Remembering what happens when Jews rely on others (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

If there was ever a time that Jews needed the help of the West, it was against Hitler.

And we all know how that turned out.

Put aside the refusal to bomb railroad tracks in order to slow down the transportation of Jews to their death in the concentration camps. And put aside how long it took countries to get together to make a united effort to save Jewish refugees who needed destinations in order to escape the Holocaust. 

What happened when countries did get together with the sole purpose to help Jewish refugees escape the danger and find a new home? The answer is Evian.

And the results were not pretty.

In his new book, And None Shall Make Them Afraid, Rick Richman describes "Eight Stories of the Modern State of Israel" -- the stories of 8 Jews whose lives and actions contributed to the success of Zionism and the establishment of the Modern State of Israel. The 1938 Evian Conference intersects with the life of Golda Meir, who attended the conference, and the life of playwright Ben Hecht, who dealt with the Jewish leadership that followed and relied too much on world leaders they thought actually wanted to help.

The problem with Evian became clear before it even convened, starting with the invitation itself, which defined the goal as to

consider what steps can be taken to facilitate the settlement in other countries of political refugees from Germany (including Austria).

Notice that there is no mention of the identity of the refugees that the conference was supposed to help--Jews. Merely political refugees.

This avoidance was pervasive.

Richman points out:

To read the speeches of the nine-day Evian Conference, which convened on July 6, 1938, in the Hotel Royal's Grand Ballroom with 140 representatives from thirty-two countries, is to see a cascade of euphemisms, all designed to avoid using the words "Jews" (who were the subject of the Conference) and "Hitler" (who had created the problem the Conference was called to address). (p. 141, emphasis added)

This included the lack of any condemnation of Hitler or even any "message" addressed to him (p. 144).

That use of euphemisms is reminiscent of the tendency of today's media which in their headlines reduce Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israelis into cars that on their own volition run down Israelis --

At the conclusion of the conference, only the Dominican Republic was willing to accept Jewish refugees.

A political cartoon that depicted the situation of the Jews before the Evian Conference served as an accurate description of its result:

But Nazi Germany knew that the purpose was to help the Jews and not just refugees in general. Hitler's Foreign Office publicly gloated in response to the refusal of the participants in the Conference to offer to help:

it appears astounding that [those] countries seem in no way anxious to make use of these elements [the Jews] themselves now that the opportunity offers. (p. 148)

Richman writes about the inaction of the Conference:

It sent a signal to Hitler that no nation in the world wanted the Jews, that Palestine had effectively been closed as a place of refuge, and that German could deal internally with the Jews as it wished, without fear of even a critical resolution from the West. (p.148-149)

He notes that some historians find a connection between the failure of the Evian Conference and the Kristallnacht pogrom that occurred 4 months later. (p.149)

World leaders today are not doing much better. A look at the UN gives a snapshot of where those countries stand today.

And what about Jewish leaders?

During Kristallnacht, more than a thousand synagogues were burned and more than 7,000 businesses were destroyed. Hundreds of Jews died and 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

What was the response from Jewish organizations?

Three days after Kristallnacht, the major American Jewish organizations met and formally agreed that "there should be no parades, public demonstrations or protests by Jews." They adopted a strategy of silence, out of fear that Jewish protests might lead to accusations of special pleading. [p. 158, emphasis added]

When Roosevelt condemned the pogrom 5 days later, he made no reference to Jews. What he did make were some generalized platitudes, concluding that there would be no protests and no increase in immigration quotas. The Jewish leader Rabbi Stephen Wise wrote at the time, "At long last, America has spoken."

Someone less satisfied was the Jewish playwright Ben Hecht, who once wrote about himself, "Most of the Jews I know are, like myself, a little startled to find themselves Jews." Despite what was, up to then, a weak Jewish identification, seven months after Kristallnacht, Hecht wrote a collection of stories in a book called A Book of Miracles. It included The Little Candle, which vividly recounted an international pogrom in Germany in which half a million Jews were murdered. He became friends with Peter Bergson, a follower of Vladimir Jabotinsky, leading to Hecht becoming even more active.

He wrote about what was happening in Germany, getting the word out at a time when FDR was doing nothing and Jewish leadership was passive. In March 1943, he wrote a script for a pageant at Madison Square Garden entitled "We Will Never Die," highlighting the dangerous situation of Jews in Europe. It featured a number of famous Broadway stage personalities. In his autobiography, Hecht writes about a phone call he received from Rabbi Wise reaction:

I have read your pageant script and I disapprove of it. I must ask you to cancel this pageant and discontinue all your further activities on behalf of the Jews. If you wish hereafter to work for the Jewish Cause, you will please consult me and let me advise you. [p.170]

Hecht hung up on him. 

There were 2 sold-out performances the first night and 40,000 saw the pageant, with thousands more listening outside on loudspeakers. It went on to be performed in DC, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.

In September, Hecht wrote a poem entitled Ballad of the Doomed Jews of Europe, which the Bergson Group had published in an ad in The New York Times.

And again, Jewish organizations were opposed:

Both the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress opposed the ad's publication when Hecht had proposed it at the end of 1942, fearing it was too provocative. When it was ultimately published a year later, another 1 million Jews had been murdered.

During this period, the Roosevelt administration took no action whatsoever to save the European Jews. (p. 172)

Finally, in January 1944, Roosevelt took action on the advice of his Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr, who informed him that the State Department was blocking aid to Jewish refugees. According to Morgenthau, if FDR did not act quickly, he would risk an election-year scandal. This is what led to the creation of the War Refugee Board.

The Board was successful in saving the lives of tens of thousands of Jews, but it came into existence far too late, after more than 5 million Jews had been murdered.

Jewish organizations failed.

Today, Jewish organizations again suffer from a lack of confidence.

Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership, is a collection of 22 essays assembled by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser. As established in the book's Acknowledgments, there is a need to address

The failure of the American Jewish establishment to counter the growing hostility toward the Jewish community [which] is endangering Jews across the country. This failure is scandalous.

