03/09 Links Pt2: Ilan Halimi’s murder and the whitewashing of Muslim antisemitism; America's Tradition in Fighting Boycotts of Israel; El-Kurd Destroys His Own Credibility With ‘Apartheid Israel’ Confession

From Ian:

Ilan Halimi’s murder and the whitewashing of Muslim antisemitism

Seventeen years ago, a Parisian gang calling itself “the Barbarians” lured a twenty-three-year-old cell-phone salesman named Ilan Halimi onto its turf, tortured him for three weeks while reciting Quranic verses, and then left him to die by the roadside. Halimi’s murder is often seen as the beginning of the current era of anti-Semitic violence in France. Eleanor Krasne comments on the repeated failure of the French government, and even of Jewish leaders, to confront the sources of such violence:

The French authorities initially neglected to explore the anti-Semitic nature of the crime, but after a three-week search, they finally caught the gang’s leader, Youssef Fofana. When the case went to trial, Fofana wore a t-shirt that said “Allahu Akbar,” and when asked to state his identity said, “My name is Arab, armed African rebellion Salafist barbarian army, and I was born on February 13, 2006 in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.” In other words, Fofana boasted of his allegiance to Salafism, a political-religious movement within Islam that seeks to establish a global caliphate. . . . Fofana was also saying that he was “born” the moment Ilan Halimi died.

Muslims are not solely responsible for French anti-Semitism, nor is every Muslim an anti-Semite. However, radical Islam’s role in French anti-Semitism must not be overlooked. Yet . . . French and American organizations that . . . advocate for Jews seem to shy away from confronting the radical Islamic theology behind these attacks, particularly when commemorating Ilan Halimi’s murder.

Confronting modern-day anti-Semitism in France means confronting the ideology behind it. France is home to 450,000 Jews and a growing community of over three million Muslims. Simone Rodan Benzaquen, the American Jewish Committee’s director in France, wrote in 2017 that Islamic anti-Semitism in France is a result of a variety of factors, “including manipulation of the Palestinian cause, failure of integration into French society, radical preachers and the funding of mosques, and satellite television stations broadcasting a steady stream of anti-Semitic discourse.”

Unfortunately, Benzaquen is correct, and other organizations must join her in facing the reality of Islamic anti-Semitism in France.

ITP: Another Gaping Hole in the Islamist Antisemitism Con

In its statement promoted by CAIR's national office, CAIR-New York Executive Director Afaf Nasher also noted "the disturbing rise in anti-Asian bigotry nationwide."

"All Americans, regardless of their background," he said, must be able to walk down the street without fear of a racist attack."

This is true. Correspondingly, there has been a disturbing rise in antisemitic bigotry in New York city and nationwide. A Times of Israel analysis of NYPD data found an anti-Jewish attack every 33 hours in New York. Masoud presents a clear example of the danger such blind hate about Jews and the Jewish state can pose.

But CAIR cannot bring itself to acknowledge, let alone condemn him. This is an organization with a decades-long record of antisemitism, including co-founder and Executive Director Nihad Awad's repeated insinuations that Jews are "pushing the United States" to advance policies "at the expense of American interests."

In 2014, as ISIS rampaged and Hamas terrorism instigated war in Gaza, Awad called Israel "the biggest threat to world peace and security." Awad also believes Tel Aviv is "occupied" territory. His San Francisco director Zahra Billoo believes pro-Israel Jews are out to hurt Muslims and should be shunned entirely. CAIR stands behind her.

CAIR claims it merely criticizes Israeli policy, as if the question whether a country should exist is a policy up for debate.

Was Masoud merely criticizing Zionists? His "veil of 'anti-Zionism' is pathetically thin in this case," prosecutors wrote. "As an initial matter, the defendant is not an equal opportunity anti-Zionist. He did not attack 'Evangelical Christians . . . who identify with the State of Israel' ... Instead, he repeatedly attacked Jewish men."

In October, CAIR condemned antisemitic material left outside homes in Wyoming.

"Those targeting the Jewish community with antisemitic hate must be repudiated by all Americans," CAIR national spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said. "The mainstreaming of bigotry in any form must never be tolerated or excused."

