Showing posts with label Israel is Apartheid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel is Apartheid. Show all posts

Thursday, July 06, 2023



More indication of how absurd the "apartheid" libel is. From Globes:

According to the Labor Market Report for 2022 released today by the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Social Services, over a decade, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of Arab women acquiring higher education, which has translated into greater participation in the labor market.

In 2020, the report states, a quarter of Arab women aged 30-34 held academic degrees, double the proportion in 2010, when just 13% of Arab women in this age group held degrees. In the 29-31 age group, the proportion of those with degrees reached 27% in 2020.

The figures are in line with those of the Council for Higher Education in Israel, which also show a substantial rise in the number of female Arab students. The proportion of women among Arabs studying for a first degree has remained steady in recent years at about 69%, but the proportion of Arabs in the undergraduate student body as a whole has risen from 16% in 2014 to 20% today, almost the same as their proportion in Israel’s population.

There is a correlation between higher education, participation in the workforce, and level of pay for those in work. People with academic degrees are found to earn more than those without, even after control for variables such as occupation, industry, gender, ethnic group, and location. ...

The general level of participation in the workforce by Arab women, which historically has been very low in comparison with women in other sections of the population, has also risen significantly. According to the Labor Market Report, in 2014, the rate of participation in the workforce by Arab women was just 33%....By 2022, the rate of participation among Arab women jumped to 42%.
This is a direct result from increased investment by the government into the Arab sector, a story that hardly gets any coverage in world media. 

Needless to say, this is the diametric opposite of what one would expect to see in an apartheid regime. So you will never read about this in Amnesty or HRW reports, because when their lies are contradicted by facts, they try to bury the facts.

(h/t Yoel)



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!

 

 

Thursday, February 02, 2023



AI helped me get a terrorist in a suit, but it wasn't easy.




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!

 

 

Sunday, January 01, 2023

I love making my cartoons, but since I am not a good enough artist to draw them myself, I spend a lot of time looking for an existing cartoon that can be re-purposed and re-captioned for my punchline.

Last week, it occured to me that artificial intelligence drawing packages might be able to help.

They aren't the quality  I want, but they show potential.

Here are the first two I made with the help of AI.










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!

 

 


Indigo Traveller, a popular social media personality, visited a beautiful but very dangerous slum in Brazil and interviewed people there.

One of his subjects is a dancer who has traveled around the world. 

He describes how he experienced racism in Europe, especially Spain. 

But his favorite place to visit and perform is Israel - he says he even learned Hebrew.

(h/t Ezequiel Doiny)




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!

 

 


Monday, December 19, 2022

From Ian:

Daniel Greenfield: The light of Hanukkah that has continued to shine for 74 years
A candle is a brief flare of light. A wick dipped in oil burns and goes out again. The Hanukkah light appears no different, but it is.

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

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

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

It is the miracle that we commemorate because it is a reminder of possibilities. Each time we light a candle or dip a wick in oil, we release a flare of light from the darkness comes to remind us of what was, is and can still be.
Israel is one of the most progressive countries in the world
While so-called “progressives” and biased media in the United States level a relentless stream of accusations against Israel, these “critics” uniformly ignore the fact that Israel is one of the most liberal, progressive nations in the world. If Israel’s “progressive” critics really cared about social justice, they would be the country’s most fervent supporters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, November 30, 2022



Although it took way longer than I would have liked, NGO Monitor released a thorough, line by line debunking of the Human Rights Watch 2021 report that accused Israel of "apartheid."

No unbiased person can read the NGOM report and end up concluding that the HRW report has a shred of intellectual honesty.

The HRW report is not just filled with errors. That is an understatement. When they cherry pick parts of an article that support their thesis, and ignore the parts that debunk it, it is not an error - it is willful lying.

I could make 200 blog posts out of the lies listed here. Here is a very minor example that illustrates the whole, perverted attempt to paint Israel as an apartheid state:

