Blood libel of the day: "Israel blocking dialysis supplies to Gaza"

From Xinhua:

At least 1,100 Palestinian kidney patients are facing an interruption of life-saving treatment due to a lack of medicines and medical equipment in the coastal enclave, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said on Wednesday.

They include 38 children who are in danger of being denied access to dialysis sessions, Ashraf Abu Mahdi, director of the pharmacy department in the Health Ministry, said in a press conference held in Gaza.

"Patients with kidney failure are forced to live in difficult health conditions as medical supplies will be used up soon," Abu Mahdi added.

Abu Mahdi indicated that stores run by the ministry in Gaza are short of related medical supplies, and the hospitals in Gaza provide 13,000 dialysis sessions for patients per month.

He accused Israel of "banning the transport and shipment of medical supplies to the hospitals of the coastal enclave, putting the lives of thousands of kidney patients at risk."

Israel has never blocked the supplies of medicines or consumable medical supplies to Gaza. Any previous shortages were blamed on the Palestinian Authority, not Israel. 

And interestingly, when Gaza health authorities first raised this alarm on Saturday, they didn't blame Israel either:

The Director of the Hospital Pharmacy Department at the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, Alaa Helles, appealed to all concerned authorities “to assume their responsibilities to save the lives of kidney failure patients due to the acute shortage of the necessary medical supplies needed for dialysis sessions, which poses a threat to the lives of 1,100 kidney failure patients, including 38 children.”

Helles called on the relevant authorities to “take urgent action to provide medical consumables for the needs of kidney failure patients, which means continuing service to them and preserving their lives.”

Not a word about Israel, just "authorities." Which is not a word used to refer to Israel. 

This is not adding up.

Perhaps a hint to what is really going on can be seen in this June article at ReliefWeb:

In response to the difficult health situation and a looming dialysis services halt in Gaza, Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) has provided the hospitals of Palestine’s Ministry of Health (MOH) in Gaza with a total of 12 dialysis machines and accessories, as well as life-saving medicines and medical consumables for the patients with kidney failure.

Dr. Akram Nassar, head of QRCS’s office in Gaza, said the project of “providing dialysis departments with equipment and medicines in Gaza” was part of QRCS’s unwavering support to the health sector of Gaza. Its aim is to ensure continuing dialysis services, as well as mitigate the impact of depleted medical equipment and supplies for 1,022 patients with kidney failure.

Since 2018, QRCS has been working extensively on dialysis services in Gaza, with three projects to procure 33 dialysis machines, medications, and consumables to MOH hospitals, totaling approximately QR 4.2 million in value.

We learned this week that Qatar was reducing its aid to Gaza. Could it be that they also stopped paying for these dialysis supplies and Gaza has no one else to pay for them?

Given that it appears that Hamas is trying to pressure Israel to pressure Qatar in turn to resume payments, this sounds like it is another means by Hamas - which runs the Gaza health ministry - to make Israel look like the reason for the shortages - and, as we see, the world media won't fact-check any accusations against Israel. 

 

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The PA would prefer that Gazans suffer. (Which has always been true.)

This week, it was announced that a fourth generator for the Gaza power plant was going online thanks to the help of Qatar, which is providing the fuel for the facility for the first month. 

The head of the Public Relations and Media Department of the Qatari Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza said that Palestinian Authority prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, delivered a "strongly worded" letter to the State of Qatar in which he expressed the PA's dissatisfaction with Qatar. Shtayyeh was said to complain that this move makes the PA look irrelevant in Gaza since they were bypassed in all decision making.

Shtayyeh's response to the reports was that "the news is incorrect." But that is not the same as denying that he wrote a letter of complaint.

Who is telling the truth? The Qatari committee has little reason to issue a press release for a fake letter. It would make a lot of sense that the PA would complain about being marginalized.

Which means that the PA would rather Gazans have electricity shortages than lose face.

Which is also consistent with how they have always acted.

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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!

 

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05/31 Links Pt1: W.H.O. Singles Out Israel as Violator of Health Rights; Mahmoud Abbas's Two-Palestinian-State Solution; Terror victim Meir Tamari laid to rest

From Ian:

How lies became facts: The Tantura ‘massacre’ returns

The battle over Israel’s legitimacy, of which this story of the great “massacre of Tantura” is but a chapter, is part of the overall war being waged in the West by the progressive camp to impugn the moral foundations of the West as a civilization advancing freedom.

