BBC's blood libel came straight from a recent antisemitic Haaretz op-ed

The BBC has weakly apologized for presenter Anjana Gadgil saying, as a fact, that “Israeli forces are happy to kill children” during her interview with former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett.

In a statement, the BBC said, “While this was a legitimate subject to examine in the interview, we apologise that the language used in this line of questioning was not phrased well and was inappropriate.”

But how could Gadgil have even thought that Israelis are such monsters to begin with?

The answer is almost certainly - Haaretz.

A review of news articles from the past 20 years finds that it is very rare for even the most extreme haters of Israel to accuse Israelis of happiness at killing children. 

During the 2009 Gaza war, in The Guardian, a resident of Gaza writes in an op-ed, "A short message to the pilots in the Israeli F-16s: does it make you feel happy to kill Palestinian children and women? Do you feel it's your duty? Killing every child and woman, man and teenager in Gaza? I don't know what exactly you feel, what exactly you think, but please think of your mother and sister, your son and daughter." But even for a Gaza resident seeing airstrikes, the idea that Israel wants to kill children was not stated as a flat fact.

A satirical Israeli filmmaker in 2012 prompted children visiting a war museum to say that killing Arabs makes them happy, which the Electronic Intifada promoted as if they don't understand how Borat-style filmmakers can elicit the responses they want from people eager to please an interviewer.

But outside of those contrived cases from years ago, I cannot find even the most biased news source making such a libelous claim that killing children makes Israelis happy.

Until this two months ago. 

That's when Haaretz published an op-ed by an execrable person named Yossi Klein who wrote, "Killing children is designed to cause pain, to strike the most sensitive place of all. It isn’t designed to stop terrorism; it’s designed to deter the terrorists and make us happy."

The Haaretz headline that everyone saw, since changed, was "Killing children brings Israelis together."

At the time I argued that this was the most antisemitic article ever published. Hitler never claimed Jews relish killing children. Medieval Christians and later Muslims said that the Jews murder gentile children for religious reasons, not out of sheer pleasure.  

Only Haaretz made that claim.

Western news professionals rely heavily on Haaretz to inform themselves of the alleged Israeli zeitgeist. It cannot be a coincidence that Gadgil's libelous accusation comes on the heels of Klein's own blood libel. No one would have dared to say something so outlandishly false unless they felt that it was backed up by facts - and Haaretz gave the antisemites of the world the ammunition they need to go even beyond the classic blood libel accusation. 

When the Haaretz article was published, I wrote that Klein's words "will be used by antisemites forever as proof that Jews admit their happiness at murdering Arab children." 

That is exactly what happened here. 

And it will keep happening - because what would be unthinkable to say out loud gets a kosher stamp of approval when a Jew says it. 

(Interestingly, as of this writing, Haaretz has not reported on the BBC interview nor on the apology. Could it be that they do not want people to make this connection between their own libel and that of Anjana Gadgil?)

(h/t Benjamin)

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A lying left-wing antisemite from +972 dies

+972Mag writes an obituary for Yossi Gurvitz:

It is impossible to imagine Israeli anti-occupation writing without thinking of Yossi Gurvitz. A relentless, fearless, incredibly knowledgeable, prolific, and sharp writer, Yossi passed away last week at the age of 53.....

Yossi’s roots were as far from the left as one could imagine. He was born to a national-religious family and educated at Nehalim Yeshiva, an Orthodox boarding school...Yossi hated religious studies, and even more so the racism and nationalism he encountered at school, including among the rabbis. Gradually, he began to lose his faith. “I started devouring philosophy books,” he would later write: "By the time I started grade 11, I was Orthodox in name only. Earlier, I rejected Jewish law as racist; now I could no longer believe in a deity which was managing the world and interested in our lives … "

I only wrote about Gurvitz twice, over a decade ago, but he stuck in my mind as an exemplar of everything a journalist shouldn't be: a bigot, a liar, and an antisemite.

In 2012, Gurvitz claimed that a person wrote a halachic question to a rabbi essentially asking whether it is permitted for Israeli soldiers to rape women, and that the answer was that they could. He completely misrepresented the question and answer - as well as the rabbi's clarification after the fake story exploded. The question was about how horrible the thought of such a thing was, and the rabbi agreed. It was obvious the rabbi was saying that such an act is forbidden today, the exact opposite of Gurvitz's claim.  

