Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: NYT

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Monday, November 28, 2022

11/28 Links Pt1: A New Strategic Landscape in the Middle East; IDF arrests 3,000 Palestinians, thwarts 500 attacks in past 6 months; How not to condemn an Arab terrorist attack

From Ian:

A New Strategic Landscape in the Middle East

Arab-Israeli relations are a source of good news these days. The conflict between the Jewish state and its radical enemies, Palestinians and others, is far from over, and the threat of the Iranian revolutionary regime may be greater than ever. However, a new strategic alignment promises a better chance for regional states to isolate and stand up to the radicals who continue to threaten the existing order. The old structure of the Arab-Israel conflict that defined the Middle East for generations is now being replaced by a strengthening Arab-Israeli coalition against Iran and its radical Arab proxies.

The erosion and ultimately the abolition of aggressive regional solidarity targeting the Jewish state has been the supreme objective of Israel's regional strategy since its inception. Breaking up regional solidarity is an indispensable precondition to any progress toward peace. Arab states would consider accepting Israel only following a painful recognition of the failure of the attempt to erase it at an acceptable cost.

The profound change in the strategic landscape of the Middle East in the recent decade may be characterized by four pillars: the magnitude of the Iranian regional threat, the inability of Arab states to stand up to that threat by themselves, the questionable steadfastness of American support, and the proven capacity and dependability of Israel.

Unlike most European and American officials, Arabs fully realize the magnitude of the Iranian determination to hegemonize the Middle East at their expense and the effectiveness of Iranian brutality and sophistication in the pursuit of that objective. Watching the impact of the Iranian takeovers in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen and its subversion in their own countries, they know they are in desperate need of external assistance to survive.

The most vulnerable Arab states turned to the only power that fully appreciates the magnitude of the Iranian threat and is capable and determined to provide a forceful response. Israel has been engaged for more than half a decade in a wide-scale preventive war in Syria and western Iraq to thwart the Iranian takeover where it threatens Israel most acutely. The historic all-Arab coalition against Israel has been replaced by a de facto Arab-Israeli coalition against the radical forces that threaten them both.

IDF arrests 3,000 Palestinians, thwarts 500 attacks in past 6 months

The IDF’s ongoing Operation Break the Wave in the West Bank has seen thousands of troops and reservists crack down on Palestinian terrorism, arresting over 3,000 suspects and thwarting over 500 terror attacks.

The operation began in late March after a series of terror attacks in Israeli cities left 20 people dead. Israeli security forces, including the IDF, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and Israel Police have been carrying out raids during day and night against Palestinians suspected of terrorism.

For more than six months, some 25 regular battalions have been deployed to the West Bank along with an additional 84 of reservists deployed to the area by the end of next year.

The large number of troops comes as the level of violence in the West Bank continues to remain unusually high, with massive amounts of gunfire directed against troops carrying out operational missions as well as against Israeli civilians.

The past year has seen a marked increase in terrorism, with 281 serious terror attacks by Palestinians: 239 against soldiers and 42 against civilians.

There were also a total of 8,483 violent incidents by Palestinians such as riots or stone throwings, about 40% of them against Israeli civilians and 60% against IDF troops. The number marked a significant rise of almost 20% from the 7,039 attacks last year.

Israel Upgrading Security Barrier in Northern West Bank

On Nov. 14, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz approved plans to upgrade a section of the West Bank security barrier after a series of terror attacks were committed by Palestinians who illegally entered Israel.

A tall fence, similar to those on the borders with Egypt and Gaza, will replace a 50-km. stretch of fencing from the Te'enim checkpoint near Avnei Hefetz to Oranit in the northwestern West Bank.

In the summer, construction began on a 9-meter tall concrete wall to replace another 50-km. stretch of fencing in the northern West Bank from Salem to the Te'enim checkpoint that was built 20 years ago.

Both upgraded sections will be equipped with surveillance cameras and sensors.

In July, the IDF began to strengthen defenses along the existing security fence in the Judean Desert in the southern West Bank, digging a deep trench over 20 km. to prevent the passage of people and vehicles.

Many credit the West Bank security barrier with helping to end the Second Intifada (2000-2005), though only 62% of the barrier was completed.

11/22 Links Pt1: Hold Abbas accountable; NYTs demonstrates why Israelis have turned right; Mossad was behind intelligence tip to UK’s MI5 over Iranian terror threats

From Ian:

Hold Abbas accountable

We should recall here that last March, then-ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced the launch of an investigation into suspected crimes committed in the territories of Judea and Samaria, in east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since June 13th, 2014. Her announcement followed a preliminary investigation in the wake of a Palestinian complaint that determined – contrary to Israel's position – that the court has the jurisdiction to deliberate on such complaints. Israel called this decision a moral and legal disgrace and officially informed the court that it would not cooperate with it.

It should be noted here that ICC investigations enable arrest warrants to be issued against suspects without any public notification. The court's signatories are required to cooperate with the investigation, honor arrest warrants, and hand over suspects located in their territory to the court. Beyond immediate harm to such persons, the opening of processes against could impact its comportment in the international arena and severely damage its international standing. In any event, in practical terms the investigation against Israel has yet to commence and this is also something that the Palestinians wish to advance through the move at the ICJ.

In fact, what Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his people are trying to achieve is a decision that the "occupation" is permanent and that it is in its entirety (not just measures within its framework) is illegal and therefore Israel should be subjected to pressures and a price should be exacted for its continued presence in Judea and Samaria. The ICC will find it hard to ignore an advisory by the ICJ that adopts these conclusions in their entirety or in part.

At present the ICJ should be busy dealing with the war in Ukraine and events in Georgia, Afghanistan, Africa, and elsewhere. But Israel should not count on the court being too busy to deal with it.The ICJ (once the UN General Assembly officially turns to it) will approach Israel, which will be required to answer the question of whether it is willing to cooperate. It would seem that the considerations that in the past led to a decision to turn down any such request, still hold.

Without any connection to all of the above, Israel will have to consider changes to its approach to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. It should weigh measures that will make it clear to Abbas and the PA that there will be consequences to the incessant campaign to negate Israel's legitimacy. The means at Israel's disposal are not meagre. If they don't deter Abbas, they should at the very least encourage a rethink of his approach among leaders who support it.

The history of apartheid proves Israel is not an apartheid state

By contrast, in Israel, there is an official policy of affirmative action administered by the Israeli government aimed at including minority Israelis in all aspects of public life. The Arabs who chose to stay in Israel during and following the 1948 war are Israeli citizens and are entitled to the rights granted to all citizens under the law. Arab Israelis serve in public institutions as ministers, Supreme Court judges, parliament members and governmental clerks. Furthermore, the former parties of the Joint List, an Arab-Israeli political bloc, hold seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. For the first time, in 2019, the Joint List endorsed a candidate to become prime minister of Israel.

It is also common to find many Arab Israelis holding only Israeli citizenship. Between 2011 and 2013, Professor Sammy Smooha, a researcher from Haifa University, conducted a poll among Arab Israelis, asking if they identify as Israeli or Palestinian. More than 20% responded “Israeli” or “Israeli-Palestinian.” Furthermore, according to his findings, when Arab-Israeli participants were asked if they would move to a Palestinian state if it is formed, 65– 77% percent of them replied that they would not.

A walk through the streets, shopping malls and hospitals of Israel will permit one to see and appreciate the integrated society that exists within all of Israel. People of all religions, all races and all beliefs are treated with respect in all public places; have access to all religious places; are protected in their right of prayer and assembly; have full access to healthcare treatment without regard to their race, religion, sexual orientation or beliefs; and enjoy freedoms not known anywhere else in the Middle East.