These revisionist arguments echo the ideas of the founder of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci, and his concept of “cultural hegemony.” Progressive thought holds that Western narratives are deliberately constructed around so encompassing a body of myths and so pervasive a structure of institutions that they become the received wisdom and obscure an underlying condition of perpetuated oppression.

Gramsci argued that codes of morality are constructed by dictatorial elites in order to create norms that uphold, validate and deepen the systemic oppression inherent to the capitalist system. Even the concepts of logic, truth and facts—the foundations of Western rational debate—are dismissed as forms of such hidden systems of oppression designed to contain debate into a repressive and misleading straitjacket.

As such, the idea of “approximate truth”—where narratives trump factual records of history—become valid to legitimize a cause or perspective even when the facts would suggest otherwise, because facts are themselves a form of repression.

The story of Tantura—or rather the myth of Tantura—is thus part of this larger assault on Western foundations. It is neither a historical work, a documentary, or even a docu-drama that took some artistic license. It is the intentional obfuscation of fact in an attempt to use the device of the “approximate truth”—something factually wrong but nonetheless representing a desired truth—to actually undermine truth and rewrite the historical narrative of Israel.

It is an attempt through fiction cropped as fact to paint Israel’s creation in such a dark palette that it is exposed as a historic evil born of colonial desire to suppress the Arab and Muslim people rather than as an attempt to correct the historical wrong of the exile of the Jewish people and instead to deliver them finally their liberation and sovereignty after two millennia.

W.H.O. Singles Out Israel as Violator of Health Rights

Deviating from its focus on public health emergencies, the annual assembly of the UN’s World Health Organization held a special debate on May 24th to single out Israel, which was condemned by Iran, Syria, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela and Cuba, for allegedly violating the health rights of Palestinians and the Druze population in the Golan Heights.

By a vote of 76 to 13, with 35 abstentions, the world health assembly adopted a resolution submitted by the Syrian and Palestinian delegations requiring the WHO to hold the same debate at next year’s meeting, and to prepare another report on the “Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.”

Co-sponsors of the resolution included Syria, Libya, Algeria, Cuba, Pakistan, Somalia, Venezuela and Yemen. No other country received a special agenda item at the 76th World Health Assembly, which concluded yesterday.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, an independent non-governmental organization that monitors the UN, condemned the “cynical politicization of the world’s top health agency at the expense of focusing on urgent health priorities affecting hundreds of millions around the globe.”

WHO Singles Out Israel, Ignores Russia, Syria, Afghanistan, Ethiopia

“Out of 25 items on the current world health assembly’s agenda,” said Neuer, “only one focused on a specific country — Israel.”

Bassam Tawil: Mahmoud Abbas's Two-Palestinian-State Solution

The "right of return" is not actually a "right," especially if you are the party who started the war and then lost it, as took place in 1948.

The "right of return" is, rather, a demand: that all the Palestinians who fled their homes during the war of 1948 – and all their descendants – be allowed to return to what is currently the State of Israel.

Thousands of wealthy Arabs left their homes in anticipation of a war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders' calls to get out of the way of the advancing Arab armies. A handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the crossfire as the Arabs waged war in response to the establishment of Israel.

"There is a limit to how far Abbas should go to appease Israel." -- Saudi commentator, mepc.org, 2012.

[A]n extensive letter to Abbas, signed by 78 Palestinian organizations, contained a semi-veiled death threat.

It has now become clear that when Abbas says he supports the two-state solution, he is actually talking about one Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, and another one that would replace Israel.

In Israel, there are currently about seven million Jews and two million Arabs. An influx of untold millions of Palestinians would mean, literally, the end of Israel. This appears to be exactly what Abbas and other Palestinians are hoping to achieve.

In pursuing this hardline push for the "right of return," Abbas desires a two-state solution: two Palestinian states, one in the West Bank and Gaza, and the other in all of Israel.

The only 'partisan' here, is you @KenRoth - a partisan of blind Jew hatred and relentless obsession with Israel. https://t.co/tu8KK58KQ3

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) May 31, 2023

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Meanwhile,. Arab states send billions to US universities. Who believes they aren't trying to influence academia?

While Ken Roth and The Nation are trying to stoke outrage that Roth was not hired for a fellowship at Harvard University, blaming rich Jewish donors for the decision without any actual evidence, foreign money pours into US universities with the obvious intention of influencing academia - and more.

