Sunday, November 27, 2022
From Ian:
Israel does not need anyone’s permission to exist
The FBI should investigate the attack on US citizen in Jerusalem bombing
Israel does not need anyone’s permission to exist
This November, Iraq is hosting a celebration to honor 90 years since the British gave it independence. Iraq will be joined by Jordan, which will mark 76 years since the British Mandate for Transjordan ended. In attendance at these ceremonies will be United Nations officials. A keynote speech will be delivered by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who will reflect on Britain’s role in the creation of two major Arab countries.
Except this won’t happen.
After World War I, the League of Nations created five mandates in the Middle East: Syria, Transjordan, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Lebanon. All those mandates, with the exception of Palestine, became sovereign nation states, retaining the borders identified by the League of Nations. Not one of them had ever before held sovereignty over that territory. The Jews alone had once maintained a sovereign kingdom in the Levant.
Yet the only country still celebrating its right to exist by genuflecting before the world is Israel, which hosts annual celebrations of the 1947 U.N. Resolution 181 that partitioned British Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.
This year is no different. For example, in Los Angeles, the Consul General of Israel is organizing a 75th anniversary celebration of the event. Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories
Resolution 181 is now a staple in Jewish and Israel education in the Diaspora. When I attended Jewish day school, our teachers, with pride and tears in their eyes, would show us film of the outburst of applause and standing ovation as the U.N. consecrated the Jewish people’s right to their historic and ancestral homeland.
No one can deny that Resolution 181 was historic and significant. Israeli-American philosopher and computer scientist Judea Pearl called it “the encounter between the Jewish people and history.” But this mythology of the resolution has contributed to the Jewish people’s recurrent need for external recognition.
Seventeenth-century French philosopher Rene Descartes’ emblematic declaration, “I think, therefore I am,” was a pivotal moment in our understanding of the nature of knowledge, forging a philosophical connection between self-awareness and existence. Sadly, for the Jews, Descartes’ exultant affirmation reads more like, “The non-Jews think, therefore we are.”
This concept has long been applied to Israel, whose legitimacy is constantly in question, and to the Jew, who during his 2,000-year exile from the Land of Israel was considered a nuisance and later a pariah. The “Jewish Question” was, at its core, the non-Jewish world’s attempt to grapple with the existence of the Jew. During the French revolution, non-Jews gave an answer to this question: To the Jew as a citizen, everything; to the Jews as a nation, nothing. Tragically, many Jews embraced this form of partial acceptance.
a re-enactment of the vote, videos and testimonies from the period, school choirs and more. I will provide A Witness's Reflections.
— Judea Pearl (@yudapearl) November 22, 2022
For background, see
The Forgotten Miracle: Nov. 29, 1947 https://t.co/f394qsFFdJ
The FBI should investigate the attack on US citizen in Jerusalem bombing
US law does not restrict the pursuit of terrorists who harm Americans overseas only to those who kill Americans. It also includes anybody who “attempts to kill” a US citizen (18 US Code 2332).Canadian lawmaker vows to defend Israel, Jews
Palestinian Arab terrorists have murdered 146 American citizens, and wounded 204 more, since 1968. Yet, not one of those killers has ever been handed over to the United States for prosecution.
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to discuss this matter with senior officials of multiple administrations, Republicans as well as Democrats. The excuses I have heard as to why they don’t pursue Palestinian Arab killers of Americans have ranged from evasive to downright disingenuous.
For example, they have claimed that the US “can’t find” the suspects, even when they are hiding in plain sight, by serving openly in the Palestinian security forces or – in the case of Sbarro pizzeria killer Ahlam Tamimi – hosting a radio show in Amman, Jordan.
US officials also have claimed that nothing can be done because America does not have an extradition treaty with the Palestinian Authority – even though the US frequently arranges for the transfer of criminal suspects from countries with whom it does not have formal treaties.
In fact, the real reason that the FBI is not investigating the latest attempt to murder an American citizen in Israel is the same reason it has never pursued any of the other Palestinian terrorists who have killed or injured Americans: because it would interfere with the administration’s goal of maintaining friendly relations with the Palestinian Authority in order to bring about the creation of a Palestinian state.
The PA will resist any request to hand over killers of Americans, since it regards the killers as heroes. For the United States to pursue justice, it would have to be willing to confront the PA, including putting political and financial pressure on the PA leadership. That would interfere with the Biden administration’s warm relationship with the PA.
And so, justice is sacrificed in order to avoid angering the PA. That’s why the FBI will investigate the accidental death of an Arab-American in Israel who placed herself in a dangerous situation, but not the deliberate murder and attempted murder of Jewish Americans in Israel. That’s why terrorists will be extradited and transferred to the US from around the world – but not if they are Palestinian Arab killers of Americans. And this outrageous double standard will continue until American Jewish leaders make it clear to the Biden administration that they will no longer stand for it.
The writer is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is author of A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.
She’s a Jamaican-born lawyer who immigrated to Canada with her family at age five. She made history by becoming the first woman of color to run for the Conservative Party leadership in Canada and is well-known for tweaking the establishment view with her unabashedly socially conservative opinions. And she’s also a staunch supporter of the State of Israel.
Meet Canadian MP Leslyn Lewis, the new chair of the Canadian Parliamentary Israel Allies Caucus, a cross-party faith-based parliamentary lobby that seeks to strengthen the bonds between the two nations.
“The existence of Israel is at the cornerstone of our faith as Christians,” Lewis, who represents Haldimand—Norfolk in southern Ontario, says in a telephone interview with JNS from Ottawa. “As both Canadians and Christians we stand in support of the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Lewis sees a direct link between the increasing levels of antisemitism both in Canada and around the globe and the narrative coming out of the BDS movement that seeks to delegitimize and demonize Israel, conceding that it is becoming increasingly challenging to reach the hearts and minds of the next generation at a time when pro-Israel students are being silenced and demonized on university campuses.
“Young people are more focused on things that pull at their heart-strings—so when you throw out words like racism and Apartheid of course their view is ‘I want to fight against that,’ ” she said. “When they tie it in with racism, it becomes very visceral. As a person of color I can see it.”
