05/12 Links Pt2: Matti Friedman: Jerusalem of Glue; Biden failed the Israel-Palestinian rocket and riot test; Kristallnacht in Lod; Gal Gadot, international celebrities speak out over Gaza crisis

From Ian:

Matti Friedman: Jerusalem of Glue

The idea of a complex place is anathema to the current mood in America and the West, where many people seem to be regressing to a world of childhood, of heroes and monsters. As I sit here typing by a window in Jerusalem, many seem to believe that Israel is attacking Muslim worshippers at prayer and ethnically cleansing the Arab population of this city, which is more than a third of our population and growing. For years, Arabic papers have described routine visits by Jews to the Temple Mount, or Israeli policing efforts there, as Israelis “storming” the Al-Aqsa compound; this wording has now spread to the Western press.

In the spirit of 2021, exciting video clips are ripped from their context here and injected into ideological circulatory systems to prove whatever needs to be proved. Explosions in the Al-Aqsa Mosque could mean that Israeli police are firing tear gas inside, desecrating the holy site, or that Muslim rioters are shooting off the stores of fireworks they hoarded inside to use against the police, desecrating the holy site. An Israeli driver hitting a Palestinian man near Lions’ Gate on Monday might be attempted murder, or a driver losing control of his car while escaping Palestinians who were trying to kill him. A video of Israelis dancing at the Western Wall as a fire burns on the Temple Mount is evidence of satanic intent, or of the coincidence that the annual Jerusalem Day celebrations at the wall were going on at the same time that one of the firecrackers set off by Palestinian rioters ignited a tree in the mosque compound above.

The subtleties seem beside the point when the villains and the heroes are so clear. The condemnations of Israel are pouring in from the strange coalition that gathers with increasing frequency for this purpose: the Turkish authoritarian Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, both of whom used the word “abhorrent” in their tweets, the dictator of Chechnya, the Saudis, the Iranians, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It’s hard to follow whether Israel is supposedly attacking Islam or attacking liberalism; in Israel’s case, the two seem to be oddly interchangeable. When some Westerners see dozens of green Hamas flags in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, they seem to perceive a civil rights protest, and when a Hamas leader calls on his people to buy “five-shekel knives” to cut off Jewish heads, demonstrating with his finger exactly how this should be done, some hear a call for social justice that Israelis should try to accommodate.

It helps that plenty of Western activists, including many who identify as journalists, have spent the past decade or so rebranding this conflict to suit the ideological fantasy world in which they operate. That fantasy world has only expanded in detail and reach with the triumph of social media, which marries elite prejudices with activist fervor and the passion of the mob. Hamas rockets are no longer being fired at Israeli civilians, as they were 20 years ago. Now they’re being fired at “Israeli apartheid.”

Being an observer in Jerusalem always means gauging two opposing forces: the one pulling the city apart, and the glue keeping it together. The former gets plenty of attention from observers, and the latter almost none, but both are always in play in this city of nearly a million people. The glue is on display in malls and taxis and hospitals, the places of no interest to journalists or politicians, where Jews and Arabs of different ideological stripes interact carefully in their daily lives to a greater extent than ever before, moving things forward to a future that’s unknowable but could be better. That has been the trend here in the past few years. But it’s the other force, the destructive one, that we’re seeing now.

JPost Editorial: It's time to stand with Israel against Hamas rockets

Israel must now engage in a public relations campaign to present its case effectively to the world. It has done nothing wrong, except for allowing a terrorist organization to gain the upper hand. It must now prevent Hamas from gaining international sympathy in its hollow attempts to portray itself as the guardian of Palestinian rights in Jerusalem.

In addition, the Palestinian Authority, regional neighbor Jordan, and Arab citizens of Israel – as exemplified by the mob of protesters in Lod on Monday night – shouldn’t be spreading lies that Israel, without provocation, threatened Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount.

Israel’s government is not blameless. Tensions had been mounting during Ramadan, which ends on Wednesday, with ongoing clashes between police and Palestinian protesters in Jerusalem’s Old City and elsewhere.

While Hamas does not need an excuse to attack Israel, the government should have done more to contain the situation and try to defuse it before the violence spiraled out of control. The perfect storm – Ramadan, Jerusalem Day, Sheikh Jarrah, and political instability in Israel – all contributed to the reality that the people of southern Israel now find themselves.

To help Israel find a way to end this and restore peace and security, world leaders need to convey clearly to Hamas that terrorism is not acceptable under any circumstances. If those leaders want to see peace in Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the region, they must side with Israel against these blatant unwarranted acts of terror. This is important so Hamas and the Palestinians learn that terrorism does not pay and does not work. Firing rockets into civilian areas cannot be rewarded. Instead, it needs to be punished.

Israel is not responsible for the current escalation, but it should try to end it as soon as possible. This can’t happen without the international community supporting Israel, rather than siding with the real culprits.

Until we assert ourselves, projecting actual power and deterrence, we will be picked apart

As Winston Churchill famously encountered in the 1930’s, there is an inherent reluctance of peace and freedom loving peoples to respond pro-actively to aggression. There are issues of disbelief, often predicated upon the inability of the peace lover to understand the mind set and intentions of the aggressor.

This leads to rationalizations of how the other side might feel and could be dealt with. From this point, it is just a hop, skip and a jump to wishful thinking about how to deal, or not deal, with an aggressor.

