Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: NGO lies

Showing posts with label NGO lies. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 07, 2023

Latest EoZ memes

Here are my latest:

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Jordan's unemployment rate is much worse than in PA-controlled areas

Palestinians have it easy.

Whenever there is any statistic announced that shows that life for them isn't perfect, they have someone to blame: Israel.

So, for example, when there are some people in Gaza who are food insecure, it must be Israel's fault - even though it is much worse in neighboring Egypt, and even though Israel does not limit food into Gaza at all.

When the unemployment rate in the West Bank is at 14%, that sounds very high. It must be Israel's fault. Except that neighboring Jordan's is at nearly 22%.

Whose fault is that?

To the world, Palestinians have zero responsibility for their own problems. That is mostly because Palestinians insist that this is the case. This way they avoid doing any actual nation-building, and the EU keeps sending experts who do the work for them.

For three decades.

The fact that Palestinians choose to spend about 6% of their budget on terrorist "salaries" and family payments hundreds of millions of dollars that could go to help normal Palestinians - does not faze the rest of the world.

And the fact that Israel employs some 125,000 Palestinians, with salaries more than double their domestic worker counterparts, doesn't mean anything either.

The only narrative allowed - in the media and from NGOs - is that all Palestinian problems come from Israel.

And the world is happy - nay, eager - to believe it.

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Palestinian NGOs cynically use World Press Freedom Day to falsely accuse Israel of jailing journalists

Palestinian prisoner rights NGOs are using today's World Press Freedom Day to call for Israel to release 16 "journalists' who are in prison. They claim that these journalists were arrested to curtail freedom of speech: "The occupation authorities are pursuing a number of policies to restrict freedom of opinion and expression and impose more censorship and control on the Palestinians, as part of the tools of the apartheid regime, most notably the policy of arrest, threats, house arrest, and repeated assaults in the field of work; This is in a continuous attempt to undermine their societal, cultural, and political role, and to prevent them from exposing the ongoing crimes against the Palestinians."

They pointedly don't mention that these "journalists" were arrested because they engaged in terror. And many were never journalists to begin with.

People like Ahmed Adeeb Ahmed Al-Saifi, a member of Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades sentenced to 17 years in 2011 for his involvement in a shooting attack. He became a "journalist" during his time in prison.

Or Bassem Khandakji, a PFLP member who drove a 16 year old to blow himself up at the Carmel Market in 2004, killing 3 civilians. He also started writing after he was in prison.

Or Mahmoud Musa Issa (right), a Hamas Al Qassam member who kidnapped and killed an Israeli soldier in 1992. H is another "journalist" who started writing while in prison.

Or Islamic Jihad's Haitham Jamal Ali Jaber, sentenced to 28 years in 2002 for terror attacks, who completed his degrees while in prison and also only became a writer afterwards.

Of course, people who do have press credentials and use them to help terrorism are even more reprehensible and should not be held up as

One photojournalist, Yazan Abu Salah, is a PFLP member who was sentenced to four years for his involvement in setting up terror cells an Iranian-funded plot to kidnap soldiers.

This is just more cynicism from Palestinian NGOs who know that most people will not bother to check their claims. Their track record of telling the truth is exceedingly poor, but they keep getting funded and respected. They know that years of lying propaganda pay off over time.

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Amnesty's latest anti-Israel report's scope and methodology proves its bias was intended from the outset (update)

Amnesty just released its latest anti-Israel report, "Automated Apartheid: How facial recognition fragments, segregates and controls Palestinians in the OPT."

The 82 page report was conceived from the start to be biased against Israel. This can be seen from just the introduction.

By Checkpoint 56 in H2, a towering barrier features two turnstiles, and at least 24 cameras on the outside. Palestinians rely on passage through the checkpoint to access most, if not all, of goods and services, work, education, family life, and healthcare. It is here where witnesses described coming face to face with a new facial recognition system, Red Wolf, in 2022.

Palestinians are the only racial group of residents in H2 required to use these checkpoints, and the system relies on databases consisting exclusively of Palestinian individuals’ data.

Palestinians are not a racial group. Here Amnesty is apparently again using a definition of "racial discrimination" based on the ICERD definition which explicitly says that its definition does not apply to treating citizens and non-citizens differently. Amnesty's use of the word "racial" here has only one purpose: to assume that Israel's racism as a basis for the report itself.

Similarly:

In Hebron City and East Jerusalem the rights of Palestinians are violated through a range of legal and military measures that help maintain Israel’s system of apartheid over Palestinians.

Amnesty lied about "apartheid" in its earlier reports, and those definitions have been thoroughly debunked. But since Amnesty is more interested in propaganda than accuracy, it now uses the term as if it was a fact and this report is meant to build on that assumption. As a result, any alternative explanations for its findings are discounted or ignored - everything must support the lie that Israel engages in "apartheid" against non-citizens, which is nonsensical, since by that definition every country in the world practices apartheid.

The constant surveillance Palestinians face means they not only live in a state of insecurity, but they are also at risk of arbitrary arrest, interrogation, and detention.

If Palestinians are being arrested or detained based on being identified by surveillance, then by definition the arrests are not arbitrary. Israel is only arresting those people it is looking for; the vast majority of Palestinians pass through the checkpoints with no problem. This is the opposite of arbitrary.

