Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Haaretz

Showing posts with label Haaretz. Show all posts

Friday, March 03, 2023

He wrote an op-ed supporting judicial reform. So Haaretz fired him.

Earlier this week, Daled Amos wrote about how Haaretz has dropped all pretense of journalism and objectivity, based on my tweet of a letter from Haaretz's publisher Amos Schocken:

Dear Haaretz reader,

Despite the hopes – and votes – of nearly half of Israel's electorate, Benjamin Netanyahu won Israel's last election and, since taking office as prime minister, he has spun into action together with his far-right partners, to implement a swathe of radical policies that threaten to change the nature of Israel's democracy, perhaps irrevocably.

Israel's newly empowered right wing, discarding its liberal right heritage, has swung towards nationalism, illiberalism and authoritarianism. We now have a serving prime minister who is simultaneously the subject of an ongoing criminal trial, and hoping to evade justice. We have a government pushing to undermine the rule of law in Israel, to end the separation of powers, the independence of the courts and judges, and to crush freedom of expression.

It is incumbent upon us to fight these policies and even worse proposals taking shape among members of the governing coalition. This fight must be informed by the unparalleled, and unafraid, reporting and analysis that has been our mission for over a century.

At Haaretz, our dedicated journalists are on the ground every day working to defend a free and democratic Israel-- and the work we do depends on the support of readers like you. We invite you to become a partner in this essential work by subscribing now to Haaretz.com. We must act together, and we must act now.

Thank you,

Amos Schocken

I had responded:

Missing words from Amos Schocken's description of Haaretz's mission:

Truth
Objectivity
Accuracy
Fairness

Call me old fashioned, but I don't want my newspaper to tell me what to think. And certainly not one that is hellbent to only report one side of an important issue.

I admit I was pleasantly surprised that later that week, Haaretz published a long interview with the architect of judicial reform, Simcha Rothman. The interviewer was combative and condescending, but at least Haaretz published Rothman's words.

But now we see that Haaretz only allowed that interview because they thought that Rothman's position was counteracted by the interviewer's words. Actually allowing an op-ed in support of judicial reform is way, way over the line for Haaretz.

Gadi Taub is an Israeli historian and (mostly) conservative commentator who has written for Haaretz for years. He has written in favor of judicial reform for years as well.

But this week, after he submitted an op-ed on the topic for Haaretz, they fired him.

He is interviewed by Israeli magazine Now 14:

I sent an article whose bottom line is that now there is no democracy in Israel, and therefore the legal reform is an attempt to bring it back to Israel. In response, I received a series of questions from the editor, a kind of fact checking about my article.

On the exact day that I received the list of questions from the editor, including the claim that I was wrong and misleading, I was invited to dinner with a friend of mine who is a retired judge. At the dinner there was another retired judge and two of the greatest legal scholars in Israel, an excellent opportunity to test myself.

I presented them with [Haaretz's] questions and wrote down points. At night I sat down with my friend Nissim Sofer and wrote the editor an answer to all the questions. What can I tell you? A small seminar paper, including citations and references.

The Haaretz newspaper replied, 'Thank you for the detailed answer, but we don't want to publish the article, because now democracy is on the defensive.' Basically they are saying: We wanted to claim that you are lying, but the truth is that we are lying and now it is forbidden to tell the truth, so shut up.

Alon Idan, editor of the newspaper's opinion section, wrote to Taub: "The recent change of government was accompanied by an aggressive and immediate attack on Israeli democracy, as we at 'Haaretz' perceive it. The desire to weaken the judicial system with the help of extreme moves that are done unilaterally and without restraints, forces us as a media outlet to defend ourselves against what which in our eyes will be perceived as a regime coup... in terms of a defensive democracy, we believe that now is a time of defensiveness."

Haaretz admits it: It is not interested in truth, objectivity, accuracy or fairness.

Unfortunately, while this is an extreme example, this is what we are seeing in most of the mainstream media. The people are considered too dumb to make up their own minds so the self-appointed arbiters of morality choose what the public is allowed to see.

I admit it gets frustrating sometimes trying to research and publish facts when so many seem to prefer narratives, and perception trumps the truth.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Amos Schocken And The @Haaretzcom Model of Newspaper Journalism (Daled Amos)

Haaretz still sees itself as being more than just a newspaper that reports the news.

Under publisher Amos Schocken, Haaretz thinks of itself as a champion in shaping Israel, calling upon Israelis to follow its lead (after subscribing, of course).

For instance, last week, Elder of Ziyon tweeted about a "letter" from the publisher of Haaretz, Amos Schocken, insisting that Israelis have a responsibility to oppose the democratically elected government:

Elder of Ziyon noted what Shocken left out:

Schocken's call to arms against the Israeli government is not really unexpected. Haaretz's radicalism is part of the history of the newspaper under the Schocken family:

[Amos Schocken] had inherited it from his father and grandfather, and the legacy seems to have included an ambivalent relationship with the Jewish state. His grandfather, Salman, who had fled from Germany to Palestine, had been, according to Remnick, a supporter of Brit Shalom, an organization of Jews favoring a bi-national state rather than a Jewish one. The paper passed to Salman’s son, Gershom (née Gustav), who once wrote an essay about the need to remove the religious prohibition on intermarriage so as to encourage the emergence of a homogeneous Israeli nationality to supersede those of Jew and Arab...Gershom’s son, Amos, acquired the paper upon his father’s death in 1990 and has given it editorial direction since then. [emphasis added]