Finally, there is the reluctance that is born out of not wanting to disrupt one’s serenity, individually and collectively, in order to take the necessary and potentially costly steps to deal with aggression. Costly steps of course focus on risking the lives of soldiers, but also include risks to civilians, their lives, businesses, assets and lifestyle.

We look at other people as if they were extensions of ourselves. It is both unrealistic, and completely untrue. If all of this sounds uncomfortably familiar, that might be because it pretty well describes the state of affairs in Israel, now and in the past, when confronted with Palestinian Arab aggression.

We live with a functional absurdity. We have invested men, materiel, treasure and brainpower in creating the most advanced - in training, technique and equipment - armed forces in the Middle East, and one of the strongest in the entire world.

Yet, for reasons cited above, as well as the ever present fear of international opprobrium, we hamstring ourselves constantly.

This hamstringing takes at least two major forms: the unwillingness to react, not in equal measure, and not to mention more intensively, in the hope that the aggression can be managed; and second, allowing ourselves to be dictated to by legal advisers and arbiters who are not focused on deterrence, let alone victory, but rather, the sensibilities of our enemies, and most certainly the judgments of the international community.

The “just keep a lid on things” strategy defines much of what passes for geo-political policy vis-à-vis Judea and the Shomron, the Temple Mount, and all things related to Palestinian Arab and Israeli Bedouins. The thought is that, left to their own natural devices, conflicts will subside, as the aggressor will understand that its not in his interest to continue down this destructive, but also self-destructive path.

But this is solipsism, meaning that we look at other people as if they were extensions of ourselves. It is both unrealistic, and completely untrue.

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BDS is a threat to the entire free world (Richard Landes)

This is a guest post from Richard Landes, professor of history.

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Every once in a while articles have been published by legacy media outlets like AP and Time, and newer ones like Vox, introducing the BDS Movement (which advocates boycotting Israel) to a larger public. They often take the form of a backgrounder (“what you need to know”), and do little more than rephrase a press release from the organization itself, with a modicum of disagreement from “the other side” which is then downplayed. 

 The uninformed come away from these articles with the impression that BDS is a group of Palestinian civil-society, non-violent, human rights NGOs and allies, defending Palestinian rights, and using the moral protest of a boycott to oppose Israel’s suppression of those rights. It’s not trying to destroy Israel, but to hold it to universally recognized moral standards. Zionists who complain about BDS as antisemitic are trying to silence legitimate criticism, and anyway, not all Jews are Zionists: progressive Jews don’t object to BDS. Some even join.

Then follows a predictable backlash from Zionists, complaining that this isn’t journalism and BDS is not a civil society group. And then they refute the BDS talking points:  Palestinians didn’t start in 2005, it started in 2001 at the Durban hatefest as a weapon to destroy Israel; it’s a form of legal and informational warfare trying to destroy Israel; it behaves like a religious cult; it’s anti-intellectual; they’re not pro-Palestinian, they’re anti-Israel; they have extensive ties to openly terrorist groups; they’re anti-semitic; they use fake news and misinformation to mislead people; and wherever they’re active Jew-hatred increases.

On and on it goes, with both sides dredging up arguments that have been around for years. Both BDSers and Zionists seem to have inexhaustible energy, each accusing the other of elaborate schemes to dupe outsiders.

Why should you  care?

Here’s why.

This isn’t a fight happening in a far off land. This is here, today, in America and Europe. It has been brought to your homes. Whether you like it or not, when your children go to college, they will find BDS among the most militant and dominant groups on campus. When they take classes or go to talks, BDSers will exercise significant influence on what they can read, hear or discuss. when you look at the most radical voices in American politics today, you’ll find BDSers and a large following of social mediaites who wish to launch an American Intifada (uprising.) When you look at the most extensive re-writes of high school curricula, and you’ll find the BDSer narrative. So, whether you like it or not, you have skin in this game.

I admit, I am one of their targets: an American-raised Zionist who moved to Israel. Even though it is a simple matter to demolish the BDS arguments, I advise you to pay attention not so much either to what BDS says, or to its impact is on its alleged target – Israel – and more closely on the impact it has on your own societies.

BDS is using the language of human rights to abrogate human rights. It uses the language of democracy to promote an anti-democratic agenda. BDS is using modern liberal concepts to push a very illiberal stance. And what the BDSers are attempting to do to Israel is what they want to do with all free, democratic societies. 

BDS is not about justice. It is about wiping the most liberal, free society in the Middle East off the map. And to do so effectively, it needs to appeal to liberal, democratic societies with an argument that can and will be used against those cultures foolish enough to respond to their “moral appeal.”

That’s why it matters that the BDS goal of boycotting Israeli Jews is a virtual clone of the Nazi boycott of German Jews. That’s why it matters that BDS claims that Israel is guilty of ethnic cleansing is really a smokescreen for their own desire to ethnically cleanse all Jews from the Middle East – or to relegate them to the same legally inferior status they have had for 1400 years under Islam. 

Noura Erekat, a US lawyer of Palestinian heritage, claims: “If you say anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism then you’re basically condemning all Palestinians as anti-Semites because they decide to exist.” It is important to understand what she means. Is she saying that all the Palestinians want to do is exist, and the Zionists call even that basic human right, antisemitism?  Or is she saying that Palestinians define their existence in terms of not allowing Jews a state of their own? Not only do the answers matter, they have much larger significance for citizens of democracies the world over.