Where South Africa intended to and did impose a segregationist regime and called it apartheid, the allegation that Israel is similarly an apartheid state originated not from fact or from governmental policy but from Israel’s enemies as an intentional distortion of her commitment to building a wholesome society where diversity is cherished and rights are protected by the rule of law. Applying the moniker of apartheid to Israel today is another example of an antisemitic double standard applied exclusively to the Jewish state and ignores much greater injustices suffered by minority ethnic and religious groups around the world.

To put it bluntly, the attempt to equate Israel with South Africa is defamatory and disingenuous. Moreover, calling Israel an apartheid state under these circumstances does great injustice to Israel’s vibrant democracy and further disrespects the real and genuine struggle against the racism of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Moreover, the accusers against Israel who are in the Palestinian territories are obligated to look at their own leadership, and to look inward, as they essentially call for the future Palestinian state to be judenrein—free of Jews.

Who is it that is practicing apartheid?

'The New York Times’ demonstrates why Israelis have turned right

From Abdulrahim’s previous dispatches for the Times, it is clear that she has visited Gaza. That means either she is suffering from hallucinations that Israel is “controlling” things there, or she is fully aware that it is not, but wants to give the impression that it is in order to blame Israel for the Gaza fire.

Either of those two possibilities should be grounds for immediately firing her.

Not that Ms. Abdulrahim’s journalistic misbehavior relieves her editors of any responsibility. After all, they knew what they were getting when they hired her earlier this year. She had previously received awards from the anti-Israel organization CAIR after she wrote a letter denying that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations.

A staff reporter for one of the world’s most influential newspapers maliciously smears Israel with a blatant falsehood, and her editors look the other way.

This is one reason Israelis have been turning more hawkish in their voting preferences. No matter how many concessions they make, no matter how many risks they take, no matter how many territories they withdraw from—they still get blamed for anything and everything.

You can’t blame Israelis for feeling like, no matter what they do, they just can’t win. Israel’s critics will never play by the rules. They will lie and smear in order to turn public opinion against the Jewish state. They want to see Israel isolated, hated and harangued. And when Israel is threatened, they want the international community to stand idly by.

That leaves Israelis to conclude that their only hope for survival is to strengthen their military resolve and fortify their security policies—in other words, to vote for parties on the political right.

Israel’s critics complain that such thinking represents a “siege mentality.” Maybe that’s because Israel really is under siege—including in the information war, where combatants such as Raja Abdulrahim, pretending to be journalists, hurl dart after dart at the Jewish state without the slightest regard for the facts.

11/16 Links Pt2: Meir Soloveichik: The Prime Minister and the Minyan; A UN Seminar Teaches Antisemitism, Encourages Bias; Israeli company on the edge of finding diabetes cure

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Prime Minister and the Minyan

While Jabotinsky’s own appreciation of civic religion may have grown over time, there was no guarantee that the nascent Israeli right in 1948 would have been sympathetic to the Jewish state being a place that cherished traditional Jewish faith. It was Begin who, as prime minister three decades after the founding, first demanded kosher food when making state visits abroad; and it was Begin who, as prime minister, first insisted that Israel’s airline not fly on the Sabbath. He argued, as Yehuda Avner recounts in The Prime Ministers, that “one need not be pious to accept the cherished principle of Shabbat. One merely needs to be a proud Jew.” It was Begin, in other words, who understood the role religious tradition would play in the Israeli future.

This understanding has been vindicated. Much has been written on the various and very different views of the members of Israel’s newest government. But less focus has been given to the remarkable fact that this seems to be the first Israeli coalition with a majority made up of Orthodox Jews. This includes not only the members of the religious parties themselves but also those MKs from the Likud who are part of the Orthodox community. And this is an accurate representation of what the country has become. As Maayan Hoffman noted in an article titled “Why the Israeli Election Results Should Not Be Surprising,” the makeup of the future Knesset reflects plain sociology: “Around 80% of Israel’s population is either traditional, Religious Zionist or ultra-Orthodox, according to official reports.”

Begin was a singular figure in Israel’s history—one who seamlessly joined deep familiarity with, and knowledge of, Jewish tradition, a personal, natural faith in the God of Israel, and a Zionism that defended both Western democratic traditions and the Jewish right to the Land of Israel. But there is no question that Israeli society today reflects the fact that only Begin among the nation’s founders sensed what the future of Israel would be.

No one, under the new government, will be forced to eat gefilte fish. But all future successful political leaders will have to understand and address the central role that traditionally religious Israelis are now playing in the country’s polity. In the ministerial offices of Israel’s 37th government—and its 47th, and its 57th—there will be many more minha minyanim yet to come.

Time for an Israeli victory, end 100 year rejections against Israel - opinion

ALL OF the polls undertaken by the Israel Victory Project show growing support for the idea that peace will only become possible when the Palestinian leadership recognizes that it has lost its fight against Israel, and that Israel is here to stay.

This is reflected in a growing acceptance among politicians and even senior IDF officials that Israel has to return to winning wars and not be continually stuck in a cycle of violence with no way to escape the loss of life and bloodshed.

It is not a simple task to defeat Palestinian violent rejectionism as it has been allowed to fester for generations but as with all wars throughout history, once the will of the antagonist to continue fighting has been broken and that their war aims will not be reached are accepted, the war can finally end.

This is the strategic solution that the government must reach now.

It might be painful and difficult but it is the only one that will finally end the conflict for the good of both Israelis and Palestinians.

It will be good for Israelis because the country will finally see peace without the threat of endless military operations and can focus on potentially greater threats like those posed by a nuclear Iran. It will allow Israel to dictate the terms for peace that will ensure its permanent security needs.

For the Palestinians, it will free them of hate that unrelentingly permeates so much of their lives, whether in the media, the education system or in the mosques. It will free up the budget of violent rejectionism that incites and pays for mass murder which can then be freed up for social welfare, education, health and public services. This will mean a better future for Palestinian society which is being crushed by its own crucible of hate and rejectionism. It will ensure that Palestinians elect leaders who do not distract and deflect from allowing greater progress, development and democracy for their people by constantly blaming Israel for all of their ills. It is a win-win for all.

Just as importantly, the international community is starting to understand that wars are still simply won and lost, and diplomacy, unfortunately, isn’t enough when one party insists on playing a zero-sum game.

A UN Seminar Teaches Antisemitism, Encourages Bias

So, who does control the media and the “strong machine,” according to Marai, a featured panelist at the UN seminar?

That would be the “Center of Powers,” declared Marai, who confided to the audience it makes him “scared to say anything” because of unfair accusations of antisemitism the “Center” employs against people like him. The same Center also targets Palestinian journalists “even out of Palestine,” he added.

Marai’s cited evidence for the existence of this monolithic media-controlling entity is the case of several Deutsche Welle journalists who lost their jobs after CAMERA exposed their promotion of anti-Jewish terrorism and tropes, including their claims of Jewish control and “fabricating” the Holocaust.

Conveniently omitting the journalists’ own objectionable rhetoric, Marai suggested they lost their jobs over unproven allegations of antisemitism and that this, in turn, is evidence of a shadowy “Center of Powers” that controls the media by weaponizing antisemitism for its own nefarious purposes.