HRW cites disparity in playgrounds in one location as evidence of apartheid 

HRW consistently cherry-picks statistics, misrepresents data, and makes broad claims of Israeli evil based on minor incidents and minutiae. This example discusses charges of “playground apartheid.” HRW claims: “Israeli authorities sharply discriminate in the provision of resources and services between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis in Jerusalem” (p. 115). The first specific evidence to back this charge is the fact that in 2016, there were two playgrounds in the Arab Jerusalem neighborhoods of Shuafat and Beit Hanina with a combined population of 60,000, compared to nearby Jewish neighborhoods with a playground for every 1,000 residents. HRW cites an article in Haaretz discussing how the Jerusalem District Court ordered the construction of playgrounds in response to a lawsuit filed by two East Jerusalem residents in these specific neighborhoods. The rest of the news story reveals key information that HRW ignores. The Court acknowledged the contention by the City that one could not compare older Arab neighborhoods to newer, planned neighborhoods that incorporated space for playgrounds. Indeed, it was shown that playground density in Arab neighborhoods was similar to ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, contradicting the notion of “playground apartheid” favoring Jews over Arabs. The municipality also demonstrated efforts to build playgrounds in these Arab neighborhoods but explained “that most of the appropriate land for such playgrounds is in private hands, and arrangements must be reached with the owners.” Despite these explanations, the Court ordered the City to build playgrounds in these two Arab neighborhoods, evidence that the government-run courts consistently apply laws that contradict apartheid.
HRW cited a Haaretz article that showed there was no difference between how Israel treated Jewish and Arab neighborhoods - and extracted half-truths to make it look like the opposite.

This is only one of hundreds of similar, egregious misreporting of facts. 

Another tiny example: HRW says that it takes hours for Palestinians to cross the Qalandiya checkpoint, citing an article from 2017. This is used as evidence of how badly Israel treats Palestinians. But Israel overhauled the checkpoint in 2019 - at great expense - and now it takes only minutes for Palestinians to cross. Is it remotely possible HRW is not aware of that overhaul, which was widely reported?

Or HRW's assertion that the very concept of a Jewish state is evidence of apartheid, ignoring the many states that are officially Christian or Muslim. 

The sheer number of these clearly purposeful omissions, double standards and outdated facts is overwhelming, but all of them point to the same conclusion: HRW decided that Israel was guilty first, and manufactured the evidence afterwards, secure in the knowledge that very few people would fact check them - and by the time it happens, they have already gotten their message out.

Put it this way: Public trust in the media is at near an all time low.  The media, however, often corrects mistakes. Human rights NGOs never correct the mistakes in their reports. 

Which means that human rights NGOs are less trustworthy than the media is.





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!

 

 

Wednesday, October 12, 2022

From Ian:

Alan Johnson: On Amnesty’s Antisemitic ‘Apartheid’ Report
This new introduction to the updated 2022 edition of The Apartheid Smear (forthcoming), originally published by BICOM in 2013, critiques a recent Amnesty International report, one of a crop of very similar ‘reports’ published by NGOs and UN bodies in 2021 and 2022 that smear Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state [6]. The introduction is organised in three parts, critically examining in turn the analysis, politics, and methods of Amnesty’s report.

Why is it so important for opinion formers and policy makers who seek peace via the two-state solution to reject the Amnesty Apartheid Report?

Because it has long been understood by democrats on all sides that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is impossible without the hard work of mutual recognition and peacebuilding, negotiations and compromises, and, eventually, a lasting settlement based on a division of the land and an institutionalisation of the democratic right to national self determination of both peoples.

Some way-stations on the journey to peace have been Madrid, Oslo, Camp David, Taba, Annapolis, and the Kerry-Obama talks. Yes, the last inch of the journey, as the saying goes, is a mile deep, but there is no real-world alternative to trying again to traverse it. Today, that effort will proceed in the more hopeful context of the Abraham Accords, a historic series of agreements between Israel and several surrounding Arab states. For an extensive collection of some of the most creative and expert thinking from Israelis, Palestinians and others about how to recommence that journey to peace see Rescuing Israeli-Palestinian Peace: The Fathom Essays 2016-2020.

However, while a negotiated two-state solution remains the only viable way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by recognising the right of both peoples to national self determination, right now the gaps between the sides remain significant, and there is insufficient trust, or political will, to build the kind of relationships between the leaderships that might allow those gaps to be bridged.

In the real world, which is found at some distance from NGO-UN Reportland, the task of Britain, along with other European states, the US and Arab leaders, is not to make Israel an international pariah as the Amnesty report would have us do, but to prevent further deterioration on the ground, lower tensions, and find ways to improve the situation. This approach may not be well suited to winning applause from a campus audience, but it is well suited to encouraging a recommencement of the peace process down the line. The analysis, politics and methods of the Amnesty report would take us in the opposite direction, and should be rejected as a political dead-end by opinion-formers, policy makers and, not least, Palestinians.


Mainstream Jewish Organizations Don’t Have Leftwing Antisemitism “Under Control”
While the Jewish community is playing the short game, doing what it’s always done to win the moment, radical social justice warriors are playing the long game—what activists call “the long march through institutions”—in inculcating a stark ideological worldview that portrays anyone with power or success (success is a function of power, in this worldview)—America, Israel, Jews, Asians, men, etc.—as oppressors. Schools are teaching students to see people’s identities as markers of privilege and power and to “recognize and resist systems of oppression.” The problem is that the ideologues who are driving the agenda define the oppressor as anyone perceived to be powerful and successful, and the oppressed as anyone they deem powerless and, hence, unsuccessful. It’s a highly simplistic, binary worldview.

