Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Noura Erakat

Showing posts with label Noura Erakat. Show all posts

Thursday, February 02, 2023

The most progressive, liberal, Westernized Palestinians support murdering Jews

Up until Friday night's terror attack in Jerusalem, Mahmoud Abbas usually condemned terror attacks like that - usually at the urging of the US.

This time, he didn't.

And the Palestinian intelligentsia who are the face of Palestinians to the Western world got the memo.

Yesterday, we mentioned how angry Noura Erakat was that a TV producer wanted to interview her and ask her reaction to the attack. She refused, but helpfully explained on Twitter that she feels that celebrating the murder of Jews is normal human behavior, and justified the shooting of Jewish civilians as "resistance to apartheid."

Erakat, a lawyer and academic, is one of the most articulate, videogenic propagandists for the Palestinian cause - and she justified terror.

But she wasn't the only one.

At the BBC, Al-Shabaka's Yara Harawi was asked if she agrees that attacks on innocent Israelis makes peace more difficult. After ducking the question, Harawi said, "I reject the premise of the question." Meaning, she couldn't even admit that maybe murdering Israelis outside a synagogue is a bad idea for peace. Only Israelis are responsible for peace - i.e., by surrendering wholesale to Palestinian demands - while Palestinians should have the right to kill Jews without any consequence.

Even more amazing was the answer of Husam Zomlot, head of Palestinian mission to the UK, on Sky News when asked if he condemns the murder of innocent Israelis.

His answer, after trying to dodge? "No." The interviewer asked him a third time to verify that he really doesn't condemn a terror attack, and he mumbled and then tried to weasel out of saying a negative word about murdering Jews, fighting hard to bring the conversation back to how evil Israel is.

The rest of his answer was telling. He said he won't condemn the attack or even send condolences to the victims' families because Palestinians have been there, done that "all along:" - meaning that Abbas has issued pro forma condemnations for previous terror attacks (after being pressured by Washington) and it didn't help them any, so it is time to end the (obviously) fake condemnations.

This is Palestinian official who is pretty much admitting that all previous condemnations for terror attacks were just meaningless words. More than that, when Palestinian officials used to allow their arms to be twisted to mouth the fake condemnations, that was considered a major political concession that deserve a quid pro quo - not honest abhorrence at the most sickening terror imaginable. Zomlot has retroactively shown that Palestinians never, ever opposed terror.

Which we all know is true. As I've shown before, specific mass murder attacks get consistently an 80% approval rating from Palestinians over the years, far higher than the abstract "do you support armed resistance?" questions. The official Palestinian media lionizes terrorists. School textbooks tell students that martyrdom is their highest calling. The PA has said explicitly and repeatedly that paying salaries to terrorists and their families is the absolute highest priority in their budget.

All three of these are spokespeople for the Palestinians in the West, official or unofficial. They are the articulate and attractive face of Palestinian moderation and modernity. And every one of them condoned Jews being slaughtered, explicitly or implicitly.

Another prominent Palestinian symbol was in the news as well this week, and her story further proves that these examples are not anomalous, but mainstream.

Susan Abulhawa is a much praised Palestinian American writer and feminist and calls herself a human rights activist. She represents the best face of Palestinians in the West - sensitive, articulate, liberal.

She was locked out from Twitter recently causing a minor uproar among her fans. I do not know what she wrote that violated the rules.

However, Adin Haykin noticed that in one of her publicity photos she has an interesting picture on the wall of her office.

One of her icons is a terrorist who murdered 13 Israeli children.

Zomlot, Abulhawa, Erakat and Hawari are the most Westernized of Palestinians. They are the face that Palestinians want to show the world so people don't think of them as Islamic extremists (which polls show they are.)

Yet even these progressive, enlightened Palestinians support terrorism against Israelis and consider murdering Jews to be praiseworthy, not something to be condemned.

Outside of brave Palestinians like Khaled Abu Toameh and Bassem Eid, support for terror is unanimous even among the Palestinians who speak the most and loudest about human rights.

Likewise, not one Palestinian "human rights" NGO condemned the Jerusalem attack, and several of them or their leaders praised it on social media.

If the people whose jobs are to whitewash Palestinian extremism to the gullible West are themselves fans of terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi or Khairi Alqam, then it is pretty obvious that Israel isn't the obstacle to peace.

Israel cannot make peace with an bloodthirsty, Jew-hating death cult.

