From Ian:
David Collier:
A point or ten about the Palestinian flag
I recently spent a night in Belgium doing some research. As soon as I came out of the Brussels Midi Eurostar station I was confronted with a huge image of the Palestinian flag that had been graffitied onto one of the station walls. I took a photo of the flag – and posted it in a tweet – noting my discomfort.
That simple statement of fact – that the Palestinian flag can be viewed as a symbol of hate, went viral – receiving over 3.8 million views – and over 3,280 comments. For several days my notification feed was a tsunami of abuse. Some even suggested that my discomfort made me ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic’:
Most of the comments were just mocking. After all they said – ‘it is only a flag’. This is a ridiculous position, more so given that I can think of dozens of examples of ‘only a flag’ that most right-minded individuals (left and right) would find threatening or offensive. Like many emblems of hate – the problem lies in what the Palestinian flag represents – and what many of those waving it support. Only a fool would believe that the person who placed that graffiti on the walls of the Brussels Midi station has any good intentions vis-a-vis Jewish people in Israel.
Ignorance on this subject is everywhere, so here are ten points looking at what the Palestinian flag actually means – and why Jewish people have every right to view it as offensive:
1. The truth hidden in plain sight: 1964
Firstly, let me put the record straight. At the start of the 20th century there was no ‘Palestinian flag’ – just as there was no ‘Palestinian people’. Before the national Palestinian identity was created as a weapon with which to fight Zionism, Arabs under the mandate saw themselves as part of the greater Islamic or Arab nations. In August 1929, while Arabs massacred Jews throughout the British Mandate area, the Arabs in Nablus tried to revolt against the British. Briefly declaring independence, they raised the Turkish flag:
This next clarification was made during the Arab revolt in the late 1930s. That the ‘Arab nationalists fly a variety of flags, generally Islamic green’:
Only in May 1964 when the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was established, did they fully adopt what we now know as the Palestinian flag – as the flag of the Palestinian people (not the flag of ‘Palestine’, that came later). The PLO also created the ‘Palestinian Liberation Army’ to work towards the ‘ultimate goal of liberating the Arab homeland’. The flag was the banner under which they would unite to destroy Israel:
The flag is based on the flag of the Arab revolt (which is why the flags of so many Arab nations are similar). It was part of the pan-Arab cause, and the colours are in remembrance of Islamic conquests.
This point is reinforced by various Fatah spokespeople, such as this example from 1969. This Al-Fatah ‘commander’ did not care what flag he stood under – as long as it was an Arab one:
In 1964 the Arabs were in total control of the West Bank and Gaza, so the *ONLY* land they could ‘liberate’ was Israel behind the 1949 armistice lines. The very origin of the flag is one that sought the destruction of the Jewish state. This was the sole purpose of its adoption.
2. The age of terror
For six decades the PLO adopted ‘Palestinian flag’ has been associated with the slaughter of Jews and the desire to destroy Israel. Such as this threat from Arafat – as he pointed to the Palestinian flag – promising ‘the flag will fly on the road to Haifa‘ and they would keep their guns ‘raised‘ until they took Jerusalem:
And these were not idle threats. Wherever there was terror and the murder of Jews – the Palestinian flag was present:
Rachel Riley: 'I couldn't stay quiet during the Corbyn years'
Riley Riley has spoken about her role in confronting Labour Party antisemitism during the Corbyn years saying “I just saw something bad happening and just couldn’t stay quiet."
Riley, who was recently awarded an MBE in the 2023 New Year’s Honours list for her work raising awareness of the Holocaust and combating antisemitism, also discussed the abuse she received.
Speaking on the Spinning Plates podcast with Sophie Ellis-Bextor, she said: “When they [Labour] were rejected and lost 80 seats [in the 2019 general election], it was a sigh of relief but on the same day, I got a message wishing my daughter stillborn. It [the abuse] took its toll.”
Riley went on to say: "I know there are some brilliant people in Labour now really determined to get rid of these bad actors. So it kind of took the pressure off a lot.”
She also recalled a moment meeting Holocaust survivors and Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis at a charity honours event.
Watchdog launches campaign against alleged Morningstar anti-Israel ratings
A conservative, nonprofit watchdog is keeping up the pressure on Morningstar, despite a reduction in the number of Israel-linked companies on a blacklist maintained by the investment firm and its socially conscious investment ratings arm, Sustainalytics.
Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, told JNS that the nonprofit launched a new media campaign on Tuesday morning. It planned to send a mobile billboard to Morningstar’s Chicago headquarters and to run digital ads on the website of Crain’s Chicago for a week.
It is also starting what Hild referred to as “targeted digital campaign aimed at consumers and Morningstar employees.”