With this ideological software running through our kids’ brains, the school system does not have to even utter the word “Jew” or “Israel” for Jews and Israel to be ultimately implicated in oppression. Indeed, this is already happening. Survey data shows a strong correlation between progressive political attitudes on oppression and antisemitism on the left. The Jewish Institute for Liberal Values commissioned a poll of 1,600 likely voters. Survey respondents were split roughly between Democratic and Republican voters. Respondents were asked: “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? America is a structurally racist country in which white Americans, and white-adjacent groups who emulate white culture (like Asian Americans and Jewish Americans), have unfair advantages over minorities which must be addressed to achieve equity?” The poll revealed that those on the far left were much more likely to agree with the statement, an indication that progressive ideological attitudes about structural racism are fueling antisemitic and anti-Asian sentiment (viewing Jews and Asians as privileged).

The ideologues are rewiring the way young people think so that they’ll adopt their worldview, including the view that Israel is a “settler-colonialist” state. They are, in effect, laying the groundwork for the Berkeley Law Schools of the future, when there will be more true believers on their side, at which time the future Dean of the Law School will face more pressure from radical activists and less pushback from us.

For Jewish organizations to effectively counter the long-term threat, they must come to terms with the underlying ideology that powers progressive antisemitism. They cannot, on the one hand, pretend to support this oppressor/oppressed binary, as many did in the California Ethnic Studies controversy, and, on the other, hope and pray that such a stance doesn’t ultimately manifest in the portrayal of Jews and Israel as oppressors. As long as radical social justice ideologues are experiencing success pushing a program that simplistically divides the world into oppressed and oppressors and condemns anyone who doesn’t agree with them, we are going to have major antisemitism problems, in ever greater frequency and intensity.

The sooner the Jewish community comes to terms with this reality and stops playing footsie with radical forces, the sooner we can develop strategies and tactics aimed at winning the long game.
Martin Kramer "Semites, Anti-Semites, and Bernard Lewis: The Life and Afterlife of a Seminal Book"
Martin Kramer is a historian of the Middle East and Israel at Tel Aviv University and the Walter P. Stern Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was the founding president of Shalem College, a liberal arts school in Jerusalem, and a visiting professor or fellow at Brandeis, Chicago, Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the Wilson Center. He earned his degrees from Princeton, under the supervision of Bernard Lewis. Among his many publications on Islam, Israel, and the Middle East, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (2001) has been widely discussed and influential.

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

From Ian:

Anti-Zionists advocate a global apartheid
As I have recently written, the claim that Israel is an apartheid state has, in fact, little to do with the actual charge of apartheid. It is, first, little more than a cheap attempt to demonize the Jewish state. But more ominously, it is also a call for Israel to be dismantled, just as South Africa’s apartheid regime was, quite rightly, dismantled.

To destroy the Jewish state would, of course, be an injustice to the Jews quite as horrific as the injustice apartheid did to black South Africans. But it is worth pondering the nature of this injustice and following the dark logic of the apartheid libel to its inevitable end.

Its logic culminates in something hinted at many decades ago by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. The struggle for the Jewish state, Ben-Gurion said, is not a question of the Jews and the Arabs; it is a question of the Jews and the world.

This simple but remarkably profound statement points out that injustice need not take place only in a community or a nation. Injustice can be global. It can rise higher than mere questions of territory and individual rights. It can be expressed in the nature of the international system itself.

In the case of the Jews, this global injustice was obvious: By leaving the Jews without a nation of their own, and thus denying the Jewish people its right to self-determination and self-defense, the world constructed a discriminatory regime that kept the Jews separate and unequal—second-class citizens of the world. It was, in effect, a global apartheid.

Implied in Ben-Gurion’s insight is not only that this global apartheid must end, but that it can only be ended by the creation and perpetuation of a Jewish state. Thus, in Ben-Gurion’s view, Zionism is not simply a territorial or nationalist movement. It is a global movement that seeks to correct a global injustice. It is a struggle to do nothing more—but also nothing less—than to make the Jews equal citizens of the world.

This has profound implications—and not only for the Jews—because it implies not simply a moral imperative but an assertion of certain responsibilities. The world, Ben-Gurion was saying, must remember that it is overwhelmingly not Jewish. As such, it has responsibilities towards one of its smallest and most beleaguered minorities, just as an overwhelmingly white nation has towards its black minority or a Muslim nation towards its non-Muslim minority.