Here's a long forgotten incident. In 1989, then-governor Bill Clinton lobbied Saudis to donate to the University of Arkansas. He even met with the Saudi ambassador to the US in 1991. But the Saudis didn't give any money to the university - until Clinton became the Democratic nominee for President in 1992.  And only weeks after he became president, the Saudis gave the university $20 million to establish the King Fahd Middle East Studies Center.

Early efforts by oil-rich Arab kingdoms to donate to prestigious universities in the US were heavy handed, and most universities rejected them because of their demands that the money be used in specific, illegal ways. Over time, they moderated their demands - but the attempt to influence is still quite obvious. As Mitchell Bard writes in a detailed article on the topic:

In 1975, Saudi Arabia was asked to finance a $5.5 million teacher-training program, but several schools, including Harvard, would not participate after the Saudis banned Jewish faculty from participating. MIT also lost a $2 million contract to train Saudi teachers because it insisted that Jewish faculty be allowed to participate.

Georgetown and Harvard accepted $20 million gifts in 2005 from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, whose offer of money to victims of 9/11 was rejected by then mayor Giuliani because of the prince’s suggestion that America rethink its support of Israel. Georgetown’s funding was used to support a center for Muslim-Christian understanding, which was subsequently renamed the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (the center was originally created in 1993 with $6.5 million from a foundation of Arab businessmen led by an Arab Christian, Hasib Sabbagh).As I noted in The Arab Lobby, “Prospective Jewish donors to Georgetown might ask why it is not a center for Muslim-Christian-Jewish understanding, but Jews aside, other donors might wonder why a Jesuit university is accepting funding for such a center from a government that does not allow the practice of Christianity.”

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) asked in February 2008 whether “the center has produced any analysis critical of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for example in the fields of human rights, religious freedom, freedom of expression, women’s rights, minority rights, protection for foreign workers, due process and the rule of law.”...

Georgetown president John DeGioia responded by extolling the virtues of Prince Talal as “a global business leader and philanthropist.” Without answering Wolf’s questions directly, DeGioia simply pointed out that the center had experts who had written about the extremism of Wahhabism and human rights issues. He also lauded the center’s director, John Esposito, the man who had said before 9/11, “Bin Laden is the best thing to come along, if you are an intelligence officer, if you are an authoritarian regime, or if you want to paint Islamist activism as a threat.”

To bolster the credibility of the center, DeGioia revealed the real reason for the Saudis’ interest in Georgetown, and the ultimate threat it poses: “Our scholars have been called upon not only by the State Department, as you note, but also by Defense, Homeland Security and FBI officials as well as governments and their agencies in Europe and Asia. In fact, several high-ranking U.S. military officials, prior to assuming roles with the Multi-National Force in Iraq, have sought out faculty with the Center for their expertise on the region.”

In its investigation of institutional compliance with reporting requirements, the DoE noted that “Prince Alwaleed’s agreement with Georgetown exemplifies how foreign money can advance a particular country’s worldview within U.S. academic institutions.”

The Department of Education began to crack down on universities not properly reporting their foreign donations in 2020, under the Trump administration. It created a website where universities must report the country sources of such donations, although it doesn't publicize the specific donors due to privacy issues. 

Although it is unclear now what percentage of total donations have been reported (many retroactively to the early 2000s), the website currently lists these donation totals to Harvard alone:

Egypt - $44M
Iran(!) - $22K
Jordan - $622K
Kuwait - $22M
Lebanon - $2.5M
Malaysia - $21M
Morocco - $335K
Oman - $1.7M
Pakistan - $1.5M
"State of Palestine"[!] - $1.6M
Qatar - $16M
Saudi Arabia - $61M
Tunisia - $700K
Turkey - $28M
UAE - $80M

The database details some $10 billion in donations from Arab Gulf countries to US universities, many of them earmarked for specific projects. And, as the article I quoted above details, there is plenty that is not reported here.

Harvard, Yale, Georgetown and other schools are awash in Arab funds. The DoE database lists that Qatari donors alone gave Cornell nearly $1.8 billion!

Who can even pretend that the purpose of these funds is not to influence the universities, their faculties, their students and politicians that have these institutions in their districts?