Haaretz's strong left-wing roots haven't stopped Schocken from speaking out from time to time, in fairly conservative terms, on what a newspaper in general is supposed to be. In 2008, The Jerusalem Post reported on a rumor of a "purge" at Haaretz, and a new "moderate" era at the paper. In response, Schocken told the media site The Seventh Eye:

I understand there are those readers who want Haaretz to look like a protest [manifesto] against the occupation - for example, Ashkenazi, secular and righteous, and focused on the occupation. But a newspaper is not a protest [manifesto]; it's a newspaper...If it were possible, then, I would be ready to be the publisher of a newspaper that solely campaigned against the occupation till its end. The problem is that some of those protesting against the occupation also want to know what is happening in the shops of Comme Il Faut [a clothing chain]. So we were concerned that they wouldn't take out a subscription to the newspaper that I am prepared to be the publisher of. [emphasis added]

Schocken is not actually averse per se to running Haaretz as a protest manifesto, its just that a newspaper has to be able to pay the bills and has to take into account the concerns of its readership. Here, he conjectures that a portion of his readership is concerned about what is happening "in the shops of Comme Il Faut," as opposed to what is happening in Israel.

He got closer to the mark a few years later. In 2011, Haaretz was criticized for its coverage of the Fogel family massacre, when it decided not to feature the story on the front page -- choosing instead to feature a report on the Japanese tsunami that occurred on the same day. In 2012 Schocken defended this choice to a Haredi audience, laying out the role of Haaret z as he saw it. He told them that, "with all due respect for the family at Itamar, when you compare that event, which was very grave – it was not the first time that Palestinians murdered Jews." Schocken tied this in with how he saw the responsibility of Haaretz:

The role of a newspaper as I understand it, and as Ha’aretz has understood throughout the years, even before I became responsible for the paper, even when my father was there...is not to give expression to emotionalism and feelings, but to give readers information about the important things. To set some sort of hierarchy of importance...

The role of Ha’aretz is also to provide a perspective of how important things are in the world we live in. What is the role of a newspaper, after all? To give the reader some kind of picture of reality that is as faithful to reality as is possible. [emphasis added]

That sounds like a fairly conservative approach. Yet just 2 years later, in 2014, Schocken published a call to Israelis, and in his manifesto described what Israelis could accomplish by subscribing to Haaretz:

By doing so, you will become a partner in the ongoing effort to shape Israel as a liberal and constitutional democracy that cherishes the values of pluralism and civil and human rights. You will become a partner in actively supporting the two-state solution and the right to Palestinian self-determination, which will enable Israel to rid itself of the burdens of territorial occupation and the control of another people.

Now, according to Schocken, this is all actually part of being a newspaper:

Influencing the way Israel evolves is a daily effort of news gathering, reporting developments and creating editorial positions and sometimes campaigns to prevent negative outcomes and encourage positive ones.

So the goal of Haaretz is "to give the reader some kind of picture of reality" while "influencing the way Israel evolves."

But if the picture of reality it tied to an agenda, what happens when reality does not cooperate?

David Landau, a former editor-in-chief of Haaretz and the founder of its English-language edition had his own way of dealing with the problem. In 2005, when CAMERA contacted the paper requesting a correction, an assistant editor accidentally responded with an email intended for internal circulation:

We have a quasi ‘policy,’ on orders of David [Landau], to ignore this organization and all of its complaints, including not responding to telephone messages and screening calls from [its] director.

According to an article by Joshua Muravchik in Commentary Magazine, Landau justified this by claiming CAMERA had a “vendetta,” a convenient way of avoiding having to deal with whether the criticisms from CAMERA were valid or not.

Like Landau, Schocken similarly defends his reporters. In the above Letter From The Editor last week, he wrote that, "at Haaretz, our dedicated journalists are on the ground every day working to defend a free and democratic Israel."

That includes Gideon Levy.

On October 23, 2012, an article by Levy carried the front-page headline, “Most Israelis Support Apartheid Regime in Israel.” But in fact the survey data did not support either the headline nor Levy’s own analysis. In the face of public criticism, Haaretz published an apology five days later.

Three years ago on Twitter, when this topic came up, Schocken defended Levy, claiming that "bringing this up only proves [Gideon Levy's] other work is beyond reproach. This led to a review of Levy's "other work," based on CAMERA analysis:

At that point, Schocken doubled down:

Here is the story, from Jerold Auerbach's book:

Wikipedia references a source indicating that Hass herself, instead of even attempting to dispute the other accounts, claimed she was not responsible because it was up to the newspaper editor's themselves to cross-reference sources from the IDF and Hebron community.

All Schocken's pontificating over the years about the role and responsibility of a newspaper means little if the journalists do not put his words into practice and he himself continues to support them and extol them as paragons of journalism anyway.

So much for:

Truth

Objectivity

Accuracy

Fairness

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!

Haaretz agrees: Zionism is integral to Judaism, anti-Zionism is antisemitism

Haaretz headlines over the past month keep trying to top themselves in derangement. Here's one from today:

Yes, Netanyahu is an anti-Zionist!

But wait: in 2018, Haaretz had other op-eds on Netanyahu:

These articles comes right up to the line of accusing Bibi of antisemitism because he criticizes George Soros.