...we have weak, politicized bureaucrats too often more concerned with their social status, the perks of power, and their organizations’ financial success than with their responsibility to defend the community. As can be seen in their priorities, staffing, and programs, they seem more loyal to a progressive ideology than to the safety of Jews.

Jews and Israel can no more rely today on the nations of the world to help them than it could when those same Western countries were needed the most. By the same token, Jewish organizations cannot afford to be complacent, valuing the connections with world leaders above the best interests of the Jewish people. At a time when there is growing friction between Israel and American Jews, it is even more important for Jewish organizations to put Jews and Israel before politics and progressive ideology

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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!

 

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Arabs make up a lot of fake Golda Meir quotes

Wednesday was the 125th anniversary of Golda Meir's birth.

She was known for many memorable expressions, but the Arab world seems to prefer to make up their own.

Egyptian newspaper El Balad attributes to Meir a series of quotations that are completely fictional. It doesn't look like they made these up - these fake quotes have been mentioned in Arabic language articles (and even Arab English language articles)  for a long time.

You can tell a lot abut the Arab psyche by their fabrications.

For example, they claim she said,  "Every morning I wish to wake up and not find a single Palestinian child alive." It is an absurd libel, but it is good propaganda for Arabs who want to demonize Israelis.

The next lie is that she was asked about the worst and best days of her life, and here's the fake answer: "The worst day in my life was the day when Al-Aqsa Mosque was burned, because I was afraid of the Arab and Islamic reaction. The happiest day in my life is the next day; because I saw the Arabs and Muslims did not move a finger." This is clearly meant to insult the Arab nations for not invading Israel after that 1969 arson by a mentally ill Christian.

Another fantasy is that Meir was told that Islam predicts an upcoming war between Muslims and Jews, in which the Muslims will be victorious, and she answered "I know that, but the victorious Muslims are not the ones we see now, and this will not be achieved unless we see the worshipers in the Fajr [dawn] prayer as fervent as they are in the Friday prayer." This plays into the fantasy that smart Jews of course know that Islam is the true religion but the reason they have lost every war to Jews is because they are not strict enough with their religion.

The next fabricated quote has been used by Jews but is just as false. The story is that  during a meeting between Golda Meir and a group of Israeli writers in 1970, one of them said that a Jew from Poland visited Palestine in the 1920s. On his return to Europe, he summarized his impressions by saying: "The bride is beautiful, but she has got a bridegroom already." (This  quote is false as well.) Golda Meir is quoted as responding, "And I thank God every night that the bridegroom was so weak, and the bride could be taken away from him."

Another obviously fake quote is that when she first came to Eilat, which is close to Saudi Arabia, she said, ""I smell the scent of my ancestors in Khaybar." 

The others mentioned in the article appear to be false as well, with one exception: Golda's 'famous quote “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but we cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.” 

Beyond the propaganda value of the fake quotes, we can see in just this one article how little regard Arab journalists have for the truth. 

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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!

 

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They Say Biden Only Criticizes Israel Behind The Scenes -- The Same Place He Undermines It (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

President Joe Biden called Netanyahu to congratulate him on his victory, as he returns to serve as prime minister of Israel.

It only took a week, but a lot was made of the fact that a number of world leaders lost no time in contacting Netanyahu to wish him well, while Biden -- who likes to brag about his friendship with Bibi -- seemed to be deliberately delaying his congratulations.

And maybe he was.

In February 2021, CNN reported that Biden took his time after winning his own election before contacting Netanyahu -- and that was because Netanyahu had taken his time contacting Biden on winning the election in 2020.

And so it goes.

But we are told that Biden and Netanyahu are actually good friends -- after all, Biden tells us so himself. He has claimed that he once gave Bibi a photo inscribed with the words:

“Bibi I don’t agree with a damn thing you say but I love you.”

Whatever that means.

During Biden's last visit to the Middle East, he visited Israel and met with Netanyahu, even though he was no longer prime minister at the time, and shook hands with him, saying “You know I love you.” Ha'aretz reported that a member of the US delegation met with a senior Israeli figure and told him that Biden's comment had nothing to do with affection --

When the president tells Netanyahu, “You know I love you,” the interlocutor from Washington explained, the implicit continuation of the sentence is: love aside, but you know I don’t want to see you return.

In any case, no matter how the media and the pundits choose to describe their relationship, Biden supposedly limits his criticisms of Netanyahu and Israel to private communications, while publicly providing unwavering support for the Jewish state. Yet that has not prevented Biden from publicly calling Netanyahu "counterproductive" and "extreme right." 

That may be something to keep in mind when Netanyahu confides to Mark Levin that 

[Biden] always says, 'Bibi, I love you, but I don't agree with a word you're saying' — [and] I say to him, ‘Joe, sometimes I reciprocate that.'"

Netanyahu and Biden apparently each can give as good as they get.

And when it comes to Israel, not all the things that Biden says about the Jewish state are complimentary.

Two years ago, Channel 13’s Nadav Eyal provided excerpts from a classified memo detailing a meeting Biden had with Golda Meir in 1973. The media's major focus was on the revelation that Biden relayed to her the conversations he had with Egyptian leaders who told him that they respected Israel's military superiority. Weeks later, Egypt attacked Israel. Obviously, Biden is not responsible for Israel's lack of preparation and military intelligence at the time.

However, there are some other comments Biden made that seem to have been overlooked.

Speaking directly to Golda Meir, Biden not only claims that Israel has an outsized influence on the Nixon administration against its will, but also claims that the US Senate is afraid of crossing American Jews. 

There is a certain brazenness there that would make Ilhan Omar jealous.

But Biden is known for his odd comments and gaffes. What about what he has actually done since taking office -- what do his actions indicate about his attitude towards Israel and what Netanyahu can expect?

Just last November, it was reported that the Biden administration wanted to reopen the US consulate for the Palestinian Arabs in its original location in Jerusalem, despite the fact that the establishment of such a consulate in Jerusalem would be a violation of the Oslo Accords. 