The moderator of the panel, Director of the UN Information Service Alessandra Vellucci, did not challenge any of Marai’s conspiratorial and bigoted rantings. Rather, she expressed her gratitude towards Marai for his remarks, thus imitating earlier silent acquiescence by other UN officials to such claims of “Jewish lobby” control during the July 2022 anti-Israel UN Commission of Inquiry.

One might forgive Marai for conspiratorial thinking regarding media control, given that he works for an outlet controlled by the repressive Qatari government. However, many inside the UN seem all too comfortable with suggestions that a manipulative Jewish cabal controls the levers of power.

Meet @UN_HRC's @FranceskAlbs, the "new favorite" rapporteur of the Syria regime and who believes Jews should be murdered, because Israelis don't have a right to self-defense against Palestinian terror. https://t.co/uDI26rrWeR
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 15, 2022

11/14 Links Pt2: Israel Deserves Better than the NYTs Prophet of Doom; Chappelle and normalizing black antisemitism; CNN Producer Tweeted ‘#TeamHitler,’ Hamas Terrorists ‘Freedom Fighters’

From Ian:

Braving bigotry and enemy fire, Jews served the Union valiantly during the Civil War

Sgt. Leopold Karpeles had a dangerous job. Serving in the 57th Massachusetts Infantry’s E Company during the American Civil War, he was a color bearer, which meant carrying a flag that identified his unit’s position — a necessary role, but one that invariably drew attention from the enemy. In May 1864, his actions won him the Medal of Honor — a decoration created during the conflict. His citation credited him with encouraging fleeing men to reform ranks and drive back the Confederates during the Battle of the Wilderness in northern Virginia.

Karpeles’s story was one of the more prominent accounts of Jews in the US Army during the Civil War. A new book, “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army,” by Adam D. Mendelsohn, director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town, explores the wider narrative around Jews serving in America’s bloodiest conflict. Its release is scheduled for November 15, just a few days after Veterans Day.

“Individual cases obviously gave life and color,” Mendelsohn told The Times of Israel, including when it came to “their decision to enlist, their experience in the army — which was not an easy one, particularly for Jews.”

On the battlefield, there was deadly combat and fear, including the terror Karpeles experienced in Virginia. Jews in uniform also faced ignorance, antisemitism or both from fellow servicemembers and higher-ups. Notoriously, in General Orders No. 11, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews as a class from the war department he commanded in the American South in December 1862.

“Clearly, in the senior ranks of the army, we see in [William T.] Sherman, Grant, [Benjamin] Butler, others, echoing views current in American society at the time of Jewish speculators and shirkers, profiting at the expense of the Union,” Mendelsohn said. “All these things ultimately came to a head in Grant’s order.”

Yet there were also interfaith friendships formed through mutual dependence during wartime.

“What I sensed in the data was the nature of comradeship,” Mendelsohn said. “Serving alongside each other, the experience of fighting together, does bring down the barriers.”

After the war, many Jews joined a nationwide veterans movement called the Grand Army of the Republic, with some even taking leadership roles. While the book states that Jewish veterans were largely unrecognized immediately after the war out of a national desire to move on, this changed several decades later. In the 1890s, the Hebrew Union Veterans Association was established amid a wave of antisemitism sweeping the nation.

The antisemitic history of the Union Army and the US civil war - opinion

The contractor, smuggler, speculator and shirker, however, were more than just figures of scorn. Jews and other “shoddy aristocrats” came to be seen as the creators and beneficiaries of the new economic and social order produced by the war. This “shoddy aristocracy” — whose morals and manners marked them as undesirable, whose profits were ill gained, and whose power derived from money alone — was imagined to lord it over a new and unjust social heap summoned into being by the chaos and disruption of war.

Even as the heated rhetoric of the war years receded after 1865, these ideas remained primed for action. They were returned to service in the Gilded Age.

It was no coincidence that the episode traditionally identified as initiating modern antisemitism in America — the exclusion of Joseph Seligman by Henry Hilton from the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs on May 31, 1877 — had at its center a man who had made a fortune as a contractor and banker during the Civil War. Seligman, a friend of President Grant, was viewed as an exemplar of the new capitalism that was remaking America.

Henry Hilton slandered Seligman as “shoddy—false—squeezing—unmanly,” a social climber who “has to push himself upon the polite.” Hilton drew upon themes familiar from wartime antisemitism: the Jew as speculator who trafficked in credit and debt; the Jew as obsequious ingratiator who attached himself to the powerful; the Jew as profiteer who advanced by improper means; the Jew as vulgarian who flaunted his (and her) obscene wealth and did not know his (or her) place; and the Jew as overlord whose money allowed him (or her) to displace others. In short, the “Seligman Jew” was the “shoddy aristocrat” by another name.

In an age of inequality and excess, the antisemite imagined the Jew as embodying all that was wrong with American capitalism. And during an age of mass immigration from Romania and the Russian Empire, they soon added another theme familiar from General Butler’s wartime diatribe: The Jew could not be trusted to become fully American.

Sadly, even as Louis Gratz, Max Glass and many other Jewish soldiers became American by serving in the Union army, the Civil War produced a range of pernicious ideas about Jews that have proven remarkably durable. We have escaped the everyday torments that afflicted Max Glass, but are still haunted in the present by the fantasies of Benjamin Butler and Henry Hilton.

A review of 'Woke Antisemitism', by David Bernstein

The American linguist and political commentator John McWhorter coined the term Woke Racism to refer to the latest wave of elite, radical, ‘anti-racist’ campaigners who posit that racism is so deeply embedded in the fabric of American life that it’s impervious to traditional civil rights and anti-racist legislation.

In order to level the playing field, liberal democratic systems of government – which aren’t up to the Utopian task of achieving perfect racial parity – must be radically re-constituted to allow for what Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How To Be An Anti-Racist”, refers to un-ironically as “anti-racist discrimination” against groups who are ‘disproportionately successful’.

The only thing that matters to such campaigners is the racial disparity in economic and social outcomes, which is viewed as sufficient evidence to demonstrate racism. Not only are all other possible factors for unequal results ignored, but it’s considered racist to even consider other explanations.

Thus, “privileged” whites and those labeled as “white adjacent” must accept a future where they will face ‘progressive bigotry’ until there’s complete racial parity in all areas of life.

Though the proponents of this Woke Racism typically focus only on the Black-White paradigm, the question of where Jews (and other successful, yet historically disadvantaged minorities) stand within this racial binary is rarely prominent within the public discourse.

Jason D. Greenblatt: Israel Deserves Better than the New York Times' Prophet of Doom

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote last week that in the new Israeli government coalition, Benjamin Netanyahu will soon preside over a parade of right-wing horribles whose very existence dooms Israel itself. Friedman then makes a giant leap of logic to suggest that if Jews in America share his distaste for two members of the new Israeli government, they will turn their backs on Israel once and for all. Apparently, these days, members of the Israeli government must pass muster not just with Israeli voters but also with newspaper columnists like Friedman - when in fact Israel, like the U.S., gets to choose its own leaders through free and fair elections.

Friedman claims that Arab countries entered the Abraham Accords only because "they wanted to trade with Israel." First, there's nothing wrong with that. And second, the Arab nations made peace with Israel because they're tired of pointless, expensive hostilities and because they recognize a common enemy in Iran. Friedman ought to have more respect for the courageous Arab governments that normalized their relations with Israel, and for those who may have quietly supported it from behind closed doors.

