and footnotes. Some of its claims are true, but even so they don’t undo the fact that the report sets a new record for incitement against Israel, written by a committee made up of three antisemites.

This is what demonization looks like. This is not the way to achieve peace, this is how a UN committee becomes a propaganda machine for supporters of terrorism.

Jonathan Tobin: Israel should stay out of the war in Ukraine

The international community has always opposed allowing Israel to achieve the kind of complete military victory over its enemies that would force them to give up their struggle against its existence. World opinion also dismisses terrorist attacks on the lives of Israelis as being part of a “cycle of violence” that ought to be stopped, regardless of who is in the right.

In contrast, many otherwise sensible people think Ukrainian ambitions for a military victory over Russia should be indulged, including if that means, as even President Joe Biden recently acknowledged, a risk of a nuclear confrontation.

Anger and disgust with Russia are justified, as are economic sanctions, even if they are clearly hurting the West more than the Putin regime. Yet, now that Ukraine’s extinction is no longer possible, a rational rather than an emotional response to the situation shouldn’t involve an open-ended commitment to an endless war that—Zelenskyy’s boasts and Biden’s promises notwithstanding—isn’t going to end in a total Ukrainian victory or anything like it.

Instead of ganging up on Israel in an effort to force it to join a war that has nothing to do with its security, perhaps the virtue-signalers should start considering whether it wouldn’t be more sensible for the United States to begin exploring a way to end the war. Instead, they are supporting policies geared to ensure it goes on indefinitely, and speak as if advocacy for a negotiated settlement is Russian propaganda. They have no coherent exit strategy or achievable goal and accuse those who point out this inconvenient fact of being insufficiently supportive of the cause of freedom.

This fuels the paranoia that helps sustain Putin in Russia and the patriotic fervor that is bolstering Zelenskyy’s maximalist position. It ignores the cost in Ukrainian and Russian lives, as well as the price for American taxpayers who thought they were done financing unwinnable foreign wars.

The idea that Israel should be dragged into this morass simply for the sake of a dubious romanticizing of the conflict, to assert its status as a world power or any other reason is as irresponsible as it is reckless.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Biden Embraces America's Fiercest Enemies: Whose Side Is He On?

[T]he Biden administration was damaging America's relations with its historical friends and allies while sending "positive messages" to America's fiercest enemies and haters. — Dr. Ibrahim Al-Nahhas, Saudi political analyst, Al-Riyadh, October 19, 2022.

[T]he Biden administration has preferred to attack Saudi Arabia than deal with the use of Iranian drones by the Russians in Ukraine... Were it not for American and European leniency, especially since the era of Barack Obama, who tried with all naivety to rehabilitate the Iranian regime, Iran would not have interfered in the internal affairs of Europe and four Arab countries (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen) — Tarik Al-Hamid, former editor-in-chief of the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat, October 19, 2022.

Since Barack Obama admitted erring in his failure to support Iran's protestors in 2009, however, has US policy changed? Apart from painfully feeble lip-service to the protestors in Iran, Biden and his administration, through their inaction, appear still to be totally committed to their initial alliance with Russia and Iran.

Biden and his administration , it appears, would rather align themselves with the mullahs in Iran and the new "Russian-Iranian Axis of Evil," than strengthen their ties with America's longstanding partners, the Arabs in the Gulf.

The winners: Russia and Iran.

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10/03 Links Pt1: Kontorovich: 'Gas deal with Lebanon is a total capitulation to Hezbollah'; Abbas demands that UN turn back the hands of time

From Ian:

'Gas deal with Lebanon is a total capitulation to Hezbollah'

The emerging maritime boundary deal between Israel and Lebanon, brokered by the Biden administration, constitutes a “total capitulation” to the terrorist organization Hezbollah, a senior jurist argued Sunday, adding that the Lapid government is violating Israeli constitutional rules by pursuing an agreement.