This is the same Biden who in support of the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995, said

Mr. President, it is unconscionable for us to refuse to recognize the right of the Jewish people to choose their own capital. What gives us the right to second-guess their decision? For 47 years, we, and much of the rest of the international community, have been living a lie.

Yet here was the Biden Administration trying to create conditions that would imply a division of Jerusalem between Jews and Arabs.

Eugene Kontorovich put it in stronger terms:

"The US does not want to open a consulate merely to have a place for diplomatic connections with the PA [Palestinian Authority]. If that is all they wanted, they could easily do this by opening a mission in Abu Dis or Ramallah -- where most other countries conduct their relations with the PA... the purpose of opening the consulate is to recognize Palestinian claims to Jerusalem."

Actually, Biden himself was explicit when he visited Abbas during his visit to the Middle East:

Jerusalem is central to the national visions of both Palestinians and Israelis, to your histories to your faiths to your futures. Jerusalem must be a city for all its people.

One month later, the Biden administration seemed to have shelved the idea. 

Another area that reflects Biden's attitude towards Israel is the appointments he makes to fill positions that influence policy in the Middle East.

o  In February, the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor invited nonprofit groups to apply for grant money in order to "strengthen accountability and human rights in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza." Not only would this strengthen those seeking to delegitimize Israel, but the appointee to head the program was Sarah Margon -- the former Washington director at Human Rights Watch who has openly supported boycotting Israel.

o  The White House appointed George Salem as chairman of the U.S. Agency for International Development's Partnership for Peace Fund board. Salem lobbied for the Palestinian government from 2015 until late 2021 and was registered as a foreign agent for the Palestine Monetary Authority. Under Abbas, the Palestinian government has been known for the way it has mishandled foreign aid -- especially exploitation of those funds for the pay-to-slay program.

o  The Biden administration appointed Elizabeth Campbell as a deputy assistant secretary of state at the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. She is the former director of UNRWA, criticized for its use of textbooks promoting hatred of Jews and of terrorism in Palestinian schools.

o  Hady Amr serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs and Press and Public Diplomacy in the Biden administration. He is also in charge of US negotiations with Israel and Palestinian organizations. He was the lead author of a report published by the Brookings Institution in December 2018 that said that the US must "reconnect" with Hamas, "create a Palestinian unity government integrating Hamas" and "compel Israel to make major concessions" even if this would "endanger Israel" -- concluding that "should Israel prove uncooperative with American efforts, the United States could signal it will move ahead anyway."

o  Biden's nominee for a top role at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Tamara Cofman Wittes, was director of the Middle East Policy Center at the Brookings Institution. She promoted articles that criticized the Abraham Accords and discouraged Arab countries from normalizing ties with Israel before the 2020 election. She tweeted that peace between Israel and the UAE was a ‘new Naksa,' a setback. She also retweeted an article that called the Abraham Accords misogynistic, a “triumph for authoritarianism.”

ZOA head Morton A. Klein has his own list of anti-Israel appointees that Biden put into key positions within his administration.

Reema Dodin [deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs]—who justified and even encouraged suicide bombings against Jews, organized anti-Israel rallies and spread Medieval-style blood libels, including the false claim that Israel denies Palestinian Arabs food, water and medical treatment; Maher Bitar [National Security Council official]—who organized the Palestine Solidarity Movement anti-Israel boycott conference at Georgetown University, at which he ran a session on how to demonize Israel; Karine Jean-Pierre [White House Press Secretary]—who helped orchestrate Democratic presidential candidates’ boycott of a major pro-Israel conference; Wendy Sherman [United States Deputy Secretary of State]—who negotiated the terrible Iran deal, praised secret concessions to Iran and downplayed PLO suicide bombings and other terror attacks on innocent Israelis; Avril Haines [Director of National Intelligence]—who signed a vicious letter falsely accusing Israel of violence, terrorism, and incitement; apologist for Hamas and Iran Robert Malley; and numerous others.

Klein also recalls that Biden praised Rashida Tlaib last year:

I admire your intellect, I admire your passion, I admire your concern for so many other people. You’re a fighter and God thank you for being a fighter.

He also notes that Biden resumed funding to Palestinian projects, in violation of the spirit -- if not the letter -- of the Taylor Force Act.

In fact, last month it was reported that the legal advocacy group America First Legal, a group of conservative lawyers and activists, filed a FOIA request for internal documents about US funding for the Palestinian Authority. The group claims that the Biden administration is violating US law by providing more than half a billion dollars to the PA. They claim the documents they are demanding will show an illegal effort "to undermine Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem."

And let's not forget about Biden and Iran.

Remember the tension we saw between Netanyahu and Obama?
The next 2 years might just make Netanyahu nostalgic for those days.

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The American Jewish Committee in the 1960s: Peter Beinart's NYT lies more egregious than I reported

I wrote my fisking of Peter Beinart's NYT op-ed quickly, but the true depth of Beinart's dishonesty can be seen from a deeper dive into one of the topics he mentioned and I touched upon.

He wrote, "Although supportive of Israel’s existence, America’s leading Jewish groups did not make it the center of their work in the mid-20th century. And when they did focus on Israel, they often tried to bring its behavior in line with their broader liberal democratic goals. The A.J.C. repeatedly criticized Israel for discriminating against its Palestinian Arab citizens. In 1960 the head of the group’s Israel Committee explained that it hoped to eliminate “antidemocratic practices and attitudes” in the Jewish state so the organization could more credibly “invoke principles of human rights and practices in our country and abroad.”

Beinart links to a fairly obscure 1998 academic paper, "Transformation Through Crisis: The American Jewish Committee and the Six-Day War," by Lawrence Grossman, published in the journal American Jewish History. This is already a red flag - if American Jewish organizations in the 1960s  were so uniformly critical of Israeli democracy, wouldn't there be a New York Times article about it that Beinart could link to?