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 lawyer" Noura Erakat justifies murdering Jewish civilians - and Palestinian bloodlust

There was a very revealing thread by academic fraud Noura Erakat, who calls herself a "human rights lawyer:"

Palestinians under siege, subject to killing by world’s 11th most powerful army & deputized settlers but news producers want me to come on air to comment on Palestinians celebrating the killing of 9 Israeli settlers?
Why this pathology of Palestinians and apology for apartheid? Why exceptionalize this Palestinian expression when you know full well ANY human who lived under such devastating circumstances without an army or international protection would similarly respond to this operation?
It's the combination of absolute removal of context, together with dehumanization of Palestinians that makes media more interested in examining Palestinians as hateful, blood thirsty rather than absolutely emblematic of humanity.
Only in this context, are news media more concerned about sporadic Palestinian operations aimed at resistance to apartheid, than an Israeli government & society that has caged 2 mil Palestinians in Gaza, suffocates children with tear gas, shoots to kill over 1 Palestinian a day.
I shared this with the producer who rushed off the phone. Shocking.
We should be invited to comment on the situation and context, not to spend air time being a corrective and scrutinizing the segment itself.

Erakat is angry that a TV producer wants to frame Palestinians as hateful and bloodthirsty - and then justifies Palestinians being hateful and bloodthirsty.

She is saying that Palestinian celebrations on the death of Jews targeted outside a synagogue is perfectly normal and "human." She claims that any human would act that way.

Would they?

A Google search of "celebrate terror attack" finds that the overwhelming majority of examples refers to Palestinians. When they are filtered out, all the remaining hits are Muslims - and the only cases I can find of handing out sweets are Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon also celebrating a terror attack in Israel.

Did Jews celebrate the Allied firebombing of Dresden, Germany in 1945, killing tens of thousands of civilians? No - no one did.

Erakat's thesis is a lie. But it is one she clearly subscribes to herself - she is saying that she felt the same joy that other Palestinians did, and she is irritated that she has to explain to dense reporters why this bloodlust is normal and Israel targeting terrorists is the real crime.

Notice also that she doesn't frame the Jerusalem massacre even as something distasteful. She justifies the massacre itself as a "Palestinian operation aimed at resistance to apartheid." To her, murdering Jews is not an outrage but an act of heroism, and Jewish worshippers are themselves the enemy to be killed, no different than a soldier.

This is not what a real human rights activist or human rights lawyer would ever say. Erakat is a fraud as an academic, as a lawyer and as a human being.

(And, no, the famous photos of children in Northern Israel under rocket attack in 2006 and Sderot residents watching Israeli airstrikes in 2014 are not Israelis celebrating the deaths of civilians.)

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!

12/28 Links Pt2: The Democrats must have a ‘Sister Souljah moment’ on antisemitism; War of Independence veterans protest 'defamatory' Netflix movie; Prominent Israeli firms vow to boycott bigots

From Ian:

The Democrats must have a ‘Sister Souljah moment’ on antisemitism

The recent rise in American antisemitism is the result of a lack of consequences for those engaging in it.

For example, Americans Against Antisemitism studied 194 anti-Jewish assaults and 135 attacks on Jewish property in New York that have taken place since 2018. According to their July 2022 report, only two of the perpetrators actually went to prison.

A similar situation is occurring on college campuses. Students who harass Jews are rarely if ever suspended or expelled, and almost never face any consequences at all. This has emboldened antisemites on campus, with a chilling effect on Jewish and pro-Israel voices.

Colleges have codes of conduct according to which harassment of other students can result in serious ramifications. These codes have not been enforced against antisemites.

In the realm of politics, when Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar engaged in anti-Jewish and anti-Israel comments, and expressed support for BDS, their fellow Democrats were initially prepared to take action against them. A resolution passed by the House of Representatives (H.R.183) sought to “ensure safety” for Jews. It stated, “Accusing Jews of being more loyal to Israel or to the Jewish community than to the U.S. constitutes antisemitism.”

The resolution was a response to Omar’s comments, with Tlaib by her side, that supporters of a strong U.S.-Israel relationship “push allegiance to a foreign country.” In Jan. 2019, Tlaib criticized Sen. Marco Rubio’s efforts to punish those who attempt to boycott Israel, tweeting, “They forgot what country they represent.” Rubio posted, “The ‘dual loyalty’ canard is a typical antisemitic line.” Neither Tlaib nor Omar have apologized for these statements.