Morningstar reduced the number of businesses it tags with “controversy ratings” from 26 to 7, following pressure from a coalition of U.S. Jewish and pro-Israel organizations. The “controversy” tag, which can dissuade would-be investors, was applied to companies that operate beyond the 1949 armistice line, often referred to as the “Green Line.” Morningstar is also being investigated in at least 20 states for potential boycott, divestment and sanctions activity against the Jewish state.
Critics have called the “controversy” ratings a boycott due to the company’s use of anti-Israel sources for its ratings and the language it used originally, suggesting that businesses serving Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria should be flagged automatically. Morningstar has said consistently that it does not engage in BDS.
The investment firm agreed to implement changes in how it handles businesses inside what it calls the Israeli-Palestinian conflict area.
Hild told JNS that the reduction isn’t good enough.
From Ian:
‘The great unpunishment’: How, why so many Holocaust perpetrators got away with it
After spending 18 years bringing “Getting Away With Murder(s)” to fruition, British filmmaker David Wilkinson faced wall-to-wall rejections when he shopped the documentary to global broadcasters and subscription services such as Netflix.
Clocking in at three hours, Wilkinson’s film is a detailed indictment of the so-called “great unpunishment” faced by nearly all of the Holocaust’s perpetrators. The film focuses on specific German war criminals — and non-German collaborators — to explain how so many mass murderers avoided accountability.
“The lack of justice for the victims of the Holocaust is the greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of mankind,” Wilkinson told The Times of Israel. “The world needs to know this,” he said.
“Getting Away With Murder(s)” will finally land on several US streaming platforms on January 27, which is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The film has been airing in 11 European countries since July, said Wilkinson.
“It has been a slog all the time with this documentary,” said Wilkinson, who has produced or distributed 125 films in a career spanning more than four decades.
“In some ways, ‘Jews Don’t Count’ should have been the name of this film,” said Wilkinson, who had to fund much of the documentary himself, along with his wife, costume designer Amy Roberts of Netflix’s “The Crown.”
Even Israeli broadcasters, said Wilkinson, were not keen on supporting the sprawling Holocaust documentary.
“I was told a few times that Israel has more Holocaust documentaries than any other country,” said Wilkinson, whose film was also rejected by the Berlin Film Festival.
However, after the slew of commercial rejections, “Getting Away With Murder(s)” became a favorite of British critics. Wilkinson has been compared favorably to Claude Lanzmann of “Shoah” fame, and the influential “Guardian” voted the film its top documentary of the year.
“It was the power of the free press. Without them championing the film, I really do think it would have been ignored,” said Wilkinson.
The Need to Curb Black Anti-Semitism
In fact, Irving has neither apologized for any unintended incitement nor even acknowledged the phenomenon of growing animosity and violence toward Jews—especially among American blacks. If he had actually wanted to defuse the hold of these ideologies on some of his fans, he might have tried saying something like this:
There is no truth in the claims in Hebrews to Negroes that there was no Holocaust or that today’s Jews usurped Judaism from blacks and should be punished for it. In fact, roughly 6 million Jews were murdered for being Jews during World War II; there is no historical support for a religious usurpation; and it is never okay to harass or attack Jews. If your religion tells you that they deserve it, then your religion is despicable.
And he might have added:
Jews make up about 2 percent of the U.S. population but routinely suffer 60 percent of religion-based hate crimes. Here in New York City, nearly half of all hate-crime victims are Jewish—in a city only around 7 percent Jewish—and in cases where the attacker’s race is known, 42 percent of attackers are black. Brooklyn has experienced 186 hate crimes so far this year, at least 74 of these against Jews. This is shameful, and anyone who commits crimes against Jews needs to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
If anything, Irving’s peace-and-love non-apologies served as a dog whistle to those whose ideologies he refrained from condemning. On his reinstatement day, scores of Black Hebrew Israelites, outfitted in the uniform of the group Israel United in Christ, amassed in military formation in Grand Army Plaza shouting: “Hey Jacob, it’s time to wake up. We have good news: we are the real Jews.” Still shouting, they army-marched to the nearby Barclay’s Center, where Irving was finally back on court, to distribute fliers promulgating the same brand of libel against Jews that Irving could have explicitly countered, but didn’t. Nothing that Irving has said or done since has stopped Hebrews to Negroes from becoming the best-selling book in multiple Amazon categories or delegitimized its hateful message.
Perhaps conscientious education can cure people of prejudice; certainly, dialogue is a critical and healthy part of civics. Anti-Semitism, however, is an age-old malignancy that leapfrogs bias to become something irrational, suffused with magical thinking and the potential for violence. Maybe to combat this growing surge, we need to focus less on explaining why anti-Semitism is not nice and more on discovering what forces of misplaced grievance and fear in the black community are inflaming it now.
UAE will teach Holocaust education in national school curriculum
The UAE will be adding Holocaust education to its school curriculums, the UAE Embassy in the US confirmed on Twitter last week.