But "arbitrary arrest" sounds so much worse, so Amnesty lies.

Neda, a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, spoke of the impact this oppressive technology has on her daily life: “I’m being watched the whole time…[it] gives me a really bad feeling everywhere in the street. Every time I see a camera, I feel anxious. Like you are always being treated as if you are a target.”

For better or worse, residents of every urban area on Earth have cameras pointing at them all the time. Police can request the video footage from private security cameras, too. There is no fundamental difference between what Neda is describing and what everyone in every city experiences.

This report establishes that facial recognition technologies are providing the Israeli authorities with powerful new tools for curbing freedom of movement – a pre-requisite for the realization of basic rights – adding further layers of technological sophistication to the system of apartheid that Israel is imposing on Palestinians in the OPT. This is achieved via:

• The establishment of compounding technological infrastructure to expand the reach of Israeli authorities’ control. As checkpoints govern the ability of Palestinians in H2––the area of Hebron under military rule by the Israeli Civil Administration––to travel outside their homes, Israel is able to contain Palestinians geographically, using domination by way of military force and surveillance tools such as Red Wolf and Blue Wolf to deter resistance.

Even if you call Israel's presence "occupation," the Geneva Conventions allows great latitude in allowing the occupier to maintain security of both civilians and soldiers. Checkpoints are not illegal. As we will see, the only people that the new technology stops are those who are already wanted.

Palestinians define attacking Jews as "resistance." Deterring resistance is not only legal but an obligation, to normal moral people.

• Surveillance as part of a coercive environment aimed at forcing Palestinians to leave areas of strategic interest to Israeli authorities, by making their ordinary lives unbearable.

Really? Cameras make their lives unbearable? Has a single Palestinian ever moved his family to avoid cameras? This is just another example of how Amnesty makes things up and knows that no one will look too closely at how their supposedly factual assertions are simple lies.

This report is based on field visits to Hebron and East Jerusalem, involving observations, interviews, and the collection of visual evidence, as well as on open-source intelligence and previous reporting. Between May and June 2022, Amnesty International met with Palestinian families, activists, students and experts from across Hebron and East Jerusalem, who were routinely exposed to daily surveillance. In doing so, Amnesty International researchers gathered testimonies and experiences related to the human rights harms associated with the deployment of invasive and wide-reaching remote biometric surveillance technologies, in particular facial recognition.

Given the sensitive nature of the research, risk of leaks, and risks posed to Amnesty researchers, a decision was made from the beginning of the research not to engage directly with Israeli officials.

Meaning, all of Amnesty's "research" involved looking at only one side of the issue. And this was a deliberate decision, not only not to include Israeli officials but not to include any Israelis who might contradict the premise of the report that Israeli is racist.

How can Amnesty claim to be objective when its decides, at the outset, to only look at sources biased in one direction?

Amnesty International issued a right of response letter to the state of Israel on 19 April 2023 but had not received a response at the date of publication.

Amnesty has been working on this report since 2021 - but gives Israel less than two weeks to respond to an 82 page report. One of those weeks includes Remembrance Day and Yom Haatzmaut. Yeah, that's real objective.

Amnesty International has found that facial recognition technology is used extensively by the Israeli authorities to support their continued domination and oppression of Palestinians in the OPT. With a record of discriminatory and inhuman acts that maintain a system of apartheid, the Israeli authorities are able to use facial recognition software – in particular at checkpoints – to consolidate existing practices of discriminatory policing and segregation, violating Palestinians’ basic rights.

Amnesty International is not convinced that the security justifications which Israel cites as the basis for its treatment of Palestinians – including restricting their freedom of movement – justify the severe restrictions that the Israeli authorities have imposed. While some of Israel’s policies may have been designed to promote legitimate security objectives, they have been implemented in a grossly disproportionate and discriminatory way which fails to comply with international law. Other policies have absolutely no reasonable basis in security and are clearly shaped by the intent to oppress and dominate. This includes differential treatment in the occupied territories, supporting the settlement of Jewish Israelis in the OPT, the designation of closed military zones, and the imposition of certain restrictions on movement such as travel bans. Examined in the context of systematic discrimination and oppression, and in the light of the mass human rights violations these policies have entailed, it becomes clear that genuine security considerations, including in the context of the deployment of facial recognition, are not the driving force behind these measures.

There is no way for Amnesty to know any of this without mind-reading capabilities. These aren't conclusions - they are assumptions. Given that the number of terror attacks against Jews has increased dramatically during the time period that Amnesty researched and wrote this report, plus the rise of new terror infrastructure like Lion's Den, these two paragraphs are Amnesty's way of saying Jewish lives don't matter.

Amnesty's position is that any technology to save the lives of Jews and soldiers is disproportionate.

Their "Methodology" section shows more intentional bias by Amnesty:

To design the research project, Amnesty International established an advisory committee in early 2022 consisting of half a dozen researchers at the forefront of research on surveillance in the context of the OPT, with proven track records of scholarship and human rights advocacy in relation to the topic. They included academics, lawyers, campaigners and activists. The advisory committee was crucial in informing the research project, including but not limited to formulating the research questions, identifying potential witnesses and research partners, and addressing ethical and security-related concerns associated with the project.