Instead of making it clear that Tlaib and Omar’s bigoted views are anathema to the Democratic Party, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed both for reelection.

Sadly, it is not surprising that several Jewish organizations, including the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and Ameinu, along with the left-wing lobby J Street, issued a statement saying they “oppose Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s pledge to strip Representative Ilhan Omar of her House Foreign Affairs Committee seat based on false accusations that she is antisemitic or anti-Israel. We may not agree with some of Congresswoman Omar’s opinions, but we categorically reject the suggestion that any of her policy positions or statements merit disqualification from her role on the committee.”

With Jewish organizations like these, we should not be surprised that antisemitism is rising.

War of Independence veterans protest 'defamatory' Netflix movie

Veterans of the War of Independence, who are currently in the tenth decade of their lives, have joined the furor surrounding the Jordanian film Farha, which depicts Israel Defense Forces soldiers executing Palestinian children and babies, demanding Netflix immediately remove it from their library.

"We are Holocaust survivors who defended our country. Remove the defamatory film," the five ex-soldiers called.

The Israel Law Center has sent a warning letter to Netflix on their behalf concerning a potential breach of Israeli defamation laws.

The group consists of 96-year-old Oded Negbi, who served in the Givati Brigade and fought many battles in the Negev and Jaffa; 92-year-old Eitan Yavzory of Kibbutz Afikim, who fought in Gush Etzion and in the Negev; 94-year-old Ezra Yachin, who fought in Jerusalem; 92-year-old Lt. Col. (Res.) Ze'ev (Tibi) Ram, a Holocaust survivor who lost his entire family at Auschwitz and enlisted in the Golani Brigade upon the outbreak of the War of Independence; and 91-year-old Prof. Benny Arad, a veteran of the Haganah, who fought in the War of Independence, among other conflicts, and served as an IDF officer for many years. As a physicist, Arad was one of the founders of the Department of Experimental Physics at the Negev Nuclear Research Center.

"It's an antisemitic movie. When I heard about it, I was appalled. At the thought that this movie is being shown all over the world, I was driven to stand up and protest, and I called in my son. He contacted the Israel Law Center," Arad said.

"Personally, I don't watch television. But when we're defamed like this, I can't let it pass. The world doesn't know what the IDF is, what a moral army we have. So they may think that the lies that the movie shows are the actual truth. All we did is defend our country, our nation, and our nascent state."

Negbi also shares his frustration with the movie and the lopsided fashion in which it depicts his comrades in arms.

"The life I lived alongside the Arabs was completely different. When I heard about that movie, I shuddered. I went through many hardships. My mother taught me to give to others and help them. Not even the concept of killing children could come out of a home like that. The very notion of harming an Arab child was far from our minds. It's sheer slander," he said.

‘Activist’ or Antisemite? Dr. Noura Erakat’s Poorly-Timed Speech at OSU

Several incidents involving swastikas, harmful antisemitic libels, and images of the burning Israeli flag took place on Ohio State University (OSU)’s campus in the months and weeks leading up to the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

One would have hoped that OSU administrators and students could come together to resist this unprecedented and abhorrent increase in antisemitism on campus.

Sadly, those hopes were crushed by the invitation of a speaker to campus who spews the very same libels.

On November 9, the OSU Palestinian Women’s Association hosted Rutgers University Professor Dr. Noura Erakat, who spoke to Ohio State students over Zoom to discuss her new book, “Justice for Some: Law and the Occupation of Palestine.”

Although she is hailed by her university and many anti-Zionist activists as an expert in international law, fallacies in her book can be found as early as the introduction, where Erakat discusses “Zionist militias established Israel by force, without regard to the Partition Plan’s stipulated borders.”

This falsehood negates the indisputable fact that in 1948, most Jews accepted United Nations Resolution 181, which partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. Arabs, on the other hand, vehemently rejected the proposal and tried to eliminate Israel and kill its Jewish inhabitants.

Hey Noura Erakat, if you are a settler in North America, why don't you give your house to a native American?

I love virtue signaling.

From Algemeiner:

“Palestinians have basically said … that Zionism is a bedfellow of Nazism and antisemitism,” claimed Rutgers University assistant professor Noura Erakat during an April 13 webinar.

Sponsored by the University of Illinois’s Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (CASMES), her presentation on “Unfinished Business: Zionism as Racism and Racial Discrimination,” further established her reputation as one of academia’s leading bigots.