"In the wake of the historic Abraham Accords, the UAE will now include the Holocaust in the curriculum for primary and secondary schools," was written in the tweet which added a quote by one of the Emirati brokers of the Accords Ali al-Nuaimi.
"Memorializing the victims of the Holocaust is crucial," he said. "Public figures failed to speak the truth because a political agenda hijacked their narrative, yet a tragedy on the scale of the Holocaust targets not only Jews but humanity as a whole."
The UAE is the first Arab state to officially include Holocaust education in its school curriculum.
"This means a lot," said US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides in a comment to the UAE Embassy's tweet. "Great to see it coming to fruition."
'Holocaust education is imperative for humanity'
"Pleased to see this important step being taken by the United Arab Emirates," wrote the US Special Envoy to Monitor Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt. "Holocaust education is an imperative for humanity and too many countries, for too long, continue to downplay the Shoah [Holocaust] for political reasons. I commend the UAE for this step and expect others to follow suit soon."
“The United Arab Emirates has been leading the way in peace and tolerance education in the region for some years,” said CEO of Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) Marcus Sheff. "IMPACT-se is delighted that they have taken this important step in educating about the Shoah and humbled to have partnered with the Ministry of Education.”
From Ian:
It’s time for Jews to say, ‘Sorry, not sorry’
There are many Jews out there who blame Israel for antisemitism:
“If only we didn’t ‘occupy’ the ‘Palestinians,’ there would be no antisemitism.”
“If only those ultra-Orthodox Jews wouldn’t dress like that and stick to their ‘primitive ways,’ people wouldn’t hate us so much.”
But they’ll never accept our apology, so it’s time we stop apologizing.
The new government is too right-wing for you? You must have confused me for someone who cares about your opinion.
Foreign aid? Go ahead, Biden, try to pull it. Try to boycott Israel, BDS. Go for it, let’s see how that goes for you.
We don’t need you any more than you need us.
Allow me to officially declare that the era of the apologetic Jew is dead. It should rest in peace.
Now let me introduce you to a new creature: the proud Jew.
We have a lot to be proud of.
20% of all Nobel prizes have been awarded to Jews. We have the most moral army in the world. We are able to balance our military power with our unwavering need to behave morally and ethically, sometimes too ethically.
We lead the world in life-changing tech: Medicine, food, you name it, we are at the forefront of it all.
We took a desert that Mark Twain famously referred to as “a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land” and transformed it into one of the most flourishing societies in the Middle East and the world, and it only took us 75 years.
So, it’s time we all declared the apologetic Jew dead and introduced the world to a new breed of Jew, the proud Jew.
If we don’t respect ourselves, how can we expect the world to?
Our new government, despite its shortcomings, represents the proud Jew. There has never been more Torah learning than there is right now. We have never been stronger physically or economically. That’s something to be proud of.
This new government will support Torah. It will support the land of Israel—all of it. It will support our needs, not the needs of our enemies.
We have always talked about and prayed for the people of Israel, with the Torah of Israel, in the land of Israel. And now, we have arrived, not yet to the final destination, but we are well on the way.
For that, we, the Jewish people, should be proud, not ashamed and apologetic.
Or, in other words: Sorry, not sorry.
The American Jewish left’s endorsement of antisemitism
Once upon a time, identifying an antisemite required the proverbial duck test. If it quacked like an antisemite, then it probably was an antisemite.
Back then, antisemites had ways to avoid responsibility, but this has changed in recent years due to the widespread adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Antisemitism, which is now used by 38 countries, including the United States.
The IHRA definition, which includes examples of antisemitism directed against Israel, fits Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) perfectly.
For years, Omar has used the vocabulary of antisemitism delineated in the IHRA definition, such as tweeting “Israel has hypnotized the world” and that U.S. politicians’ support for Israel is “all about the benjamins”—a reference to hundred-dollar bills.
Even the Democratic House leadership, headed by outgoing speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that Omar “engaged in deeply offensive antisemitic tropes.”
One of the IHRA definition’s most important examples of antisemitism is “accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel.”
Omar did precisely that in Feb. 2019, when she angered fellow House Democrats Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey (both of New York) by saying in reference to Israel, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
Omar has also repeatedly applied double standards to Israel and singled out the world’s only Jewish state for her attacks, both of which are also included in the IHRA definition. She even equated Israel and the U.S. with Hamas, Afghanistan and the Taliban.
But despite all that quacking, several left-wing groups that label themselves “Jewish” and “pro-Israel” recently had the audacity to pretend that Omar is not a duck.
Who came to Omar’s defense when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) pledged to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee?
It was J Street, Ameinu, Americans for Peace Now, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Habonim Dror North America, the New Israel Fund, T’ruah and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
From Ian:
Bari Weiss:
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Kanye, Kyrie, and Antisemitism
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired from the NBA in 1989, but he remains one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Many argue he is simply the greatest.