Gurvitz let his inner antisemite out in his original text: "Those texts were written mostly in a barbaric period by ignorant people, fuelled by the hatred of mankind which is endemic to Judaism." It leaves no doubt that Gurvitz could not be trusted to write about Judaism at all.  (The +972 editors quickly changed that when they realized how bigoted Gurvitz's words were.)

In the +972 obituary, they say, "During his time at +972, his writings on the racism found in some Jewish religious texts was a constant source of editorial frustration. No matter how much the other editors and I explained that some phrases that worked in Hebrew would not translate well into English, and could lead to accusations of antisemitism (or that we should simply pick our battles), Yossi would hear none of it. What made matters worse was that none of us had the depth of knowledge to argue with him."

Notice that not one of the "journalists" at +972 even considered that Gurvitz's hate of Jews and Judaism, which he didn't hide,  might color his reporting. Not once did they fact check his lies against what a knowledgeable religious Jew would say. 

That is the state of +972's "journalism."

But the other time I looked at Gurvitz's work was perhaps even more damning to him and to +972. Gurvitz repeated the lie,that there were Israelis dancing in celebration of 9/11 in New Jersey. He wrote this in context of claiming that Israelis are all inherently supportive of international terrorism, a truly libelous and absurd assertion, based entirely on a couple of comments in a news article.

Again, the professional editors at +972 didn't bother to fact check Gurvitz. And again, Gurvitz's own bigotry drove the story - not the facts. The only place to find the "dancing Israelis" lie is on the very same right-wing conspiracy theory websites that +972 readers would consider antisemitic in any other context.

Why was Gurvitz reading them? Because he shared their opinion of Jews.

Yes, Gurvitz wrote thousands of other articles. I haven't read any of them. Once I saw these two, why assume that they are anomalous? It isn't like Gurvitz or 972 apologized for the lies they published.

I'm sorry Gurvitz is gone. But I am not mourning the loss of a bigot and antisemite whose hate of Jews that started when he was a teen informed his entire adult life.

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Every country is proud to help earthquake victims. Only Israel is vilified.

Romanian media are reporting that a team from Romania rescued a family from under the rubble in Turkey.

Chinese media are proud that a Chinese team rescued a pregnant woman.

The UK government issued a press release about the large team they sent to Turkey.

Algerian officials are proud of their rescue team. 

So are Palestinians.

UAE media are similarly reporting on their own teams who have rescued people in Syria.

It is natural to be proud that your own people are helping others. Even local media in Los Angeles are showing pride that rescue dogs being sent by the US were trained in Ventura County.

Yet when Israel sends a massive number of experienced experts to set up a field hospital, and shows pride in helping save ten people so far, some people bristle.

Palestinian media have had multiple articles that say that Israel's rescue efforts are only for PR purposes, and they are not interested in saving any Muslim lives. 

"Rabbi" David Mivasair calls it "cynical propaganda." Someone named Dan Easterman gleefully tweeted and defended, "Every time there is an earthquake or humanitarian disaster, Israel immediately tries to exploit the tragedy to gain political capital and improve it’s [sic] international image. The cynicism makes me sick." 

This has been a theme for previous rescue missions, where "critics" even accused Israel of using the rescuers as cover for doing crimes in the disaster zone. 

It is yet another case where Israel acts like every other country on Earth - and people single it out as being immoral.

Yes, this is the definition of antisemitism. 

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01/12 Links Pt2: ADL: Number of Americans believing antisemitic stereotypes nearly doubled since 2019; Jews who defend antisemites

From Ian:

Karol Markowicz: The New Jew

The New Jew remembers the Taffy Brodesser-Akner piece about how support for Israel is no longer in fashion on the left, how “we whispered to each other that it felt like the anti-Israel sentiment was actually a new way of being openly anti-Semitic, somehow wrapping it up in a Democratic cause” and how that piece made him sad. Today it would make him angry. How dare the mealy-mouthed left question the existence of the only Jewish state? We're done explaining anything to anyone anymore.

When someone is found to be a Jew-hater (a term far preferable to the clunky “antisemite”) he thinks “please, just don’t take them to the Holocaust museum.” Having to prove our humanity to people who hate us is embarrassing and the New Jew refuses to do it. We are not here to beg “please don’t hate us” and show them how much we have been hated by others. We’re here to say we mean “Never Again.” We’re here to boo when you think we won’t have guns to protect ourselves.

Her favorite Jewish organization is Tikvah because they didn’t flinch when the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan demanded they disinvite Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis from their Jewish Leadership Conference. The boldness was appealing. The event went on, the protestors impotently raged outside, and the Jews inside got to say: we invite who we want.