The entire point of the academic article Beinart links to is to show that the AJC was out of the mainstream of American Jewish opinion on Israel and Zionism before 1967. It refutes Beinart's point - but Beinart quotes a small portion and pretends that the AJC's ambivalence on Israel represented mainstream American Jewish thought.

On the contrary - that attitude made the AJC nearly irrelevant in the 1960s. The paper makes the AJC's anomalous status clear:

The Jewish community had shifted massively toward the Zionist pole, and the AJC risked being marginalized if it did not adjust.

By the early 1960s, writes Naomi Cohen, AJC "had virtually stopped growing." In 1962 Executive Vice President John Slawson told a newly organized AJC Committee on National Growth that one reason Jews were reluctant to join was that  "there is still a feeling that we are anti-Israel."

The article also notes that the AJC was literally the only Jewish organization in America to criticize Israel for  a 1966 retaliatory raid in Jordan after a series of Arab attacks and not to condemn a UN anti-Israel resolution on the issue.  The Conference of Presidents of Major American Organizations, the major American Jewish umbrella group, condemned the UN resolution. The National Community Relations Council, the other large American Jewish umbrella group, was prevented from joining the Conference of Presidents resolution because its rules required a unanimous vote - and the objection of the AJC, which had only recently joined the NCRC, vetoed it.

Beinart must have read the entire piece to find the out-of-context quote he published, which means he knows very well that he was misrepresenting the opinions of major American organizations.

To be sure, American Jews in the 1960s had other issues to worry about besides Israel. There was still explicit antisemitism in America, and the plight of Soviet Jewry started gaining recognition. But I did a quick survey of the front page of the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, as a representative of Jewish mainstream concerns, on its first issue in each year from 1960 to 1967. Israeli topics were featured as the top story in every issue (judged as the right-most story on the front page):

January 1, 1960: Golda Meir criticizes a World Bank loan to Nasser's Egypt

January 6, 1961: David Ben Gurion says a speech of his was distorted and he lauds US Jewry

January 5, 1962: Soviet-Egyptian pact on arms a concern for Israel

January 4, 1963: "Middle East arms race unfolding to Israel's disadvantage": Javits

January 3, 1964: Israel charges Syria with "barbarism" in treatment of Israeli prisoners

January 1, 1965: Cabinet decides against reopening Lavon affair

January 7, 1966: State Department confirms supplying Jordan with up to 100 Patton tanks

January 6, 1967: Israel complains to Security Council over Arab raids

Beinart is making things up, knowing full well that most people - and certainly the New York Times editorial board - will not fact-check him. This is a pattern with Beinart, who is not only lying, but attempting to rewrite history itself. 

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Jokes of the Six Day War

 During the Six Day War, this division of Arabs is making its way across the burning desert sands towards Israel, when the Arab commander, bouncing along in his jeep, spots an aged Israeli on top a distant sand dune.

The commander drops his binoculars and shouts orders to a foot soldier to run up ahead and kill the infidel Israeli.

The soldier sprints ahead of theadvancing troops, and soon disappears over the sand dune.

The general stops the troops and waits to see what happens.

Nothing happens.

The commander sends a whole platoon of soldiers to investigate.

All twelve Arabs disappear over the sand dune, never to be seen again.

The now-slightly-anxious commander dispatches 3 tanks to find out just what in the heck is going on, and they disappear over the dune, too.

Sweat pours down the commander's forehead as he orders his entiredivision to overrun the solitary Israeli behind the sand dune.

But just then, the first soldier reappears on the distant sand dune and cups his hands to his lips. ” Go back!” he shouts. ” Go back!

It's hopeless there's TWO of them!”

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Time Magazine called the Six Day War a "blintzkreig."

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After the war,  Nasser complained that it was an unfair fight. "They have 2 million  Jews - and we don't have any!"

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It's a few days after the end of the Six Day War between the Arabs and the Israelis, and Golda Meir is giving a press conference.

Asked how such a small country as Israel could beat such large neighbors, she replies, "Well, boys, it's like this. We called up all the doctors, and we called up all the dentists, and we called up all the lawyers, and we gave them all a gun each and put them in the front line."

"And when we yelled "CHARGE".. BOY !! Do they know how to Charge!"

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 How many gears on an Egyptian tank? Five: one forward, four reverse. Why the forward gear? In case it gets attacked from behind.

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(This is an American joke)

During the war, an Israeli and Egyptian tank sollided. The egyptian jumped out and yelled "I surrender!" The Jew jumped out and yelled, "Whiplash!"

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Children's book erases Jews and Israel from the Middle East (UPDATE)

Here is a map of the Middle East from the children's book, Amazing Women of the Middle East:

You will notice that there is no Israel in this map. It is replaced with "Palestine."

Modern nations like Jordan and the UAE are mentioned, so it cannot be that the map refers to a time period before 1948. 

Iran and Turkey are shown, so this isn't a map of only Arab countries.

It is a clearly deliberate attempt to erase Israel from the map. 

The list of women that the book discusses seems to be missing a certain type of people as well:

• Scheherazade, Persia, narrator

• Nefertiti, Ancient Egypt, 1370 BCE, Queen of Egypt

• Queen of Sheba, 1050 BCE, modern-day Ethiopia

• Semiramis, ancient Iraq, 811 BCE, Queen of Babylon

• Cleopatra VII, Egypt, 69 BCE, last queen of Egypt

• Zenobia, Syria, 240 CE, Queen of Palmyra

• Theodora, 497 CE, Empress of Byzantium

• Rabiya al Adawiyya, Iraq, 714, poet

• Shajarat al Durr, Egypt, early 13th Century, Sultana of Egypt

• Hurrem Sultan, Ukraine, 1502, Sultana of Ottoman Empire

• May Ziadeh, Nazareth, Palestine, 1886, writer

• Nazik el Abid, Syria, 1887, activist

• Anbara Salam al Khalidi, Lebanon, 1897, activist and feminist

• Saloua Raouda Choucair, Lebanon, 1916, painter

• Fairuz, Lebanon, 1933, singer

• Zaha Hadid, Iraq, 1950, architect

• Anousheh Ansari, Iran/USA, 1966, astronaut

• Somayya Jabarti, Saudi Arabia, 1970, editor-in-chief

• Nadine Labaki, Lebanon, 1974, film maker and actress

• Amal Clooney, Lebanon/British, 1978, lawyer

• Manahel Thabet, Yemen, 1981, economist and mathematician

• Maha Al Baluchi, Oman, pilot

• Nadia Murad, Iraq, 1993, rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner

• Zahra Lari, UAE, 1995, ice skater

• Azza Fahmy, Egypt, jewellery designer

Hmmm. No Jewish women make the cut of Amazing Women of the Middle East. No Queen Esther or prophet Deborah or Golda Meir. 