If Palestinian leaders define their existence as the elimination of the only Jewish state on the planet, the only one in the last two millennia, then they have no commitment to the kinds of Palestinian rights they demand Israel respect. Indeed, they offer the textbook case of a hypocritical strategy: demanding respect of Palestinian human rights from those whose rights they wish to deny. 

Every meaningful and progressive change in history had, at its core, the rejection of this deceptive, retaliatory, authoritarian strategy. If BDS, or the Palestinian cause, deserves condemnation, it’s not for “wanting to exist,” but for insisting in that their national existence demands the non-existence of the Jewish nation. And if that is the kind of false, zero-sum moral claims BDSers make, what other extremist groups will follow their example if they are seen to succeed?

If there’s one thing over two millennia of experience with Jew-hatred have taught us, is that people who succumb to its blandishments do not prosper: compare 16^th century Spain and the later 20^th century Arab world. Indeed, spreading hatred is a sure-fire recipe for social failure, and the more widespread the hatred, the more extensive the damage. Because what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.
Once one shifts attention to what BDS actually does, one finds a strong and consistent legacy. Consider for example, academia, where the movement has had its most favorable and enduring reception. On campus, BDS wages a relentless campaign of slander and demonization, punctuated yearly by an orgy of misinformation and propaganda called “Israel Apartheid Week.” It de-platforms, sometimes violently, anyone who dares challenge their dogmas. They have managed, with these techniques, to politicize and polarize both campus and academic discussion, to make Western universities places of indoctrination rather than of learning. In the name of liberal values, they have created a deeply illiberal pedagogy.

Their lack of actual success against Israel is matched only by their success in their hostile occupation of Western academia, pressuring students, professors and administrators to either join or fall silent. As a result, our Middle East Studies departments, often heavily funded by Arab countries, offer problematic research, lopsided syllabi, propaganda-laden curricula for high schools and near-useless information and analysis about the Middle East and Islam. 

Wherever BDS succeeds, whether on campus or in high schools, the scene becomes profoundly hostile to Jews, both students and faculty. This is not inclusive excellence; it’s exclusive mediocrity. If it succeeds, it will not only produce more tendentious, repetitive, and misguided research, but drive out a major source of modern and post-modern intellectual thought. The revolution, hijacked by bloody-minded zealots, eats its own, starting with the vast majority of Jews who are guilty of the modern crime of being Zionist.

BDS is not confined to the campus. It is influential in “human rights” organizations. It is making inroads in the halls of Congress and world parliaments. When BDS is ascendant, it is intolerant of any other opinions – and of the people who hold those opinions.

These are deeply troubling developments. Those who worried about Trump’s proto-fascism should understand that he has had only a fraction of the “will to dominate” that we find in both BDS and its allies. Whenever leaders use the language of liberalism to trample liberal principles, you need to ask yourself whether your own beliefs put you on their enemies list. 

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01/05 Links Pt2: Jewish unity is the answer to the EU's kosher slaughter ban; How Germany tricked Jewish organizations worldwide

From Ian:

Jewish unity is the answer to the EU's kosher slaughter ban - opinion

Let’s not be fooled into thinking that banning kosher slaughter is the end of the story. In fact, many have noted that this decision represents a ‘slippery slope,’ bringing about the question of, ‘What next?’

Building a united strategy which combines effective use of the law, messaging, bottom-up and top-down activism, and local and global support will ensure that we do not have to find out what could have been next.

Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry sees itself as a convener in this work. Jewish communal leaders, institutions, government officials and legal professionals – both in Europe and around the world – must work together under a shared plan of action, which includes:
• Calling out the hypocrisy of banning kosher slaughter – which shows mercy for the animal – while allowing hunting to continue
• Working effectively with governments
• Bringing together individual European countries and government leaders and offices from around the world, along with the Israeli government, to use diplomatic channels to engage with the European Union and other bodies
• Creating an effective media strategy
• Generating a shared voice to engage the public and leadership
Now is the time to join as a united Jewish coalition to ensure the strength and viability of European Jewry.

How Germany tricked Jewish organizations worldwide

When the German parliament labeled the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement as anti-Semitic, it garnered the praise of Jewish organizations worldwide.

But despite the importance of the move, which influenced more European countries to adopt similar decisions, what remained hidden was the fact that the resolution had no legal and practical validity. It was merely a recommendation.

Besides the fact that many left-wing parties in the Bundestag voted against the decision, the initiative's very purpose was to block a more radical right-wing proposal that demanded a complete ban on BDS activities in Germany.

The vote drew immediate public criticism from BDS supporters, including Israelis, Jews, journalists, and the former Israeli ambassador himself. They claimed the decision was a violation of the principle of freedom of expression. It was also alleged that Israel forced the German government to silence the critics of government policy in Jerusalem, an argument that is anti-Semitic at its very core.

A week later, the Bundestag's Research and Documentation Services issued an opinion that the parliament's decision is legally invalid.

And that is how German authorities pulled off an ingenious move: on the one hand, they presented themselves as pioneers in the fight against anti-Semitism and the de-legitimization of Israel; on the other hand, their decision is void of any practical capability to fight the anti-Semitic boycott movement.