He is still—even with Michael Jordan and Steph Curry and Lebron and Shaq and Kobe—the NBA’s all-time leading scorer (38,387 points) and the league’s only six-time MVP. In March, the basketball news site HoopsHype included Abdul-Jabbar in its list of the top ten most influential players of all time. ESPN called him the greatest center in NBA history.
As Jews say every Passover: It would have been enough.
But there’s so much more that makes the 7-foot-2-inch Abdul-Jabbar a true giant. His religious conviction, his integrity, his wide-ranging intellectual proclivities, his outstanding performance in the 1981 movie Airplane!—and the unusual fact that this black, Muslim basketball star has been a consistent and outspoken voice against antisemitism.
For all those reasons, I wanted to speak with Abdul-Jabbar about the various firestorms of late: Kanye and his antisemitic rants; Kyrie Irving’s promotion of an antisemitic movie that denies the Holocaust; and the alarming rash of anti-Jewish hate crimes seemingly inspired by their worldview. A few weeks ago, a banner declaring “Kanye was right” hung over the 405 in Los Angeles as people gave Nazi salutes. On Halloween, the side of a townhouse in an Atlanta neighborhood was sprayed with graffiti: “Jews kill Blacks.” On the stop sign around the corner: “Jews enslave Black lives.” Last week, headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Chicago were vandalized with swastikas and the phrase “Kanye was rite.” And in Brooklyn, physical attacks against Orthodox Jews have become routine.
I asked Abdul-Jabbar about all of that and more in the Q and A below. And if you’re looking for more from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, check out his Substack, where he writes and talks about everything from basketball to pop culture to politics. — BW
BW: I want to focus on Farrakhan’s influence. He believes that Jews are parasitic, that Jews are behind a plot to exploit black Americans, and that blacks are the real Jews from the Bible. We’re hearing these ideas come out of the mouths of musicians like Kanye West (“Jewish people have owned the black voice”) and athletes like Kyrie Irving (“I cannot be antisemitic if I know where I come from”). For many Jews, hearing this kind of rhetoric is shocking, but many black Americans have noted that these views are more commonplace than we’d like to admit. So what I think a lot of people are afraid to ask is: How mainstream are these beliefs among black Americans? Are Kanye and Kyrie unique? Or has the influence of people like Farrakhan made this strain of antisemitism somehow more normal than many want to believe?
KAJ: Certain black leaders do exactly what certain white leaders do who want to gather followers, money, and power: They find a scapegoat they can blame. They can’t blame others who are marginalized because of the color of their skin, like Latinx or Asian-Americans, so they go for the default villain of fascists and racists: Jews.
What astounds me is not just the irrationality of it, but how self-destructive it is. Black people have to know that when they mouth antisemitism, they are using the exact same kind of reasoning that white supremacists use against blacks. They are enabling racism. Now they’ve aligned themselves with the very people who would choke out black people, drag them behind a truck, keep them from voting, and maintain systemic racism for another hundred years. They are literally making not only their lives worse, but their children’s lives. The fact that they can’t see that means the racists have won.
British Comedian David Baddiel Takes His ‘Jews Don’t Count’ Argument to TV
David Baddiel, a comedian-turned-activist against antisemitism who calls himself “one of the U.K.’s very few famous Jews,” was holding court in the basement of one of Britain’s best-known TV studios.
As a reporter headed hurriedly for the exit, Baddiel slouched into his chair, seemingly exhausted by the interview he had just completed about the forthcoming documentary based on his 2021 bestseller, “Jews Don’t Count.”
“I am speaking to many people like the last journalist who had not thought about any of this in their life,” he said.
The “this” Baddiel was referring to was to the idea, outlined in his book, that progressive anti-racists are guilty of hypocrisy towards Jews by not viewing them as worthy of similar protection or championing as other minorities because they are seen as white, privileged and wealthy.
When the book came out last year, it received rave reviews, and Baddiel has since become seen by some as a “voice for Britain’s Jews.” He often litigates the finer points of contemporary antisemitism as a guest on radio and television, and he has been quick to square off with trolls and critics on Twitter.
Now, with the premiere of an hour-long documentary also called “Jews Don’t Count” on Britain’s public Channel 4 network, Baddiel gets a primetime slot to make his case to a bigger audience. Featuring Baddiel’s interviews with Jewish stars of pop culture in both Britain and the United States — ranging from comedian Sarah Silverman to novelist Jonathan Safran Foer to actor Stephen Fry — the film argues that “in a culture where all forms of racism are being monitored, called out and held accountable, one form is apparently invisible.”
Can we fight antisemitism without losing our sense of humor?
If a comic with a huge following like Dave Chappelle goes over the line, he will immediately be put under a societal microscope that will analyze and respond from every possible angle, as I’m doing now.