Her lies and antisemitism are all over the place:

Zionist Jews “do not want to assimilate with non-Jewish society,” she claimed, without explaining whether religious preferences or even communal survival for relatively small groups, including Jews, requires limits to assimilation. “Jewish superiority” is “fundamentally rooted in the belief that Jews are God’s chosen people.”

Hmmm. Israel wants relations with all Arab and Muslim countries, many of them want nothing to do with the Jewish state. Zionist Jews are interested in dialogue with ll, BDSers like Noura Erakat want no one to speak to them.

Who's intolerant again?

But this is the part I really love:

“I recognize myself in North America as a settler,” who is “white adjacent,” yet proud of being “quite brown,” she said eagerly.

A lot of social justice warriors love to identify which part of Native American land they are living.

But when they demand that Jewish "settlers" - one of the few people son Earth who are literally living in the land of their original ancestors - be the only ones who must move out of their houses and give them to people who falsely claim to be "native."

Will Noura give up her apartment and find some North American land that was never settled by anyone before to build her new house? Or will she move back to where her ancestors lives in Arabia?

If not, this is nothing more than virtue signaling - "Hey, I recognize that I am an oppressor, but I don't have to pay the price - the other oppressors that I identify do!"

Noura Erakat is a hypocrite. But I repeat myself.

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!

University of Illinois distances itself from Noura Erakat anti-Zionist hate lecture

Yesterday, Noura Erakat gave a lecture at the Illinois Global Institute of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, titled, "Unfinished Business: Zionism as Racism and Racial Discrimination."

The lecture was publicized as being co-sponsored by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

I tweeted how absurd it is that a literal hate speech that characterizes Jewish nationalism - and ONLY Jewish nationalism - as racism should be co-sponsored by an organization that supposedly cares about inclusion. I also created this meme to educate the Diversity office.

Others complained as well.

Finally, after the lecture, the University sent out a mass mailing to all students:

Dear Students Faculty and Staff:

The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity Equity & Inclusion was incorrectly identified as a co-sponsor for a campus lecture titled “Unfinished Business Zionism as Racism and Racial Discrimination." As worded, this title does not invite participation and engagement with all members of our Community and does not represent the values of our university.

Academic freedom and freedom of expression are bedrock principles of this institution and are necessary for the exploration of controversial, divisive or uncomfortable issues — even those that are in opposition to this university's clearly stated positions and values.

Any future lectures in this series will make clear that these are not sponsored by our office nor do the viewpoints expressed represent the university.

I am sorry for any additional discomfort or distress some may have felt when it appeared that it was sponsored of endorsed by the office that is charged with helping us turn the aspiration of belonging and inclusion into a universal practice.

Sincerely

Sean C Garrick
Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

There is a bit of tone-deafness here from an office of diversity, equity and inclusion. And the description of the lecture still includes the claim that they are a co-sponsor as of this writing.

It is also an attempt at gaslighting. When they say, "Any future lectures in this series will make clear that these are not sponsored by our office nor do the viewpoints expressed represent the university," they know very well that this was the last lecture in the series! It is an empty gesture.

Still, a mailing to all students to distance the university from the hate espoused by Noura Erakat is welcome, and hopefully other universities will be a little more sensitive to the fact that these lectures are not "pro-Palestinian" but hate speech meant to destroy the world's only Jewish state, and offensive to any proud Jew.

(h/t Judith)

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!

Sorry, Noura Erakat, but you cannot deny Arab and Palestinian antisemitism

Noura Erakat, the lawyer who is a darling of the anti-Zionist Left, tweeted (I corrected numerous spelling errors)

In today's edition of living while Palestinian. Journo interested in IHRA critique asks me if Palestinian protest doesn't risk turning into anti Jewish hate. So here we go #Thread #IHRA

First off, the fact that young Palestinians who have only known Israeli siege and massacre and aerial bombardment & snipers in Gaza distinguish between Zionists and Jews and rally for a decolonial future for all. THAT is a remarkable example of humanity and what should be the story.

Second, since the only thing that has been hateful has been Israel’s racialized violence, its siege, its shoot to kill policies, its home demolitions - the story is about Zionist settler hate. It is THE primary teacher and exemplar of hate.

Third, as much as we try to distinguish Zionism and Judaism, our adversaries want to collapse the two and obscure the distinction between a people and a state. We are not responsible for this gross reduction and resist it. No state or ideology is beyond critique.