I abhor Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' anti-American comments, his payments to Palestinians to reward them for harming and murdering Israelis, and his comments about the Holocaust - yet I would still work with Palestinians and their leaders to try to improve their lives and seek peace between them and Israel. We don't burn everything down just because we disagree, however strongly, with the views of some of those in power.

11/08 Links Pt2: No More ADL; The Dangerous Mainstreaming of Kanye West and Kyrie Irving’s Brand of Antisemitism; First Israeli to Be Wounded by Gaza Rocket in Sderot to Become IDF Officer

From Ian:

No More ADL

To understand why, think, for a moment, about Kyrie Irving. What would the head of a serious version of the ADL have done? It’s actually pretty simple. First call attention to how messed up this situation is, not by issuing pompous statements with corporate logos slapped all over but by doing exactly what a bunch of Jewish kids did at a Brooklyn Nets home game earlier this month: wearing a T-shirt that says “Stop Anti-Semitism” in the front row of the stadium. Those kids probably invested a few hundred bucks, and in return received news coverage all over the world, appearing not as shadowy peddlers of indulgences but as what Jews actually are: outsiders getting pummeled left and right by bigots and haters.

Then, this ADL chief would go on TV and instead of cozying up to Sharpton, America’s greatest living pogromist, simply deliver the following speech: “I feel bad for Kyrie. I admire what seems like his willingness to seek out knowledge and to stand alone for what he thinks is true. But for all his alleged seeking, he still can’t find the right answer. He’s making the same mistake that millions have made throughout history—being smart and curious enough to wonder how the world works, but only finding imaginary Jews at the end of every road. This is the road to ignorance and misery, not to knowledge.”

Except, of course, that you can’t give that speech if your current or hoped-for donors are made up of the real thing Kyrie would uncover if he looked a bit more carefully: the very large corporations who have melded with government to create an almost impregnable, opaque, all-containing blob that controls American life, from dictating public health priorities to changing the way we produce and consume food.

Instead, all you can do is shame people who are confused and undereducated using the brute force you have at your disposal: corporate power. Cancel their contracts! Nix their ad campaigns! Make them bleed cash! Which, as we all saw this week, only amplifies the original noxious allegation.

This is why having no ADL would be so much better than having the one we currently have. Because of its own massive conflicts of interests, the ADL under Greenblatt may very well be , inadvertently or otherwise, contributing to the growth of antisemitism, not its diminishment.

This is as much of a philosophical question as it is a practical one. If your goal is to exterminate antisemitism—make the world’s most ancient and persistent hatred disappear, vanish, go kaput—then what we’ve seen from Greenblatt this week is understandable: Let’s educate or punish one hater at a time, until they’ve all reformed or disappeared. But if you believe, like me, that antisemitism will never go away, this approach is nothing more than a silly game of whack-a-mole. If we believe antisemitism is here to stay (and if you doubt it, do I have a few really good history books for you), then what you need is a real defense organization—one that doesn’t waste time with selling indulgences but instead forms bonds with groups and communities across the American spectrum, remains very vigilant to every attack no matter the perpetrator’s identity, and provides real education in large part by, ya know, speaking the truth clearly and unequivocally.

Here, then, is my solution to the problem that is Jonathan Greenblatt’s ADL: Let’s accept that the ADL is no longer a Jewish organization and ask for a divorce. Greenblatt can keep everything: His anti-racism, AstroTurf organization and all the corporate money trees he shakes on its behalf. We amcha Jews walk away with nothing—nothing, that is, but our dignity and our safety, both improved by no longer being pawns in a profit game that is endangering us more by the day.

A Little Piece of Ground

Elizabeth Laird is a renowned British children’s author, twice nominated for the prestigious Carnegie Medal. Ironically, it is her ability to tell a gripping story with vividly realized Arab protagonists that makes her novel A Little Piece of Ground so powerful – and so pernicious. (The metaphoric title reveals the author’s bias: Just as Israeli soldiers deny the boys of Ramallah “a little piece of ground” for soccer practice during the Second Intifada, so Israel denies the Palestinians their “little piece of ground.”)

The book was recently listed as required reading for sixth grade in the Newark, New Jersey public schools, a choice that has been challenged by the Zionist Organization of America.[1] This isn’t the first time the book has raised hackles.

Written in collaboration with Palestinian teacher Sonia Nimr, A Little Piece of Ground met with controversy from the moment it was published in Britain in 2003. Phyllis Simon, co-owner of a Vancouver, Canada, bookstore, urged Laird’s publisher (Macmillan) to reconsider the book, pointing out that “there is not even one mildly positive portrait of an Israeli in the entire book. . . . A Little Piece of Ground . . . is for children, the overwhelming number of whom clearly haven’t a clue about this conflict, and thus depend on books like this for the opinions they form about what goes on in the Middle East.”[2]

Laird’s answer was disingenuous. “The book is written through the eyes of a 12-year-old who just sees men with guns,” she wrote. “It would not have been true to my characters to do otherwise.”[3]

Perhaps, but who made the decision to paint the Middle East conflict exclusively through the eyes of a twelve-year-old Arab boy living in Ramallah during the Second Intifada? Karim sees his father humiliated at checkpoints; not only has he no idea why the Israelis have set these up in the first place, it’s a question he wouldn’t think to ask. Karim and his friends are confined inside by endless curfews which to them seem arbitrary, and there is no voice in the novel to explain them. Soldiers damage his school; are they just throwing their weight around, or are they looking for stashes of weapons? The reader isn’t told.

First Israeli to Be Wounded by Gaza Rocket in Sderot to Become IDF Officer

Shila Naamat was just one year and eight months old when a rocket from the Gaza Strip hit his home in the southern city of Sderot back in March 2002.

Shrapnel from the rocket moderately wounded Naamat, who was playing on the balcony of the home when the projectile landed, and was evacuated to a hospital in moderate condition

Naamat was the first Israeli civilian in Sderot to be wounded by rockets from the Palestinian enclave.

The incident happened when there was no safe space and bomb shelters on every corner of the bombarded city, including private homes. There were also no rocket alert sirens, and certainly, no Iron Dome that could protect the civilians.

Every Qassam rocket that was fired from the Strip at Sderot in the first few years had fatal and destructive consequences. Residents of the city and other communities near the Gaza border were forced to adapt to a new reality, which sadly continues to this day.

Naamat sustained a major wound to his leg and was fitted with platinum in his leg that has accompanied him all his life. But, he decided his injury will not hold him back. On the contrary, the injury eventually provided him with the needed drive to achieve his life goals - becoming an IDF officer.

"The IDF officer's training meant a lot to me, I learned many things about the IDF command, Israeli society, and of course the security system," Naamat says.

"I have more ambitions and I won't let my injury stop me, I want to reach senior commanding positions, and in the future do some public service, especially for the Israeli periphery."

"Me and my cousin, who is an Israeli Air Force officer, are working with the Sderot Youth Council to open up the young people of Sderot to important and commanding positions in the IDF.

10/31 Links Pt2: Indoctrinating schoolchildren to hate Israel and Jews; Far-left MK: Kiryat Arba shooter not a terrorist, settlers aren’t innocent civilians

From Ian:

Head-Scratching Questions about Jews and Israel

Writing a weekly column isn’t for the faint of heart or the perpetually bored. Sometimes, I tire of attempting to write heartfelt words and reflections week after week. Therefore, I’ve devoted this week’s column to asking readers 25 head-scratching questions about Jews, Israel and that harmoniously peaceful corner of the world known as the Middle East:

1. If Jews control the media, why does the media generally depict Israel in such a harsh and even untruthful manner, and in the same vein, if Jews control the world, why isn’t the world more sympathetic toward Jews?