The world’s responsibility is or ought to be fairly clear: It is to ensure that the Jewish people is not a second-class people, and that it enjoys the same rights and privileges as any other people via a state of its own.
Emily Schrader: BDS opposition to Project Nimbus will harm Arab-Israelis, too - opinion
Once again, the ugly BDS movement has reared its head over the landmark $1.2 billion (NIS 408 b.) Project Nimbus contract between Israel and tech giants Amazon and Google. Under the guise of civic action by employees, fringe anti-Israel groups, such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Linda Sarsour’s MPower group have led a campaign to demonize the two companies over their contribution to Israeli “apartheid.” In the process, they are politicizing an apolitical project that will benefit all of Israel’s citizens, including two million Arabs.

Project Nimbus, according to Google, focuses exclusively on upgrading cloud computing services at the government level for ministries, such as finance, healthcare, transportation, and education, in an effort that will create over 3,000 jobs for Israeli Arabs and Jews alike. The project has nothing to do with military or weapons technology. But that’s never stopped anti-Israel activists from, once again, hijacking the narrative to make every single issue somehow about Palestinians.

This past week, protests against Project Nimbus took place in four locations, intended to give the impression there is a tremendous pushback from within the companies involved. The reality, however, is quite different.

The protesters claimed that Project Nimbus could be misused to oppress and surveil Palestinians, despite the fact that Google and Amazon confirmed that’s not related to the project in any capacity. Google’s representative even stated, “Today’s protest group is misrepresenting the contract. Our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”


University of Vermont Faces Federal Investigation for Fostering ‘Severe Anti-Semitic Harassment’ on Campus
The Department of Education has opened a formal investigation into the University of Vermont over allegations several Jewish students have been "subjected to severe and persistent anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination."

A group of Jewish students who are remaining anonymous due to concerns for their safety say they have been targeted in a range of school settings merely for openly identifying themselves as Jewish. This includes Jewish students being kicked out of a support group for sexual assault victims, "online harassment against Jewish students by a Teaching Assistant," and attacks on the university's Hillel building, which supports Jewish life on campus.

The Education Department, which only investigates matters with substantial amounts of evidence, will review these incidents to determine if the University of Vermont "allowed a hostile environment to proliferate on its campus" in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on race and religion.

"Jewish students have expressed fear about identifying publicly as Jewish, report hiding their Jewish identity and have considered transferring out of UVM due to the hostile environment toward Jews," according to the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a legal advocacy group that filed the complaint with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

The University of Vermont investigation is one of several being handled by the Education Department as anti-Semitic incidents proliferate on America’s campuses, driven by an ever-growing cohort of anti-Israel student activists who target Jews. The University of Southern California is also being investigated over allegations it fomented "a hostile environment of anti-Semitism" on its campus that forced a Jewish student government official to resign from her position.

At Vermont, a number of Jewish students approached the Brandeis Center after they faced a series of anti-Semitic incidents. The complaint filed with the Education Department alleges that "an environment of harassment and intimidation has existed at UVM for years, but it intensified in 2021 when a UVM [teaching assistant] repeatedly instigated hate against Jewish students who express support for Zionism, even threatening to lower their grades." Separately, "two student groups deliberately excluded Jewish students who expressed support for Zionism from membership, and the [UVM] Hillel building was pelted for nearly 40 minutes and vandalized."

The complaint alleges that school administrators were aware of these incidents, but have "taken no steps to rectify the situation."

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

James Zogby is the founder and president of the Arab American Institute, Managing Director of Zogby Research Service which provides polling services, a visiting professor at New York University Abu Dhabi, and a former member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee. He is a leading anti-Israel voice in the media and social media.

On Saturday, he tweeted a link to Daniel Levy warning about Israel's reputation, saying, "It may be uncomfortable to some to hear the inescapable truth that Israel is an Apartheid State. The truth is often uncomfortable. And btw, it’s not antiSemitic to call Israel Apartheid - the problem is w/ Israeli behavior."

I responded with a thread:

I've looked at the actual legal definition of apartheid. Those accusing Israel of apartheid are knowingly lying. And I've shown this. No one has found any holes in my arguments.

Falsely accusing Israel of apartheid using made up definitions is indeed antisemitism.

And if you look at the history of the apartheid libel, it is blindingly obvious that the accusation came first, and the fake legal arguments were created after the fact to justify the lie.

B'Tselem's definition was absurd - it could prove that JEWS were victims of apartheid.