The New Jew furtively discusses admiration for Bari Weiss if she’s at the beginning of her journey away from the left and brazenly Ben Shapiro if she’s exited the building.

Religiously, the New Jew is either Orthodox or shul-less. She noticed that Reform and Conservative synagogues stayed closed for too long during Covid and when they re-emerged they were temples to leftism not G-d. She fills in her worship at Chabad, because they’ll never turn Shabbat into a struggle session, but it’s not an exact fit. The shuls will get there. They’ll have to. Their empty pews will be their signal.

She has broken with Facebook or Instagram friends who said vile things about Israel while Jews hid from bombs in basements in Tel Aviv. He has looked at his family, or dreamed about the one he hopes to have, and said "Not us. Not ever."

He discovers there are many others like him, so many others, and they’re welcoming and accepting as we all navigate together being independent Jews in the freest of countries.

The gun booing was telling because it wasn't about quietly owning a firearm. It was about letting others know that you do. It was about standing up for that right, standing up against the idea that our people will always be sitting ducks. We will not be.

A real political realignment to accompany this shift is coming. It is not here yet. One issue, like support for Israel, often leads to change on other issues, like gun rights. One little time you pull out a thread and where has it led? The whole shawl of Jews-always-being-liberals unravels.

Israel is an imperfect example but it's still instructive. Israel was once a left-leaning country. It is not today. The shift runs parallel to what is happening with Jews in America. Leftism rewards victimhood and the New Jews have decided to be victims no more.

Melanie Phillips: An ancient spoon stirs American mischief against Israel

So why is the U.S., which claims to be Israel’s staunch ally, giving credence to a false Palestinian identity created to write the Jews out of their own history?

The Biden administration’s sympathy with the Palestinians is well documented. It has persistently refused to call them to account for their murderous aggression and incitement. It continues to fund them regardless of their “pay-for-slay” rewards to terrorists’ families. It forces Israel to undermine its own security in pursuit of a “two-state solution” that the Palestinian Arabs have refused for almost a century.

In creating a new role of special envoy to the Palestinians, for which it appointed a man with a record of profound hostility to Israel, Hady Amr, the administration upgraded the Palestinians’ status by giving them direct and public access to the U.S. government. It has also appointed other profound enemies of Israel to several prominent positions within the administration.

But what the Assyrian spoon transfer reveals is that the Palestinian Big Lie is being promoted as truth by none other than the Department of Homeland Security, which was created after 9/11 to protect America against terrorist attacks.

Far from being a key link in the chain of Western security, the DHS has internalized the fiction about Palestinian identity that is promoted as a principal weapon in the war of extermination against Israel—and is in turn the flag behind which march the Islamist foes of the West.

Noll said of the spoon transfer, “This is a historic moment between the American and Palestinian people and a demonstration of our belief in the power of cultural exchanges in building mutual understanding, respect and partnership.”

It was certainly a historic moment. What it demonstrated, however, was that the Biden administration is a far more profound foe of Israel and the Jews than most people have yet realized.

Zionism is more than just a viewpoint and passion - opinion

ZIONISM INSPIRES the Jewish people to this day, through heroes like the Maccabees, who fought for freedom in ancient Israel. It is what triggers mourning for the destruction of the Jewish temples in Jerusalem thousands of years ago.

Zionism is what powers the Jewish people’s ancient connection to the land of Israel, which is constantly reinforced by new archaeological findings. These discoveries date back to the times of King David, whose own Zionism led to him declaring Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish nation, uniting that nation once again.

Zionism is what has accompanied the Jewish people through centuries of exile, crusades, conquerors, pogroms, persecution and the Holocaust.

Zionism is all the above and more. It is such a core element of the Jewish people that it is part of our religion, our oral and written history, our traditions and our national memory. It is an inherent part of our sense of peoplehood. Regardless of whether we live in Israel or not, or agree with the current Israeli government or not, Zionism is part of who we are.

While these clubs and others claim that their only goal is to boycott Zionists, the outcome of their actions is excluding and silencing Jews and Jewish voices on campus. An outcome that, if not confronted, could expand well beyond the halls of UC Berkeley.

These attempts to portray Zionism as merely a viewpoint are a transparent backdoor to excuse antisemitism - a backdoor that must be nailed shut. The way, to do so is to show the OCR and the world that Zionism is an intricate part of the Jewish people, their identity and their shared ancestry. Zionism must be recognized for what it is: an integral part of Jewish Identity not only by the OCR in its investigation but the wider public.