This is how good-old Germany has always operated: its official policy states that the existence and security of Israel is part of the nation's national interest; at the same time, it supports anti-Israel organizations with known ties to terrorists and consistently votes against Israel at the United Nations.

The BBC’s ‘Black Christmas’ is the least of our problems

As the late Rabbi Lord Sacks warned in speeches in the House of Lords in 2018 and 2019 on British anti-Semitism and global anti-Semitism: when anti-Semitism moves from the political fringes to a mainstream party – and when anti-Semites don’t think they are anti-Semites – we are all in serious trouble.

Anti-Semitism starts with Jews, but it never ends with Jews. And I’m afraid to say the churches on the whole are returning to their anti-Semitic traditions, particularly those represented by the World Council of Churches. See this piece by Melanie Phillips on the anti-Semitism of the WCC, and the pusillanimity of the senior clergy of the Church of England – my own faith community – towards BLM. As I wrote in a piece for The Algemeiner, the Anglican Communion, in cahoots with the Jihadists, is now leading what it calls Palestinian ‘Liberation Theology’, a Marxist movement that Pope John Paul II had the good sense to proscribe when it first appeared in the Sandinista movement and Roman Catholics of Nicaragua. Communism/Socialism is not the Way.

In 2004, the BBC commissioned a formal report – the Balen Report – following persistent accusations of anti-Israel bias. To date the BBC has spent about £330,000 of public money in legal costs to hide the report from the public. This cover-up is itself scandalous. The reasons for the BBC’s anti-Israelism, like that of French state TV (France 2), are multifarious, but one reason is that Western institutions are easily duped by Islamist propagandists fluent in the old colonial languages, and expert in feeding the liberal egocentrism of the West. Hence the BBC and France 2 report what their Arab hosts tell them, but fail to report the commonplace preaching and incitement of genocidal antisemitism in Arabic and Persian by clerics, politicians and media. Similarly, Qatar state TV, Al Jazeera, broadcasts democracy in English, but gives a weekly perch to the intellectual head of the Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi to broadcast genocidal anti-Semitism in the form of fatwas against Israel, including advocating the use of Muslim children as suicide bombs.

I recently wrote a joint essay with the historian and Jerusalemite Dr Richard Landes partly on the dangers of this ‘lethal journalism’. Islamists are winning the cognitive war, and this results in an existential threat to us all, especially if the anticipated Farrakhan-loving Biden administration is lenient with Islamism and the nuclear ambitions of the Ayatollah. As it is, through its political proxy Hezbollah, Iran already has about 150,000 rockets hidden within the civilian populations in south Lebanon, all pointing at Israel to bring on the Shiite Apocalypse.

Richard Landes and I are frustrated that these really serious problems – the ticking time bombs – are being ignored by Western intellectuals and legacy media alike. Even many who claim to be battling anti-Semitism – including some Jewish leadership – get bogged down in pedantry and political correctness.

In sum, anachronisms and the colour of Jesus’s skin are not worth worrying about, rather we have some profoundly serious battles against anti-Israelism that we must take to BBC and the wider world. We must win, and we will.

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Biden Brings Back Cognitive Dissonance Over Israel (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

Binyamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by prize recipient Lord David Trimble, who got it in 1998. Trimble was honored for his part in negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement that brought relative peace to Northern Ireland.

In my opinion, the Abraham Accords represent the first ray of light in the darkness of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948, and if I were a Nobel recipient I would have nominated Donald Trump and Jared Kushner as well.

Of course the chances of Netanyahu receiving anything but abuse from the “international community” of which the Nobel committee is a pillar, are close to zero. The United Nations and the human rights industry, much of it set up in direct response to the industrial murder of European Jewry by the Nazis and their enthusiastic helpers over almost all of Europe, have ironically embraced the would-be genocidaires of the PLO, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the revolutionary Iranian regime. Especially since the year 2000 (see this brilliant analysis by Mark Pickles and Richard Landes), international institutions and NGOs have picked up and carried the flags of misoziony and Judenhass relinquished by the Soviets and the Nazis.

The USA was more or less neutral with respect to Israel (although its Jewish community strongly supported her) until the 1973 war, when it adopted Israel as its Cold War proxy. But soon after, thanks to OPEC’s devastatingly effective “oil weapon,” US policy became ambivalent. Henry Kissinger negotiated multifaceted agreements with the Arabs which resulted in ending the oil boycott; but one of the conditions was that the US would work to restore all territory conquered by Israel in 1967 to Arab control. Until Trump’s presidency, this was firm American policy, followed by relatively pro-Israel presidents like Clinton and Bush II, less friendly ones like Bush I, and anti-Israel ones like Carter and Obama alike.

The policy required a certain degree of cognitive dissonance from American politicians (not to mention the liberal Jews that supported them). It was necessary for them to advocate the transfer of strategically essential territory from Israeli to Arab control, while still at least appearing to support Israel’s continued survival. This they did by providing military aid. A master stroke, the massive aid package for Israel and Egypt that began with the Camp David agreement got Israel out of the Sinai, provided the US with leverage to control Israel’s behavior, and enriched American defense contractors. Later, it served as a fig leaf to hide the dangers of withdrawal inherent in demands for Israel to leave Gaza, the Golan, and Judea and Samaria.