Some people complained to a Canadian book chain, which removed the book from its shelves. The publisher, Michel Moushabeck who founded Interlink Publishing, wrote a snarky and demeaning response:

This past week, Interlink and my family were subjected to some vicious trolling by a small number of people on social media started by a pro-Israel group, which resulted in the removal of copies of a children’s picture book, Amazing Women of the Middle East, from the shelves of Indigo Books, a large bookstore chain in Canada. The book was banned because the group complained that it was anti-Semitic because the word Palestine—instead of Israel—appeared on the accompanying map that helped identify to children where the women featured in the book originally came from (one was from Palestine). 

We are saddened to see such an important book that celebrates Middle Eastern women of all faiths, be disparaged online. Unfortunately, this is not the first time we have been recipients of false accusations of anti-Semitism and this will likely not be the last. The notion that Palestinians are intrinsically anti-Semitic is a harmful and false narrative rooted in racism. This stereotype is harmful to not only Palestinians, but ignores the very REAL problem of anti-Semitism happening around the world. The books we publish amplify marginalized and underrepresented voices, including indigenous Palestinians, who are often left voiceless in Western media. We also publish talented Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic, etc. authors who further our cultural understanding of their lived experiences. 

He then went on to make fun of one tweet. 

One of the women profiled is Scheherazade, from Persia. Persia is not listed on the map, which means the children won't be able to identify where she came from!  So from the outset, we can see that the publisher is not being intellectually honest in his defense of a propaganda map that erases Israel.

Moushabeck goes on to misrepresent and demean the feelings of the people complaining. No one is saying that "Palestinians are intrinsically antisemitic." If the map drew Palestine as being in the West Bank, no one would have cared.

But the decision to erase the Jewish state is indeed antisemitic. 

Including women who represent all religions and areas of the Middle East except for members of one religion and one nation is indeed antisemitic. (And saying that women of "all faiths" are celebrated means that to the publisher, Jews don't count.)

There is also another implication in this letter: that women from ancient powerful empires like Egypt, Persia and the Ottoman Empire represent "marginalized and underrepresented voices," that Christians and Muslims who make up billions of people are "marginalized." Is Cleopatra really that marginalized? But the tiny number of Jews from a small ancient kingdom to a small modern democracy are not worth mentioning.

Let's be honest. The reason there are no Jews or Israel in the book is because the author and publisher do not believe that Jews have any rightful place in the region, historically or today. 

Let's be even more honest. If the book treated Jewish women on par with the others, and included Israel in the map and Israeli women like Nobel Prize winner Ada Yonath or Israel Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch or poet Leah Goldberg, the book would be boycotted by the target audience. 

So cut the crap. This has nothing to do with Palestinians and everything to do with what can only be considered a deliberate mindset that Jews are outsiders, colonialists - in short, the enemy. 

That's why this book is antisemitic. 

The publisher's letter that twists the arguments about the book and belittles the Jews who were insulted by it proves the underlying antisemitism more than the book itself does. 

I don't like censorship but this book promotes the idea that Jews do not belong in the region, and it is therefore utterly unsuitable to be bought by anyone who supports the liberal stance that Interlink Publishing pretends to espouse.

(h/t Jim W)

UPDATE: The UK publisher has pulled the book from its website after a legal action by UK Lawyers for Israel.

UK Lawyers for Israel warned Pikku Publishing the book, called ‘Amazing Women of the Middle East: 25 Stories from Ancient Times to Present Day,’ could be in breach of education laws if used as a teaching aid in schools because it featured no Israeli women and had erased Israel from a map of the region.

The book, which is marketed to children over the age of nine, is listed on a web page marked “Teachers’ Resources” on the publisher’s website.

UKLFI warned self-publishing company Pikku if the book were used as a teaching aid in schools it would be likely to result in a breach Section 406 of the Education Act 1996.

This forbids ‘political indoctrination’, which is defined as the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school.

The UK Lawyers for Israel requested the publishers both in the UK and the USA withdraw the book and re-publish it with the correct map and featuring at least one ‘Amazing Woman’ from Israel.

The title has been withdrawn both from Pikku’s website and the teaching resources based on the book have also been removed from the ‘teachers’ resources’ section.

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Vietnamese General Reminds Us Of A Truth Golda Meir Taught Us Half A Century Ago (Daled Amos)

Palestinian terrorists naturally want to learn from the best.

That's why they have spoken to military leaders from Latin America, Vietnam and Algeria in search of advice on the kinds of tactics that will accomplish their goal of destroying the State of Israel and sending the Jews packing.

Last month, Hamas deputy political chief Musa Abu Marzouk gave an interview to Russia Today comparing the Hamas war against Israel with the Vietnamese War with the US:

“It’s not like it was in Vietnam and elsewhere, where things ended up with negotiations. This is just one of a [series] of wars, and a war will come when we negotiate with them [i.e., the Jews] about the end of their occupation and their leaving of Palestine.”

But despite the contrast with the results in Vietnam, Palestinian leaders apparently see similarities. 