2. If Jews are white, why do the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups chant “White Power” while demanding their demise, and if Jews aren’t white, why are they excluded from progressive groups that vow to protect non-whites?

3. Why do Jew-haters get to keep their jobs, but those who espouse prejudiced views toward other groups are canceled? Case in point: Why has it taken more than two weeks for Adidas to drop Kanye West? (Thanks to Balenciaga, though).

4. Given that the regime in Iran is currently butchering protestors, including young girls, why have Iranian diplomats still not been expelled from any Western countries, with the exception of one (see below)?

5. Why did Iran conduct a major cyberattack against Albanian government websites (yes, Albania) last month, resulting in the expulsion of diplomats from the Iranian embassy (and can the rest of Europe take a cue from Albania)?

6. Why did the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) just ask the Supreme Court to overturn Arkansas’ anti-boycott (BDS) law against Israel, citing concern for Palestinians’ rights, but the organization hasn’t uttered a single word about Iranians dying to protect the civil liberties of their fellow citizens?

Indoctrinating schoolchildren to hate Israel and Jews

The cognitive war against Israel has been pursued on college campuses for well over a decade. It has persuaded many to view the Jewish state as a racist, colonial oppressor of an innocent indigenous people and an illegal regime that exists on land stolen from Palestinians. Now, these slanders, lies and distortions are being injected into younger and even more impressionable minds: those of schoolchildren.

A recent example of this was the Newark, New Jersey school board’s decision to include an anti-Israel book on its mandatory reading list. The book, A Little Piece of Ground by Elizabeth Laird, found its way into the sixth-grade English curriculum for the 2022-2023 school year. According to its description on Amazon, it “explores the human cost of the occupation of Palestinian lands through the eyes of a young boy.”

The book depicts Israelis as an evil force that constrains the life of the young protagonist in a capricious and cruel way. Karim, the 12-year-old protagonist, complains that his father is “humiliated” by the Israeli checkpoints, but young readers are not told that such checkpoints exist because Israeli citizens have suffered decades of terror attacks.

Israelis are portrayed throughout the book as an inhuman military machine. “The Israeli tank that had been squatting at the crossroads just below the apartment block for days now had moved a few meters closer,” the reader is told. “He could imagine the great armored machines lying down there, like a row of green scaly monsters, crouched waiting to crawl back up the hill and pin the people of Ramallah down in their houses again.”

Some Israelis are literally rather than metaphorically dehumanized. “Human?” Karim says at one point. “You call those settlers human?”

A spokesperson for the Newark school district tried to justify the inclusion of the book by claiming that it “elevates historically marginalized voices, strengthens and sustains a focus on the instructional core and provides opportunities to learn about perspectives beyond one’s own scope”.

In a letter to Newark’s superintendent of schools, Morton Klein and Susan Tuchman of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) pointed out that the book will manufacture a false and negative image of Israel and Jews in the minds of students. They said the author was “clever, repeatedly sending the false and outrageous message to her young readers that Israelis are heartless and cruel, that their goal is to humiliate Palestinian Arabs and make their lives a misery, and that Jews are stealing other people’s land.”

Far-left MK: Kiryat Arba shooter not a terrorist, settlers aren’t innocent civilians

Hadash-Ta’al MK Ofer Cassif said Monday that he did not consider the Palestinian gunman who killed Ronen Hanania in a shooting attack near the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Araba on Saturday to be a terrorist.

In an interview with the Ynet news site, Cassif was asked if he considered settlers killed in West Bank attacks to be victims of terror, with Hanania given as an example.

Cassif, the alliance’s only Jewish MK, said he did not.

“Don’t portray him as a simple man,” he said of Hanania.

“Especially those that live as a thorn in the side [of the Palestinians], they can’t be considered innocent civilians,” Cassif said.

“Myself and my friends in Hadash have for years said that we support a nonviolent struggle, but that’s what happens in every place where there is occupation and repression — those who expect the occupied and repressed to just sit and do nothing are lying to themselves,” the lawmaker added.

Hanania and his son Daniel were shot Saturday evening while visiting a convenience store located between Kiryat Arba and the adjacent city of Hebron.

The attacker was identified as Muhammed Kamel al-Jabari, an apparent member of the Hamas terror group. After shooting Hanania and his son, Jabari opened fire on medics and settlement security guards who arrived at the scene to help the pair, seriously wounding a paramedic.

English speakers trying to figure out how to vote in the Knesset elections, and why these elections are important, please watch the video that @AviAbelow and I did this morning where we lay it out.https://t.co/r15jnLjzyV
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) October 31, 2022

This is a lie. All Israeli citizens, Arabs, Jews, Druze, Armenians, Christians, Muslims, Jewish people, however one identify or whatever religion one is, can vote. #Israel https://t.co/PzGBCnBsXk
— ?? Shai De Luca ?? ????? (@ShaiDeLuca) October 30, 2022

The @NYTimes mirrors its 1991 biased coverage of the Crown Heights pogrom

The New York Times today has an article, "How the Hasidic Jewish Community Became a Political Force in New York."

It mentions the 1991 Crown Heights pogrom, but it describes it in ridiculously evenhanded terms that don't reflect reality:

The Hasidic community began to carefully build relationships with elected officials, starting in the 1950s, when Rabbi Teitelbaum found common ground with Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr.

A pivotal moment came in 1991 when the Crown Heights riots shook the city.

The violence and chaos was almost unimaginable. Overnight, Brooklyn streets had turned into combat zones, pitting groups of Hasidic Jews against mostly Black men — some holding longstanding grudges over what they saw as the Hasidic community receiving preferential treatment from the police and the city. Racial and antisemitic epithets filled the air alongside hurled rocks and bottles.

So I looked up the original coverage by the New York Times of the rioting, and this very close to what their original article, on August 21, 1991, had claimed:

Hasidim and blacks clashed in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn through the day and into the night yesterday as the two communities, separately and bitterly, each mourned a member killed, one in a traffic accident on Monday night and the other stabbed in the racial melee that followed.
Bottles, rocks and ethnic slurs were hurled as hundreds of police officers struggled to separate the screaming, taunting groups near the headquarters of the Lubavitcher sect, at 770 Eastern Parkway.

Yet the article went on to mention a number of outrages by the Black community - and not one from the Hasidim.

The very next paragraph summarized it:

As darkness fell, about 500 blacks, mostly young teen-agers, gathered at the intersection of President Street and Utica Avenue, where the accident had occurred and where the dead child had lived. They set afire at least three vehicles, one a police car, hurled rocks at houses owned by Jews and looted a sneaker store. Five reporters and photographers were beaten, two by police officers and three by black protesters.

Not one example of racial epithet was given. (There apparently were groups of Hasidim that threw bottles and rocks back at black youths who were attempting to hurt them.)

The other New York media was not so circumspect. Newsday's celebrated columnist, Jimmy Breslin, was nearly lynched from a cab, and not from Hasidim:

"And up in the higher echelons of journalism, some moron starts talking about balanced coverage."

Exactly. Covering a story like this as if there is "balance" between a murderous mob and a mostly peaceful group of Jews, between a tragic car accident and the purposeful murder of a Jew, is not balanced journalism - it is irresponsible pandering to avoid appearing to be racist.

And it is just as outrageous in 2022 as it was in 1991.

But, hey. maybe they thought that the angry blacks were merely anti-Zionist:

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!