Fourth, the greatest source of antisemitism is white supremacy/ists. Go do interviews with them rather than interrogate Palestinians if they really think they deserve freedom and have the right to condemn the racist ideology that has marked them for removal. #IHRA

Every single one of her four points is a lie, and Erakat knows it.

Young Palestinians don't distinguish between Zionists and Jews. All you need to look at are the numerous terror attacks against Jewish targets in Israel - rabbis while praying in synagogues, children studying in yeshivas, and the 1929 pogroms against religious Jews in Hebron and elsewhere still celebrated by Palestinians. In Arabic, children are taught to hate the Jews - and they proudly say it on TV (even if in this case they say "sons of Zion" itis clear they mean Jews when they say "murderers of Allah's prophets.")

Her second assertion that "the only thing that has been hateful has been Israel’s racialized violence" is nothing short of absurd. Certainly she is aware of Palestinian terrorism that pre-dates Israel's existence. And how many ways can Palestinians glorify stabbing Jews?

Her claim that Palestinians try to distinguish between Jews and Zionists is also a lie. In print, they are more sensitive than they had been years ago because of MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch, so they are a bit more careful about replacing the word "Jew" with "Zionist," but in the end, they don't ask a Jew they are about to stab if they support settlements or not.

And according to the ADL, an astounding 97% of Palestinians hold antisemitic views - the highest in the world. Her assertion that Palestinians are only anti-Zionist and not antisemitic is laughable gaslighting.

Finally, the center of today's antisemitism is not white supremacists but the Arab world. White supremacist websites get only a tiny percentage of the readership as mainstream antisemitic Arab media. The Palestinian Al Quds news site published in Britain includes regular Holocaust inversion and references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as being obviously real, and it is one of the top 4000 websites in the world - compared to the most notorious neo-Nazi website, Stormfront, which doesn't crack the top 200,000.

Actual Holocaust denial is still a regular feature of Arab websites, like this one in Al Mayadeen (ranked #10,131 in Alexa.) This top Egyptian newspaper (#1856) headlines an article with the Nazi claim that Kristallnacht was a response to what a Jew did.

Thankfully, this has been slowly changing, in no small part because of the Abraham Accords. Antisemitism in the UAE and Morocco has been tempered with articles that are sympathetic to Jews and Judaism. Of course, the peace agreements that are prompting this major pushback against antisemitism in the Arab world is opposed by Noura Erakat.

Noura Erakat is not stupid nor is she ignorant. She knows everything I have written is true. Her entire goal is to spread false propaganda. It must be exposed - every time.

Opposing the Abraham Accords is a pretty good indication you don't really care about peace - or human rights

Noura Erakat, the virulently anti-Israel academic who positions herself as a "human rights attorney," used Naftali Bennett's visit to the White House as an excuse to write a Washington Post op-ed to attack Israel as an "apartheid" state, along with the other lies we are so familiar with.

It would take a much longer article to go through all of her arguments, many of which I have debunked a number of times, but one paragraph is enough to show Erakat's dishonesty and how little she cares about liberal causes.

As part of his plan to present a new image, Bennett is seeking to “shrink the conflict” by making conditions more tolerable for Palestinians while maintaining Israeli domination, much like Trump’s vision for “economic peace.” This approach will also feature exalting the Abraham Accords — Israel’s recognition pacts with U.S.-backed authoritarian regimes — as models of peace. Bennett will likely support increasing U.S. aid for the Palestinian Authority, which is part of Israel’s security apparatus; just recently it arrested dozens of Palestinian human rights defenders in an effort to quash dissent.

Erakat derides the Abraham Accords on the grounds that Israel is only making peace with "U.S.-backed authoritarian regimes." One wonders whether her opposition is to the "US-backed" part or the "authoritarian" part. Given that every Muslim-majority state in the Middle East is an authoritarian regime, that means that Erakat is against Israel making peace with any state at all. This "human rights" attorney isn't interested in the problem that every Muslim and Arab country in the region is authoritarian - she is upset that Israel makes peace with any of them.

Her statement reveals that she is not anti-authoritarianism, but anti-peace - with Israel.

If someone opposes a peace agreement with Israel - and keep in mind that the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan were brokered under Democratic presidents, and their regimes are equally authoritarian - that means that you are against Israel's existence altogether and oppose the very idea of Jewish self-determination.

How, exactly, would Israel's disappearance enhance human rights in the Middle East? Would the Palestinian Arabs enjoy more freedom and more rights?