So the advisory committee included only people who hate Israel. And no distinction was made between the supposed experts and "campaigners and activists." There is not even the pretense of objectivity.

Here is one perfect example of Amnesty's bias. The report relies heavily on testimony from Breaking the Silence, but ignores when their testimony proves that the facial recognition actually makes the lives of Palestinians at checkpoints easier. One BtS report quoted four times says:

You have this system called Red Wolf.

Okay, give more details.
A person arrives and goes through a security check. He gives me his ID. I put it into [the system]. If it goes green on the computer, he goes through a security check and moves on. If it goes yellow, I have to call... Yellow is unidentified, unknown, something like that. There’s this number you call, the division, the DCL (District Coordination and Liaison office, a regional unit of the Civil Administration), and they tell you what to do. And if it’s red, there’s the protocol. You lock down the whole turnstile [at the checkpoint], call to have him picked up because he’s wanted for arrest.

And they come to get him?
Yes.

Would that happen a lot?
No. It never happened. They (the Palestinians) are not idiots. In the end, there are openings that aren’t this checkpoint.

And usually, when there’s a yellow, what would actually happen?
It’s a computer bug. I never really had a yellow. For the most part, they’re all green, or they have no ID, and then you turn them around.

Can this system identify them even without putting in the ID [number]?
Yes. There’s something like ten cameras. Once they arrive and pass through inside, it essentially takes photos, identifies them, to help you as the soldier standing there. It catches the face before [they enter], and it displays the face for you on the computer. If it’s someone who’s been coming through there a lot, the computer already knows them. It takes photos of everyone who passes there essentially. And you, as a soldier, a commander, standing there, can match the face to the IDs until the system learns [to recognize] the face. It recognizes him, and then he comes, and he’s already lit green for me even before he showed me an ID, and so it makes the process shorter for him, in theory.

And then, after you see green?
He can go through the turnstile with no problem.

So the system allows Palestinians who live in Hebron to zip through checkpoints without having to show their ID each time.

Amnesty doesn't even consider that the systems could be used to ease Palestinians' lives, nor does it allow that the security gains and lives saved by these systems have any value at all.

Amnesty's scope for this report deliberately omits the high tech checkpoint at Qalandiya that speeds Palestinian workers through and saves them the hours that they used to spend there. It also uses facial recognition to help make things go much faster. There is no way that someone with any intellectual honesty can look at Qalandiya and conclude that the facial recognition is hurting them in any way.

But Amnesty chose not to include that in this report, because it would contradict the anti-Israel message that Amnesty intended this report to be all along. If report readers knew about Qalandiya, they might think that checkpoints in Hebron that use facial recognition also are better then the old system of checking IDs.

Similarly, Amnesty quotes an IDF report about the surveillance system in Hebron, but doesn't quote the part that explains why it is necessary: "The main challenge in Hebron is the friction between the Jewish residents and the Palestinians, who live right next to each other - so when a security incident breaks out, the force has to react within seconds. The new cameras which give us a clearer picture of what is happening in the field, and thus solve the timing problem."

Amnesty doesn't mention, or airily dismisses, the actual security reasons for surveillance. Which is the entire problem. There are alternative explanations for this technology that make far more sense than Amnesty's assertion that these systems are "clearly shaped by the intent to oppress and dominate." How exactly that oppression and domination would help Israel in any way is not defined. In fact, such a deliberate mistreatment as Amnesty describes would make life worse for Israelis as well. But according to Amnesty, Jewish supremacists just love to harass Palestinians for no reason, and even spend millions of dollars to create high tech methods to make their lives miserable.

Those are Amnesty's "facts" before they wrote one word of this report.

The report was conceived, researched, scoped and written with assumptions of unmitigated Israeli evil If you never encountered Amnesty's bias beforehand, this report alone is enough to show that the entire organization is a joke.

Yet the New York Times wrote essentially a press release for this anti-Israel report, without reporting any bias at all.

Because people who share a bias cannot notice it in others.

UPDATE: NGO Monitor adds lots more.

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Amnesty's defense of its anti-Israel lies: "Trust us, bro. We have experts."

There was a remarkable Twitter exchange between a number of critics of the Amnesty "apartheid" report and Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty UK campaigns manager.

CAMERA created a video showing specific lies in Amnesty's video supporting the report.

If Amnesty had a good case, why would it need to manipulate viewers?

15 Lies in 15 Minutes: Amnesty International's 'Apartheid' Video":#Israel pic.twitter.com/PFMqfs5T4T
— CAMERAorg (@CAMERAorg) April 18, 2023

Benedict responded:

Please send this as ‘evidence’ to the chief prosecutor of the ICC..

David Litman of CAMERA:

Now that we have your attention, perhaps someone from Amnesty could finally address some of those blatant factual errors I pointed out directly to your colleague, which suggest your organization is knowingly lying or doesn't actually understand the law.

Kristyan Benedict

Benedict: "Sound like you’ve already made your mind up. Good luck with that."

Adam Levick (CAMERA-UK): "Why don't you just respond to the CAMERA video, Kristyan."

Benedict: "We've laid out our findings in a very detailed report and stand by it. We didn't just put it out without serious review from experts. You however, should make your case to the likes of the ICC chief prosecutor and the COI. Would be a better use of your time in all seriousness."