10/20 Links Pt2: For Israel’s 75th Birthday, Hollywood Should Raise a Toast; Shapiro says Kanye West is spouting anti-Semitism that resembles Nazi propaganda

From Ian:

Gil Troy: For Israel’s 75th Birthday, Hollywood Should Raise a Toast

Now that the High Holy Days are over, let’s start planning what should be the most hyped holiday of this year: Israel’s 75th birthday. Although Israel was founded on May 14, 1948, its diamond jubilee celebration will be, by the Hebrew calendar, on April 26, 2023, 189 days from today. Although only six months remain to figure out how to celebrate the greatest modern Jewish miracle, few Jewish organizations or Israeli leaders seem to have noticed or started planning.

Last May, I tried triggering some brainstorming about how to celebrate this culmination of the arc of Zionist triumph: starting last August with the Zionist Congress’s 125th anniversary, building through this November 29, with the 75th anniversary of the United Nations’ 1947 recognition of Israel and culminating with Israel’s 75th birthday. Celebrating those three moments toasts the idea of a Jewish state, the world’s recognition of that idea and Israel’s realization of that noble, liberating idea.

As the date approaches, I become more dismayed by the organizational and political torpor, and as anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attacks metastasize, it’s clear that we need our friends in Hollywood to help make this moment.

The war against Israel and the Jewish people is now a cultural war. When there is so much hatred against what Israel is, not just what Israel does, when bash-Israel-first has become an instinctive posture, an obsessive pursuit and a shorthand for proving yourself to others, the battleground must shift. I still advocate the Zionist salons, Israeli historical exhibitions, Diamond Jubilee Presidential medals, Zionized haggadot and ice-cream-for-breakfast-eating initiatives I championed last spring.

But in our wired world, where American adults average 11 hours of interacting with media daily and four and a half of those hours being entertained, the pro-Israel entertainment community must mobilize. It may be wise, as in baseball to hit ‘em where they ain’t, in celebrating Israel. We’ve got to reach them where they are.

In that spirit, I offer two suggestions modeled on two successful initiatives. We need 75 Israel jubilee minutes in Hebrew, English, French, and Spanish, modeled on America’s Bicentennial Minutes and the Charles R. Bronfman Foundation’s (CRB) Canadian Heritage Moments. These Israeli history snippets should culminate in a big, brassy, schmaltzy celebration of Israel, modeled on the Saturday Night Seder thrown together in two weeks during 2020’s COVID lockdown, which attracted over a million viewers when streamed on its own website and on YouTube that Passover.

Demand for probe into BBC coverage of Jews and Israel

The JC is launching a public online petition today demanding a parliamentary inquiry into the BBC’s coverage of Jews and Israel.

The move comes after a string of controversial stories by the BBC caused concern in the Jewish community — followed by BBC responses that only deepened that concern.

This week, the BBC admitted unfairly criticising Israel in a report on the beheading of a gay Palestinian by other Palestinians. And six weeks ago, an open letter to BBC Director-General Tim Davie demanding impartiality on Jewish issues was ignored.

Delivered in September, the landmark letter was signed by politicians from both Labour and the Conservatives, from both houses of Parliament, with Jewish groups and public figures.

It also requested the corporation to stop repeatedly hosting Abdel Bari Atwan, an Islamist pundit who has frequently praised terrorism.

Its 36 signatories included former Tory leader Lord (Michael) Howard, the government’s former terror czar Lord (Alex) Carlile and former BBC governor Baroness (Ruth) Deech, as well as historians Simon Sebag Montefiore and the newly-ennobled Andrew Roberts and playwright Steven Berkoff.

“We urge you urgently to take cogent and coherent steps to rectify this worrying trend across your platforms as a matter of the utmost urgency, and look forward to your swift confirmation that this is being done,” the message said.

But the BBC has not replied. At the beginning of September, a BBC spokesperson told the JC: “We’ll get something to you in due course.” There has been no further communication.

It followed the BBC’s contested coverage of an attack on Jewish youngsters on Oxford Street last Chanukah, which reported as fact the disputed allegation that the victims had used a racial slur. The BBC’s reaction to complaints triggered an ongoing probe by Ofcom.

£30,000 reward offered to catch Oxford Street attackers

Jewish groups in Britain are offering a reward of £30,000 (nearly $34,000) to find those responsible for an attack on a busload of Jewish teenagers in Central London during Chanukah last year.

The move comes after the Metropolitan Police Service closed its investigation without identifying any suspects.

The young passengers, a Chabad group of British Jews and Israelis from northwest London, were on the bus on Oxford Street during holiday celebrations in November 2021 when a group of Arab men began yelling and banging on the vehicles. As video of the incident showed, the men even tried breaking the windows and gave a Nazi salute.

No one was injured in the attack and police began an investigation, calling the incident a hate crime.

In a statement given to the Jewish News in the U.K. earlier this month, the Metropolitan Police said they had received tips as to who the assailants were, however, “the only names provided in response to those appeals have been eliminated from our inquiries. The identity of those involved is still unknown. A decision was taken in July to close the case.

“Hate crime of any kind is unacceptable,” the police said in the statement. “Should new information come to light that provides a realistic line of inquiry, we will of course be willing to carry out further investigation.”

10/12 Links Pt2: Alan Johnson: On Amnesty’s Antisemitic ‘Apartheid’ Report; Kontorovich: Israel should not sign a cultural agreement with Europe

From Ian:

Alan Johnson: On Amnesty’s Antisemitic ‘Apartheid’ Report

This new introduction to the updated 2022 edition of The Apartheid Smear (forthcoming), originally published by BICOM in 2013, critiques a recent Amnesty International report, one of a crop of very similar ‘reports’ published by NGOs and UN bodies in 2021 and 2022 that smear Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state [6]. The introduction is organised in three parts, critically examining in turn the analysis, politics, and methods of Amnesty’s report.

Why is it so important for opinion formers and policy makers who seek peace via the two-state solution to reject the Amnesty Apartheid Report?

Because it has long been understood by democrats on all sides that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is impossible without the hard work of mutual recognition and peacebuilding, negotiations and compromises, and, eventually, a lasting settlement based on a division of the land and an institutionalisation of the democratic right to national self determination of both peoples.

Some way-stations on the journey to peace have been Madrid, Oslo, Camp David, Taba, Annapolis, and the Kerry-Obama talks. Yes, the last inch of the journey, as the saying goes, is a mile deep, but there is no real-world alternative to trying again to traverse it. Today, that effort will proceed in the more hopeful context of the Abraham Accords, a historic series of agreements between Israel and several surrounding Arab states. For an extensive collection of some of the most creative and expert thinking from Israelis, Palestinians and others about how to recommence that journey to peace see Rescuing Israeli-Palestinian Peace: The Fathom Essays 2016-2020.

However, while a negotiated two-state solution remains the only viable way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by recognising the right of both peoples to national self determination, right now the gaps between the sides remain significant, and there is insufficient trust, or political will, to build the kind of relationships between the leaderships that might allow those gaps to be bridged.

In the real world, which is found at some distance from NGO-UN Reportland, the task of Britain, along with other European states, the US and Arab leaders, is not to make Israel an international pariah as the Amnesty report would have us do, but to prevent further deterioration on the ground, lower tensions, and find ways to improve the situation. This approach may not be well suited to winning applause from a campus audience, but it is well suited to encouraging a recommencement of the peace process down the line. The analysis, politics and methods of the Amnesty report would take us in the opposite direction, and should be rejected as a political dead-end by opinion-formers, policy makers and, not least, Palestinians.