Eugene Kontorovich, Director of International Law at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum and director of the Center for the Middle East & International Law at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, blasted Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s cabinet address Sunday, in which he confirmed that Israel has made concessions in US-brokered maritime border talks with Lebanon.

"Over the weekend, Israel and Lebanon received the American mediator's proposal for an agreement on a maritime line between the two countries. We are discussing the final details, so it is not yet possible to praise a done deal; however, as we have demanded from the start, the proposal safeguards Israel's full security-diplomatic interests, as well as our economic interests," Lapid said.

Lapid argued that ceding natural gas reserves to Lebanon would help the country become independent of Tehran, and ultimately curb the strength of groups like Hezbollah.

Kontorovich pushed back on Lapid’s claims, calling the concessions “capitulation” to Hezbollah, and arguing that pursuing such an agreement during an interim government violates Israeli constitutional norms.

“The proposed natural gas agreement between Israel and Lebanon represents a total capitulation to Hezbollah, and a transfer of sovereign Israeli territory to an Iranian puppet state.”

“As the people of Iran fight for their freedom, Israel is surrendering to Tehran via Beirut without even getting an acknowledgement of its existence in return, let alone peace.”

“After being proposed and rejected a decade ago, the deal is being rammed through, just weeks before the Israeli elections - in violation of Israeli constitutional rules - because the Biden Administration and Hezbollah understand the desperation and weakness of the Lapid-Bennett government.”

Maritime Agreement: A Tactical Concession for the Sake of Strategic Gain

The emerging maritime agreement with Lebanon has benefits. These include negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, albeit indirect and mediated by the U.S. We should not underestimate the importance of an agreement, even if partial, with an enemy state. The ability to generate and implement common interests is a calming and restraining element.

Lebanon is a broken, insolvent country on the verge of anarchy, and the money it would gain from gas drilling would help it stabilize. In addition, Israel could start producing gas from the Karish field immediately, and at a time when the world is hungry for natural gas and prices are increasing. It will do so without a physical threat to its rigs.

The main disadvantage of the deal is the possible loss of maritime assets. Had Israel wanted to, it could have drilled in more extensive areas and extracted gas, but that would involve a considerable risk of an escalation. In other words, Israel has made a tactical concession for a strategic gain of stability on the northern border.

However, Israel must make sure to let Hizbullah know that it wasn't its threats that brought about the results. Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah will not hesitate to challenge Israel if he senses weakness on its part.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman: Gas Deal Gives 100 Percent to Lebanon and 0% to Israel

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said Monday that the decision to all but endorse a U.S. plan to redraw the maritime border between Lebanon and Israel was a squandered opportunity that put to waste years of hard work. "We spent years trying to broker a deal between Israel and Lebanon on the disputed maritime gas fields. Got very close with proposed splits of 55-60% for Lebanon and 45-40% for Israel. No one then imagined 100% to Lebanon and 0% to Israel. Would love to understand how we got here," Friedman tweeted.

Lebanon denies it will pay royalties to Israel as part of maritime deal

Lebanon on Monday denied a US-brokered maritime deal with Israel would see Beirut pay royalties to the Jewish state in exchange for access to disputed gas fields.

Deputy Parliament Speaker Elias Bou Saab, who has been involved in the maritime talks, told the interview the Al-Mayadeen TV station on Monday that Israel has made more significant concessions than its northern neighbor, which he claimed the Israeli government has also acknowledged.

Saab pledged that “Lebanon would not pay royalties to the Israeli enemy.”

Lebanon’s president Michel Aoun made similar claims to Saab, telling Lebanese citizens that “there will be no partnership with the Israeli side.”

Speaking earlier Monday, Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Lebanon would pay royalties to the Jewish state.

“Israel gets 100 percent of its security needs, 100% of Karish and even some of the profits from the Lebanese reserve,” the premier said.

Israel’s lead negotiator in Lebanon border talks quit over emerging deal

Israel’s lead negotiator in the U.S.-mediated maritime border talks with Lebanon quit last week due to disagreements with the Prime Minister’s Office over how the process was being handled, Israeli media reported on Monday.