So much so that Palestinian terrorist leaders made a point of traveling there for pointers from General Vo Nguyen Giap:

Giap was one of the great strategic minds of the twentieth century, a former schoolteacher who played a central role in developing the strategic thinking and organizational capabilities that transformed ragtag rural provincials into a military force that would rout the most powerful nations in the world, from the Japanese occupation to the French and the Americans over three long decades of conflict culminating in the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

In the mid-1990s, two IDF major generals were coming to the end of their military careers. Meir Dagan had led commando squads, armored brigades and the Mossad. Yossi Ben Hanan served as one of Israel’s most successful tank commanders during the 1973 war and later led the armored corps and was in charge of the IDF’s R&D. Both of them were students of military history in general and that included the Vietnam War.

The two men applied for visas and specifically requested to meet with Giap.
The request was unexpectedly approved and the 2 Israelis had a long meeting with him.

When the Israelis rose to leave, Giap suddenly turned to the Palestinian issue. “Listen,” he said, “the Palestinians are always coming here and saying to me, ‘You expelled the French and the Americans. How do we expel the Jews?’”

The generals were intrigued. “And what do you tell them?”

“I tell them,” Giap replied, “that the French went back to France and the Americans to America. But the Jews have nowhere to go. You will not expel them.” [emphasis added]

This, of course, is reminiscent of the famous quote of Golda Meir about Israel's secret weapon:

"We have a secret weapon in our conflict with the Arabs: You see, we have no place else to go.”

Same idea.
But with a difference.

Golda was right. In 1973, there were about 3.3 million Jews in Israel.
Where would they go?

But there is an implication in the way Giap phrases it.

For France and America, regardless of their reason for being in Vietnam, they had their own countries to return to -- and even under the best of circumstances they had no intent to set up Vietnam as an extension of their own country for their own people to live.

France can always go back to France and America can always go back to America

Where do Jews have to go back to?

Europe?

Even if Giap was not trying to imply that Jews have ties to Israel, he clearly saw that Jews were not about to leave as France and the US did -- not only because they can't, but because they won't.

They won't because Israel is home.
Our indigenous home.

The French went home to France.
The Americans went home to the US.
And Jews who are home in Israel are there to stay.

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Thoughts on Yom Hazikaron (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal

A few moments ago, at exactly 11 am, I went up to my roof to stand at attention for two minutes during the siren that honors the 23,928 people, soldiers and civilians, who have died since 1860 in the struggle to create and defend the Jewish state.

Today, Wednesday, is Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. It’s been said that on Yom Hazikaron we consider the price of having a state, while on last week’s Yom Hashoa, we think about the price of being without one. Most Israelis understand that the latter’s cost would be much greater, but still, the pain of those who have lost loved ones is almost unbearable. And that pain is worsened when the loss was avoidable, perhaps caused by incompetence, laziness, or selfishness on the part of political or military leaders that failed those who put their trust in them (and who mostly had no choice in the matter).

The 1973 war is considered the most prominent example of unnecessary losses in the history of the state. Repeated failures by military and political officials (including the PM, Golda Meir) to take seriously the warnings from numerous sources that an attack was imminent – even King Hussein of Jordan personally warned Meir – led to the catastrophic lack of preparation for the joint Egyptian-Syrian attack. At least 2,500 Israeli soldiers died in the war that followed, many of them in the first hours of the war when inadequate Israeli forces faced large invading armies on the Golan Heights and the Sinai.

After the war, a commission of inquiry (the Agranat Commission) investigated the failures, and after the release of its report, several military commanders were forced to resign, as well as Meir and her cabinet. Although Meir’s government was succeeded by one led by Yitzhak Rabin, it’s generally thought that the debacle of 1973 led directly to the end of the left-wing monopoly on power, the triumph of Menachem Begin’s Likud Party in 1977.

Another, more recent example was the Second Lebanon War. The three men who managed the war in the summer of 2006 were unqualified to do so. The Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, had little military experience and went to war without a clear objective or exit strategy. The Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, was an Air Force officer who didn’t understand the workings of the ground forces, and how to get them to do what he wanted. The army, especially the ground forces, suffered from a long-term lack of discipline, which manifested itself in an abysmal lack of preparation. There were serious failures in intelligence, logistics, tactics, and execution. 121 Israeli soldiers died in the inconclusive month-long war, which ended in a UN Security Council resolution that proved worthless in preventing Hezbollah from rearming for a second round.

The theme of the tragic loss of young people in war pervades Israeli culture; it appears throughout popular music, films, and literature. It’s felt especially strongly on Yom Hazikaron – the newspaper, radio, and TV are full of stories about young men and women who were everything to their parents, who were full of plans for the future, had talents and dreams, but whose lives ended at the age of 23, or 20, or 19. And the thought that it may not have been necessary is excruciating.

Today Israel is facing Iran, a large country whose leaders seem to have a limitless hatred for us, a hatred greater than just their geopolitical ambitions. They have surrounded us with proxies, in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, armed and waiting for the conflict to begin. The Iranian regime is committed to building nuclear weapons, and we are committed to stopping them. For both sides, this is an issue that is not amenable to compromise. Unless something very unexpected happens, there will be war yet again, and yet again our young people will offer themselves generously on behalf of the am Yisrael. We know, beyond any doubt, that they will not all return to take their after-army trips around the world, or go to university, or marry their sweethearts. We know this for certain. This is the terrible cost of defending the Jewish state, which is still less expensive than the cost of not having one.

If there isn’t a way to prevent it – and I think there isn’t – at least we can do our best to minimize the number of those that will be lost because of incompetence, laziness, and selfishness in the higher echelons of the government and the military.

The present situation in which there is no permanent government, in which vital functions – including the military budget – are held hostage to the ambitions, fears, personal grudges, and egos of a few dozen people who lead our political parties and our legal establishment, must end now. Not after the missiles start falling on the unprepared home front, and not after reserve soldiers whose training was cancelled for budgetary reasons are thrown into combat.