Mainstream Jewish Organizations Don’t Have Leftwing Antisemitism “Under Control”

While the Jewish community is playing the short game, doing what it’s always done to win the moment, radical social justice warriors are playing the long game—what activists call “the long march through institutions”—in inculcating a stark ideological worldview that portrays anyone with power or success (success is a function of power, in this worldview)—America, Israel, Jews, Asians, men, etc.—as oppressors. Schools are teaching students to see people’s identities as markers of privilege and power and to “recognize and resist systems of oppression.” The problem is that the ideologues who are driving the agenda define the oppressor as anyone perceived to be powerful and successful, and the oppressed as anyone they deem powerless and, hence, unsuccessful. It’s a highly simplistic, binary worldview.

With this ideological software running through our kids’ brains, the school system does not have to even utter the word “Jew” or “Israel” for Jews and Israel to be ultimately implicated in oppression. Indeed, this is already happening. Survey data shows a strong correlation between progressive political attitudes on oppression and antisemitism on the left. The Jewish Institute for Liberal Values commissioned a poll of 1,600 likely voters. Survey respondents were split roughly between Democratic and Republican voters. Respondents were asked: “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? America is a structurally racist country in which white Americans, and white-adjacent groups who emulate white culture (like Asian Americans and Jewish Americans), have unfair advantages over minorities which must be addressed to achieve equity?” The poll revealed that those on the far left were much more likely to agree with the statement, an indication that progressive ideological attitudes about structural racism are fueling antisemitic and anti-Asian sentiment (viewing Jews and Asians as privileged).

The ideologues are rewiring the way young people think so that they’ll adopt their worldview, including the view that Israel is a “settler-colonialist” state. They are, in effect, laying the groundwork for the Berkeley Law Schools of the future, when there will be more true believers on their side, at which time the future Dean of the Law School will face more pressure from radical activists and less pushback from us.

For Jewish organizations to effectively counter the long-term threat, they must come to terms with the underlying ideology that powers progressive antisemitism. They cannot, on the one hand, pretend to support this oppressor/oppressed binary, as many did in the California Ethnic Studies controversy, and, on the other, hope and pray that such a stance doesn’t ultimately manifest in the portrayal of Jews and Israel as oppressors. As long as radical social justice ideologues are experiencing success pushing a program that simplistically divides the world into oppressed and oppressors and condemns anyone who doesn’t agree with them, we are going to have major antisemitism problems, in ever greater frequency and intensity.

The sooner the Jewish community comes to terms with this reality and stops playing footsie with radical forces, the sooner we can develop strategies and tactics aimed at winning the long game.

Martin Kramer "Semites, Anti-Semites, and Bernard Lewis: The Life and Afterlife of a Seminal Book"

Martin Kramer is a historian of the Middle East and Israel at Tel Aviv University and the Walter P. Stern Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was the founding president of Shalem College, a liberal arts school in Jerusalem, and a visiting professor or fellow at Brandeis, Chicago, Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the Wilson Center. He earned his degrees from Princeton, under the supervision of Bernard Lewis. Among his many publications on Islam, Israel, and the Middle East, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (2001) has been widely discussed and influential.

To the @NYTimes, green tech is wonderful in Dubai but problematic in Israel

Last October, the New York Times described how forward=thinking the UAE is in diversifying its energy needs towards more green tech:

The Emirates plans to spend 600 billion dirhams, or $163 billion, over the next three decades to reduce the emissions from power plants that now burn enormous volumes of natural gas in part to cool buildings in the fierce Gulf heat. A lot of the money will go into solar farms, which can be set up across the sands of the Emirates. Another source of clean power will be a group of four nuclear reactors recently built by South Korean contractors in Abu Dhabi that are gradually coming online.

Analysts say that spending so much money is bound to have a major impact in a small country of 9.9 million people that is already well ahead of neighboring petroleum exporters like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in diversifying their economies away from oil. The Emirates, for instance, is a regional hub for finance, logistics and tourism.

And more funding is likely to be forthcoming to support the green agenda, like retrofitting buildings so that they don’t suck up so much power for air conditioning, or converting transportation to electric power or hydrogen. The Emirates is one of those places with the riches and the will to implement “loss-leading projects that are about being at the cutting edge,” said Raad Alkadiri, managing director for energy and climate at the Eurasia Group, a political risk firm.

But when the NYT writes about Israel and green tech, things suddenly get more problematic.

This is the great solar tower of Ashalim, one of the tallest structures in Israel and, until recently, the tallest solar power plant in the world.

“It’s like a sun,” said Eli Baliti, a shopkeeper in the nearest village. “A second sun.”

To backers, the tower is an impressive feat of engineering, testament to Israeli solar innovation. To critics, it is an expensive folly, dependent on technology that had become outmoded by the time it was operational.

Sometimes it feels like a dystopian skyscraper, looming ominously over the cows and roosters of a dairy farm across the road. The tower’s height prompts comparisons with the Tower of Babel, its blinding light with the burning bush. Its base looks like the hangar of a spaceship, its turret the pinnacle of a fantasy fortress.

Using energy from the sun, the tower generates enough electricity to power tens of thousands of homes. Completed in 2019, the plant showcases both the promise and the missteps of the Israeli solar industry, and it is a case study in the unpredictable challenges that await any country seeking to pivot from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

For many villagers, who moved to Ashalim for a flawless desert view, it was a considerable blot on the landscape.

“I’m pro clean energy,” noted Mr. Malka, who runs the pool. “But they chose to do it on the road by the village.”

In the UAE, solar power is wonderful. In Israel, it is problematic.

Anyone wonder why?

(h/t Joshua F)

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!

10/07 Links Pt2: Spanish top court says Israel boycotts are always discriminatory; Leftists Most Likely To See Judaism As ‘Incompatible’ with French Values

From Ian:

In landmark ruling, Spanish top court says Israel boycotts are always discriminatory

Over the past several years, dozens of Spanish courts have rejected Israel boycotts by nonprofits, municipalities and other groups. Now, the country’s top court has ruled that the movement to boycott Israel represents “discrimination” that “infringes on basic rights.”

Separately, the Spanish parliament on Wednesday passed legislation that bars public funding for organizations that “promote antisemitism.” The law uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which cites as examples of antisemitism some forms of Israel criticism.

The ruling by the Supreme Court of Spain, which was issued Sept. 20 and published on Tuesday, was about an appeal that a pro-Palestinian nonprofit, Associacion Interpueblos, filed contesting a lower court’s 2020 ruling that called a specific action to boycott Israel discriminatory.

ACOM, a Spanish pro-Israel nonprofit that has sued multiple entities for discriminating against Israel, claimed the ruling as a major win. Spain was once a hotbed of efforts by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, known as BDS. A slew of lower-court rulings in Spain had curtailed that trend, but they had pertained only to individual cases and thus had a limited impact, the group said, but the Sept. 20 ruling will function as a legal precedent applicable to all cases going forward.

Prior to the appeal, pro-Palestinian groups in Spain had not escalated appeals to the top court for fear of losing and creating precedent. “Also, it was a risk for us, but our legal team worked hard and turned that risk into an historical opportunity,” an ACOM spokesperson wrote in an email to JTA.

This judicial policy is similar to the one practiced in France, where attempts to boycott Israel resulted in the 2003 adoption of a law that declares any attempt to single out countries discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Leftists Most Likely To See Judaism As ‘Incompatible’ with French Values

A survey has found that those who support left-wing parties in France are far more likely to believe that Judaism is not compatible with French values, while also being the most likely to claim Islam is compatible.