Ehud Adiri reportedly resigned just days before U.S. senior energy adviser Amos Hochstein on Saturday submitted to Jerusalem and Beirut what is widely being portrayed as a final proposal to end the two countries’ longstanding dispute over gas-rich waters in the Eastern Mediterranean.

According to the reports, Adiri opposed the terms of the emerging agreement and how National Security Adviser Eyal Hulata conducted the negotiations after their purview was transferred to the PMO.

Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday accused Prime Minister Yair Lapid of caving in to Hezbollah with regard to the emerging agreement.

“Yair Lapid shamefully surrendered to [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah’s threats,” Netanyahu reportedly stated, adding: “He is giving Hezbollah sovereign territory of the State of Israel with a huge gas reservoir that belongs to you, the citizens of Israel.”

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09/13 Links Pt1: The Palestinians and the World Do Not Need Another Corrupt, Failed Terrorist Arab State; Fatah boasts: Arafat deliberately started the intifada terror campaign

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinians and the World Do Not Need Another Corrupt, Failed Terrorist Arab State

The truth, however, is that neither the Palestinian Authority leadership nor the Palestinian people is ready for statehood. And the responsibility for that fact lies squarely with the ruthless and failed Palestinian leaders.

The Palestinian bid to obtain UN recognition of a Palestinian state comes at a time when the PA appears to be losing control over some parts of the West Bank, where gunmen belonging to several groups have replaced the Palestinian security forces... [and] are responsible not only for terrorist attacks against Israel, but also the growing scenes of anarchy and lawlessness....

Abbas himself has long been praising and glorifying Palestinians who carry out terrorist attacks....

Abbas, who is unable (and unwilling) to rein in a few hundred gunmen in two major Palestinian cities in the West Bank, wants the United Nations, its member states and the rest of the world to believe that he is ready to run a state of his own.

If Abbas cannot send his officers to confiscate an M-16 rifle from an unruly gunman in Jenin or Nablus, how can he be trusted to prevent the future Palestinian state from turning into a launching pad for regional terrorism?

Abbas wants the UN to grant the Palestinians the status of full member state, but cannot provide any guarantees that the aspired-for state would not be turned into a terror entity that is armed and funded by Iran's regime and its proxies.

Abbas wants the UN to recognize "Palestine" as a state when he literally has no control over half of the Palestinians... If Abbas dares to go to the Gaza Strip, Hamas will hang him at the entrance to the area on charges of "collaboration" with Israel.

Abbas is seeking full UN recognition at a time when he continues to block general elections for the PA, arrests and intimidates his political opponents, refuses to share power with other Palestinians and muzzles freedom of expression.

More than they need a state, the Palestinians need good leadership. They need to rid themselves of the corrupt leaders who have deprived them of international aid and led them from one disaster after the other since the early 1970s, when the PLO was expelled from Jordan for undermining the kingdom's sovereignty.

[T]he Palestinians' biggest tragedy by far has been failed leadership and more failed leadership. It radicalizes them toward Islamic fundamentalism and deprives them of elections, freedom of expression and international aid. The UN member states would be doing a great service to the Palestinians if they asked Abbas about the absence of freedom of speech and a functioning parliament under his regime.

They would also be doing the Palestinian people a huge service if they asked Abbas about torture in Palestinian Authority prisons and the continuing crackdown by his security forces on human rights activists and journalists. And they should definitely ask him what measures he has taken to end financial and administrative corruption in the PA.

These issues are more pressing for the Palestinians than another worthless document by the UN recognizing a fictitious Palestinian state that is already marked by the intrusion of other brutal radical Islamist dictatorships.

MEMRI: Semi-Frozen: The Middle East's Intractable Conflicts

The term "frozen conflict" came into vogue in recent decades to describe a variety of border conflicts between Russia and neighboring countries, often over breakaway regions like Abkhazia or the Donbass.[1] There are also historic conflicts like Kashmir or the Arab-Israeli Conflict that go on for decades, sometimes hot and sometimes cold, that seem to also be "frozen," neither conclusive war nor outright peace, but an uneasy, volatile reality in between.