Anti-Israel politicians like Barack Obama had less of an internal struggle than friendly ones. With the help of the Israeli Left, he argued counterfactually that security would come from territorial concessions. His policy was to weaken Israel while pretending to help her, for example by phasing out the portion of the military aid that could be used to buy from Israel’s own military industry. No matter what he did to damage Israel’s strategic position, he could always point to those billions of dollars in military hardware as proof of his support for the Jewish state. But whether an administration was friendly or not, the policy was always fundamentally incoherent. It also distorted internal Israeli politics, leading to disasters like the Oslo Accords.

Trump turned everything upside down. New technology that increased oil production in North America and various other developments had defused the oil weapon. In addition, some of the important Middle Eastern oil producers were worried about Iranian expansionism and its nuclear program, and realized that Israel could be an indispensable ally in opposing it. American interests were now seen to lie with a strong Israel, in truth and not just in rhetoric.

So for the first time since 1973, Trump’s administration was able to introduce a reality-based policy, affirming the rationality of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and Jerusalem, and ending the obsequious treatment of the frankly terrorist PLO and its dictatorial Palestinian Authority. Under the Trump plan, the Palestinians would be required to give up their maximalist demands and make real compromises, if they wanted a state of any kind.

But as almost everyone finally admits, the clock has run out. There will not be a second Trump Administration. The new one, depressingly, seems firmly wedded to the old paradigm. Although most (not all!) of his appointments do not appear to be overt enemies of the Jewish state, Biden seems likely to restore the traditional deference (and funding) to the Palestinians, as well as to try to reopen negotiations about the JCPOA with Iran, which at the very least implies that sanctions on Iran will be reduced.

This is not because Biden and his people are idiots. They are fully aware that things have changed, and that the oil weapon no longer threatens America. But now the pressure comes from the home front. They can’t afford to alienate the misozionist left wing of the Democratic party, which has grown stronger in Congress. They don’t worry about American Jews, for whom Israel has little weight when they vote. They can ignore the Evangelicals, who will support Republicans anyway over social issues like abortion and LGBTx rights. And of course, they want to wipe out any traces of Trumpism. Staying in power and achieving domestic objectives is more important to them than logical consistency, or the negative consequences for America’s allies in the Middle East.

So we will go back to hearing platitudes about the “unbreakable” US-Israel relationship, while the administration complains about Israel building apartments in Jewish neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem. What appeared to be a real possibility that Israel would extend sovereignty to the Jordan Valley – an area of extreme strategic importance – will fade away. We’ll watch as the US goes back to pretending that the failed and antisemitic United Nations can play a positive role in any sphere, and that the PLO can be made into a peace partner. Sanctions on Iran will be relaxed, emboldening the regime to push ahead on the ground and with its nuclear and missile programs.

A dark picture. Israel has a difficult four or eight years ahead of her, at least. There will be little room for mistakes and missed opportunities. It looks like we will shortly go through yet another round of elections. Is it too much to ask that we end up with a government equal to the task?

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10/01 Links P2: A look back at the Muhammad al-Dura affair, 20 years later; Jpost Editorial: Trump is no antisemite. Drawing comparisons with Hitler is just crass

From Ian:

Richard Landes: A look back at the Muhammad al-Dura affair, 20 years later

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of one of the most disastrous events in the year 2000, an event that cast a long shadow over the unhappy early decades of a troubled new millennium. On September 30, 2000, a Palestinian cameraman clumsily filmed what he claimed was footage of a boy who came under fire and was killed by Israelis. A French-Israeli journalist then edited the brief fragments, cutting the last contradictory scene, and broadcast the accompanying narrative on France2.

The image of Muhammad al-Dura via the narrative that the IDF had targeted him became the global symbol of Palestinian suffering at the hand of Israeli cruelty. It rapidly became an “icon of hatred” that had a greater immediate and long-term effect on the new century than any other such vehicle of incitement.

A cry arose, for some of pain, for some of rage, but for all a clear sign that the Infidel, led by the twin Satans Israel and USA, were making war on Muslims. Indeed, no single event so far has done more to arouse the spirit of jihad against the West than this footage, which, as Bin Laden quickly pointed out in his recruiting video for global jihad, demanded vengeance against al Yahud and their allies. Vengeance justified suicide attacks on civilians (two previously “forbidden” practices).

The sentiment so resonated, that even “conservative” al Azhar had to yield before the sanctification of their combination martyrdom operations. While itself not apocalyptic, the Muhammad al-Dura icon fed an apocalyptic jihadi narrative: to #GenerationCaliphate Israel was the Dajjal (Antichrist).

The West followed suit. Lethal journalists like Robert Fisk quickly affirmed the charge of deliberate murder. Where before such comparisons were considered ugly if not worse, now comparing Israel to the Nazis became common. A prominent French news anchor, speaking for many, declared that al-Dura “erased, replaced the image of the boy in the Warsaw Ghetto.” It was a new, post-modern “replacement narrative.”

Instead of Christians or Muslims replacing Israel as the true Chosen People, it was the former chosen people replacing the Nazis, and the poor Palestinian victim suffering the fate of the Jews. The progressive refrain, “Israel has lost the moral high ground.” Nobel Peace Prize winners, politicians, diplomats, award-winning playwrights and journalists, prominent academics, UN officials, Jews and non-Jews, all joined in the chorus, aligning with the jihadi apocalyptic narrative. Israel was the new Nazi secular Antichrist.