But CAIR mainstreams antisemitism when it stands by frothing haters like Billoo, and when it cannot muster the nerve to condemn an ideological ally like Sadaah Masoud. Antisemitism can't be viewed conditionally. If you can't even bring yourself to condemn premeditated beatings of random Jews, you can't expect to be believed when say you oppose antisemitism by condemning leaflets.

America's Tradition in Fighting Boycotts of Israel

In 1975, President Gerald Ford called for regulations prohibiting U.S. companies from "complying in any way with [the Arab] boycott," and declared emphatically that the United States would not "countenance the translation of any foreign prejudice into domestic discrimination against American citizens." Congress quickly heeded the call, passing not one but two pieces of critical bipartisan legislation: the Ribicoff Amendment assessed steep tax penalties against U.S. companies that participate in the Arab Boycott, and the Export Administration Amendments of 1977 directed the president to prohibit American companies from joining the Arab boycott. In signing that law, President Jimmy Carter acknowledged that the Arab Boycott, though nominally focused on Israel, was in fact "aimed at Jewish members of our society." The U.S. Office of Antiboycott Compliance has been enforcing this regime ever since, on the bipartisan understanding that the boycott of Israel constitutes a tool of discrimination, not protected expression.

And the federal government was not alone in its anti-boycott effort. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, at least 13 states—red and blue—took aggressive legislative steps to prevent U.S. companies from joining the Arab boycott. New York's rule was strikingly similar to the anti-BDS laws of today. In fact, it went further, prohibiting "discrimination," "boycotting," or "blacklisting" based on "national origin" or because a person has done business with Israeli firms. When Gov. Michael Dukakis signed the Massachusetts bill into law, he explained that he wished to send an "unequivocal message" that Massachusetts would "not stand for this type of blatant discrimination" against its Jewish residents.

Today's anti-BDS laws spring from the same pair of political judgments that animate this 50-year tradition of anti-boycott legislation. The first is that the boycott isn't speech, but instead economic conduct that can be freely regulated, consistent with the First Amendment. And the second is that, in the case of Israel, the boycott constitutes discrimination, and not desirable social action.

The tradition of anti-boycott legislation lives on because its historical foundations are fundamentally true. The first boycott against the Jews of Israel took place in the 1890s, and its organizers—the Arab political associations of Mandatory Palestine—could not have been clearer about their anti-Jewish objectives: "Don't buy from the Jews," they declared, "come and bargain with the Arab merchant... We must completely boycott the Jews." And in 1933, as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem grew in political prominence, he called for systematic boycotts against the Jews of Palestine and urged Nazi Germany to do the same.

BDS's appeal to "history and tradition" should ring hollow. For 50 years, state and federal law makers have regulated Israel boycotts, on the understanding that they were conceived in antisemitism and cannot escape its taint. In the court of history, it's the state lawmakers, and not the activists, who enjoy the upper hand.

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02/23 Links Pt2: Golda Meir would agree with Netanyahu on this one; Obama gets his revenge; Israel's UN envoy accuses New York Times of 'overt anti-Israel bias'

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Golda Meir would agree with Netanyahu on this one

Mirren’s claims about what Meir would think about this issue demonstrate complete ignorance of the subject matter at hand.

During her entire time serving in and then leading Israel’s governments during its first quarter-century, the country’s Supreme Court did not exercise or claim to have the powers that contemporary left-wingers now assert are essential to democracy. On the contrary, the governments led by Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol did not recognize the right of the court to act in the manner it has done for the last 30 years. Neither did Meir.

The idea that founding father Ben-Gurion or Meir—or anyone in their Labor Zionist-led coalitions—would have tolerated for a single minute the court weighing in on every decision that the cabinet, ministers or the military made is laughable. They didn’t believe that any Israeli court had the right to override their decisions on appointments, policies or military operations without even establishing their standing to do so. The judicial revolution initiated by former Chief Justice Aharon Barak didn’t begin until many years later.

Meir was a hard-core partisan, and despised the Israeli right and its leader Menachem Begin. But the assumption that Netanyahu’s reforms would end democracy in Israel would mean that the country wasn’t one before Barak’s power grab. That happened more than a decade after Meir was driven from office in 1974.