To be fair, much of the Arab money is earmarked to departments with no political focus, with much being spent for science nd medicine. But a significant amount does go towards Arab studies which are almost reflexively anti-Israel. And sometimes the Arab money is not used to create an anti-Israel chair or department, but to lavishly fund an existing anti-Israel department - after all, there are plenty of anti-Israel academics who don't need Arab money to fund their hate, but they welcome that money to promote it further.

The people screaming about "academic freedom" to force a university to hire a specific person known for his bias seem very unconcerned about the billions that are being sent to universities with the obvious intent to influence the academic direction of the university.

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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!

 

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12/30 Links Pt2: Facts most Arabs and a hostile world would rather not admit; Wiesenthal Center publishes Top Ten antisemitism list for 2022

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The religious culture war comes to Israel

Far from creating a liberal, tolerant society, progressive ideologies are profoundly illiberal and coercive. Far from producing the brotherhood of mankind, left-wing universalism sets group against group in a battle for power over each other.

A constitutional monarchy, such as exists in Britain, promotes unity because it exists above politics and therefore above division. This was the great insight of King David, who unified the tribes of ancient Israel to form a coherent nation and whose limited monarchy was the inspiration and template for the British Crown.

King Charles’s patent desire to bring the British people together has transformed him from a figure widely disparaged and distrusted as cold and remote into a person viewed affectionately as the benign and genial grandfather of the nation.

The State of Israel, of course, doesn’t have a monarchy. Nor does America, which is being pulled apart over these cultural issues.

For all the unifying strength of the monarchy he represents, however, King Charles is actually in a lonely and perilous position. For the prevailing culture in Britain is actively undermining the religious continuity he realizes is essential.

No political party in Britain is prepared to face down and defeat the culture warriors writing women and conservatives out of the public sphere. No party is prepared to stop children being taught the lie that Britain and the West were born in the original sins of colonialism and oppression. No party is prepared to conserve and defend the classical liberal settlement underpinning freedom, tolerance and democracy. And no party is prepared to challenge radical, pagan environmentalism—to which the King, with his belief in the spiritual unity of all creation, is unfortunately also deeply attached.

In America, the parallel collapse of conservatives’ understanding of what was at risk and needed to be defended led to the implosion of the Republican Party and the rise to power in 2016 of Donald Trump as the only way to defeat the cultural predations of the left.

In Israel, the collapse of the moderate, religious Yamina Party meant that those who believe the combination of Jewish religious integrity with a modern economy, scientific advancement and the duties of citizenship is crucial to Israel’s identity and survival were left with no political representation.

They have been presented instead with a stark choice between religious zealots in one camp and left-wingers in the other screaming about the end of democracy while urging insurrection against an elected democratic government—and with Netanyahu holding the line against the extremism on either side.

Considering the way Netanyahu has been characterized as beyond the pale, this is indeed an irony. He and King Charles, it turns out, have something rather crucial in common.

David Collier: How the Twittersphere spreads antisemitism

We all know that Jew-hate spreads in the Twittersphere, but nobody touches on how much of it is there. Nor do people draw comparisons between the level of ‘anti’ activity, and the level of ‘pro’ that seeks to answer it.

As a quintessential minority group, Jews are drowned out on social media, and because these platforms operate on algorithms that reward ‘popularity’, Jewish people are on a loser from the start. Networks of hate even gang up to have Jews removed from the platform.

‘Zioporn’ addicts. Thousands of accounts in the Twittersphere that indulge their ‘kink’ by watching, liking, or sharing, either fake or butchered images that demonise Israel or Israelis. The more gruesome the image, the better the high. Authenticity is irrelevant. The ‘happy ending’ normally involves a tweeted utterance of disgust or outrage directed towards the state of Israel, or those that support it.

In a world which contains brutal regimes that slaughter millions, this tweet (posted 28/12 at 2:28am) suggests Israel is the ‘most despicable’ nation on earth:

A Twittersphere snapshot
I wanted a snapshot. Analysing a period on Twitter and then quantifying the output that was found. Such an exercise would also allow me to draw a comparison with the way other nations are treated on social media – showing just how exceptional (and therefore antisemitic) the anti-Israel rhetoric is.

I took a 36-hour period, from midnight on the 28 Dec, to noon on the 29th. Only two search terms were used. As nobody has any interest in a troll spamming his way to 100 dormant anti-Israel tweets a day, I set a bar for a minimum number of retweets. This ensured that only the hate that travelled was tallied.