Jpost Editorial: Trump is no antisemite. Drawing comparisons with Hitler is just crass

We do not believe – based on Trump’s very positive track record on Israel and steps his administration has taken to combat antisemitism in the US, as well as by the number of Jews in his immediate family and in his inner circle – that the US president is an antisemite.

Those opposed to Trump have enough ammunition to use against him, having to do both with his behavior and his policies, without having to stoop to saying that he is an antisemite or a neo-Nazi sympathizer, or drawing comparisons between him and Hitler.

Unfortunately, the Jewish Democratic Council of America released a political advertisement on Tuesday, even before the debate – that will run in swing states with large Jewish populations – drawing a direct comparison between Trump’s America and the rise of fascism in 1930s Germany, and hinting at comparisons between Trump and Hitler.

“History shows us what happens when leaders use hatred and nationalism to divide their people,” a narrator solemnly stated over pictures of German shops dabbed with the word “Jude,” and a US synagogue defaced with graffiti.

The ad juxtaposes film of Nazi parades in Germany with footage of neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville. It places images of German masses giving the sieg heil salute on one side of the screen, with Trump speaking on the other.

“As antisemitism and white nationalism rise to dangerous levels in America, we are all less secure,” the narrator intoned. “It is time to show that we have learned from the darkest moments in history. Hate doesn’t stop itself: It must be stopped.”

The advertisement – likening Trump to Hitler and 1930s Germany to 2020 America – is over the top, out of line and a gross misappropriation of the absolutely darkest period of Jewish history for momentary political gain.

Disagree with Trump, even vehemently if you wish. Criticize his behavior and his policies. Jump all over him, deservedly so, for not being able to unreservedly condemn white supremacists in America. But don’t compare Trump to Hitler, or the situation facing America’s Jews to that which faced German Jewry in the 1930s. To do so is as much an over-exaggeration as it is wrong.

Left Fascism

In the end, does the left-fascist shoe fit our current culture moment? Consider the list: programmatic silencing of dissenters, purging of editorial pages, growing fear of transgressing murky viewpoint prohibitions, while university leaders generally refuse (there are some exceptions) to offer a full-throated defense of academic freedom, but instead embrace the stereotypical language of the social justice movement in its opposition to “the system.” They sound more like Heidegger promoting the Nazi revolution in the universities in 1934 than Edward R. Murrow in 1954 pushing back against Joe McCarthy. A lot of that is just cowardice. Equally reminiscent of fascism is the de facto coordination between the crowds in the streets and the pronouncements from corporate boardrooms, as well as the monitoring of political opinion by powerful social media. This imposed conformism, this Gleichschaltung, is playing out against the backdrop of attacks on the rule of law and across-the-board denunciations of all law enforcement.

Yet in one respect, the diagnosis of “left fascism” does not go far enough. It misses a key element of the moment, alluded to in Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech: the obsessive effort to suppress history and erase memory. Not only Confederate statues have been toppled but anti-Confederate ones as well, and the Emancipation Memorial honoring Abraham Lincoln and paid for by freed slaves has come under attack. In San Francisco the Board of Supervisors voted to conceal a New Deal era mural that included a critical depiction of slavery. Any symbol of the past has become suspect, as we hurtle into a brave new world robbed of the orientation that historical self-awareness might provide. At root there is only a nihilistic refusal of any positive identification with the shared project to achieve a “land of the free.”

This constellation of riots, lawlessness and social amnesia recalls another moment in American oratory with another American president. When the young Abraham Lincoln spoke at the Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, in 1838, he was responding to mob violence, attacks on African Americans and on abolitionists, when “bands of hundreds and thousands ... burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity.” Lincoln saw this “mobocratic spirit” leading to a general alienation from the government, a loosening of the bonds of affection for the republic, as the direct memory of the struggle for independence waned. It was that loss of a historical awareness of the origins and rationale for the United States which, in Lincoln’s view, threatened political stability. The “scenes of the revolution” were disappearing into forgetfulness, as the “silent artillery of time” erased the national past with every passing generation. Lincoln’s alternative: “General intelligence, sound morality, and, in particular, a reverence for the constitution and the law.”

One-hundred-eighty years after the Lyceum Address, we find ourselves even further away from the founding. In today’s America, even Habermas’ notion of a “constitutional patriotism,” safely removed from the dangerous temptations of nationalism, is under assault, let alone any deeper love of country. National history has all but disappeared from our curricula, and when it is still taught, it is poisoned with adversarial revisionism, an education for ressentiment and guilt. The failings alone matter: We are always only at 1619 and never at 1865 or 1945 or 1989, a distorted perspective that leads to tearing down, never building up, and embarrassing public rituals of pledging disallegiance. Describing these events as “left fascism,” Trump names the constellation of verbal progressivism mixed with a moralistic vitriol to harass dissenters and indulge in irrational violence, but the worst of our crisis is the contemptuous ignorance of the accomplishments of the nation. It is time to reclaim the history.