So this is great news:

Even Haaretz admits that anti-Zionists are antisemites!

But there's more, from today's Haaretz. If you want to be anti-Israel, you should abandon Judaism!

Judaism is Zionism and anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Haaretz said so, and no religious Zionist could have said it better.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Some over-the-top articles about the new government in Israel

Here are some excerpts of articles about the new Netanyahu-led government, showing how over-the-top and hysterical some analysis is:

The alarm clock rang long ago already. It rang at fascist speeches by ministers. It appears that we turned it off and slept on. Now it is ringing again . . . One feels like weeping in view of the darkness that is slowly descending on our lives; in view of the takeover of extremist and racist opinions and worldviews, sometimes in such flagrant fashion as in this instance, and sometimes without our even being aware that it is happening. (1)

The new, anti-liberal Israeli Right and Religious Zionism have joined forces, following the logic that guides totalitarian regimes, [aiming] to capture the souls of the pupils and to transform them from lovers of people into stuck-up nationalists. This is the way to turn Israel from a Jewish and democratic state into a religious-nationalist state with a thin veneer of democracy. (2)

It looks like Weimar, it smells like Weimar; it’s malignant like Weimar. We aren’t the Weimar Republic, but a lot of what is happening here is reminiscent of what happened there’. (3)

‘Think of the media as a giant keyboard that the government can play on,’ famously declared Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, who certainly knew a thing or two about communications and cinema, and about the psychology of the masses. On this point, at least, the present Israeli government is acting as though in agreement with him. (4)

This is a sophisticated revolution, full of scheming, that rests on an obedient, ‘normative’, even liberal and tolerant Revolutionary Guards. The sort whose very inaction and habituation feed the revolution. They are sure that we are not Iran, and that we won’t become like Egypt or Turkey. No one is going to surprise them one morning with the execution of intellectuals and the burning of books. There will be no need for that. What happens here is that people march politely along with the revolution, saluting it proudly. (5)

Don’t be surprised if one day someone in civilian dress knocks on your door and takes you for questioning. For two days no one will know your whereabouts, and then you’ll be released, with no explanation . . . We will howl that its ‘undemocratic’. . . and they’ll say, ‘You can say “undemocratic” in Sweden; not by us’. (6)

I'm sorry, did I imply these articles are recent? No, they are from seven years ago.

1. S. Kadmon, “Between the Wall and the Fence” (Yedioth Aharonoth, December 31, 2015)

2. M. Kremnitzer, “Human Rights? A Whole Lot of Nonsense” (Globes, December 9, 2015).

3. N. Barnea, “Not Even Death will Liberate from Betrayal” (Yedioth Aharonoth, January 28, 2016).

4. N. Anderman, “Regev Learned from Netanyahu How to Crush the Cinema” (Haaretz, March 29, 2017).

5. Z. Barel, “We, the Revolutionary Guard Corps” (Haaretz, February 24, 2016).
6. Y. Klein, “Please, Censor Me” (Haaretz, January 27, 2016).

None of the confident predictions about the government came true.

I have no idea what the new Israeli government will do. But the point is - neither does anyone else. Especially the types of people that made these confident predictions in 2015 and whose jobs rely on their newspapers getting eyeballs.

I found these excerpts in a recent academic paper in Israel Affairs titled, "‘It’s a war on Israel’s liberal democracy’: the Israeli left as a moral panic community, 2015-19." The abstract is worth reading:

This article examines the discourse of the Israeli Left in the years preceding the succession of general elections in 2019–21, with a focus on claims of the purported threats to democracy presented by the right-wing government. Rhetorical analysis of opinion pieces and political commentary in the press on issues relating to education, science, and culture shows recurrent use of appeals to fear – such as comparisons with totalitarian regimes and invocation of other dystopian spectres resulting from nationalist indoctrination and processes of ‘religionization’. This article defines the appeal to fear and other forms of the Left’s identity claims making during this period as moral panic discourse, around which the Left sought to revive its relevance in the public debate at a time when it was viewed as a marginal political force in ideological decline. The article’s main argument is that while the labelling of the Right as a ‘danger to democracy’ has been entrenched in leftist discourse since the 1977 ‘Upheaval’, during the period in discussion it became the principal – almost sole – theme in leftist publicist discourse, serving as a flag issue around which the Left reorganised its identity as the ‘democratic camp’.

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!

How many of these far-Right Republican figures have dabbled in antisemitism?

Haaretz has two articles about extremism in today's Republican party, and many of the examples include what they claim is antisemitism.

Armed with my definition of antisemitism, do their examples fit the bill?

Law professor David Schraub says that the GOP is now as antisemitic as Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party was. Let's look at what he says.

After years of largely futile efforts by Jews to raise the alarm bells on ascendant antisemitism in the GOP, 2022 finally has made the problem too obvious to ignore. Republican candidates up and down the ballot are cavorting with open white supremacists, attacking their opponents for sending their kids to Jewish schools and eagerly elevating the conspiratorial Jew-baiting of celebrities like Kanye West.

My definition is precise, so I need precise examples. I am unaware of any candidate attacking opponents for sending kids to Jewish schools, for example, but the specific language would be important - i.e., if the point was attacking their record on public schools but having nothing to do with the "Jewish" part of the schools they sent their kids to.