Eitan Fischberger: "Who were the experts?"

Benedict: "External experts on international law including those with specialist knowledge of apartheid in international law."

Fischberger: "No I'm sure, but who? A couple of names for reference would be most appreciated."

Benedict: "Afraid not. External (and internal) colleagues have many reasons to not be public about such work - one of them being the awful smear campaigns that sometimes occur. Not everyone wants that nastiness in their lives. Hopefully that’s understandable."

Fischberger: "I can certainly understand the need for privacy. Yet, I can't help but worry this creates a situation in which Amnesty can issue reports on highly contentious topics, and when confronted with counterarguments, defers to unanswerable experts whose objectivity can't be verified."

Benedict:"The reports are signed off internally after many layers of review - so if there are any alleged ‘errors’ that you think you’ve found, including regarding applicable international law, then send them in. Just stating something is an ‘error’ does not make it so though.....the general public email is contactus@amnesty.org.

"There are of course other ways to engage but we’d both have to assess it’s a good use of our time. I suspect we’re quite far apart, no?"

Fischberger: "Thank you for the tip and clarification. What other ways are you referring to? While it appears we are far apart on this issue, I don't see that as a reason not to engage in a respectful and cordial manner, as we are now."

Benedict: "That’s of course true. I mean quite simply talking in private meetings. A lot of our (and my) time is focused on partnerships with HR NGOs and advocacy with political contacts. There is a time & place for engaging other groups but clarity on why / objectives would be paramount."

Fischberger: Makes sense. For me, the objective here is to understand what, if any, transparency and accountability mechanisms Amnesty has put in place for itself. Since you probably can't answer for the main branch, how about on behalf of @AmnestyUK?"

Benedict: "I’ve answered that. The findings and methodology are public. We are not just claiming Israel commits the crime of apartheid, we are laying out our findings for others to review. It’s worth reading our report if you haven’t already or other related assets."

Fischberger "What I'm concerned about arent reviews, but errors. AI has enormous reach. It isn't enough for someone to simply tweet about a potential error because far fewer people will see that than AI's report. Wouldn't the best solution be to ask AI to amend the error in the report itself?"

Benedict: "If I were advising you (on presumably how to try to undermine the AI report?) and you were confident in your claims, I’d suggest you make your case to bodies like the COI, ICC CPs office, Special Rapps etc. Has that happened? Credible testing is important."

David Litman: "The question isn't what those other bodies said or did. It's about the inaccurate claims YOUR organization is spending so much effort promoting while refusing to accept responsibility for the inaccuracy of the claims. YOU can fix that. Not Ms. "Jewish lobby subjugates" Albanese."

Benedict: "Your claims might not be accurate. They may be more of the same defence of apartheid & other crimes we’re used to in this space. We also have to factor in if we think the group / person is credible / acts in good faith. We have limited time & must prioritise who we engage. Sorry!"

Fischberger: "How do you determine whether someone is acting in good faith? And honestly, how much should that matter? Isn't the pursuit of truth far more important?"

Benedict: It is but the meetings with those directly and indirectly seeking to defend Israel’s system of apartheid (not clear if your organisation is but that’s my perception) are mainly with states. It’s a matter of how we use our limited time."

Fischberger: "Again, how do you determine someone is acting in good faith?"

Benedict: Re good faith - i.e. not trying to defend war crimes and crimes against humanity. There is a space to engage those who do this but as said, it’s generally states and relevant non state actors."

Fischberger: "Is it possible that people defending Israel do it because they genuinely believe Amnesty's findings to be wrong, and not because they're in favor of war crimes or crimes against humanity? The way you phrased it implies that all who defend Israel automatically act in bad faith."

Benedict: "Nope. I’m talking about those who are defending war crimes and crimes against humanity. Not a state per se. Israel like all states is many things & not just it’s government & not just the crimes that government is committing. Focus on ending the crimes. That’s what we’re doing."

David Litman: "You keep talking about 'crimes' as if their existence is a fundamental truth beyond questioning. Yet, as I've pointed out, and as that legal review board pointed out, Amnesty's conclusions are often unsupported by the actual evidence. Allegations need proof, not blind faith.

Benedict: "Not wishing to be rude but if you wish to indulge in atrocity denial, go do it somewhere else. *Muted*"

I wrote my own response, not that I expect Benedict to answer, since he believes I also engage in "atrocity denial."

In 2015, Amnesty created a website -still online - called the Gaza Platform, that attempts to be a database of incidents and casualties in the 2014 Gaza war. I showed - with documentation - that dozens of the people killed that Amnesty called civilian were actually members of militant groups. I proved it in many ways. Amnesty dismissed me as not being "credible." The database still shows hundreds more civilian deaths than even the UN claims.

Newspapers would correct errors, no matter the source of the correction, because accuracy is objectively important. Even if CAMERA and NGO Monitor are biased, they are pointing out a pattern of errors. Yet Amnesty rarely if ever corrects its reports, far less than any major media. Shouldn't Amnesty's regard for accuracy be far more stringent than that of major media?

Your dismissal of such concerns as not being a good use of your time indicates that accuracy is not your primary concern in these reports. Reliance on unnamed experts that you have chosen using an unverifiable methodology does not in any way mitigate this.