The “French Fractures” survey, which was carried out by the polling firm Ipsos and the consulting firm Sopra Steria for the newspaper Le Monde, the Jean-Jaurès Foundation and Cevipof, found that those who support leftist parties were far more likely to find that Judaism is incompatible with the values of French society.

Among supporters of the far-left France Insoumise (FI) party, only 75 per cent stated that they believed Judaism was compatible with French values, while every other party saw 80 per cent or more believe that Judaism was compatible with French society, including 90 per cent of the supporters of the centre-right Republicans.

When the same question was asked of Islam, the left-wing FI supporters were the most likely to state that Islam was compatible with France, with 64 per cent agreeing, while those on the right overwhelmingly disagreed as just 17 per cent of supporters of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally believe Islam is compatible with France, and just eight per cent of the supporter of conservative pundit Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest! party.

Overall just 40 per cent of the respondents stated that Islam was compatible with French society, with people under the age of 35 being far more receptive to the idea than those over 60.

More than 90% of slanted articles in top U.S campus papers were biased against Israel—report

Between 2017 and 2022, 92.82% of the articles in leading U.S. college newspapers that strayed from journalistic objectivity were anti-Israel, according to a report from Alums for Campus Fairness.

ACF surveyed 75 leading college and university newspapers. Of all the articles about Israel exhibiting a bias, 181 were biased against Israel and 14 portrayed it positively.

Coverage spiked during periods of tension between Israel and Hamas, including in November 2018, May 2019, November 2019 and May 2021. There is an intense fixation on Israel, with nearly 1,500 stories on the topic, the researchers found.

Avi Gordon, executive director of ACF, told JNS that the increase in “hatred towards Jewish and pro-Israel students standing up for the truth” reflects the fact that Israel has become a “divisive topic.” Israel is always considered newsworthy, which fosters a culture of saturation coverage in which bias against the Jewish state is popular, he explained.

Large public universities produced the most content about Israel. While liberal arts colleges produced less, small private colleges exhibited the most anti-Israel bias. The Claremont Colleges, a consortium of seven private institutions in Claremont, California, and Swarthmore College in Pennslyvania, for example, produced 31 articles over a five-year period.

Gordon said there has also been a shift in the general discourse on Israel. “Whereas it used to be, ‘I am not anti-Semitic—I am anti-Israel’ or ‘anti-Zionist,’” this distinction is increasingly becoming meaningless.

“Jewish students are more afraid to share their Judaism or their love for Israel” openly, he noted, describing instances of people who are scared to wear a yarmulke or IDF shirt on campus, or to share their culture and faith.

When a Palestinian journalist @HosanSalemG says that all Palestinian journalists support terror, is he an anti-Palestinian racist?

A photo of Hosam Salem from his Facebook page

Yesterday, Gaza photojournalist Hosam Salem tweeted that his contract with the New York Times had been terminated. Here's his thread:

After years of covering the Gaza Strip as a freelance photojournalist for the New York Times, I was informed via an abrupt phone call from the US outlet that they will no longer work with me in the future.
I began working with the newspaper in 2018, covering critical events in Gaza such as the weekly protests at the border fence with Israel, the investigation into the Israeli killing of field nurse Razan al-Najjar, and more recently, the May 2021 Israeli offensive on the Gaza strip
As I understood later, the decision was made based on a report prepared by a Dutch editor - who obtained Israeli citizenship two years ago - for a website called Honest Reporting.
The article, which the New York Times had based its decision for dismissing me, gives examples of posts I wrote on my social media accounts, namely Facebook, where I had expressed support for the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation...
... My aforementioned posts also spoke of the resilience of my people and those who were killed by the Israeli army - my cousin included - which Honest Reporting described as “Palestinian terrorists”.
The editor later wrote an article stating that he had succeeded in sacking three Palestinian journalists working for the New York Times in the Gaza Strip, on the basis of us being "anti-Semitic”.
Not only has Honest Reporting succeeded in terminating my contract with The New York Times, it has also actively discouraged other international news agencies from collaborating with me and my two colleagues.
What is taking place is a systematic effort to distort the image of Palestinian journalists as being incapable of trustworthiness and integrity, simply because we cover the human rights violations that the Palestinian people undergo on a daily basis at hands of the Israeli army

He doesn't link to the Honest Reporting article that shows that he praised the massacre of four rabbis and a Druze policeman in 2014, that he has repeatedly praised suicide bombers that killed 10 in 2004, and he has continued to explicitly support terror attacks even after starting his work with the Times:

On November 18, 2014, Hosam Salem again used Facebook to express his joy over the massacre of four rabbis and an Israeli-Druze police officer in a synagogue in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof.
Citing the Quran, he encouraged his followers to “smite the necks” of unbelievers, adding: “[This is the] summary of the Jerusalem operation [sic] today.”
There’s more. In 2015, Salem applauded two acts of terror (see here and here); a shooting at the Gush Etzion Junction that killed an American teenager, an Israeli man, and a Palestinian bystander; and a Jerusalem stabbing that killed three.
Some three years later, after being hired by The New York Times, Salem called for more violence following an attack that killed two IDF recruits in the West Bank. “Shoot, kill, withdraw: three quick operational steps…to bring peace to the hearts of sad people like us,” the inciting post read.
Finally, he has repeatedly eulogized Mohammed Salem and Nabil Masoud. The two were responsible for a 2004 suicide bombing that killed ten workers at the Ashdod port, Israel’s second-busiest harbor (see here and here).

(It is possible that suicide bomber Mahmoud Salem was a relative.)

Now let's look at Salem's words defending himself again. "I had expressed support for the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation..." That is an admission that he considers praising murdering innocent people to be "supporting Palestinian resistance."

And he concludes by saying that "What is taking place is a systematic effort to distort the image of Palestinian journalists as being incapable of trustworthiness and integrity..."

Salem is positioning his explicit support of terror as being a mainstream view among all Palestinian journalists. He says that exposing his praise of terror attacks is an attack on all Palestinian journalists.

In other words, he is saying that his opinions are mainstream, not anomalous.

If a Zionist would say that all Palestinian journalists cannot be trusted to be objective because they all support terror, the Zionist would properly be branded a bigot. Each journalist must be judged on their own merits and their own words. Stereotyping them is wrong.

But what does it mean when a Palestinian journalist insists that all Palestinian journalists like him support terror? When he claims that his noxious support for murdering rabbis and others is simply the same "covering human rights violations" that all reporters supposedly do? He isn't apologizing for his views - he is claiming that he, like all Palestinian journalists, is just covering the news. Praising the murders of Jews is indistinguishable from journalism.

He puts all Palestinian journalists in the same bucket as himself. (And so does Al Jazeera.) Does that make him a racist?

The reality is that support for terror is a mainstream Palestinian opinion, across multiple surveys for decades. Sometimes the majority support terror, other times is drops to less than 50%, but it is always an accepted, popular opinion. Assuming that all Palestinians support terror is indeed racist, but understanding that there is a high chance that a random Palestinian who is hired for a position at a major Western media outlet might indeed be a terror supporter is prudent. As the New York Times has learned, vetting one's social media posts before hiring anyone is essential.

As far as the many who are claiming that Salem is the victim of anti-Palestinian racism, they are the ones who are racist - because they are claiming that all Palestinians support murdering Jews.

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!