The only link given to a specific event is here:

The faux-populist rage at “globalists” and cosmopolitan “elites,” at what one far-right judge sneeringly dubbed “the Goldman rule”– that is, "the guys with the gold get to make the rules" – would be perfectly at home in the Corbynist social media milieu.

He points to a concurring opinion in a legal case by circuit judge James Ho, who quotes "The Goldman Rule:" "He who has the gold makes the rules."

That really sounds antisemitic. But Judge Ho includes a source for this "rule," and it comes from the book "Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam" by Vivek Ramaswamy, about an unwritten rule at Goldman Sachs that the employees would joke about. It has nothing to do with Jews - it has everything to do with corruption at Goldman Sachs.

Now, Judge Ho was tone deaf to mention this without further context, and it opened him up to the appearance of antisemitism. It was stupid. But antisemitism is malicious, and when you follow the source, there is no indication of malice; it was tone deaf in the sense that Ho did not seem to recognize that without context, Goldman was not referring to a generic Jew.

The cases where apparent stupidity cross the line into antisemitism is when the person saying the statement is either knowingly engaging in antisemitic dog whistling, or when any normal person would recognize that the trope is antisemitic. Such is one case in the other article, by Ben Samuels, "Meet 10 of the Most Extreme Republicans Running for Congress."

I am certainly not trying to promote these candidates' nutty opinions, many of which include QAnon conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists very often fall into antisemitic tropes. I just want to look at the specific examples of antisemitism given and determine if, indeed, they are.

One of those Republican candidates in the article is Marjorie Taylor-Greene, whose most famous episode is when she claimed the Rothschild family worked with a California utility to redirect the sun's rays to start wildfires to clear land for a rail project. The conspiracy theory is insane enough but adding the Rothschilds makes it cross the line into antisemitism. The article also mentions that she, like many far-Right figures, promotes conspiracy theories about George Soros - and without specifically mentioning his Jewishness, I am reluctant to consider those inherently antisemitic (as my linked article on the topic notes.) Yet the clearest evidence of her antisemitic attitudes comes from her promoting a video in 2018 that said “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation.”

The article says that Rep. Lauren Boebert "notably asked a group of kippa-wearing visitors at a U.S. Capitol building last January if they were doing 'reconnaissance.'" Again, at first glance, this appears to be a clear example of antisemitism. But a little research shows that this is a case of being clueless rather than antisemitic - Boebert had been accused a year earlier of bringing groups of people to the Capitol to engage in "reconnaissance" ahead of the January 6 riots. She was making fun of herself, and assumed (like most political blowhards) that everyone, especially religious Jews who generally lean Republican, follows her life obsessively and would get the joke.

Again, tone deaf and stupid, but not antisemitic in itself.

Candidate J.R. Majewski is not specifically quoted on antisemitism in the article, but it does quote him as referring to himself as a "superfan of Gab," the social network that hosts many white supremacists and antisemites. It seems highly unlikely that someone who is a fan of Gab is unaware of the antisemitism on the platform. You might argue that Twitter also is filled with antisemitism, but who refers to themselves as a superfan of Twitter? This, to me, strongly indicates that at the very least, Majewski is tolerant of antisemitism.

The article notes that in 2016, candidate John Gibbs defended an antisemitic Twitter account that regularly promoted Nazi-era propaganda. That account, "Ricky Vaughn," was a cesspool of antisemitism and racism; there is no way to defend that account without defending antisemitism.

Republican candidate from Texas Johnny Teague leaves little doubt:

[Teague has] written a novel fictionalizing Anne Frank’s final days, in which he writes that she embraced Christianity just before being murdered by the Nazis. As reported by JTA, the book continues Frank’s diary entries, where she aimed to learn more about Jesus by trying to obtain a copy of the New Testament, reciting palms and expressing sympathy for Jesus’ plight. His version of Frank writes: “Every Jewish man or woman should ask questions like ‘Where is the Messiah? … Did He come already, and we didn’t recognize Him?’”

This is incredibly offensive and antisemitic, effectively saying that Jews who do not accept Christianity are wrong.

Two other candidates that engage in George Soros conspiracy theories - Jo Rae Perkins and Mike Cargile - also engage in other truly nutty conspiracy theories. Cargile also has been linked to white supremacists, which would indicate that his Soros theories include a Jewish component that would make them antisemitic, Perkins is obsessed with QAnon which as far as I know has not trafficked in antisemitism, so she appears to just be an idiot.

I am generally of the opinion that if accusations of antisemitism must include mind-reading, without any other evidence, we should err on the side of caution. I say this knowing that some antisemites will consciously hide their hate for Jews, or wink at that hate with dog-whistles (I don't see evidence of that in these cases except for MJT.) There is also the strong possibility that some of these candidates have said other things not mentioned in this article that could add the context that would tip their ambiguous statements into full blown Jew-hate.

Yet even with that caution, too many of these candidates appear to fall on the antisemitic side of the fence.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The Abraham Accords are no myth (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

There are not that many arguments out there against the Abraham Accords.

After all, how do you argue against peace between Jews and Arabs?
How can you find fault in a coalition that opposes the leading state sponsor of terrorism?
What is wrong with the prosperity created by trade between the countries involved?

Now a different kind of argument is being made: the Abraham Accords are based on a myth.

Writing in Haaretz, Seraj Assi explains Why Jews and Arabs Are Not Long Lost Cousins

While Arab and Israeli leaders are celebrating the second anniversary of the Abraham Accords with language and iconography leaning heavily on a return to ancient and ancestral kinship, history itself begs to differ.