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Elder Comix: A little Chanukah hypocrisy never hurt anyone

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An example of Arab Jew-hatred masked as intellectualism

Al-Ahram in Egypt printed an op-ed, by a professor of political science at Cairo University, where the author starts off saying what is wrong with Arab conspiracy theories, and then swallows one hook, line and sinker. It has to be seen to be believed:

Many, I believe, share my sense of alarm over current events in the Arab world. Many wonder what will become of a region home to the world's worst crises. In Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan millions are being killed and repressed, imprisoned and tortured, expelled and displaced, brutalised and starved. No sooner do explosions abate in one location that they would flare up in another. Places of worship, the traditional safe haven for those in need of protection, have not just been caught up in the cycle of murder, but have become a target for destruction and bombing. Amid the dust cloud rising from chaos, everyone seems to be grabbing each other's throats. Often, we don't know what the fighting is about.
The most disturbing thing is that the crises present in the aforementioned countries keep escalating, finding new twists, and spilling over elsewhere in a whirlwind of intersecting disasters. Like a deadly disease slowly working its way across the region, some of our countries are in utter turmoil while others appear quiet on the surface. We don't hear explosions in these countries, nor do we see rivers of blood flowing. But if we look beneath the surface, we soon discover that these countries are neither immune nor sturdy. An eruption can happen at any moment.
There is no denying that the crises gripping the Arab world, whether evident or latent, have various roots. The causes may differ from one country to another, but there is a common thread somewhere -- a common thread that makes all vulnerable to civil war, to the kind of turmoil that may redraw the map of the region along ethnic or sectarian lines. How did we get into this fix? Is it self-destruction? Or is it the handiwork of outside powers? If so, what are their plans and intents?

So far, so good - the esteemed professor identifies a large undercurrent of problems throughout the Arab world and is seeking a common thread.

The mere asking of such questions causes controversy in the circles of the Arab elite. Any attempt to answer such questions inevitably puts one in one of two camps: the camp of conspiracy theory and the camp of self- deprecation. The camp of conspiracy theory has a ready- made interpretation for every disaster. It blames all sorts of evil on outside powers that hate the Arabs and the Islamic world -- mainly the US and Israel. The camp of self- deprecation takes the opposite point of view. It argues that our troubles are due to pitfalls latent in the nature of Arab and Islamic political systems. Both camps are busy ridiculing each other's thinking. So you can only challenge one or both at your own risk.
The conspiracy theory people tend to overlook aspects of inertia in the structure of Arab and Islamic regimes, as if the latter have no influence on our dismal reality. The self- deprecating people hate to admit that certain powers are plotting against the Arab world, and are therefore responsible for many of our current tribulations. I believe that it is time to get over the polarisation between those two schools of thought. We should start assessing events on the Arab and Islamic scene from various angles and dimensions, both domestic and foreign. We need to look at the entire picture. No conspiracies, however elaborate, can succeed without the inbuilt drawbacks in our systems.

OK, perhaps a little biased, but on the whole an admirable attempt to realistically come to grips with reality. Right?

I would like now to discuss the way the Zionist mind works and how it hopes to establish a major and dominant Jewish state in the region.

Ah, an analysis of the Zionist mind! Things are getting interesting!

To shed light on that issue, consider an article entitled "A strategy for Israel in the 1980s". Oded Yinon, a former Israeli journalist and diplomat, wrote the article in Hebrew. It appeared in February 1982 in the newspaper Kivunim. The article drew the attention of the Association of Arab-American University Graduates, which asked Israel Shahak, the well-known Israeli human rights activist, to translate it into English and comment on it. The article was then republished under the title, "The Zionist plan for the Middle East."

Yes, out of the hundreds of articles written by Israelis and Zionists about foreign affairs in the past six decades, our good professor seems to have decided - based on commentary by one of the most outstanding Jewish anti-semites of recent history - that this one is emblematic of all of Zionist thought.

Some may wonder why I am interested in an article written by an obscure journalist, even if he was a former employee in the Israeli Foreign Minister. Why would I treat that article as if it were an official document released by the Zionist movement or Israel, instead of relying on the many documents released by official figures and organisations? To those, I would say that Professor Shahak, an authority in Zionist thinking, described the article as the most extensive on the subject and as faithfully mirroring the thinking of the Zionist mainstream on the matter of dividing the Arab world.