That Mirren doesn’t know any of this is not surprising. But that anyone would listen to her on this question or give credence to her uninformed opinions in order to promote the “resistance” to Netanyahu says more about the Israeli left than it does about the object of their ire.

Whatever we may ultimately think about the current movie about Meir, Mirren’s comments about judicial reform should remind all of both the pitfalls of celebrity culture and the perils of historical ignorance.

Obama gets his revenge

Democrats have not forgotten what they viewed as an insult and a betrayal. For Obama retreads like Blinken and Nides, it’s payback time. Even staunch pro-Israel Democrats in Congress are openly criticizing Netanyahu, and they can do so with some impunity because many of their liberal Jewish constituents are equally upset with the direction Israel is going.

Israeli opponents of the government have been encouraging intervention by the U.S. government and the American Jewish community. It’s a dangerous tactic that they will likely rue when a government more to their liking comes to power and the tables are turned.

We’ve seen this before. It started when the Labor Party began agitating for Americans to oppose the government led by Yitzhak Shamir. The Likud was outraged. When Yitzhak Rabin came to power and signed the Oslo Accords, it was the right’s turn to lobby Americans to attack the government and the left’s to be indignant.

Most people engaged in the current debate probably don’t remember that in 2016, the left also asserted that democracy was in danger when Netanyahu’s government introduced the relatively benign legislation to require nongovernmental organizations to report foreign funding they received because some of them were using the money to promote the boycott of Israel. The left was also upset that Netanyahu was not prepared to trade land for peace—a formula discredited by the disengagement from Gaza. Then, as now, Netanyahu’s detractors called on the U.S. government to save Israel from itself.

The campaign was unsuccessful because Donald Trump had just become president, and Obama’s acolytes left to cash in on their government positions and plot their return to power.

The Democratic Party symbol is a donkey and that is appropriate for the stubborn obsession with the two-state solution (which should have the symbol of a unicorn). In the case of the Biden administration, the Republican elephant is just as apropos as it reflects the long memory of the Obamaites who were frustrated by their inability to bend Netanyahu to their will.

At the end of Obama’s term, when it made no difference, they took out their infuriation by abstaining rather than vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlement activity and declaring the Jewish communities illegal. This was followed by Secretary of State John Kerry’s farewell speech, which, instead of a review of his diplomatic record, was a tantrum devoted to attacking Israel.

Book Launch - "Can 'The Whole World' Be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism and Global Jihad"

In his hugely detailed, extensively researched and important new book, Professor Richard Landes documents how a radical inability of Westerners to understand the medieval mentality that drives Global Jihad, prompted a series of misguided reactions that have shaped these early years of the 21st Century. These radical disorientations have created our current dilemma of pervasive information distrust and its attendant proliferation of conspiracy theory, deep splits within the voting public in most democracies, the politicization of science and tribalization of politics, and the inability of Western elites to defend their civilization even as they adopt increasingly self-destructive ideologies.

As the world comes closer to the second quarter of this century and the political arena has become more polarized and distrust in the media has become more pervasive. Can “The Whole World” Be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad offers original and compelling insights into our current trajectory.

At this official launch in Jerusalem, Professor Landes was joined in discussing the book and the issues it raises with renowned journalist and columnist with the Times of London, Melanie Phillips; Yossi Kupperwasser, former director general of Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs; and Adam Levick, co-editor of media monitoring organization CAMERA-UK.

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10/25 Links Pt2: The New Progressivism Makes No Room for Jews; How did a radical Islamist fool the West?; Adidas drops Kanye West

From Ian:

The New Progressivism Makes No Room for Jews

In 2016, as “intersectionality” escaped from academia to become a progressive buzzword—and came to to signify a doctrine that all just causes are linked and complementary—David L. Bernstein began to suspect that it was apt to be used against the Jews. As he pointed out in an article published that year, activists argued under the banner of intersectionality that anyone opposed to racism in the U.S. should also oppose the existence of Israel. He thought, however, that there was hope:
While I didn’t say so explicitly, I’d come to believe that the mainstream Jewish community needed to find a way to include the Jewish narrative in the intersectional matrix—to complicate it—so that Jews and Israel were not viewed as the perennial oppressors and Palestinians the perennial victims. Concerned about the growing backlash to my article, I used the opportunity [to participate in a panel discussion with some of my critics] to soften my stance on the topic, stating “I still have much to learn,” and that “intersectionality is a complex, interesting, and nuanced phenomenon that we need to understand, not just from the perspective of the pro-Israel community, but from its own perspective as well.”