We all know the answer to that, based on Erakat's next sentence, where she notes that the Palestinian Authority arrests protesters. (Calling them "human rights defenders" is a little bit of a stretch.) She blames Israel for this, of course, as if these arrests were outsourced by Israel.

The Arabs enjoying the highest level of human rights in the Middle East are those who live in Israel. Israel's erasure, which Erakat clearly desires, would make things far worse for them, and probably for all Arabs whose regimes are at least a little shamed by Israel's human rights record compared to their own.

Certainly the Gulf state have horrific human rights records, but their desire to tilt towards the West is moderating them, and peace with Israel is part of that. Opposing the Abraham Accords means opposing not only peace but also human rights for Arabs.

Even the most articulate Palestinians (like Noura Erakat) have the idiotic zero-sum mentality that helping Israel = hurting Palestinians

From the start, the "pro-Palestinian" movement has not been pro-Palestinian at all. It has been anti-Israel. And its supporters, no matter how educated or articulate, are so consumed with hate for the Jewish state that they literally cannot tell the difference between the two concepts.

Noura Erakat, the "human rights attorney" and assistant professor at Rutgers University, wrote an op-ed for NBC News that crystallizes this basic fact - and thereby reveals a major reason why the Palestinians have remained stuck in limbo for so long.

Notwithstanding several early steps that distinguish him from his predecessor, President Joe Biden promises to continue [Trump’s] legacy. It’s true that the new administration intends to reinstate critical U.S. humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees and will reopen the PLO mission office in Washington, D.C. Just Monday, it announced that it will rejoin the U.N. Human Rights Council, from which the Trump administration withdrew mostly in protest of its scrutiny of Israel.

But none of these policies, welcome though they are, will challenge the oppressive status quo sustained by the United States. Worse still, the Biden administration will uphold several of the Trump administration’s most damning precedents.

These examples are most revealing:

The new secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has made clear that the administration will not move the U.S. Embassy from Jerusalem back to Tel Aviv; it will maintain, and celebrate, Israel’s normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan without ensuring a single enduring concession for the Palestinians; and it will continue to provide Israel with unconditional military support in the amount of $3.8 billion annually — a precedent established by Biden’s former boss, President Barack Obama.

Late last week, the Biden administration also expressed “serious concerns” over the International Criminal Court’s effort to exercise jurisdiction over Israeli officials to prosecute them for war crimes, and is even considering maintaining the Trump administration’s sanctions on the court’s leading personnel.

She brings three examples of what she considers anti-Palestinian policies: keeping the embassy in Jerusalem, supporting peace between Israel and Arab states, and maintaining military aid that gets spent in the US.

None of these policies hurt Palestinians. None of them affect Palestinian lives at all, except for Gaza terrorists who want to murder Israeli civilians with rockets. None of them are speedbumps towards a Palestinian state.

They do support Israel as a sovereign nation – which this “human rights lawyer” considers “damning.”

The rest of the article is more of the same, complaining that a definition of antisemitism that includes demonizing the Jewish state’s very existence is somehow anti-Palestinian.

Erakat is so filled with hate for Israel that she literally cannot tell the difference between “pro-Israel” and “anti-Palestinian,” nor the difference between “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-Israel.” She fully subscribes to a zero-sum mentality that what is good for Israel is automatically bad for Palestinians – and, worse, that nothing can be considered good for Palestinians unless it is also bad for Israel.

The UAE and Bahrain (and to an extent Morocco and Sudan) have abandoned the zero-sum mentality. No one can call them “anti-Palestinian” although the Gulf Arabs are justifiably critical of the current Palestinian leaderships. They see Israel not as an enemy but as a partner that can help them thrive; not as a open Jewish wound in the Arab Middle East but as a permanent feature that improves the region and that can lift up Arab states. Instead of zero-sum, they seek a win-win. The zero-sum mentality that they maintained for so many decades did not help them – or the Palestinians – one bit.

The zero-sum mindset is childish and counterproductive. If there is one lasting change from the Abraham Accords, it is that this puerile way of thinking is finally on the wane in the Middle East.

As long as the Palestinians – including their Western “defenders” – cannot grasp that basic concept, they will never get anywhere.

Just a little antisemitism from “human rights lawyer” Noura Erekat

Noura Erekat, an assistant professor at Rutgers University who was most recently seen exploiting her car-ramming cousin within a day of his death as an excuse to sell copies of her anti-Israel book, has created a ridiculous video for the far left video outlet Now This where she lies about Israel’s goals with extending sovereignty.