The critics, myself included, rely on transparency with our criticism. That transparency is the antidote to bias. Just as you accuse us of bias - and we are - we accuse you of bias as well. However, there is not the equivalent transparency on your side - instead, you are falling back on the logical fallacy of an appeal to authority, and not even a named authority. "We had unnamed experts review it, trust us" is not the same as "here's where you are wrong."

Whether you intended to or not, this thread strengthens the idea that Amnesty - at least for the Palestinian issue - cares more about narrative than truth.

I'm obviously pulling my punches here. Benedict himself has previously shown his extreme anti-Israel bias. He once threatened violence against Richard Millett when he was respectfully asking questions from a speaker after an Amnesty event, demanding that the speaker not answer because Millett was a "war crimes denier" and then saying he would "smack" Millett in his "little bald head."

He's compared Israel to ISIS. He singled out British Jewish MPs for supporting bombing Gaza. he's accused Israel government officials of feeling "ethnic supremacy." And lots more.

There's a reason why Amnesty (and HRW) officials usually refuse to engage with their critics. When they do, their hypocrisy is seen by all.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Hezbollah does training literally in the shadow of UNIFIL

Alma is an organization that closely monitors activities on Israel's northern borders.

Last week it tweeted a video published by a (non-Shiite) Hezbollah-aligned militia showing their training in southern Lebanon. The terrorists are practicing how to abduct and kidnap Israeli forces.

This screenshot above shows that this training was happening right next to a UN building.

Alma identified the area of the training, in Marwahin, right across the border with Israel, and affirms that the UN building is indeed a UNIFIL base.

UNIFIL's mandate is to ensure that the only military allowed between Israel and the Litani River belongs to the Lebanese Armed Forces.

There is no report on their website or Twitter feed about any military activity under their noses, even as they show photos of UNIFIL troops patrolling in the area. What exactly are they looking for if they don't seem to care about mock abductions of soldiers right outside their door?

UNIFIL is a joke, and it is exhibit #1 on how Israel can never rely on anyone else for security.

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Let's look at some anti-Israel lies: US aid to Israel

The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights has created a website that pretends to calculate how much your community would benefit if the US stopped funding Israel.

It is a useful example to show just how much these guys lie.

They write:

Every year, the U.S. government writes Israel a blank check for at least $3.8 billion to fund Israel’s violence against the Palestinian people. The Israeli military then uses your tax dollars to kill Palestinian people, destroy their homes, and steal their native land, in violation of U.S. laws.

How many lies are here?

#1. There is no blank check. Every dollar is earmarked and audited.

#2. None of the money goes towards "violence against the Palestinian people." Unless you consider all Palestinian people to be terrorists; perhaps USCPR does.

#3. None of the money is earmarked for offensive operations against Palestinians altogether.

#4. It is the native land of the Jewish people.

#5. Nearly all of the $3.8 billion goes towards missile defense, joint research projects, F-35 fighter jets, in-air refueling tanks for planes, energy and water conservation research, joint homeland security programs, and above all loan guarantees (which Israel hasn't used for 18 years.) The claim that the full amount is used to attack Palestinians is a ludicrous lie.

Beyond that, the USCPR tries to make $3.8 billion sound like a huge amount. However, it is 0.06% of the federal budget. There is plenty of waste in the US budget - but these modern antisemitic liars want you to focus on Israel alone. The US gets a great deal back for its investments in Israel (missile technology and improvements in the F-35, for example.)

The US gives well over $5.5 billion annually to Arab nations: Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. That's a lot more than $3.8 billion. Where are the websites that count how much those cost the US taxpayer?

Here is some further deception:

How much of this annual $3.8 billion in military funding do people in your city pay through federal tax dollars? What community needs could be funded instead? Find out below on our interactive map.

See all those rows of things that Kalamazoo's portion of the $3.8 billion could pay for? Each line costs $3.8 billion, not the total. If you buy the respirator masks, there is no money left for public housing. Get the teachers and say bye bye to healthcare. It is a hugely deceptive infographic.

But that barely covers how deceptive. If the US government should suddenly receive a windfall of $3.8 billion, you know what they would do if they were responsible at all? They would use it to make a microscopic 0.02% dent in the national debt! It would never go to teachers!

This entire website is meant to pretend to use real numbers but it is all an appeal to emotions and prejudice. These people don't give a damn about the US taxpayer. And they know that no one will look at their numbers and see how wildly inaccurate their information is.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

"Human rights orgs" give the world permission to hate Jews again

In 2001, Barbara Perry wrote a book called "In the Name of Hate: Understanding Hate Crimes." Chapter 7, "Permission to Hate: Ethnoviolence and the State" says:

[H]ate-motivated violence can flourish only in an enabling environment. In the United States, such an environment historically has been conditioned by the activity-and inactivity-of the state. State practices, policy, and rhetoric often have provided the formal framework within which hate crime-as an informal mechanism of control-emerges. Practices within the state-at an individual and institutional level-that stigmatize, demonize, or marginalize traditionally oppressed groups legitimate the mistreatment of these same groups on the streets. This chapter examines the ways in which state rhetoric, policy, and practice provide the context for violence against minorities.