Facts most Arabs and a hostile world would rather not admit

I was complimented some time ago by a reader of one of my earlier published articles, titled, Lies, Myths and Obama, which dealt – as many of them do – with the history of Israel and its enemies: Biblical and post-Biblical.

I had included in the article the following sentence: “Only one people has ever made Jerusalem its capital and only one people ever established their ancestral and Biblical homeland between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea: the Jews.”

I had also added that: “the Jews were the indigenous inhabitants of the Land for millennia long before the Muslim religion was created.”

The reader, nevertheless, had correctly pointed out that most people, because they have been exposed for so long to anti-Israel Arab propaganda, believe that there has not been a continuous Jewish presence in the Land during the last 2,000 years. They are thus unaware that the territory was never Judenrein (that is empty of a Jewish presence). And most Arabs and a hate filled world would rather you forget also that Jews lived for millennia in Mesopotamia or what became later known as British created Iraq.

Indeed, Jews had resided for nearly 3,000 years in that territory from the Babylonian Captivity in 586 BCE onwards. It was when Israel was reborn in 1948 that the Iraqi Arabs drove the Jews from their ancient homes, turning them into penniless refugees who found sanctuary in Israel; an impoverished country barely able to support them at the time.

More Jewish refugees were created than Arab refugees as one Arab state after another in the Middle East and North Africa drove out their Jewish populations. A monumental crime, which hardly is ever recognized.

Arabs and their anti-Israel supporters try to convince the world that the Jews just appeared in the early 20th century after being dispersed for two thousand years from their Biblical homeland. That is a flat out lie and flies in the face of recorded history. Indeed the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians do not even acknowledge ancient Biblical Jewish history ever existed. But facts never seem to matter to Arabs and pro-Arabs. So this brief history lesson will be for them an inconvenient truth.

Let me start by quoting from an article written in The Weekly Standard, May 11, 1998 by Charles Krauthammer:

"Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,500 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one today advertising ice cream at an Israeli corner candy store."

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12/28 Links Pt1: The European Union's deceit and the Israeli response; Israel’s New Government Isn’t What You’ve Heard; What’s behind Oman’s BDS push?

From Ian:

The European Union's deceit and the Israeli response

The EU insists that Israel should abide by the Oslo Accords, as it still believes that within this area, a Palestinian state should be established within the framework of a comprehensive peace agreement. At the same time, according to the leaked document, it tries to strip Israel of its rights per that same agreement.

So that’s where humanitarian law comes in; the very set of laws that are supposed to help the EU circumvent Israel’s authority in Area C. This means that the EU has found a way to fund construction in Area C without violating the Oslo Accords, or so we are tricked to believe. The claim is that the construction is meant for humanitarian ends and is not politically motivated. Yet the EU construction takes place in locations that are highly sensitive, precisely for the sole purpose of creating new facts on the ground and preparing the area for a Palestinian takeover without any final peace agreement.

Many times the political motivation is obvious, as the construction is conducted without permits and in such places where Israel has no choice but to demolish it, for example, a school adjacent to a dangerous highway or other construction in places where there are no facilities and thus are not considered habitable environments. The political motivation becomes even more obvious when the document explicitly states the EU’s plan to curb Israel’s archeological activities in order to minimize the Jewish connection to the land.

Moreover, the EU does not seem to consider building in Area A and Area B where all they would need is a permit from the Palestinian Authority. Apparently, in those areas, there is no need for humanitarian aid at all.

Needless to say, the news of the leaked document hit Israel really hard. Subsequently, a letter signed by 40 Knesset members was sent to EU leaders.

The letter, initiated by Likud MK Amichai Chikli, reminds the EU of Europe’s past when it used to taunt Jews to “go to Palestine,” and now, in essence, claims that Jews are foreigners in their own homeland.

The letter continues to state that the leaked document “completely ignores our people’s historical affinity to our homeland and completely ignores the status of the State of Israel in Area C.” Furthermore, the letter points out that no nation turns its back on its own heritage and reminds the EU that we have not forgotten our history.

Finally, the letter ends by calling upon the EU to immediately cease its illegal construction, halt the damage being caused to heritage sites and the nature in Judea and Samaria, and immediately desist from funding delegitimizing organizations that promote antisemitic propaganda, including Israeli organizations that serve EU interests.

The letter is, in fact, a fitting response to the leaked document and the reasons are twofold. For one, the EU has no jurisdiction in any of those areas and secondly, it has clearly misused humanitarian law and thus violated international law in broad daylight.