This one section of the video tells you what you need to know about Erekat’s interest in truth as well as her“human rights” credentials.

The “Deal of the Century” is better known as “steal of the century” and the “apartheid plan?” Where? Only in the fever swamps of anti-Israel propaganda that Erekat inhabits. I follow the topic quite closely and have never heard it called either of those things, and even Arabic media routinely call it the “Deal of the Century.”

But beyond that, look at the stock footage she chose when showing the words “the apartheid plan.”

Yup – religious Jews. Jews who have nothing to do with Trump or the deal, nothing to do with extending sovereignty, Jews who for all we know are walking in Brooklyn.

Not a Tel Aviv beach. Not IDF soldiers. No, she chose to show Orthodox Jews while flashing the word “APARTHEID” on the screen, so her viewers would associate Jews with gross human rigths violations.

Yes, that is antisemitic. And this entire video is propaganda that a Rutgers instructor is not the least bit embarrassed to spread.

(h/t kweansmom)

Noura Erakat tries to label Israel and the West as "terrorist" in the NYT

The New York Times has a "Room for Debate" section where different people give brief arguments on a topic. The topic earlier this week was "Can we just 'live with' terrorism?"

Academic fraud Noura Erakat, whom I have proven has no problem with lying and then justifying her lies for the sake of her "narrative," spends a few paragraphs pretending that there is no difference between Western armies and terrorists killing civilians, and makes sure (as a person of Palestinian ancestry) that Israel is exhibit A:

To eradicate terrorism, we need a much more honest discussion about what terrorism actually is. If it means the use of force against civilians to achieve a political goal, than that should include all such attacks on civilians, and not merely the ones launched by nonstate actors. In practice, we limit the term to include only nonstate actors.

The victims of state-led attacks are considered collateral damage, or unfortunate but necessary killings. This framework effectively diminishes the value of their lives making it much easier for the world to tolerate excruciatingly high death tolls and absolve the states that caused them.

This paradox is not lost on most of the thinking world, especially where those losses are highest, on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, in southern Yemen and in the Gaza Strip.

Erakat is saying that Western armies and Israel attack civilians to achieve political goals - meaning that they purposefully attack civilians. Then after stating her slander as fact, she implies that the idea that the civilian deaths are collateral damage is simply a cover-up for the real desire to murder civilians.

There is a glaring omission in her "highest losses" list is what proves that her polemic is meant to deceive, not enlighten.

Syria.

Everyone sees quite clearly that Syria has been using its state armed forces to directly attack civilians. No one is justifying it. And the loss of life from the Syrian civil war dwarfs that of Yemen or Gaza.

Erakat's definition of terrorism is absolutely correct. Her assertion that the word "terrorism" does not apply to state actors such as Syria is a straw man, because it is obvious that Syria is targeting civilians and is therefore guilty of state terrorism. Practically every Arab state has been equally guilty of directly attacking civilians in recent decades.

Yet Erakat wants to make the reader think that there is no difference between how Western armies act - with clear and specific rules of engagement that are compliant with the Geneva Conventions - and how her fellow Arabs act, state and non-state actors alike.

There is a huge difference. The difference is the target. Terrorists target civilians, moral armies target military targets and sometimes civilians unfortunately die, often because the targets purposefully hide among the civilians themselves.

And while Erakat and Amnesty and HRW and other "human rights" frauds like to claim that Israel and the US and European armies target Arabs, the simplest counterproof to that is the fact that the casualties are not in the tens of millions. In fact, if Erakat knew the least amount about modern Western militaries, she would know that more money and time is spent on avoiding killing civilians than on targeting valid military targets.

That is certainly not the case with her own Palestinian brethren, nor with her fellow Arabs.

Erakat knows very well that international law depends on intent, specifically how a reasonable military expert would react given available information, before labeling an action to be a war crime. She wants to hide that basic fact.

That is why Noura Erakat is an academic fraud, preferring advocacy to the truth.

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The wrong side of history

After my takedown of Noura Erakat's lies on Friday she made a series of tweets aimed at (but not addressing) me. I found this one fascinating:

It must be incredibly frustrating to be on the wrong side of history & know that justice and love will prevail #SorryNotSorry #Gaza #Freedom
— Noura Erakat (@4noura) May 6, 2016

Here is an expansion on my response.

Is the right side of history the one that sided with Hitler, Nasser, the Assads, and Saddam Hussein?