Bernstein, at the time still president of the left-leaning Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), soon learned that there was little room for such a compromise position:
[In 2020], the JCPA pulled together a Zoom meeting for a coalition called Jews for Criminal Justice Reform, which included top Jewish criminal-justice activists from around the country. After an inspiring talk by Paul Fishman—a former federal attorney from New Jersey—on the need to end mass incarceration, we broke up into smaller groups to discuss next steps. A lawyer named Jared, the group facilitator for my breakout session, asked, “What do you all think our criminal-justice reform priorities ought to be?” Ariella, a young professional staffer from a Jewish civil-rights organization, interjected, “Before we talk about strategy, there’s a lot of internal work we have to do in the Jewish community. We need to recognize our complicity in white supremacy and ensure we have black Jews at the forefront of these efforts.”

More and more, that’s how it is now: a young staff person holding the work process hostage until we recite some prescribed litany of woke pieties. What, pray tell, did Ariella think all this self-reflection would do to help black people get out of being jailed for low-level drug charges? I suspect she didn’t have a clue. And as things turned out, our breakout session never discussed a single criminal-justice reform measure.

In short, Bernstein discovered that there is no room in this brand of progressive ideology to see Jews as anything but oppressors, and for Jews to do anything but proclaim their own imagined sins. This discovery is the subject of his newly published book, Woke Antisemitism.

How did a radical Islamist fool the West? - analysis

Many articles written about Qaradawi after his death emphasized his condemnation of al-Qaeda and ISIS and his moderate rulings permitting certain Western conduct for Muslims living as minorities in Western countries.

These articles portrayed him as many Westerners wanted to see him: a widely accepted authentic Islamic scholar who wanted to dialogue with the West and rejected violence.

However, the intelligence center noted that many of these articles left out that he helped shape “the concept of violent jihad,” especially justifying “carrying out terror attacks, including suicide bombing attacks, against Israeli citizens, the US forces in Iraq, and some of the Arab regimes.”

Qaradawi supported violent jihad and suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians. He was a source of supreme religious authority for Hamas at a time when many Islamic scholars still prohibited suicide of any kind.

Qaradawi claimed that violence was a legitimate expression of the so-called “resistance” and that Israel was a militaristic society in which every civilian is a potential soldier, said the report.

His antisemitism was not limited to Israel, with the report saying he frequently expressed antisemitic statements worldwide and even issued a fatwa authorizing attacks on Jews around the world.

In that fatwa, “he claimed that there is no essential difference between Judaism and Zionism, and therefore every Jewish target equals an Israeli target,” according to the report.

‘The Squad’ urges Biden administration to negotiate ceasefire in Ukraine

30 Democratic US Congressmembers – most notably the young progressives who have become colloquially known as “The Squad” – penned a letter to President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday in which they ask the administration to avoid direct military conflict and attempt to bring Russia and Ukraine to a ceasefire.

“Given the catastrophic possibilities of nuclear escalation and miscalculation, which only increase the longer this war continues, we agree with your goal of avoiding direct military conflict as an overriding national-security priority,” the letter read. A call for diplomacy

The congress members noted the difficulties involved in a settlement, particularly with the issue of annexed territories in the east of Ukraine, though they also mentioned Biden’s commitment to end the war. While no concrete plan of action was presented in the letter, the congress members suggested that easing sanctions against Russia would be a natural step to take.

“Such a framework would presumably include incentives to end hostilities, including some form of sanctions relief, and bring together the international community to establish security guarantees for a free and independent Ukraine that are acceptable for all parties, particularly Ukrainians.”

“The alternative to diplomacy is a protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks,” the letter continues.

The signers of the letter also pointed to the food and commodity crises brought upon by the war as reasons to seek an end to the war. “Economists believe that if the situation in Ukraine is stabilized, some of the speculative concerns driving higher fuel costs will subside and likely lead to a drop in world oil prices.”

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