She brings examples of how political figures, by invoking or dog-whistling tropes against oppressed groups, enable hate crimes against the same groups.

The theory seems to have merit. After all, when bigotry is normalized, then the environment is riper for people who want to act in a bigoted way. They don't feel like they are outliers and they believe that there would be fewer consequences for their actions.

There was a cottage industry of people warning that Donald Trump's alleged bigotry would increase hate crimes, and then magically finding such correlations. (The increase in hate crimes began in the second term of the Obama administration, but for some reason no one seems to blame him.)

Relatively few people noted that there was a similar increase in hateful speech from the Left in the same time period - much of it directed at Trump voters.

To be sure, hate from the Left doesn't usually translate into direct hate crimes, while far-Right hate sometimes does. But hate is always directed at the Other - and it is just as reprehensible when the Other is black or gay, or whether The Other is Republican or live in flyover states.

A major barrier to having feelings of hate is that no one wants to believe that they are bigots. They want to believe that their hate is a righteous hate towards a group of people who richly deserve it. It just so happens that groups like Black people, gays, or women are easily categorized and hate towards them is more easily analyzed than hate for political opponents. However, the emotions are the same, and just as destructive - the same feeling of superiority versus the Other and the same imperative that the Other not have the same rights as those of the hater.

Which brings us to modern hate of Jews.

Jews are indeed a defined group with a rich history of victimhood. Outside of the fringe that are white supremacist or neo-Nazi, people don't want to think of themselves as having the label "antisemite.". The Holocaust is still in living memory and no one wants to be on the side of the Nazis.

But lots of people are itching for an excuse to hate Jews without being called antisemitic, indeed while claiming that they are against antisemitism. They want someone to give them permission to hate in a way that they can still look themselves in the mirror - or better yet, to consider themselves paragons of morality.

The UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other "human rights organizations" have been happy to jump in and provide exactly that permission.

Have you ever noticed that the thorough, multiple debunkings of the "apartheid" slander against Israel get no attention? It is partially because the modern antisemites aren't looking for real reasons to hate Israel and Israeli Jews - they are looking for permission to act on the hate they already had beforehand. Once an Amnesty or a UN gives them that permission, by giving Israel a label of "racist" or "Jewish supremacist," they can pretend that their hate is not toxic Nazi-style bigotry but righteous moral indignation. They have no desire to look beyond the modern slanders of accusing Jews of moral crimes - they have "experts" on their side, and that is all they need to legitimize this new bigotry. The 200 page papers don't need to be read or analyzed; they are meant to simply give permission for the masses to hate Jews eight decades after Auschwitz.

This is the same permission that Barbara Perry noted for bigotry on the Right. NGOs fulfill the functions of the Perry's state-supported hate - in fact, they are in some ways more respected because they position themselves as having no political agenda, only a moral one.

Apologists might argue that this Leftist antisemitism, if they even admit it exists, is still much less serious than far-Right antisemitism. The neo-Nazi antisemites are more likely to have guns and to directly murder Jews, while the Leftist antisemites are merely boycotting Israel. If you define the consequences of antisemitism merely by counting the bodies killed directly by the bigots, they would have a point.

However, we have seen in recent years that while the Leftist version of the world's oldest hatred might not directly attack Jews, it encourages Palestinians and Iranian proxies to attack them - and gives them their own moral cover.

They have created an additional false intellectual framework that claims that Palestinian terrorism is legitimate self defense, and that Israel has no right to defend itself or its citizens from Palestinian terror. They push lies that US military aid to Israel has no oversight and that US arms are being used for war crimes - with the intent to destroy Israel's ability to defend Jews from Palestinian terror. They fund "charities" and Palestinian NGOs that are tightly tied to, and often fronts for, terror groups like the PFLP.

This is simply another layer of looking for, and finding, permission to hate and dehumanize.

Jews killed by right-wing crazies in a synagogue in the US are just as dead as Jews killed by Palestinian Jew-haters while driving in their cars in Judea or exiting their synagogue in Jerusalem. But the Left doesn't consider the latter to be victims of antisemitism - the cognitive dissonance would be too painful So they construct yet another castle in the sky, backed up by academics, pretending that the Palestinians who openly admit and publish their hatred for Jews don't really hate Jews and that they are the victims, not the dead Jews.

The entire house of cards of Leftist justifications for hating Jews (and only Jews) in Israel would collapse in an instant if the "progressive" anti-Zionists would spend five minutes looking at the critiques of the "apartheid" slanders and absurd arguments justifying murdering Jews. Or ten minutes to compare Israel's supposed "crimes" with the acts of any other country in the history of warfare. But truth isn't their goal - they only want to have permission to engage in the same kind of bigotry that they claim is exclusive to the Right. Facts get in the way of their deep desire to put those uppity Jews in their place.

Today, in the streets of London, you can get a crowd of thousands to openly cheer the idea that Palestinians have the right to target and murder Jews, and only Jews, in Israel. They just change the word "murder" to "resistance" and terrorism magically transforms from a crime against humanity into a heroic action.

These bigots have permission from the UN, from Amnesty and HRW, from The Nation and Electronic Intifada, from Peter Beinart and Marc Lamont Hill and dozens of other "intellectuals," to hate Jews - and from there to incite the murder of Jews.