You know who you are – Bibi, Bennett, Lapid, Sa’ar, Smotrich, Gantz, Lieberman, as well as Kochavi, Mandelblit, Hayut, and all the rest. You know that the state is in a perilous situation, and that it needs the attention of leaders that will put aside everything else except the good of am Yisrael and its nation-state, who will start earning the exorbitant salaries that we pay them. You know what you have to do. Do it.
Now. Before it is too late.

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This Time Around, Will Biden Get What The Arab World Is Saying? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Following the news of Israel's peace agreement with the UAE and Bahrain, we had a laugh at John Kerry's expense when we watched the 2016 video of Kerry assuring his audience that peace between Israel and the Arab world without first resolving the Palestinian question just wasn't possible.

And Kerry knew this because he had, even a week earlier, spoken to "leaders of the Arab community."

It would be interesting to know just what Kerry said to those Arab leaders -- and what exactly they said to him in response.

Did he misinterpret what they said to him?

Did those leaders intentionally mislead Kerry?

It certainly wouldn't be the first incident of an apparent 'miscommunication" between Arab leaders and a member of the US government.

In a recent post, Judean Rose asks: Joe Biden’s First Meeting with Golda Meir: Did it Lead to the Yom Kippur War? The basis for the question is a Twitter thread by Nadav Eyal, Chief International Correspondent for Reshet News.

Once again, Arab officials apparently misled a US politician as to what they were thinking about Israel.

Joe Biden (YouTube screencap)

But apparently, this is not limited to US politicians.

As a matter of fact, Arab leaders have been known to mislead other Arab leaders as well.

In his book The Arab Mind, Raphael Patai tells a story from the eve of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence:

Musa Alami, the well-known Palestinian Arab leader, made a tour of the Arab capitals to sound out the leaders with whom he was well acquainted. In Damascus, the President of Syria told him:

I am happy to tell you that our Army and its equipment are of the highest order and well able to deal with a few Jews; and I can tell you in confidence that we even have an atomic bomb...Yes, it was made locally; we fortunately found a very clever fellow, a tinsmith...(p. 53-54) [emphasis added]

Patai gives another example, this one from the Six Day War, when on the first day (June 5, 1967) the commander of the Egyptian forces in Cairo sent a message to the Jordanian front:

that the Israeli air offensive was continuing. But at the same time, he insisted that the Egyptians had put 75 per cent of the Israeli air force out of action. The same message said that U.A.R. bombers had destroyed the Israeli bases in a counter-attack, and that the ground forces of the Egyptian army had penetrated into Israel by way of the Negev! (p. 109)

If Egypt had been honest with Jordan from day 1, Hussein might not have entered the war, and Jordan would have retained control of Judea and Samaria -- and the Kotel.

But behind these examples of miscommunication, there are issues of Arab culture. 

For example, the story about the tinsmith is pure exaggeration, what Patai refers to as the "spell of (Arabic) language," namely the "prediliction for exaggeration and overemphasis  [which] is anchored in the Arabic language itself" (p. 55)

As for Egypt's deception of Jordan, Patai describes it as wajh, or an attempt to avoid loss of face. In fact, Patai blames King Hussein's years in England for his failure to see this for what it was:

Had Hussein not lost, during his formative years spent in England, the ear for catching the meaning behind the words which is an indispensable prerequisite of true communication among Arabs, he would have understood that a real victory over Israel would have been announced by Amer and Nasser in a long tirade of repetitious and emphatic assertions, and that the brief and for Arabs, totally unusual factual form of the statement betrayed it for what it actually was: a face-saving device, a reference not to a real, but to an entirely imaginary victory. [emphasis in original] (p. 112-3)

But what about Biden and Kerry?

Again, without knowing what each side actually said, it is impossible to know what went on.

But their misunderstanding of their Arab hosts might be due to the Arab concept of shame.

Patai distinguishes between shame, which is "a matter between a person and his society," and guilt which is "a matter between a person and his conscience" -- or as he puts it: "A hermit in a desert can feel guilt; he cannot feel shame."

One of the important differences between the Arab and the Western personality is that in the Arab culture, shame is more pronounced than guilt...What pressures the Arab to behave in an honorable manner is not guilt but shame, or, more precisely, the psychological drive to escape or prevent negative judgement by others. [p. 113]

We tend to associate the Arab concept of shame/honor with of 'honor killings,' but there are implications on a national level too.

In his preface to the 1976 edition of his book, Patai writes that although Egypt lost the Yom Kippur War, the fact that they caught Israel by surprise and were able to initially gain the upper hand, allowed the Egyptians to perceive the war as a victory, and cleared the way for peace negotiations:

A manifestation of this new Arab self-confidence is the willingness to enter into disengagement agreements with Israel. It is, in this connection, characteristic that it is precisely Egypt, the country that won what it considers a victory over Israel, which has embarked on the road of negotiation with her....It is quite clear that the feeling of having demonstrated strengh is for an Arab state a psychological prerequisite of discussing adjustments and reaching understanding with an enemy. [emphasis added] (xxiii - xxv)

How would shame/honor manifest itself in discussions between Arabs and Westerners?

In his 1989 book, The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs, David Pryce-Jones writes about

Kenneth Pendar, an American intelligence officer whose task it was to persuade Moroccans to side with the Allies during the last war, expressed the difficulties of conducting a negotiation in which he expected a yes or a no from people unable to commit themselves to either, because they could not tell who would win the war and acquire honor or who would lose and be shamed. [emphasis added] (p. 45)

 Pryce-Jones goes on to quote Henry Kissinger, who complained of the difficulty of negotiating with the Saudis because of their style that was "at once oblique and persistent, reticent and assertive" based on the allocation of honor or shame.

Based on this, one can imagine that Kerry and Biden could each have easily misinterpreted what they heard in accordance with what they wanted to pass on to their respective audiences.

Interestingly, when Patai writes about the confidence the Yom Kippur Was instilled into the Arab world in 1973, he contrasts Egypt -- which considers the Yom Kippur War a victory -- with other Arab countries that either cannot make such a claim or have never fought Israel, and are therefore opposed to negotiation.