So HRW tried, very hard, to combine definitions from the Rome Statute with the ICERD to make it look like Israel was guilty of apartheid. But they ignored the part of ICERD that exonerates Israel. It was a conscious lie, and every legal scholar knows it. 
 
Amnesty copied HRW's argument but tried to strengthen it by adding a 1971 case that they pretended is about apartheid - but it isn't. 

It is clear: they all know they are wrong but they want to accuse Israel so much they MADE UP INTERNATIONAL LAW. 

But even worse, in these NGOs' Jew-hating zeal, they want to make Israel look uniquely guilty. So the cases of real apartheid in the world, like Lebanese treatment of Palestinians, or Chinese of Uyghurs, others - are shunted aside and not given that label. Real victims suffer. 

When you look at all the evidence and history (the Soviets made up the "Israel is apartheid" accusation originally) the desire to paint Israel with the label of apartheid has NOTHING to do with real facts, and everything to do with a desire to demonize the Jewish state. This is antisemitism, plain and simple. 
My response received over 500 "Likes" and Zogby finally felt he could no longer ignore it, so he attempted to prove that, yes, Israel really is guilty of apartheid:

1. It’s apartheid when when Israel has two systems of law - one for Arabs & one for Jews; when they’ve expelled 750,000 from their homes & refuse to let them go back to their properties; when they’ve demolished 500 Palestinian villages, seized their land & businesses;…  
To which I immediately responded:

Israel doesn't have two systems of law for citizens. 

And what happened in 1948 was a war for survival, not apartheid. 

But you know that. And lie anyway.

 And, of course, by your definition every Arab country that expelled nearly all of their Jews are guilty of apartheid.

Not my definition - YOURS.

Trying to shoehorn a new definition of the term to fit Israel only is indeed antisemitic.

He responded:

 It was a deliberate planned expulsion to remove Arabs from the Galilee, the coastal cites and areas around Jerusalem. Ben Gurion’s letters, Moshe Sharret’s diaries, & others have testified to this fact. & what they did afterwards to those whom they expelled made the intent clear

To which I said:

 Then why are there still two million Arabs in Israel? If there was a policy to expel them, what is taking Israel so long?

And how does that relate to the LEGAL DEFINITION OF APARTHEID? I am giving a legal argument, you are throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks.

He doubled down:

2…when they have laws that provide that the Arab land they’ve seized & turned over to Jews can never be sold to Arabs; when they continue to seize Palestinian land to build Jewish-only housing & infrastructure, while Palestinians struggle to get permits to build;…

3…when any Jew can immigrate & become a citizen while descendants of those who were expelled cannot; when Israel has multiple laws & policies in place to control what they call the “demographic problem” - that is limiting or controlling the growth of the non-Jewish population…

4. These policies & laws that favor the rights of one group at the expense of Palestinians , constitutes Apartheid. You may not like it, but don’t deny it. Have you no regard for the humanity of Palestinians; no compassion for the discriminatory polices to which they subjected?

But then he moved the goalposts:

5. The problem isn’t our calling Israeli behaviors Apartheid. To try to make that the issue is an effort to deflect. The problem is Israel’s behavior - that’s what must change. And stop resorting to calling antiSemitic anyone who criticizes Israel & defends Palestinian rights.

Zogby's entire argument, repeated at least three times, was "Israel is apartheid!" Yet when challenged, he changed it  to "Don't get hung up on the precise definition of apartheid!"

So I called him on it:

No, I am saying when Amnesty or HRW claims Israel is guilty of apartheid, they are lying because it has a specific definition.  You know that I am right. Which is why you are changing the subject.

By your argument, every Arab state is guilty of apartheid, because they define themselves as Arab and discriminate against non-Arabs for citizenship. 

Tell me, are they guilty of apartheid or not? And why not?

You won't answer because you want to say ONLY Jews are guilty.

Yes, it is antisemitic to say that the Jewish people do not have the right to self-determination. It is antisemitic to apply terms like "apartheid" ONLY to the Jewish state. It is antisemitic to have one standard for the world and another for Israel. 

This thread proves it.

James Zogby, the great intellectual defender of Arabs and highly regarded figure in Democratic Party politics, responded....by blocking me on Twitter.

In the end, even the most articulate critics of Israel and defenders of Palestinian intransigence know that they are using their intellectual gifts not in the service of truth but for lies.  They assume that their ability to use propaganda methods and gaslighting is the same as real arguments. (For their antisemitic fans, it actually is.)  

When their hypocrisy is clearly called out, outside their usual bubble, they try to reframe their arguments to what they think is more solid ground. 