If you run an organization that fights antisemitism, or simply cares for the welfare of the Jewish community, it’s almost certain that you will feel obligated to respond. Many of those responses follow the usual dance of “expose, condemn and ask for an apology.”
Chappelle himself poked fun at that dance at the start of his monologue: “Before I start tonight, I just wanted to read a brief statement that I prepared. I denounce antisemitism in all its forms and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community. And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time.”
Chappelle exposed the uneasy truth of celebrities getting caught saying something offensive and then releasing a statement that everyone knows was written by a PR handler. By revealing the goal of “buying yourself some time,” he captured the phoniness of the whole exercise.
That was cutting and funny. It’s when he played up antisemitic tropes around the “all powerful” Jew that he entered dicey territory.
“I’ve been to Hollywood,” he said. “And I don’t want y’all to get mad at me, I’m just telling you this is just what I saw. It’s a lot of Jews. Like a lot.”
Perhaps realizing he was on sensitive ground, he called the idea that Jews run show business a “delusion,” but then added: “It’s not a crazy thing to think. But it’s a crazy thing to say out loud in a climate like this.”
In other words, it’s not crazy to think that Jews run the show; just don’t say it out loud.
Whether he intended it or not, that “hush hush” vibe suggests mystery and conspiracy, precisely the ancient trope that fuels Jew-hatred and makes so many Jews nervous.
Which brings us back to the “Chappelle trap.” It’s one thing to fight antisemitism when it comes from places like a neo-Nazi march or a BDS group or even celebrity musicians or athletes. None of those people make a living by making us laugh.
Chappelle does.
Because Chappelle plays in the very Jewish playground of comedy, it makes it that much harder to calibrate our response. How do we fight a comic without losing our sense of humor, without losing what made America love us in the first place? At what point do we say, “We can’t take this joke because it goes too far?”
If the ritual of “expose, condemn and ask for an apology” is phony anyhow, is it worth losing our sense of humor? And does complaining so loudly, as much as it makes us feel good, make things better or worse?
In the classic Jewish tradition, I have more questions than answers.
From Ian:
No, Israeli Democracy Is Not in Danger
Surveying rhetoric concerning last week’s Israeli elections, and the upcoming American elections, Elliott Abrams writes:
There is a striking parallel between the comments being heard from the left in the United States about the meaning of a possible Republican victory on November 8, and from the left in the United States—as much as or more than in Israel—about the meaning of the victory of the right in the Israeli election on November 1. The meaning, we are told, is the end of democracy. That’s what President Biden and Hillary Clinton said on November 2 about our elections, [while] President Obama said, “democracy is on the ballot.” It is what we heard from commentators such as Thomas Friedman about the Israeli results and our own election.
What actually happened? There was a very high turnout of voters—over 70 percent, substantially higher than is typical in the United States (and this was the fifth election in under four years)—and it split almost down the middle.
Those inclined to apocalyptic rhetoric in response to the results cite the presence of two members of the far right, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, in Benjamin Netanyahu’s likely coalition. On this, Abrams comments:
For one thing, Netanyahu is a known quantity as prime minister because he was Israel’s longest-serving prime minister ever. His party is by far the largest in his coalition and as his long record shows he is as canny a politician as Israel has produced. Moreover, he has in the main been pretty prudent as a leader, avoiding war and conflict whenever possible and watching carefully where the voters are. It is not at all to be assumed that the government will be under the thumb of Ben-Gvir and/or Bezalel Smotrich, who are new and untested as government officials. Moreover, though they joined to run in this election, they actually come from separate parties and may soon find themselves rivals. If it is useful to Netanyahu to have this happen, he has the wiles to encourage it.
Jonathan Tobin:
Democrats’ doomsday political appeals are bad for the Jews
Both parties spend a lot of effort seeking out and publicizing extremists among their opponents who have either said something anti-Semitic or support someone else who has done so. And each side has found plenty of such targets for their ire. But to jump from that game of political gotcha to a belief that the Jews must be loyal soldiers in an imaginary war for democracy is a trap.
Such is the conceit behind a conference on extremism, being held by the Anti-Defamation League just after the election, whose headliners, like ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, are believers in the war-on-democracy myth. It would have behooved them to invite at least one conservative who might refute that claim, but it appears they didn’t.
Mixing up real Jewish security concerns with partisan propaganda is a colossal mistake. What the ADL seems not to understand is that by enlisting the premier Jewish defense agency to back up the claim that democracy is at risk, they are helping to drag the country down a conspiratorial rabbit hole with incalculable consequences.
Responsible Jewish leaders should be doing the opposite. Even mainstream liberal groups have to understand that bolstering the narrative about the country’s being on the brink of an apocalyptic battle for freedom against domestic foes is bad for America and the Jews. It is exactly the sort of mindset in which those who dwell in the fever swamps of the far-left and far-right, and who actually do mean the Jews harm, thrive.