Now that the EU’s intentions are exposed, it should reconsider its positions, stop masking its political positions with laws and put its cards on the table for an honest discussion that is, in reality, a political and moral debate and not primarily about the law. They should do that before EU-Israel relations deteriorate any further.

As for Israel, it should invest more time and energy in defending its rights and preempt such initiatives, whether it comes from the EU, the United Nations or elsewhere.

Bezalel Smotrich (WSJ$): Israel’s New Government Isn’t What You’ve Heard

Our reforms are aimed at developing the area’s infrastructure, employment and economy for the benefit of all. This doesn’t entail changing the political or legal status of the area. If the Palestinian Authority decides to dedicate some of its time and energy to its citizens’ welfare rather than demonizing Jews and funding the murder of Israelis, it would find me a full partner in that endeavor.

Additionally, we seek to halt the execution of the Fayyad plan, a massive European Union-funded project to facilitate the Palestinian takeover of Area C, the one part of Judea and Samaria where Jews are currently permitted to live under the Oslo Accords. The authority is building housing, infrastructure and more in areas that are outside its jurisdiction to surround Jewish communities and other strategic locations in Area C in an attempt at de facto annexation. The EU contends its funding is purely humanitarian, but recent reporting has revealed this is not the case. This unrestrained usurpation poses mortal dangers to Israelis living there and risks significant damage to the natural environment and to historical sites. Among other measures, we will beef up enforcement of existing laws and agreements to stop this deliberate abuse.

Israel’s justice system also needs urgent reform to restore democratic balance, individual rights and public trust. In the U.S., elected politicians appoint federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, making the bench at least indirectly responsive to the people. In Israel, sitting Supreme Court justices have veto power over new appointments to the court.

Israel also lacks a written constitution, but in the 1990s the Supreme Court began striking down democratically enacted laws based on its own idea of what Israel’s constitution ought to be. This has created legal and economic uncertainty, precipitating a severe decline in the public’s trust in judicial and law-enforcement institutions. The Supreme Court ignores written law and, worse, invalidates government action even if it violates no law, but rather the court’s own notions of sound policy, or “reasonableness,” as it calls it. Moreover, the Israeli criminal-justice system also lacks basic procedural safeguards for defendants, such as the exclusionary rule, and there is no effective oversight on government prosecutors, who too often abuse their wide scope of authority.

Our emphasis on judicial reform is meant to bring Israel closer to the American political model with some limited checks to ensure the judicial system respects the law. We seek to appoint judges in Israel in a process similar to America’s; to define the attorney general’s scope of authority and relation to elected representatives in a manner similar to what’s set down in America; to develop effective oversight mechanisms for law enforcement to ensure they protect basic rights; and to restore the Knesset’s authority to define the fundamental values of the state and its emerging constitution.

All Americans should appreciate the wisdom and justice in these plans. They should shed their preconceptions and unite to support the resurgence of accountable government, prosperity, individual rights, and democracy in the Jewish homeland.

Why World Media Must Wait to Criticize New Israeli Government

Israel has a long legislative process. To become law, bills must be passed seven times, four in the plenum and three in committee. The controversial laws already passed by the new Knesset are – of course – fair game for criticism, but the rest will take their time.

Plenty of governments never get around to passing even their core goals. The outgoing government intended to pass legislation that could have limited Netanyahu from running again but never completed the process. Leaders of all its coalition parties were willing to make significant changes to the Western Wall prayer site, but for various reasons, they did not.

The previous coalition had an anti-LGBT party in Ra’am (United Arab List), which had four seats in a coalition of 61 that ended up taking unprecedented steps to help the LGBT community.

This coalition has an anti-LGBT party in Noam, which has one seat out of 64. It has Israel’s first gay Knesset speaker in Amir Ohana and a prime minister in Netanyahu who has repeatedly promised to prevent any harm to the community.

If the past two months of infighting inside Israel’s right-wing bloc are any indication, the new government will be less homogeneous than previously thought. It will likely have trouble passing bills that most of the parties in the coalition agree on, amid fights over credit and disputes over which party is more hawkish than another.

The new government has come to power with one clear mandate: To improve the security of Israeli citizens. This is a relatively uncontroversial goal, and its success would improve the lives of Jewish, Christian and Muslim Israelis as well as Palestinians.