When called on that, they are left with only one recourse: shutting down the discussion. 

When an anonymous blogger can so thoroughly dismantle the arguments of one of America's leading Arab intellectuals in the constrained format of Twitter, it shows that the anti-Israel side has no argument to begin with. 

Their running away from debate proves that they know it, too.





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!

 

 

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

With a special appearance by a young looking Ken Roth.








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!

 

 

Monday, July 11, 2022

According to this tweet by Amnesty International UK Campaigns Manager Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty-UK will soon be selling "End Israel Apartheid" T-shirts.


I looked through the Amnesty USA and Amnesty UK website ad could not find any other merchandise that attacks a single nation.

No anti-Russia or anti-China or anti-Myanmar items. Nothing being sold against Afghanistan or Syria or North Korea.

But the issue isn't only that Amnesty decided that Israel should be given this unique treatment. It is that Amnesty knows that some people would proudly wear such a T-shirt.

Wearing a message T-shirt is a social activity. No one buys one to wear alone at home. They are meant to be seen. More importantly, they are meant to be responded to, if only subtly. People wear message T-shirts to feel the thrill of people agreeing. People want to wear messages that get those who read them to say "Yeah!" or "Clever!" or "Me too!" or just a smile and a nod. 

In the case of anti-Israel T-shirts, the wearer gets the positive feedback thrill because there are enough fellow haters that would respond positively. 

The reason you don't see "End Chinese Genocide" or "End Myanmar Persecution of Rohingya" T-shirts is because they wouldn't elicit the same positive response. No one wants to hang out with those T-shirt wearers; their message is fundamentally anti-social. Anyone who reads them are likely to be offended, too, because real human rights abuses are trivialized when placed on T-shirts.

But publicly proclaiming you hate Israel brings a thrill that would usually be amplified by the positive reactions of other haters. It is like being part of a club - just like the appeal of the German "League of Antisemites." 

The only nation that is is socially acceptable to publicly hate is the Jewish state. So the only T-shirts that Amnesty would ever sell that call out a specific nation would obviously be anti-Israel T-shirts. 

Just like the only nation called out for hate in Amnesty's children's book is also Israel. 




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!

 

 

Thursday, June 30, 2022


From the Jerusalem Post:

The US Presbyterian Church voted to declare Israel an apartheid state and establish a Nakba Remembrance Day, as well as passing two other resolutions highly critical of Israel on Tuesday at the American religious body's 225th General Assembly.
The resolutions are pure antisemitism.
The US Presbyterian Church's International Engagement committee voted overwhelmingly to recognize that "Israel’s laws, policies and practices regarding the Palestinian people fulfill the international legal definition of apartheid," as they had determined that Palestinians were systematically oppressed through inhuman acts for the objective of racial domination.  
Jew-hating lies.

"After World War II when the horror of the Nazi Holocaust was revealed, Jews around the world said 'never again,'" read the resolution. "Christians too vowed that never again would they be silent if a government passed laws establishing and maintaining the domination by one ethnic group over another ethnic group through systematic separation, oppression and denial of basic human rights. Silence in the face of evil was wrong then, and it is wrong now."
Comparing Israel to Nazis? Complete lies and Jew-hatred.

The Racial Equity Advocacy Committee supported the resolution with the recommendation that it replace mentions of antisemitism with "anti-Jewish" as it believed that antisemitism " encompasses other people groups in addition to our Jewish siblings."
I have no problem with "anti-Jewish," but the ignorance in implying that antisemitism means hatred of Semites is almost too much to believe.

The International Engagement Committee unanimously passed a resolution directing Church leadership bodies to designate May 15 as "Palestinian Nakba Remembrance Day" and to commemorate it annually as part of the Presbyterian Planning Calendar.
...The new resolution described[the Nakba] as the "expulsion by terrorism and force of 750,000 Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim."
Ahistoric, antisemitic lies.

Another item unanimously passed by the church's International Engagement Committee was a recommendation on the church's concern about Jerusalem. 

"The face of Jerusalem has been changing rapidly in the direction of a heightened Zionist-Jewish identity, with intensified restrictions on the movement, residency and human rights of Muslim and Christian Palestinians," read the statement. "The State of Israel’s policies steadily increase inter-religious tension with their disregard for the historic claims and freedom of worship of Muslims and Christians."
A stinking pile of Jew-hating lying garbage.
Beyond religious tolerance, the church rejected the Trump administration's move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, saying that it damaged peace prospects. 
Well, at least they are just as ignorant about current events as they are about history.

There are lots of sponsors for this hatefest conference, but only one of them is not obviously a religious group: PNC Bank.