It remains to be seen whether leaders on both sides of the aisle can be found to pull us back from an abyss of delegitimization that poses a genuine threat to democracy. More than the security of the Jewish community will be at stake if we don’t find a way out of an ideological civil war fueled by intemperate political rhetoric.
Pennsylvania Jewish voters may vote Republican to defeat Israel critic Summer Lee
In Tuesday’s midterm elections, some Jewish voters are hoping for an upset in Pennsylvania’s 12th District, where insiders say Republican Mike Doyle is closing the gap with Democrat Summer Lee in the final days of the race.
It could all come down to support for Israel.
Some Jewish voters in the district, which encompasses most Pittsburgh neighborhoods—including Squirrel Hill, considered the heart of the Jewish community and the scene of the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in October 2018—have been deeply concerned by what they perceive as Lee’s political radicalism, including on the issue of Israel.
Some, in fact, were so alarmed that they organized a grassroots effort encouraging registered Republicans and independents to switch their party affiliation to Democrat in order to vote against Lee in the Democratic primary.
Several of Lee’s tweets have been of particular concern, including one that criticized U.S. support for Israel during the May 2021 war between Israel and Hamas.
Lee has also tweeted about a “plan” to “dismantle the Democratic Party.”
Many Jewish voters fear that Lee is sympathetic to the group of left-wing congresspeople known as “The Squad,” which is notorious for its hostility to Israel and includes several anti-Semites. The Squad recently organized a fundraiser for Lee.
From Ian:
A New Israeli Film Purports to Expose the Story of a Massacre That Never Happened
Beginning this evening, the Manhattan Jewish Community Center is hosting its Other Israel film festival. Featured movies include Boycott, described as an “inspiring tale of everyday Americans” engaged in “legal battles that expose an attack on freedom of speech across 33 states in America”—namely, legislation that prevents states from doing business with entities that discriminate against and boycott Israel. Another film featured at the festival is about smugglers who help Palestinians evade Israeli soldiers, while a third film focuses on Mizra?im who were “denied their right to a better life in Israel” by the Israeli government.
At the festival’s opening night, there will be a screening of the documentary Tantura, directed by Alon Schwartz, which investigates allegations of a massacre perpetrated by the Haganah during the 1948 war. But like the “massacre” at Lydda, or the more famous one at Deir Yassin, it’s unlikely this atrocity ever took place. The distinguished historian Benny Morris sets forth the evidence:
In both [a recent article published in Haaretz] and the film, Schwarz maintains that Israeli forces, specifically the 33rd Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade, perpetrated a large massacre against the inhabitants of Tantura immediately after they captured the seaside village on May 23, 1948. The film is based on the allegations made by Teddy Katz in his master’s thesis, submitted to the University of Haifa in 1998. . . . Katz is the film’s hero and chief narrator.
Schwarz maintains in the article that his film is based on Katz’s paper and on “documents, military aerial photographs, and other archival materials.” This is just another crude lie, which points precisely at the central historiographic problem with Katz’s thesis and Schwarz’s film: there is no written evidence from 1948—not in Israeli archives, not in United Nations’ archives, and not in the archives of the Red Cross or the Western powers—that describes or even mentions a big massacre at Tantura. Katz and Schwarz base the “big massacre” thesis entirely on interviews with Arabs and Jews who “remembered” or claimed that they remembered it 40 years after the event.
Particularly damning is the absence of reports on this supposed outrage from contemporaneous Palestinian sources. Radio Ramallah, for instance, reported on the Israeli victory at Tantura, but said nothing about a massacre.
It’s noteworthy that a memorandum of the Arab Higher Committee, titled “The Atrocities of the Jews,” which was sent to the UN in early July 1948, makes no mention of Tantura—another puzzling omission if a large-scale massacre had recently taken place there. It’s worth noting that Palestinian historiography in the decades after 1948 also did not mention a massacre at Tantura. The book deemed the Nakba bible, the six-volume al-Nakba published between1956 and 1960 by the chronicler Aref al-Aref, does not mention a massacre at Tantura.
Melanie Phillips:
The Jihadi Onslaught Against Christians
Last Saturday, there was violence in the vicinity of Bethlehem. You won’t have read a word about this in the mainstream media. That’s because the perpetrators weren’t Israelis but Muslim Arabs, and the targets weren’t Palestinians but Christians.
This was but the latest in a serious of attacks on Christian Arabs in the Bethlehem area. You won’t have read about those in the mainstream media either — just as you will have read hardly anything there about the horrific attacks on Christians that continue to take place in Nigeria and other African countries.
This is what happened on Saturday, according to contemporaneous reports on social media. A Christmas bazaar opened in Beit Sahour, a town near Bethlehem. A young Muslim Arab went to the bazaar and started taking videos of Christian girls wearing western clothes, which to his eyes probably seemed immodest.