Just as an example, Shahak wrote in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion. The Weight of Three Thousand Years that orthodox Jews worship Satan during ritual hand-washing before meals and that Jewish children are taught a curse to say when they walk outside non-Jewish cemeteries. Yes, the professor has found his authority.

Does it make sense, you may ask, for the Zionist movement to publish a paper that would reveal its true intentions, even if it were written in Hebrew? Shahak provides the answer to this question. First, he points out that the aim of the document is to educate the new generations of the Israeli elite, especially in the military, of the thinking of the founding fathers, whose teachings were up to then relayed orally. Secondly, the Zionists doubt the ability of the Arab mind to react sensibly to any threats, however devastating those could be.

Now that we've solved that problem, time to see what this clearly seminal article from that obscure journal that is the blueprint of Zionist thinking actually says.

The Zionist strategy at stake involves two main aspects. One is its perception of the structure of the region surrounding it from the demographic, social and cultural perspectives. The other aspect is its perception of the security of the Jewish state and of the means to defend this security in an absolute manner, which is the ultimate aim of the Zionist movement.

Concerning the first aspect, the Zionist movement sees the Arab world not as an integral entity that is ethnically, socially, or religiously cohesive, but as a region of immense diversity, a mosaic of countries inside which tribes, sects and minorities are in continual conflict. Current entities, or Arab states, have been created through historic and political coincidences related to the ambitions of foreign powers (the imperial powers that inherited the Ottoman Empire) and the interplay of domestic interests (of tribes, clans and political and social movements). The Zionist movement believes that these units, or Arab states, cannot endure in their current form and can easily be dismantled, which would allow for the region to be reshaped on completely different foundations.

Concerning the second aspect, the Zionist movement believes that Israel's security cannot be achieved through military superiority alone, however important that military superiority may be. So no other major central state should be allowed to exist in the region. The Zionist movement is determined to break up any central state in the region and divide it into small entities created on ethnic or sectarian lines. Once this is done, Israel would become vindicated, for its ethnic foundations would be no different than that of other countries in the region; and Israel would become the biggest, strongest, and most advanced country in the Middle East. This would give it the clout it needs to lead the region and control its future course. In other words, Israel would be the region's mastermind, the country that calls the shots and tells others what to do.

I can imagine a serious article talking about how fractured the Arab world is, and even how it is in Israel's interests to encourage indigenous ethnic Arab subgroups to assert themselves. But it takes a special kind of paranoia to see this article as a blueprint for regional Zionist domination that echoes, in nationlistic terms, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And now that this Egyptian professor feels that his arguments are air-tight, he is free to see the world since 1982 in terms of Jewish - um, Zionist - domination:

The above is a short synopsis of Yinon's article, and yet the article is worthy of further discussion. First, because the article was published for the first time years after Egypt signed a peace agreement with Israel, a few months after the assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat, and a few months before Israel pulled out of Sinai on 25 April 1982. When Israel invaded Lebanon, less than four months after the article was published, it was literally doing everything Yinon recommended. ...

Second, it has now become clear, beyond any doubt, that the Zionist movement, led by Israel, has played a pivotal role in prodding the current US administration to invade Iraq. The US administration acted like a tool in the hand of a Zionist movement that wanted Iraq partitioned at any cost, and that hopes to see other countries in the region follow suit.

Third, it is the right of future generations of Arab citizens to be aware of plots against their countries. We must encourage the young generations to keep an open mind about all ideas, including those attributed to conspiracy theories, before they wake up one day and discover that their future has been shattered or their land taken away.

I will dedicate three more articles to a detailed discussion of Yinon's essay. In the first article, I will discuss Zionist schemes against Egypt, focussing on Israel's hope to restore Sinai and divide Egypt into two states, a Coptic one in the south and a Sunni one in the north. In the second article, I will discuss Zionist designs on the eastern part of the Arab world; namely, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. In the third, I will discuss Zionist schemes for the Gulf and North Africa. Again, I do not wish to promote conspiracy theories per se, but some risks of naïvety are too real to ignore.

There you have it. A secret Zionist plan, cleverly leaked out to the public where only the most far-seeing Arabs can see its huge importance, for regional dominance and the destruction of the Arab world.

This is how the elite academics and intellectuals of the Arab world - in a country that is supposedly at peace with Israel - think. (I would rather not fall into the trap this author does of generalizing one article - if someone can find me Egyptian political science articles that do not think that there is a Zionist plan to dominate the Arab world or the world at large, I will be happy to give it equal space. But I've never seen it.)

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