The Abraham Accords, which turn two years old this month, are founded on a historical myth long cherished by Middle East peacemakers: that Arabs and Jews are descendants of one great forefather, Abraham, and hence are both symbolic and ethnic cousins, the Arabs being descendants of his son Ishmael.

Assi goes into a detailed overview of the development of the idea that Arabs are Ishmaelites, descendants of Ishmael, and therefore brothers with the common father, Abraham.

And what is his point?

For many disenchanted Arabs and Palestinians, however, the Abraham Accords are illusory, a branding exercise milking a historical myth, just like the political fable that peace can be achieved by a stroke of pen or a romanticized leap of historical imagination. But there is more to peace than mythmaking. Perhaps Arabs and Jews can find a better way to coexist in real life and legitimate each other than depending on the delusions of historical fiction.

According to Assi, if the familial ties between Jews and Arabs are an illusory myth, then the Abraham Accords themselves are illusory as well, based on nothing more than "a stroke of the pen."

Assi's point about Ishmael is not new.

Almost 70 years ago, the ethnographer, historian and Arabist S. D. Goitein wrote about this in his 1955 book Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts Through the Ages:

To be sure there is no record in the Bible showing that Ishmael was the forefather of the "Arabs." [p. 21]

But Goitein continues that by the same token,

While the pseudo-scientific myth of the Semitic race has no basis in reality, there is much more to the popular belief that Jews and Arabs are close relatives, "cousins," because they were descended from the brothers Isaac and Ishmael, the sons of Abraham.

He writes that the Ishmaelites were an ancient tribe that vanished from history, which the Bible then used as a common noun to denote desert people who were camel-breeders and engaged in either raids or transport. During the Second Temple, when Jews had many dealings with Arab tribes, they were described as Ishmaelites. In addition, the Arabs were also referred to as dodanim, cousins, of Israel. Dodanim was a pun on the name of the Arab tribe Dedanim mentioned in Isaiah 21:13.

But according to Goitein this connection between Jews and Arabs was more than a literary invention. He writes that ancient Israel and the original pre-Islamic Arabs

show very distinctive affinities which make them akin to each other and different from the great civilizations which surrounded and influenced them. There were very definite common traits in the social traditions and the moral attitudes of the two peoples. These common traits can best be described as those of a primitive democracy. [p. 27; emphasis in the original]

He contrasts Jews and Arabs with the kingdoms of the ancient Orient, such as Mesopotamia, Egypt and Asia Minor and the later civilizations of Byzantium and Persia (3rd-7th century). In ancient Israel and among the Arabs, society consisted of rich and poor, fortunate and miserable, just like everywhere else. But unlike other kingdoms and civilizations, there were no privileged classes or castes established by law.

In his book, The Seed of Abraham: Jews and Arabs in Contact and Conflict, (p. 7) Raphael Patai writes about "pre-Islamic values and characters traits which to this day are basic ingredients of the Arab personality" described by pre-Islamic poets:

o hospitality
o  bravery
o  generosity
o  manliness
o  honor (vis-a-vis shame)

The Jewish trait of hachnasas orchim, as personified by Abraham, clearly parallels the hospitality listed above. Gemilus Chasadim (sometimes translated as "giving lovingkindness") may also parallel the generosity listed above. They reflect a tight-knit dependence common to both Jews and Arabs.

Goitein sees the source for the similarities between Jews and Arabs described in the Bible. After all, Abraham did have other children besides Isaac and Ishmael:

It would seem that the answer to this question is to be sought in the aboriginal affinity alluded to in the Bible.
According to Genesis (21:20-21, 4:1-6, 12-18), Abraham, the ancestor of Israel, was not only the father of Ishmael, but also of Midian and many other tribes living in North Arabia, and even of Sheba, a tribe most probably connected with the old country of Sheba in Southern Arabia. Genesis reports that Abraham sent these sons into the countries of the East, after giving them presents, thus leaving Isaac the sole heir of the Land of Canaan. (p. 31)

And this would signify that

The people of Israel felt themselves closely akin to those tribes of Northern Arabia or even of Southern Arabia. [p. 32]

Regardless of Assi's hangup about "Ishamael", the fact of symbiosis between Jews and pre-Islamic Arabs set the stage for the continuing relationship -- admittedly not always friendly -- between Jews and Arabs in the centuries following the advent of Islam.

Even then, the relationship is different between Jews and Muslims from the relationship of Jews within modern Western civilization

like the ancient civilization of the Greeks, [which] is essentially at variance with the religious culture of the Jewish people...Judaism inside Islam was an autonomous culture sure of itself despite, and possibly because of, its intimate connection with its environment. Never has Judaism encountered such a close and fructuous symbiosis as that with the medieval civilization of Arab Islam. [p. 130]

Where else but among Arabs and Jews today do we find religion, land, language, law and culture so closely bound together?

A review of Goitein's book in a 1956 issue of Commentary Magazine notes:

It is obvious that, backed by oil revenues and 20th-century technology, a new association of the two peoples and the devotion of their talents and resources to pacific purposes could bring both to a new level of prosperity and even spiritual satisfaction.

Unfortunately, a simple Arab-Jewish rapprochement is no longer sufficient. Near Eastern history is made, in 1956, not in Jerusalem and Cairo but in Washington and Moscow, and by harassed officials with little or no intimate knowledge of or concern for Arabs and Jews.