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07/29 Links Pt2: Matti Friedman: Israel Was Ground Zero for the New Woke Religion; Jonathan Tobin: On Tisha B'Av, it's time for Americans to step back from apocalyptic rhetoric

From Ian:

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Matti Friedman: Israel Was Ground Zero for the New Woke Religion

Western ideologies generally include a parable about villainous Jews. Because this is a set of ideas that sees itself as a political critique, the parable doesn’t come, as past versions have, from Scripture (in the case of Christianity), or from economic theory (as it did in Marxism), or pseudo-scientific racial doctrines (National Socialism). It comes from the news—specifically, from the mythology that I saw being constructed as a reporter a decade ago. A strange antagonism to something called “Israel” came up if you went to a Women’s March against Donald Trump in New York, or protested violence against African Americans in Ferguson, Missouri, or joined the Dyke March in Chicago, or presented an academic paper at the American Studies Association. It appears in the platform of Black Lives Matter from 2016, in left-wing politics in Britain and France, and in gender studies courses at California colleges.

These diverse applications are unique, if not entirely unprecedented, for a news story. But they make sense if we understand the Israel story as a kind of sacred template that can be used to explain many different situations. A good example became visible this spring in the wake of the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis: the myth that Israel trains American police officers in the same methods of brutality that killed Floyd, and which are deployed more generally against people of color. This conspiracy theory has been promoted as factual by (among many others) senior journalists, members of the British Labour Party, and, in early July, by the biggest Lutheran denomination in America.

That last detail supports the idea that new religions are never completely removed from the old ones. Indeed, the unique power of the Israel story is the way it takes the central preoccupation of the new thought system—the inequality of white Western power versus nonwhite Third World innocence—and projects it onto a setting already loaded with religious resonance. If you’re looking for a parable about human inequality, places called Jerusalem or Bethlehem are potent in ways that can’t be rivaled by Xinjiang or Laayoune, or Minneapolis.

A good illustration of this merger came in the form of a speech given to a convention of the Episcopal church in 2018 by a Massachusetts bishop who described atrocities she claimed to have personally witnessed in Israel. She described the murder of an innocent 15-year-old Palestinian by Jewish soldiers—“they shot him in the back four times, he fell on the ground and they shot him another six”—and the aggressive handcuffing by soldiers of a 3-year-old Palestinian boy whose ball rolled off the Temple Mount.

It later turned out that the bishop hadn’t seen any such thing, and she apologized profusely. But in a religious mindset, the question isn’t whether a story happened. The question is whether a story can mobilize believers to achieve good. If the answer is yes, the story is “true.”

This kind of thinking has now bled into newsrooms and university departments, precisely the bodies that are supposed to be engaged in observation and reasoned debate. If important parts of the press and the academy are beginning to sound like ministries, it’s happening at a time when religion and quasi-religion are on the rise everywhere—not just on the progressive left but also on the right, and not only in the West. Some of these trends are evident in Israel, too. As we speak, as if to symbolize the moment, the Hagia Sophia is being changed from a public museum back into a mosque—though in Istanbul, at least, the conversion is being done in the open.

Jonathan Tobin: On Tisha B'Av, it's time for Americans to step back from apocalyptic rhetoric

Americans are experiencing a summer of discontent in a way that exceeds any in living memory. The nation is divided not just along political lines but seems increasingly immersed in something much more dangerous – a culture war in which both sides truly believe that not only will a triumph by their opponents bring ruin, but that the very existence of the republic and American democracy is at stake.

That's why both Jews and non-Jews need to pause this week and consider the lessons that the observance of Tisha B'Av: the day on the Hebrew calendar that marks the destruction of both ancient holy temples in Jerusalem, as well as many other catastrophes of Jewish history. The day of fasting and reflection, which begins this year on the evening of July 29, is not observed by most non-Orthodox Jews and generally considered too depressing to have become part of secular American Jewish culture, which prefers holidays that follow a model that runs along the lines of "they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat."

But if there was ever a year when its lessons were needed by Americans of all faiths, it is 2020.

Tradition teaches us that the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE occurred because of "sinat hinam" – senseless or baseless hatred—that undermined Jewish resistance during the siege of Jerusalem and great revolt against the forces of the Roman Empire.

A war that pitted the forces of a small nation against the world's only superpower wasn't going to have a happy ending, no matter how united the defenders of Jerusalem had been. But the rabbis who subsequently reconstituted Jewish faith emphasized the way that the Jewish rebels were divided into competing factions within Jerusalem's walls. In the civil war that raged inside the doomed city, a Zealot faction destroyed food supplies that could have prolonged resistance. Their self-destructive behavior made the task of Roman conquest that much easier and provided Jewish history with a lesson of what not to do to survive in a hostile world.

It's an important lesson, but not one that most Jews – or non-Jews for that matter – find easy to follow.

The political lines dividing Americans are starker than at any moment in living memory. It's not just that Republicans and Democrats disagree about the issues. Most of the supporters of President Donald Trump and most of those who support his opponents seem unprepared to credit each other with good intentions, period.

The deafening silence of liberal Jewish leadership in the face of BLM anitsemitism

For those of us that are children of Holocaust survivors, we know well the hell our parents went through to survive.
They hid, had no food, no clothes, no medical attention, and no help.
They were cramped in hiding places with no fresh air and couldn' t make a sound or Nazis would kill them.
It lasted a lot longer than this will last, some for up to 4 or 5 years.
They lost their education, their souls, their youth.
There were no supermarkets,no cell phones, no radios and no outside interference.