People wonder how the Holocaust could have happened. How, centuries after the Age of Enlightenment that normalized the concepts of human rights and equality, could an entire country be so brainwashed to hate Jews? How could such a hate be not only accepted but enthusiastically promoted by ordinary Germans?

The intellectual groundwork for such an event is being put in place in front of our eyes today.

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Israel to increase funds for monitoring illegal Arab Area C construction

From Haaretz:

The Israeli ministry that oversees settlements intends to double the budget allocated to settlers for drones and inspectors to monitor Palestinian construction. The National Missions Ministry intends to allocate a total of 40 million shekels ($11.1 million) for this purpose.

In 2020 the National Missions Ministry – then the Settlement Ministry, and headed by Likud lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi – announced for the first time that it would allocate 20 million shekels ($5.5 million) to these departments, to be disbursed among the settlements. The funds were eventually transferred much later, under the Bennett-Lapid government.

Under the leadership of National Missions Minister Orit Strock, that budget is projected to double. A recently published call for tenders stresses that the budget will only be allocated after the state budget is approved.

Good!

There are lots of Western NGOs who put everything Israel does in Area C under a microscope - while they ignore, or encourage, Arabs to build in the same area.

The EU even puts its own name and logos on these illegal settlements, built nowhere near any infrastructure, positioned specifically to stop Jews from building - or to stop the IDF from being able to use existing military zones.

In 2016, I created this animation of satellite images showing a bunch of illegal structures being built. I've gone on tours and seen these structures up close - often with EU logos.

Masafer Yatta, which is a favorite topic among the anti-Israel woke, is likewise a new community built in Area C - not an ancient Palestinian village being threatened.

It is hard to describe how prevalent this illegal building is without seeing it yourself. So this modest increase of funding to help document the many, many illegal Palestinian structures is a welcome development.

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"Jewish Voice for Peace" says to symbolically burn US and Israeli flags on Passover eve

From Jewish Voice for Peace's Facebook page:

Nationalism is chametz, during Passover and always!
Freedom only for some is never enough. This Passover, at a time when violence against Palestinians by the Israeli state, military and settlers continues to escalate, we gather to demand and dream liberation for everyone.
For anti-Zionist Jews, this holiday can be a challenging time. For some, it can feel impossible to separate our holiday traditions from Zionist propaganda advocating ethnic cleansing and land theft. Many of us feel reluctant to even celebrate the holiday as Zionist terror escalates in Palestine. And many of us may be facing yet another holiday where our beliefs and politics are not welcome.
This year, bring your whole anti-Zionist self to our virtual seder! Our beloved community is coming together to set the Pesach table for you. Our seder will feature joy and rage and hope from our Havurah, BIJOCSM and student networks, our campaigns, our rabbis, and from JVP members from near and far—all gathered for collective liberation for us all.

They never seem to have a problem with Palestinian nationalism. I wonder why.

Their latest "Haggadah" is just as twisted in its interpretations of what Passover is about. I looked at a previous version in 2012, which was 28 pages long and included an essay on "pinkwashing."

Apparently that was way too much for the current TikTok generation that JVP wants to attract, so this new one is a mere 14 pages long, deleting nearly all of Maggid, Hallel and Nirtzah. it doesn't even describe the overstuffed seder plate of the previous editions that included an olive (for Palestinians) and an orange (for feminists and LGBTQ+.).

This one still includes the third cup of wine celebrating BDS, though.

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"Palestine" ranks better than most countries in "multidimensional poverty" and "human development index"

The UN Human Development Reports of the UN Development Program defines a "Multidimensional Poverty Index" (MPI.)

The MPI looks beyond income to understand how people experience poverty in multiple and simultaneous ways. It identifies how people are being left behind across three key dimensions: health, education and standard of living, comprising 10 indicators. People who experience deprivation in at least one third of these weighted indicators fall into the category of multidimensionally poor.

The MPI score is based on these metrics:

How do Palestinians do?

Pretty good, actually.

While Western nations are not listed in this chart, the Palestinians are shown to be in far better shape than over 100 countries that are listed. I call out some of them.

Anti-Israel activists like to pretend that Palestinians have "no choice" but to turn to terror, and one of the reasons they like to trot out is how impoverished they are.

If that was the case, then why are we not seeing the same support for terror in the 100 countries who have a higher poverty score than they do?

Until COVID, Palestinians had also been steadily getting better scores every year in UNDP's Human Development Index, but even after a brief setback they are ranked "high" in various metrics.

Israel haters hate context like this. Because by any metric, Palestinians aren't in nearly as bad shape as people in over a hundred countries - but Palestinians get far more aid per capita than every single one of them.

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Another absurd anti-Israel report from HRW submitted to the UN

Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch submitted a memorandum to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities about the problems of Palestinians with disabilities.

Not surprisingly, it places most of the blame for Palestinian leaders not adhering to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on - Israel.

Here is a section about how Israel restricts movement in and out of Gaza:

Human Rights Watch found that sweeping Israeli restrictions on the movement of people and goods, at times exacerbated by restrictive policies by Palestinian authorities, curb access to assistive devices, health care, and electricity essential to many people with disabilities.