According to official IDF figures, in the month prior to the election, there were 382 terror attacks in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Jerusalem alone. That number includes shootings, stabbings, explosives and Molotov cocktails.

There were three European countries where Far Right parties gained strength in recent elections. But in France, Italy and Sweden, there were nowhere near 382 terrorist attacks in the month prior to the election, so the rise of extremists there is arguably harder to justify.

But will those countries come under as much international scrutiny as Israel? Probably not.

To its credit, the Biden administration in the US has been careful to give the incoming Israeli government the benefit of the doubt until it takes steps it deems problematic and unacceptable.

The international media should consider following America’s lead.

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12/26 Links Pt2: It’s time for Jews to say, ‘Sorry, not sorry’; The American Jewish left’s endorsement of antisemitism; Glick: Jason Greenblatt: Two State Solution is meaningless

From Ian:

It’s time for Jews to say, ‘Sorry, not sorry’

There are many Jews out there who blame Israel for antisemitism:

“If only we didn’t ‘occupy’ the ‘Palestinians,’ there would be no antisemitism.”

“If only those ultra-Orthodox Jews wouldn’t dress like that and stick to their ‘primitive ways,’ people wouldn’t hate us so much.”

But they’ll never accept our apology, so it’s time we stop apologizing.

The new government is too right-wing for you? You must have confused me for someone who cares about your opinion.

Foreign aid? Go ahead, Biden, try to pull it. Try to boycott Israel, BDS. Go for it, let’s see how that goes for you.

We don’t need you any more than you need us.

Allow me to officially declare that the era of the apologetic Jew is dead. It should rest in peace.

Now let me introduce you to a new creature: the proud Jew.

We have a lot to be proud of.

20% of all Nobel prizes have been awarded to Jews. We have the most moral army in the world. We are able to balance our military power with our unwavering need to behave morally and ethically, sometimes too ethically.

We lead the world in life-changing tech: Medicine, food, you name it, we are at the forefront of it all.

We took a desert that Mark Twain famously referred to as “a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land” and transformed it into one of the most flourishing societies in the Middle East and the world, and it only took us 75 years.

So, it’s time we all declared the apologetic Jew dead and introduced the world to a new breed of Jew, the proud Jew.

If we don’t respect ourselves, how can we expect the world to?

Our new government, despite its shortcomings, represents the proud Jew. There has never been more Torah learning than there is right now. We have never been stronger physically or economically. That’s something to be proud of.

This new government will support Torah. It will support the land of Israel—all of it. It will support our needs, not the needs of our enemies.

We have always talked about and prayed for the people of Israel, with the Torah of Israel, in the land of Israel. And now, we have arrived, not yet to the final destination, but we are well on the way.

For that, we, the Jewish people, should be proud, not ashamed and apologetic.

Or, in other words: Sorry, not sorry.

The American Jewish left’s endorsement of antisemitism

Once upon a time, identifying an antisemite required the proverbial duck test. If it quacked like an antisemite, then it probably was an antisemite.

Back then, antisemites had ways to avoid responsibility, but this has changed in recent years due to the widespread adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Antisemitism, which is now used by 38 countries, including the United States.

The IHRA definition, which includes examples of antisemitism directed against Israel, fits Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) perfectly.

For years, Omar has used the vocabulary of antisemitism delineated in the IHRA definition, such as tweeting “Israel has hypnotized the world” and that U.S. politicians’ support for Israel is “all about the benjamins”—a reference to hundred-dollar bills.

Even the Democratic House leadership, headed by outgoing speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that Omar “engaged in deeply offensive antisemitic tropes.”

One of the IHRA definition’s most important examples of antisemitism is “accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel.”

Omar did precisely that in Feb. 2019, when she angered fellow House Democrats Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey (both of New York) by saying in reference to Israel, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

Omar has also repeatedly applied double standards to Israel and singled out the world’s only Jewish state for her attacks, both of which are also included in the IHRA definition. She even equated Israel and the U.S. with Hamas, Afghanistan and the Taliban.

But despite all that quacking, several left-wing groups that label themselves “Jewish” and “pro-Israel” recently had the audacity to pretend that Omar is not a duck.

Who came to Omar’s defense when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) pledged to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee?

It was J Street, Ameinu, Americans for Peace Now, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Habonim Dror North America, the New Israel Fund, T’ruah and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

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