A Christian scout leader threw him out of the bazaar. A short time later, he returned with a gang of men. They started stoning the Holy Forefathers Greek Orthodox Church near the bazaar. They smashed up cars parked nearby belonging to Christians and struck the scout on the face. In the absence of the Palestinian police, the church rang its bells — a known danger alert for churches.
Videos of these events started circulating on social media. You can see one here, in a tweet which suggests the perpetrator had tried to enter the church.
2008:
The Deception of Palestinian Nationalism
The evidence that simple autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza was never the PLO’s true goal is everywhere. In 1970, US Secretary of State William Rogers suggested that the West Bank and Gaza be given up by Israel in return for peace and recognition. This plan was accepted by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Only Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, rejected it, opting instead to attempt an overthrow of Jordan’s King Hussein.
The evidence runs deeper. Yassir Arafat, who was head of the PLO until 2004, was under the direct tutelage and control of the KGB. Ion Mihai Pacepa, KGB officer and onetime chief of Romanian Intelligence, was assigned to handling Arafat. Pacepa recorded several of his conversations with Arafat when they met in Romania at the palace of brutal dictators Nicolai and Elena Ceausescu. In these conversations, Arafat unequivocally states that his sole aim is to destroy Israel.
Pacepa and the KGB were delighted. They consulted General Giap, a close associate of Ho Chi Minh, who was involved with the North Vietnamese propaganda effort during the Vietnam War. Giap recommended to Arafat that he “stop talking about annihilating Israel and instead turn your [Arafat’s] terror war into a struggle for human rights.” It had worked in Vietnam, he claimed, because transforming the conflict from one of ideologies (Socialism vs. Capitalism) to one of an “indigenous” people’s struggle for liberty had turned the tide of popular support in the West against the war.
Similar advice was provided to Arafat by Muhammed Yazid, minister of information in two Algerian wartime governments. He wrote “wipe out the argument that Israel is a small state whose existence is threatened by the Arab States, or the reduction of the Palestinian problem to a question of refugees; instead present the Palestinian struggle as one for liberation like the others. Wipe out the impression that in the struggle between the Palestinians and Zionists, the Zionist is the underdog. Now it is the Arab who is oppressed and victimized in his existence because he is not only facing the Zionists but also world imperialism.”
Yasser Arafat heeded this advice, and with the help of bi-weekly plane-loads of Soviet supplies brought in through Damascus as well as the Soviet propaganda machine, he began to portray the Palestinian Arabs as a supposedly indigenous population whose human rights were being tarnished by Israel.
The fact is that after the War of 1967, Israel inherited Arab refugees living in the West Bank and Gaza that were forced to live there in the period of Egyptian and Jordanian control from 1948 to 1967. Israel immediately offered to return the lands it won in 1967 (West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights) in return for a peace treaty. This offer was rejected by the Arab countries in the Khartoum Conference (Aug. 29- Sep. 1, 1967). In Arafat’s authorized biography, Arafat: Terrorist or Peace Maker, Arafat claims this moment as one of his greatest diplomatic victories.
It is telling that Zahir Muhse’in, member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee, said the following in a 1977 interview with the Amsterdam-based newspaper Trouw. “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”
Palestinian nationalism is therefore a historical fabrication born out of a communist thirst for expansion and an Arab resentment of the existence of Israel. The “need” and “desire” for Palestinian is a veiled expression of the “need” and “desire” to end Israel’s existence.
From Ian:
Hatred of Israel drags us back to the Middle Ages
Since it was established in 1948, Israel has endured numerous wars and hundreds of bloody terrorist attacks. It has been forced to defend itself against continual attempted invasions by its neighbors.
Most importantly, it has sought a peace agreement with the Palestinians many times. Each time, it has been rejected by the Palestinians, who hope Israel will simply disappear.
But there is an even more important reason for Magni to consult with history: Today, there is a large alliance of forces that former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer has called “medievalist.” They are autocratic, confessional and terroristic. Many of them have Iran has a primary sponsor. They persecute women, homosexuals, ethnic and religious minorities and others. They almost uniformly back Russia’s violently anti-Western policies.
Aligned against this unholy alliance are the forces of modernity. Today, they are united more than ever in the need to defend democracy, the rule of law and coexistence in the face of brutal aggression, whether by Iranian terrorism or the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
At the U.N. last week, however, many nations—including Italy—defended Israel from the anti-Semitic U.N. Commission of Inquiry into the May 2021 Israel-Hamas conflict, which is dedicated solely to condemning Israel.
In other words, times are changing. Those members of the Italian parliament who hate Israel should realize they are on the wrong side of history. Indeed, when will the left understand that, especially since the signing of the Abraham Accords, embracing hatred of the Jewish state only drags us back to the Middle Ages?