Why is PNC supporting this disgusting display of hate?







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!

 

 

Sunday, February 06, 2022

The path that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch took to declare Israel guilty of "apartheid" can be used to claim that Israel is guilty of the crime of "genocide" against Palestinians.
Sounds absurd? It isn't.

The "apartheid" charge began in earnest at the NGO Forum of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held at Durban in September 2001. Amnesty and Human RIghts Watch were there among the 3000 delegates and did nothing to stop the final declaration, which repeatedly accused Israel of apartheid, racism, and genocide.

In the preamble:
 Recognizing further that a basic “root cause” of Israel’s on going and systematic human rights violations, including its grave breaches of the fourth Geneva convention 1949 (i.e. war crimes), acts of genocide and practices of ethnic cleansing is a racist system, which is Israel’s brand of apartheid
In the main body:
We declare and call for an immediate end to the Israeli systematic perpetration of racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing (as defined in the Statute of the International Criminal Court), ... and state terrorism against the Palestinian people, recognizing that all of these methods are designed to ensure the continuation of an exclusively Jewish state with a Jewish majority and the expansion of its borders to gain more land, driving out the indigenous Palestinian population. 

We declare Israel as a racist, apartheid state in which Israels [sic] brand of apartheid as a crime against humanity has been characterized by separation and segregation, dispossession, restricted land access, denationalization, ¨bantustanization¨ and inhumane acts. 
And in the recommendations, which sound a great deal like the recommendations at the end of the Amnesty and HRW reports:

Call for the establishment of a war crimes tribunal to investigate and bring to justice those who may be guilty of war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing and the crime of Apartheid which amount to crimes against humanity that have been or continue to be perpetrated in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Condemnation of those states who are supporting, aiding and abetting the Israeli Apartheid state and its perpetration of racist crimes against humanity including ethnic cleansing, acts of genocide.
At Durban, the absurd accusations against Israel of apartheid was accompanied by the equally absurd accusations of racism, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

And just as with apartheid, the NGOs at Durban twisted international law to justify their accusations of genocide. 

Note that they mentioned the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Antisemites can read that as if Israel is guilty of genocide just as the antisemites of HRW and Amnesty read the various legal definitions of "apartheid" to damn Israel alone.
Article 6
Genocide
For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Amnesty and HRW already laid the groundwork to prove that Israel does all of those things! Their tendentious reports try to prove a Jewish attempt at supremacy or domination, to prove Jewish racism, and especially to prove Jewish intent to destroy "in whole or in part" Palestinians. 

The accusation of "intent" was the major part of the discredited Goldstone Report and they are key parts of the newer NGO "apartheid" reports. 

Amnesty and HRW regularly pretend to know Israel's intent in all their anti-Israel reports - Israel intended to attack civilians, the IDF intended to cause disproportionate damage to Gaza, and now Israeli Jews intend to dominate the non-Jewish minority in Israel as well as the Palestinians in territories. 

Intent is the entire underlying structure of their reports. The very first sentence in Amnesty's report is a quote from Benjamin Netanyahu saying that Israel was the nation/state of the Jewish people alone, while they didn't quote his next sentence that Arabs have the same rights as all. It doesn't fit their "intent" narrative so therefore it must be ignored.

In real life, proving intent is difficult, because no one can read minds. The bar to prove intent in international law is very high for that reason - one must have a preponderance of evidence of statements and actions that indicate that the criminal had intent to persecute people because they were of a different race or ethnic group. 

That is what HRW and Amnesty have been pretending to do in their 200+ page reports. 

That's the pattern in all these reports: only quoting bits and pieces of Israeli officials' statements to prove Israeli Jewish racism and ignoring all statements and actions that prove Israeli liberalism and intent to ensure equal rights for all. 

The half-truths meant to prove Israeli racism are a direct result of antisemitism. The NGOs only look for evidence that proves their pre-judged verdict of Jewish racism and anything that disproves it is considered hasbara, or purposeful misdirection by the evil Jews to throw the righteous NGOs off the trail. Amnesty's Philip Luther pretty much said that in his dumpster fire of an interview at Times of Israel:

It’s because the Israeli state has made it so difficult to penetrate. They have tried to create a smokescreen around, and of course there is a democratic system, and there are judicial institutions that of course then call the state to account, or at least challenge their decisions. But that’s what makes it so challenging in some ways then to disentangle them when you put it all together.

So I would put it back on the Israeli state. In some ways, it ends up being a driver of complexity and a driver of resources unnecessarily spent on investigations by anybody, because it’s made so damn complicated.