The first paragraph is prescient.
The second one reflects the problem of the old thinking and attitude prior to the "inexperienced" Jared Kushner.

Instead of getting tied down by Assi's semantics, there is potential for further success and even broader peace.

And as we have seen over the past 2 years -- that is no myth.

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!

Is Iran preparing for a proxy war with Israel as soon as JCPOA is signed?

Haaretz is perplexed:

In addition to dealing with the progress toward a new nuclear agreement with Iran and the talks aimed at preventing a teachers’ strike September 1, Israeli decision makers had another matter to ponder this week. Much time and other resources were devoted to trying to figure out what Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is up to. The answers, so far, have been very partial.

There seems to be no logic to Nasrallah’s frequent threats to strike Israeli drilling platforms in the Mediterranean, risking war, if a final agreement is not reached on the Israel-Lebanon maritime border. Lebanon is in the midst of a severe economic and political crisis, and if war were to break out Hezbollah would likely be widely blamed for embroiling the country in an unnecessary and very costly military adventure.

Nevertheless, throughout the summer Nasrallah has spoken out the dispute over natural-gas drilling rights, growing increasingly extreme in his statements. What’s worrisome, especially to Military Intelligence, is the difficulty of analyzing his views and intentions. Despite the high likelihood of an eventual agreement, with U.S. mediation, there is still genuine apprehension about possible surprises from Hezbollah.

It still amazes me that serious analysts think that Hezbollah leader Nasrallah makes any real decisions on his own. His loyalty is to Iranian leaders, and no one else. The well-being of Lebanon is not one of his goals, it is an impediment to his goals.

Even UNIFIL, which is reluctant to publicly criticize Hezbollah, has called out its increased militarization and violations of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah's increasing bellicosity must be seen in context of what is happening with other Iranian proxies. For example, this story today says that Syria asked Iran and its proxies not to conduct attacks against Israel from its territory - which means that Syria is aware of such plans.

Not to mention the Islamic Jihad mini-war earlier in August, which was prompted by an attempt for a major terror attack against Israel. That was all orchestrated by Iran, seemingly against Hamas wishes for stability in Gaza.

See a pattern?

There was also an intriguing story of a possible Israeli strike at a Houthi camp in Yemen on August 7, during the Gaza fighting, where six Iranian and Lebanese advisers were killed. The Houthis, using Iranian technology, have been increasing their ballistic missile and cruise missile ranges to reach Israel and have directly threatened Israel as well.

From all indications, Iran is gearing up for a major escalation of fighting against Israel, but it is not ready to directly attack. It wants its proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and seemingly Yemen (maybe even Iraq) to overwhelm Israeli missile defenses with thousands of rockets from all directions. (One must also assume that Iran is working with some Israeli Arabs to create a fifth column of terror attacks within Israel itself in the case of any war.)

The escalation of threats by Iran and its proxies is almost certainly linked with the nuclear negotiations. The billions of dollars that Iran would gain from an agreement would help fund these proxies, a basic fact that the West is consciously overlooking in its zeal to close out a bad deal with Iran. Iran understands the West much better than the West understands Iran, and the mullahs have already proven that they can gain far more leverage with militancy than with confidence building measures.

And they know quite well that the West, after finally sighing with relief at an agreement, will not have the will or desire to threaten new sanctions in response to an Iranian-directed proxy war against Israel.

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Arab media more honest about Islamic Jihad killing Gaza civilians than Western media and "human rights" groups

Amira Hass in Haaretz published a detailed account of the Gazans who died in Operation Breaking Dawn and the circumstances of each death. I disagree with several of her conclusions, and she doesn't identify all of their affiliations with terror groups, but on the whole it is a reasonably fair article that squarely blames Islamic Jihad for the deaths of 19 civilians including 12 children, far more than were killed in Israeli attacks that were targeting terrorists and military targets.

Despite Palestinian media attributing all deaths to Israeli attacks, Gazans know well that a very high number of victims stemmed from failed rocket launches by Islamic Jihad.

The high number of fatalities from so-called internal fire has embittered Palestinians, some Gazans told Haaretz.

Amira Hass is a reliably anti-Israel reporter for Haaretz, often quoted by anti-Zionist activists and faux "human rights" professionals.

Which is why this article is being nearly universally ignored by the anti-Israel crowd who have insisted that every dead child was "murdered" by Israel - and fundraised based on that lie.

The only exception I could find was James Zogby, prominent Arab American and pollster, who took advantage of the fact that the Haaretz article is only visible to subscribers - so he misrepresented the article as saying that all the civilians were "murdered " by Israel.

Mainstream media journalists, who follow Haaretz religiously, have also ignored this story that damns Islamic Jihad for its responsibility for the bulk of the civilians killed. At best they have maintained a "he said, she said" narrative where Israel tells the truth and the Palestinians deny it.

It is essentially a conspiracy of silence to make sure that the world doesn't learn the truth, outside of the one failed rocket attack Israel documented in Jabalia.

But Arabic-language media has no such qualms.

Arabic sites, including the influential UK-based Al Quds, have translated and published the Haaretz article. It was also translated in the popular NABD news aggregator. The article is even in one Palestinian media outlet that regularly translates Hebrew articles into Arabic, as well as in "Palestine Forum."