Radical social justice ideology is fueling US antisemitism
Even while many Jews back social justice movements calling attention to police abuse and mass incarceration, some worry that rhetoric characterizing America as a white supremacist society and demonizing whiteness has and will continue to spill over into hostility toward Jews. As proponents of this ideology tend to view Jews as white, how could it not?
We worry that supposedly white adjacent groups with higher average incomes and educational achievements, such as Jews and Asians, are being implicated in white supremacy for allegedly succeeding on the backs of marginalized communities.
Moreover, it strikes us that the new social justice activism is not just a call for a much-needed shift in policy priorities but a fundamental challenge to the liberal order, which would render everyone, Jews especially, more vulnerable. The ideologues in the movement often don’t seek to fix institutions but to tear them down, as was evident in the campaign to defund the police. Those of us who have studied the history of antisemitism know that when illiberalism sets in, whether on the political right or the left, resurgent antisemitism is never far behind.
The hypothesis that radical social justice ideology foments antisemitic sentiment on the Left is supported by a new survey of 1,600 likely voters. The survey shows that self-described progressives and very liberal Americans who believe that America is a structurally racist nation also tend to see Jews and Asians as white adjacent to the tune of 80%. That same subset views Jews as having too much power and privilege by nearly 2-1 over comparable groups, such as Black, Asian or LGBT Americans. These percentages on both questions steeply decline among moderates and conservatives.
The survey also indicates that on the far Left of the American political spectrum, Israel is being increasingly viewed as a colonizer, which calls into question the country’s very right to exist. A plurality of progressives now views Israel in these very extreme terms. While the new data is not a smoking gun that the spread of radical social justice ideology is driving antisemitic sentiment on the left, it comports with what many of us have observed with our own eyes.
Adam Levick's London talk on Critical Race Theory and antisemitism
The inevitable course of the CRT understanding of the West also includes a likely antisemitic outcome:
Ibram X Kendi’s “How to be an anti-racist” (a dumbed down version of CRT) promotes the ideology’s belief that racial disparities in outcomes are, by definition, evidence of systemic racism – bigotry that, in his rejection of liberalism, must be combated by “anti-racist discrimination” against ‘whites’ (including, it follows, against Jews) – that is, the institutionalisation of preferential practices based on overtly racial and (per such racial essential-ism) antisemitic criteria.
Equality under the law and colour-blind admission standards in education, for Kendi, insofar as such traditional liberal expressions of anti-racism don’t produce equal results, is in fact racist.
While liberalism seeks traditional justice, CRT proponents seek what Thomas Sowell calls “Cosmic Justice”, a Utopian concept that, by demanding not just a fair and transparent process, but the desired result, is irreconcilable with personal freedom based on the rule of law.
CRT turns the Greek saying “character is destiny” on its head, and posits instead that “colour is destiny”.
CRT embraces fatalism and cynicism over liberalism’s agency and optimism.
CRT is obsessed with identity, while liberalism’s project has always sought to transcend identitarianism and the obsession with who we are as the result of mere accidents of birth.
The CRT inspired myth of the white-adjacent, white or even hyper-white Jew helps explain why some anti-Zionists obscenely characterize Israel as a “white supremacist state”, which brings us to a powerful observation by the Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi:
Anti-Semites have typically “turned Jews into the symbol of whatever it is a given civilization finds as its most loathsome quality.
Under early Christianity, the Jew was the Christ killer. Under communism, the Jew was the capitalist. Under Nazism, the Jew was the ultimate race polluter.
Now we live in a civilization where the most loathsome qualities are racism, and, lo and behold, Jews have become “white people” oppressing “people of colour”.
This represents, Halevi concludes, a “classical continuity of thousands of years of symbolising the Jew”.
Moreover, the message of Jewish tradition is that none of us are at the mercy of qualities or characteristics that can never change. Our message has always been one of action and hope—each one of us is a work in progress, even kings and great leaders.
CRT nullifies this powerful and liberal idea—that we are individuals with the power to make a difference in our own lives.
Equality before the law, regardless of class, colour, or creed, is not just the only answer that has worked for Jews, and the greater good, over the long run, it’s also the only solution with any moral authority – the only idea that has proven itself to be most likely to result in human flourishing.
It is not by chance that Jews in particular tend to thrive in societies in which liberalism is enshrined in law and civic culture:
The veneration and codification of individual as opposed to group rights, which are protected via the neutral application of laws.
The idea that we should judge each person not by their station or their family lineage, but by their decisions, actions and achievements.
The sacredness of the individual over the group.
Human agency over fatalism.
It is the idea that all men are created in the image of God, that freedom is a natural self-evident right which precedes the state, and is shared by all individuals—revolutionary ideas originating in the Torah, but ushered into the West by Locke, Mill, Montesquieu and the drafters of the US Constitution – which offer the only real protection against increasing threats to Jewish freedom and the liberal values that serve as a bulwark against racism and tyranny throughout the world.
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
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