Amnesty's job to accuse Israel of racism and apartheid is made difficult by the "smokescreen" of a fair legal system, freedom, democracy, laws, practices and facts that prove the exact opposite. 


In a nutshell, that is the proof of Amnesty's antisemitism - they must work really hard to ignore any evidence that Israel is not as evil as they always intended to prove it is. They know the Jews are up to no good, and it is their job to uncover it. 

So what's the difference between accusing Israel of apartheid and accusing it of genocide? Nothing. Luther alluded to years of modern antisemites accusing Israel of apartheid - i.e., "Israel apartheid weeks" on campus - to say that this was the opening to Amnesty writing this paper now:

...Part of the reason for that on Israel/Palestine is because there is a growing debate on the subject. We thought it was absolutely right and proper that we brought up….When you’re looking at the question of whether you’re going to be looking at any particular place, well, is there a debate on it? There are external factors, that’s part of the strategic landscape.  Do we have something to say on it, is it something that we might have a contribution.

... To my knowledge, the Chinese activists are not currently using the [apartheid] term.

Here, Amnesty is admitting that it bases its research on what "activists" accuse a country of doing, and not any objective factors. Since no one is accusing Lebanon of apartheid with their anti-Palestinian laws, there is no reason for Amnesty to do so . Objective truth is not the goal: Amnesty is choosing what it will call apartheid "strategically," by following the lead of the antisemites and allowing them to define the "debate."

In Durban, Amnesty official Claudio Cordone slightly distanced the group from the genocide charge: "We are not ready to make the assertion that Israel is engaged in genocide," he said. He didn't say it wasn't true, just that Amnesty wasn't yet "ready" to pursue that avenue of attack. 

It is twenty years later. Amnesty has already shown what it needs to be "ready" to accuse Israel of genocide - a "debate" created by Jew-haters. 

If today's antisemites change their annual "apartheid weeks" to "genocide weeks," that it what would create the "debate" that would give Amnesty and HRW the opening to write their next generation of reports accusing Israel of the worst crimes against humanity possible.

The apartheid charge is just as absurd and antisemitic as the genocide charge. Anyone who has visited a mall in Jerusalem see there is no apartheid. Anyone who sees that the current Israeli government has an Arab coalition partner knows that the charge is a blatant lie. But both the apartheid and genocide/ethnic cleansing charges were given legitimacy in Durban where major NGOs signed on to the final statement, both of those accusations are regularly hurled at Israel by "activists" and Palestinians, both of them have legal definitions that can be twisted by the lawyers at the NGOs against Israel. All that is missing is the "debate," and today's antisemites could create that "debate" over the next few years.

HRW and Amnesty already have the "genocide" reports half-written.

 





Friday, April 05, 2019





















We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Thursday, December 24, 2015


Mahmoud Abbas issued his annual Christmas message yesterday. As he always does, he hijacked what should be a message of peace into an anti-Israel screed.

Here's the introduction:
It is a divine blessing that this year we are coincidentally celebrating the birth of Jesus and the birth of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon them, for the first time in centuries. On this day, billions around the world celebrate the birth of two great messengers of love, hope, justice and peace.

Jesus is a symbol for all Palestinians. Palestine and its people take pride in being the birthplace of Christianity and having the oldest Christian community in the world.

Christmas is a message of hope which should prevail even during the difficult times that our nation, and the world, are facing. In Bethlehem this year, Palestinians will celebrate Christmas surrounded by eighteen illegal settlements and an annexation wall, which are taking over their land. Over the past few months, we have seen how the Israeli government has continued to consolidate an Apartheid regime by accelerating policies which destroy the two-state solution. And yet, Palestinians continue to defy the daily oppression imposed by their occupier with steadfastness and love for their country.
Those stabbers are acting out of love!

Throughout the speech, Abbas relentlessly focuses on the anti-Israel theme. He praised churches that practice BDS. He pretends to speak on behalf of the dwindling Christian population to slam Israeli defensive actions near Bethlehem.

But at the end of a speech that is nothing less than hijacking Christmas to slander Israel, he says, "The use of any religion for political purposes is absolutely unacceptable and must be fought."

Except, of course, by Palestinian Arabs.

This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 11 years and over 22,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

AddToAny

Printfriendly

EoZTV Podcast

Podcast URL

Subscribe in podnovaSubscribe with FeedlyAdd to netvibes
addtomyyahoo4Subscribe with SubToMe

search eoz

comments

Speaking

translate

E-Book

For $18 donation








Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts in recent years

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

Donate!

Donate to fight for Israel!

Monthly subscription:
Payment options


One time donation:

Follow EoZ on Twitter!

Interesting Blogs

Blog Archive