The Arab world, including Palestinians, is being more honest about Islamic Jihad's culpability in the deaths of children than the Western mainstream media has been.

The worst of all in attempting to hide these deaths are the very "human rights groups" whose job is to protect these civilians. They know the truth very well but have done everything they can to hide it.

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Arabs love Haaretz article saying Jews should go back into exile

Earlier this week, Haaretz published an op-ed by B. Michael which I still cannot tell if it is parody or not. Excerpts:

I’m a proud exilic Jew. I’m an internationalist and a cosmopolitan. I’m also devoid of any relationship to my geographic birthplace, and “land” to me is just the dirt in which food grows and people are buried. It doesn’t have a single milligram of sanctity, and it isn’t worth even a single drop of blood.
...
In our own day, we’ve learned that we owe our survival to being geographically dispersed rather than geographically concentrated. To diversity rather than unity. To communities rather than a state.

We’re really terrible at being a “nation.” We very quickly become as stupid, violent and greedy as most of the other nations of the world, and within a short time we brought destruction and exile on ourselves. Only there, in exile, do we regain the sense we lost and resume being a people that survives.

Apparently, being a majority doesn’t suit us – ruling, running an army and a state. We’re good at being a minority. Even a little persecution suits us. It brings out the best in us.

And now, we’re once again playing at being a “nation.” Ostensibly, that’s our eternal answer to the Holocaust that befell us. But in reality, it’s the continuation of the Holocaust. Not, heaven forbid, the burning of our bodies, only the crushing of our souls.

It’s the growth of another shoot from the Jewish tree that does harm to everyone around it. A rotten, poisonous brother of the Zealots, the Sicarii, Rabbi Akiva’s blind students and Simon bar Kochba’s foolish disciples. They ought to be called Jew-oids. They’re like Jews who took the trivial and wicked parts of Judaism and turned it into the essence.

... Consequently, there’s no choice but to admit that Zionism was a naïve mistake and to go into exile again to regain our strength and refresh our values.

B. Michael is the pen name of Michael Bryzon, a screenwriter and satirist. At first glance this seems like satire, but there is no punchline - and people with no sense of humor like Judith Butler also believe that the Diaspora is where Jews properly belong.

But satire or not, Arab media is reporting heavily about this article without the slightest doubt it is meant seriously. Many Haaretz articles excite Palestinians, but this one is being reproduced all over.

It reminds me of the interview last month where Ehud Barak expressed his worries about Israel making it successfully past its eighth decade. Arabic articles are still being published about the "curse of the eighth decade."

There is nothing wrong with self criticism, but the Arab world always misinterprets anyone asserting Israel has made mistakes as an indication of the demise of the Jewish state, rather than an indication of a thriving, open society.

The anti-Israel Arab world, humiliated at their inability to destroy Israel in 1948., pathetically grab onto any Jews who says that Jews will destroy the state themselves.

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Elder gets results, sort of (Haaretz edition)

In September, Haaretz' Gideon Levy and Alex Levac wrote an article saying that Israel was uprooting "hundreds" of olive trees, right before harvest!

Levac took a photo of one of them. Note the caption.

Regavim told me the entire story was bogus, and the trees that were uprooted were acacia saligna (coojong.)The acacias are a pest plant, hat spread quickly, planted by Palestinians for a land grab.

Who was telling the truth?

I asked Twitter what kind of tree was in the photo - taken by one of the authors. Everyone agreed it wasn't an olive tree, and some agreed it was acacia. I wrote up how Haaretz appears to be lying.

I just noticed that Haaretz corrected the caption, and even added a correction for the photo caption. But the article still claims that hundreds of olive trees were destroyed by Israel.

If one of the authors doesn't know what an olive tree looks like, why should we believe them about the other trees destroyed? No Palestinian news site showed photos of hundreds of destroyed olive trees.

Haaretz was caught in a lie, but only admitted the bare minimum it could.

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A textbook case of media bias that most people would miss

Haaretz reports:

Over 50 Christian and Muslim sites have been vandalized in Israel and the West Bank since 2009, but only nine indictments have been filed and only seven convictions handed down, according to Public Security Ministry data. Moreover, only eight of the 53 cases are still under investigation, with the other 45 all closed.

Because of this story, Haaretz wrote a lead editorial with the title "Israel's Public Security Minister Is Soft on Crimes Against Christian and Muslim Sites."

The bias:

At no time does Haaretz investigate how many times arson of Jewish sites results in indictments or convictions.

Haaretz is trying to say that Israeli police do not prioritize hate crimes against Muslims and Christians, but the implication is that this is not the case for Jews.

Haaretz is also trying to say that the 53 incidents over 8 years is a huge number, but it doesn't give a comparable accounting of how many anti-Jewish incidents there were.

I don't know the answer. Perhaps there is bias. Certainly more resources could be used to find the criminals. But without knowing how many Jewish sites were attacked and how many attackers were caught, this story is innuendo - not news.

In 2007, I visited the burial place of Samuel the Prophet - right after it was vandalized by Arabs. Torahs were desecrated, books destroyed, the Ark badly damaged. The story was barely reported in Arutz-7 and ignored by all other Israeli English language media. Haaretz certainly didn't report it. The people at the site described it to me as a "pogrom" and told me this wasn't the only time it happened.

Were the vandals caught? I have no idea. But I doubt it.