For more than 15 years, Israeli authorities have blocked most of Gaza’s population from traveling through the Erez Crossing, the only passenger crossing from Gaza into Israel through which Palestinians can travel to the West Bank and abroad. Israeli authorities often justify the closure, which came after Hamas seized political control over Gaza from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in June 2007, on security grounds. The closure policy, though, is not based on an individualized assessment of security risk; a generalized travel ban applies to all, except those whom Israeli authorities deem as presenting “exceptional humanitarian circumstances,” mostly people needing vital medical treatment and their companions, as well as prominent businesspeople.

Israeli authorities also significantly restrict the entry and exit of goods into Gaza. While there are no restrictions on the import of assistive devices, policies regarding “dual-use” items have restricted the entry of spare parts and batteries for hearing aids and other devices, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha.[7] Medical Aid for Palestinians has documented that Israel has restricted as “dual-use” items carbon fiber components used to stabilize and treat limb injuries, and carbon fiber and epoxy resins used to produce artificial limbs, resulting in patients being fitted with heavier, more uncomfortable alternatives.

....Hamas authorities in Gaza and humanitarian organizations have sought to provide assistive devices to those in need of them, but their efforts often fall short. Gaza’s Social Development Ministry reported on its website in September 2017 that it had allocated US $500,000 in its 2018-2020 plan for assistive devices, but it is unclear what devices it secured and distributed, and what standards it relies on to assess need.[14]

....Under the CRPD, States Parties should take effective measures to ensure personal mobility, including by facilitating access to assistive technology and by promoting the availability, knowledge, and use of assistive devices and technologies.[16] International humanitarian law obliges occupying powers to ensure the safety and welfare of civilians living in the occupied territory.[17]

Israel’s sweeping restrictions on the movement of people and goods, at times exacerbated by restrictive policies by Palestinian authorities, restrict the right of people with disabilities to freedom of movement and access to assistive devices, as set out under articles 20 and 14 of the CPRD.

Here's how HRW's bias works:

It mentions a couple of times that Palestinian authorities also restrict Gazans from leaving the territory. But while it goes into some detail on Israeli restrictions, it doesn't say anything about the Palestinian restrictions. Is it Hamas or the PA? (The answer is both.)

This memorandum is meant as a submission to the CPRD review of Palestinian policies, as they are signatories to the CPRD and have specific obligations under that convention. Israel's policies on allowing Gazans into Israel are not a part of Palestinian responsibilities under the CPRD. HRW is using this as another excuse to bash Israel.

Notice also that the word "Egypt" is not mentioned once in this memo. It is another border through which people and goods can pass, but only Israel is responsible for restrictions, not Egypt.

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The lies of the "Arab Group for the Protection of Nature"

Last week I noted the absurd claim by the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature that Israel has destroyed 3 million trees between 2000-2012.

It turns out that this group, founded in 2003, just started a major anti-Israel campaign - probably to attract lots of money from the EU which loves funding any anti-Israel organization.

They published a series of infographics to push a lot of lies.

The entire series is based on the lie that today's Palestinian Arabs are related to the Canaanites, so they discuss the thousands of years of history of the olive tree in the region, pretending that this has something to do with modern Palestinians.

Of course, the Jews in the kingdoms of Judah and Israel also cultivated olive way before anyone ever heard of Palestinians. Olives are a major theme in the Hebrew scriptures. Ancient olive presses built by Jews can be found throughout the Land of Israel.

They don't want to mention that!

This is not true. The agricultural sector as a whole (including cereals) is less than 5% of the Palestinian GDP, and olives are about 25% of that (Oxfam), so the olive sector is about 1% of the Palestinian economy. That is a far cry from 14%.

In fact, Palestinians spend far more on paying terrorists and their families than they earn from profits of olive trees.

It is true that the Jaffa orange was not a Zionist invention. But the Zionists are the ones to turn it into a major export.

In 1939, the majority of orange exports from Palestine came from Jews, not Arabs! The Jewish sector outgrew the Arab sector starting in 1933. And the exports were always mostly from the Jewish orange growers, as these articles from 1922 and 1935 show.

Most of the forests planted by the JNF were pine forests, and pine forests have been in the region for thousands of years.

And guess who decimated those forests? The Arabs who lived there!

1881 Survey of Western Palestine:

From Underground Jerusalem: An Account of Some of the Principal Difficulties Encountered in Its Exploration and the Results Obtained. With a Narrative of an Expedition Through the Jordan Valley and a Visit to the Samaritans, by Sir Charles Warren, 1876:

And as for cypress trees:

The tall cypress only exists in Palestine, as cultivated by man in gardens, and in cemeteries, and other open places of towns.

Samih al-Qasim was not an ancient Palestinian poet - he died in 2014.

Psalms mention olive trees a number of times - and they were written quite a long time before any Palestinian poets talked about them.

The entire holiday of Chanukah is centered around a miracle of olive oil!

The lies just keep on coming.

Of course, this group has nothing negative to say about the current Palestinian penchant for setting fires against Israeli lands they consider to be Palestinian, or the history of their destroying Jewish crops that continues today. Their concern for nature is curiously partisan.

And make no mistake - the desire to separate Jews from the Land of Israel by pretending that they have no history there and that they have no love of the land is pure antisemitism.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!