But aside from the old conflict over Palestine, the Middle East seems to have engendered new conflicts in recent decades that are, at least, semi-frozen, lasting for a decade or longer. Often extremely violent and damaging to the future of nations, they also simmer down to situations approaching some type of wary truce, mere political turmoil or low-grade instability only to flare up again. This seems to be the case in places like Libya, Yemen, and Iraq, all three countries where the overthrow of a longtime brutal dictator unleashed forces that have not yet played out years later.

Of course, the region is flush with conflict. In Lebanon and Syria, one side (Hezbollah and Assad) is more or less victorious and dominant, though there is still some opposition on the ground. Morocco and Algeria are increasingly at loggerheads, though not at war. In Sudan, political crisis and societal turmoil could lead to open conflict between rival groupings inside the military regime. Transnational Salafi-Jihadism and Iranian-inspired terrorism still exist in the region and still claim victims.

But it is the cases of Iraq, Libya, and Yemen that are particularly haunting and costly to the future of the region. All three countries had been ruled by long-standing dictatorships that while they may have provided some of the aspects of stability, were still very volatile regimes. Two of them, Saddam's Iraq and Qaddafi's Libya, were actually major "exporters" of instability, promoting terrorism globally, repressing local citizens internally and attacking their neighbors.

Iraq has been at war, albeit sometimes at relatively low levels, since the Americans overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003. But even before that was the Kuwait War of 1990-1991 and the Iran War of 1980-1988. On top of that were internal conflicts, the regime's decades-long war against the Kurds, the savage repression of a Shia insurgency in 1991, and then after the American forces left in 2011, an increasingly sectarian Iraq under Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and the war against ISIS beginning in 2014. That war greatly increased something that had already existed, Shia paramilitary groups, which echoes today in the ongoing conflict between the militias and parties closest to Iran against those arrayed with Muqtada Al-Sadr.[2] The open armed clashes in Baghdad and Basra of August 2022 have ebbed thanks to the mediating efforts of Iraq's prime minister and of the Shia clerical authorities in Najaf, but the political crisis continues.[3]

The American overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 essentially dethroned Sunni power in Iraq and handed it over to the long-oppressed Iraqi Shia. Today's clashes in Iraq are less about good versus evil than an internal civil war within different factions of the Iraqi Shia political establishment, all of whom in one way or another, have colonized, subverted, and become parasites on the Iraqi state.[4] A 40-year-old Iraqi citizen alive today knows nothing but war and violent political turmoil inside the borders of his country.

Moscow’s invitation to Hamas could be meant as warning to Israel, analysts say

Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh arrived in Moscow on Sept. 10 at the head of a senior delegation from the terror group for talks with Russian officials. Analysts speculate that Moscow’s invitation to Hamas, like an earlier one in May, is meant to send a message of dissatisfaction to Israel.

“The Russians typically use meetings with Hamas to signal displeasure with Israel, perhaps in relation to Ukraine,” Hillel Frisch, senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), told JNS.

A noteworthy aspect of the May meeting is that it came a month after Israel Prime Minister Yair Lapid, then foreign minister, accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, specifically in relation to alleged atrocities committed outside Kyiv. Of the current meeting, Frisch said it was unclear what specifically Russia may have found objectionable about Israeli statements or actions.

Anna Geifman, senior researcher at Bar-Ilan University’s department of political science, told JNS that it might be a general warning, a way for Russia to tell Israel that if it takes a “wrong step” it will strengthen relations with the region’s hostile actors. “The message may be: ‘If you become our enemy, we’re going to deal with your enemies,’ ” she said.

For Geifman, the important point is that this isn’t something new. “The Russians have always played the anti-Israel, or anti-Western, card whenever it was convenient for them, from the Soviet days. They’ve always talked to terrorists. It’s not even a question of talking—it’s collaborating,” she said.

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