There are plenty of arson and vandalism attacks against Jewish sites in Israel, from the desecration of graves on the Mount of Olives by Arabs to attacks by bored teens to attacks by atheists against synagogues and intra-Jewish attacks as well. I don't know how many are done by Arabs and how many by Jews. I don't know how many were only graffiti and how many were actual damage to holy objects on either side.

But this is what is needed to know exactly how bad the problem is.

A real newspaper would compile all these statistics. A newspaper with an anti-Jewish bias, however, would do exactly what Haaretz did.

(Not surprisingly, Arab media is republishing the Haaretz report as gleeful proof that Jews are constantly attacking Muslim holy sites - using this photo as representative of "Jews."While any attack is too many, 53 attacks over 8 years is about one every two months, which is hardly an epidemic.)

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Haaretz columnist Rogel Alpher compares fallen IDF soldiers to suicide bombers

Rogel Alpher continues to troll Jews. There is no way he actually believes this stuff; he just wants to get people outraged at him so he can keep his job at Haaretz.

The version of “El Maleh Rahamim” sung in official state ceremonies on Memorial Day is a jihadist text that turns fallen Israeli soldiers into shahids. The prayer begins: “God full of mercy, who dwells on high” and continues: “among the holy, the pure and the heroes ... the souls of the soldiers ... who gave their lives for the sanctification of [God] and who with the help of the God of Israel’s wars brought about the rebirth of the nation and the redemption of the land. God is their heritage, may they find rest in the Garden of Eden.”
According to the prayer, Israeli soldiers die in the sanctification of the name God. And thus in fighting and dying, they carried out the commandment that requires them as Jews to give their lives for God. This jihadism is clearly declared in the prayer commemorating the souls of the departed in state ceremonies on Memorial Day. As a result of being holy, the fallen soldiers’ place in the Garden of Eden is assured, and there they will rest. How is this different from the culture of the shahids? A shahid is also someone whose place in Paradise is assured, according to the verse in the Koran: “Think not of those who are slain for the sake of Allah as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord.”
According to “El Maleh Rahamim,” a shahid and a fallen soldier are the same. They both gave their lives for the sake of God, and in exchange, they are both in Paradise. The mentality is identical.

This is a modified version of a prayer that has been around for about a thousand years, changed to apply specifically to fallen IDF soldiers. There are versions for Holocaust victims as well as a group. It was first composed, apparently, to commemorate victims of the Crusades and of the Chmielnicki massacres

The IDF version is very close to the traditional version. It is blindingly obvious that in no way does the prayer encourage people to become martyrs.

Alpher, in his depravity, is pretending that the jihadist idea of martyrdom is the legitimate and original version, and the Jewish use of the term is simply an application of the Muslim jihadist suicide bomber version. No, Rogel, Jews don't want to die as martyrs, but too often there is no choice.

Muslim Shahids willingly die while trying to kill the infidel. Jews become martyrs while trying to save themselves and their people and their faith. To call these two mentalities "identical" is, as I said, trolling.

Alpher isn't that stupid. He just gets his jollies on making people angry. He is not worth hating - he is simply too pathetic a human being.

(h/t Yoel)

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Haaretz publisher suggests settler children should be forcibly removed

In late November, Haaretz (Hebrew) published a somewhat satirical letter making an analogy between the bonfires of the Bar Kochba revolt and the arson fires in Israel:

Some 2,000 years ago an event attributed to the Bar Kokhva Revolt and marked by lighting fires accrued in the history of our people. Some 50 years ago Israel conquered the West Bank and since then, via the "Settlements Project", Israeli governments continue to deprive the Palestinians of their lands. This historic move has an existential significance for the fate and future of the Palestinians as a nation. It seems that some Palestinians what to mark this 50th anniversary by lighting fires.

We don't like it, but we can understand them.

Dov Sitton, Omer

Tweeter Amir asked Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken if he thinks it's appropriate to publish such a letter. Here's the full exchange:

Amos: Amusing letter. Certainly worth publishing (even if it agrees with the Right's claim that there was an organized Palestinian arson attack which I totally reject).

Amir: Amusing?! Everything is publishable?

Amos: Read it with a grain of salt. Certainly amusing (but that's just my opinion which you asked for).

Amos: I'll explain: the letter is amusing in it's wording but says what you've already heard: it's the right and duty of the conquered and dispossessed to throw stones (and light fires). [link]

Yonatan Yahav: What about his "right" to blow up buses and shoot babies in the head (Shalhevet Pass)?

Amos: He has no right, but colonialism has shown that the conquered and dispossessed can only achieve freedom via terror, because without that the colonizer will not give up his privileges. I oppose terror but I know it won't be eradicated until Apartheid is eradicated. In a normal country the Ministry of Welfare removes kids from the possession of their parents if they pose a threat to them. If I'd say that this how Shalhevet Pass should have been treated you'd say I'm insane, but at least she would be alive today.

Could you imagine that Schocken would ever suggest that the authorities take away children of Arab terrorists because of the danger that the IDF might bomb their houses?

Moreover, Schocken's pretense that he opposes terror rings hollow. It is difficult to believe that Schocken is against Palestinian terror if he believes that it is the only way to achieve a laudable goal. Obviously if he considers what he calls "apartheid" to be a worse crime than terror, he believes terror is justified, and the victims of terror are the ones who are guilty of being victims.

This is not merely insane. It is criminal.

(h/t Yoel)

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