That would seem to rule out Jordan and Sudan, on the one hand, and the UAE and Bahrain on the other.

But King Hussein making peace with Israel is not surprising, considering his tenuous control over his country, the majority of whom are Palestinian Arabs. There was leverage the US could apply, even if the peace treaty itself could cause trouble for Hussein at home.

Considering the leverage that the US applied to Sudan, that country also had a lot to gain. But both Egypt and Jordan have a cold peace with Israel and the Arabs in both countries have expressed their hatred of Jews and Israel. It's not clear that the situation in Sudan is any better.

What about UAE and Bahrain?

Some have belittled the Abraham Accords because those 2 countries have never actually been involved in a war with Israel.

But maybe that is the point.

Egypt and Jordan fought against Israel, and whatever the considerations on the government level -- on a national level, Israel remains an enemy in the eyes of the Egyptian and Jordanian people, regardless of the benefits Israel has to offer and are nowhere near normalizing relations. There is an absence of a state of war, but the mood of belligerence persists.

Not so with UAE and Bahrain, which has never fought Israel. 

The intent of the Abraham Accords is not to bring peace in order to end a state of war -- instead the point is to normalize relations, a goal that is conceivable for UAE and Bahrain, but not for Egypt and Jordan, which still cannot go beyond a 'cold peace,' let alone a full, real peace.

In November 2017, Mordechai Kedar wrote The Ten Commandments for Israeli negotiations with Saudi Arabia, which he described as "immutable principles" for negotiating with Saudi Arabia "and any other Arab nations who wish to live in peace with the Jewish State."

One of those principles is the need for normalizing relations as opposed to just making peace:

10. Peace with the Saudis must entail more than just a ceasefire with an attached document ("Salaam" in Arabic) . Israel agreed to that in the case of Egypt and Jordan as a result of the ignorance of those running the negotiations on Israel's side.

Israel must insist on complete normalization ("sulh" in Arabic), which includes cultural, tourist, business, industrial, art, aeronautical, scientific, technological, athletic and academic ties and exchanges, etc. If Israel participates in international events taking place in Saudi Arabia, the Israeli flag will wave along with those of other countries, and if Israel is the victor in any sports competition in Saudi Arabia, the Hatikva anthem will be played, as it is when other countries win medals. Israeli books will be shown at book fairs, and Israeli products officially displayed at international exhibitions taking place in Saudi Arabia.

An economic document, whose details I am not in a position to elaborate, but which must be an addendum to the agreement, is to be based on mutual investments and acquisitions as well as a commitment to non- participation in boycotts. [emphasis added]

This is what we are seeing now.

A foreshadowing for what is possible is in another comment by Patai, where he addresses the "Arab street" that today we are told is supposedly ready at any moment to rise up in protest, yet whose anger Trump has somehow been able to avoid these past 4 years:

The volatility of Arab reaction to the October War was paralleled four years later by the rapid evaporation of Arab wrath over President Satat's initiative in establishing direct contact with Israel. This was observed by Fuad Moughrabi, professor of political science and co-editor of the Arab Studies Quarterly, in 1980:

The Arab world reacted strongly and passionately to Sadat's visit to Jerusalem. But contrary to what many had expected, the intensity of the reaction was not followed by any concrete, effective steps to neutralize the conseqauences of the visit. Sadat did the unthinkable and got away with it. (p. 339)

Moughrabi wrote this in 1980.

Sadat was assassinated in 1981 -- by the extremist Muslim Brotherhood.

Back then, Arab opposition to Sadat was not directed against the idea of peace, but against the Camp David Accords themselves, which removed Egypt as a participant in the war against Israel -- a war which was supposed to benefit the cause of the Palestinian Arabs.

Today, with the Arab support for the Palestinian Arab cause at its lowest ebb, there are genuine prospects for continuing what the Trump administration started.

That is, assuming that this time around Biden actually listens to what the Arab leaders are saying.

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Of course we should teach young Jews about 1948

 

Hey Alma has yet another article about how young Jews who attended Zionist summer camps are unaware of the complexities of the Israeli/Arab conflict.

As is typical in these articles, the assumption is that the newly anti-Zionist Jews have been cheated out of real knowledge, and now they know better, and must “unlearn” the hasbara/propaganda they were force fed by evil former IDF soldiers.

For example:

My Jewish education at camp heavily involved learning about modern-day Israel and the reason why it was so central for Jews to have their own homeland. I remember first learning about Theodor Herzl at camp, along with famous Israeli prime ministers like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir. We had Hebrew lessons every day which often came with education about Israeli culture, and a section of our madrichim (counselors) were Israeli, young and usually fresh out of the IDF. They would teach us about where they grew up and put on a week-long celebration of Israel’s independence every summer. Posters with facts about Israeli culture and history were commonplace in camp buildings: Did you know that the average Israeli consumes 22 lbs of hummus each year?

I loved learning about Israel and felt a spiritual connection to this country I had never lived in or been to. When I was told by my counselors that Israel was the only democracy in the Middle East, that it had every right to defend itself from missile attacks coming from the West Bank, I believed them — why would I not? I was never told about the nation that existed before the formation of Israel or the native Palestinians who lived there. I was never told about the occupation and what it means for Palestinians living under Israeli rule.

So they are “unlearning” that Israel is a democracy and “learning” that there was a Palestinian nation on the land beforehand. Isn’t that great? Myths are replacing a vacuum.

It is way past time (if it isn’t happening already) for Jewish kids to be taught an accurate version of modern Israeli history, one that is proud and unapologetic. There is no reason to demonize ordinary Palestinian Arabs but there is a need to describe the antisemitism of their leaders, of the Hadassah Hospital convoy massacre, of how the Arabs attacked immediately after the partition vote, of how the Zionists waited for months before finally fighting back, of the drama of the UN vote and the declaration of the state, of the Palestinian Arabs who fled from Jaffa after their leaders abandoned them.  It can all be taught accurately in a way that kids can understand.

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