Is the right side of history the one that cheered as thousands of Americans burned to death?

Is the right side of history the one that continued to support Osama Bin Laden years after other Arab regimes realized he is not a hero?

Is the right side of history the one that has consistently supported terrorism against Jewish civilians for a hundred years up until today?

Is the right side of history the one that has consistently rejected peace offer after peace offer?

Is the right side of history the one that insists that people whose entire lives are defined by their murdering children are heroes?

Is the right side of history the one that exerts all its energy into destroying a state rather than building one?

I can come of with lots of ways that the first democracy in the Middle East is on the right side of history, but it is bizarre to argue that Palestinians have been anything but on the wrong side of everything.

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Another lie by "academic" Noura Erakat (UPDATE)

It's been less than a week since we saw an absolute lie from Noura Erakat, who teaches law at George Mason University and has taught at Georgetown and Temple U as well, according to her webpage.

Here's her latest:

While her last lie came from her quoting a thoroughly unreliable source, this one she made up from scratch.

Literally no one, even the most vehement anti-Israel sources, claim that Israel killed 100 members of the Samouni family in the 2008-2009 Gaza war.

The event she is referring to happened in January 2009. For reasons that are unclear, Israel bombed a house with over 20 members of the Samouni family after they were told to go there by Israeli forces.

One of the Samouni "civilians" killed

Several members of the Samouni family were Islamic Jihad Al Quds Force members, and Arabic sources at the time of the battle in Zaytoun bragged that their fighters barricaded themselves in civilian houses before attacking Israeli soldiers.

It seems unlikely that the Israelis who ordered the airstrike were aware of the number of civilians in the house; UAV images indicated that there were armed fighters in the house and the order was given to bomb it but there doesn't seem to have been proper communications with the ground forces who gathered the family into the house to begin with. There was active fighting in the neighborhood at the time.

Regardless, Erakat is wrong on the date, overtly lying about the casualties, and ignoring the fact that there were valid military targets in the house.

If she lies so easily in public where she can be fact-checked, imagine how much she lies to her students in private!

UPDATE: In response to my calling her out on her lies, Erakat tweeted

As a critical thinker/scholar I create space for the narrative of the oppressed & scrutinize the history written by the powerful #Gaza
— Noura Erakat (@4noura) May 6, 2016

And then tweeted (twice)

Tho the lives of marginalized communities are fit 4 fiction, our truth speaks 4 itself. We see u & ourselves w/o blinders. #PrivilegeBubbles
— Noura Erakat (@4noura) May 6, 2016

It's really funny how things that might sound intelligent in the university environment look so stupid when taken out of that bubble.

Of course there are different ways of looking at events, but Erakat is justifying making up facts to "create space for the narrative of the oppressed."

And if she needs to lie to support her narrative, it is probably because the truth doesn't do a good enough job for her purposes.

Which means that what she calls "narrative" is more accurately characterized as "propaganda."

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Academic fraud Noura Erakat gets Palestinian unemployment numbers way wrong

Noura Erakat is one of the more prominent of pro-Palestinian so-called academics in the US. She writes weighty papers pretending that Israel has no legal right to defend itself whatsoever, and her sycophants eat it up.

She has proven yet again that her interest in truth-telling is nil.

She tweeted:

She is quoting Middle East Monitor which in turn is quoting Qudsnet, two highly unreliable media outlets - and ones that this assistant professor of law trusts completely.

In fact, the 2015 unemployment rate in Gaza, released today, is at 41%, a little better than it was in 2014!

It is the unemployment rate of women that is at 60%, and the quality Palestinian media that Noura Erakat relies on for her pseudo-facts got it wrong.

I'm not trying to argue that Gaza is a paradise. But Erakat simply believed that the unemployment rate there went up by some 20 points in very little time when in fact it went down.

There were some other interesting facts in the annual May Day labor report that Noura would not want you to know.

Regarding wage employees in the West Bank, more than half of the employees 51% work in the private sector compared with 25% in the public sector and 24% work in Israel and Israeli settlements.

24% of all West Bank employees are employed by Israelis - and they are paid more than twice what their counterparts are paid. This means that some 40% of the wages paid to West Bank employees are coming from Israeli employers! (h/t Gabriel for fixing my math...)

If Gaza was not run by terrorists, its labor statistics would be dramatically better. But people like Noura Erakat will never admit that simple, obvious fact - because they are more interested in finding new ways to bash Israel than to actually help Palestinians.

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