What we can compare with deadly accuracy is 1933 Nazi Germany and the inaction of our Jewish leadership and the Stockholm Syndrome response of many liberal Jews in the face of rising, hateful antisemitism.

Just as then when the voices of the leadership might have made a difference, but was barely heard, today most liberal leaders and clergy prefer to be politically correct and support our enemies.

Had Hitler conquered America or the area that is now Israel but was then the British Mandate, no Jews would have been left alive. That means many of those reading this article would never have been born.

What is it that left liberal and progressive Jews do not understand? When I hear the rabid antisemitic lies on videos and social media, I sense that another Hitler is coming - while you are sleeping, not 'woke,' dreaming about meeting the demands of the antisemitic Black Lives Matter.

Cogwar 8 Years on: BLM BDS & the Wokeocracy

In 2012 Prof Richard Landes said "Its not every generation that gets to defend a civilisation" and he advised that silence is not an option. In view of the extraordinary events since January 2020 when he was last in London, Campaign4Truth asked him how we have done in these 8 years: Have we been silent?

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07/03 Links Pt2: Jonathan S. Tobin: A tale of 2 revolutions, and why America must be celebrated; Gangsters vs. Nazis; Liberal Jewish Leaders Accuse Jews of Racism, Cover Up Anti-Semitism

From Ian:

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Jonathan S. Tobin: A tale of 2 revolutions, and why America must be celebrated

In the view of those cheering on the efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement, this July 4 will be one less of celebration than of soul-searching and reassessment. Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the normal festivities were always going to be muted. But the brutal death of George Floyd on May 25 sent angry crowds of sometimes peaceful protesters into the streets seeking to topple monuments of not just Confederates, but also the nation's Founding Fathers and a host of other historical figures who don't measure up to the woke standards of the demonstrators.

As such, it is a deeply ominous sign that some advocates of the BLM movement, which has always been linked to anti-Semitic intersectional claims, are sometimes diverging from their usual arguments about racism to attacking Israel with blood libels. This week, one BLM march up Washington, D.C.'s Constitution Avenue, demonstrated its solidarity with a Palestinian "Day of Rage" by chanting, "Israel, we know you murder children too."

No doubt, some will claim that these chants are not typical of BLM sentiments, even though the movement has always supported smears of Israel. Others might say that among them were "some very fine people," a conclusion that few accepted when that sentiment was put forward by US President Donald Trump about those opposed to the removal of Confederate statues during a neo-Nazi march in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Va.

But at the heart of the marches is contempt for the basic idea that the American experiment in democracy – flawed though it is – is a uniquely successful effort in expanding the realm of liberty. As efforts like The New York Times' "1619 Project" that has served as an ideological guide to the protesters' vision of America as an incorrigibly racist nation made plain, the goal of the BLM movement is not so much to reform the police or cleanse the country of hate as it is to recast the entire national narrative that has provided a haven for religious minorities like Jews.

As such, it may be an appropriate moment for Americans to think seriously about their origins as a nation and to ask not only whether this 1619 narrative is true, but to ponder as well why we should still be cheering the memory of 1776.

The "1619 Project" is so named because in the view of the Times, the arrival of the first black slaves in North America was the true beginning of American nationhood, and the revolution in 1776 was fought mainly to preserve slavery. Once we set aside this inherently mendacious premise of that account, it's important to understand that the American Revolution succeeded primarily because it was rooted in a belief in the rule of law.

It's always the right time to talk about anti-Semitism, especially during Black Lives Matter protests

Recent weeks have seen a heated discussion among American Jews about whether there is a “right time” to talk about anti-Semitism. And if so, does now qualify, since our country is going through a reckoning over racism?

American Jews want to show solidarity with peaceful protesters, but should that include support for the Black Lives Matter organization, which called Israel an apartheid state, supported the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, and accused Israel of genocide in its 2016 manifesto? And should Jews remain silent while Israel is falsely accused of teaching brutal tactics to police, or when protests include “vandalism to Jewish businesses and synagogues” in Los Angeles, chants of “From the river to the sea” in Brooklyn, and slanderous accusations that Israel murders children in Washington, D.C.?

There was, by contrast, no such debate during Christians United for Israel's annual summit this week. Conducted virtually for the first time because of the pandemic, CUFI’s national conference included numerous speakers determined to speak up for Zion’s sake, as the book of Isaiah urges.

One message that echoed across the summit was that it’s always the right time to shine a light on anti-Semitism. Speakers encouraged the summit’s tens of thousands of participants to educate themselves about anti-Semitism. That education would include not only learning from dark, historic moments such as the Holocaust, but also how to recognize the anti-Semitism that hides in plain sight today, on college campuses and in the halls of Congress.

During a panel discussion on anti-Semitism, Holocaust survivor Irving Roth explained that words “direct people to the truth.” Words matter because they lead to actions, whether they are atrocities like the Holocaust or the possibility of a better future. Roth was joined by CUFI Middle East analyst Kasim Hafeez, who was raised as a radical Islamist in the United Kingdom and reflected: “I love this country, and it saddens me. There’s this horrible moment of seeing a parallel of what I saw in the U.K. with anti-Semitism. ... It doesn’t just roll in on a truck one day. It’s gradual. There’s little hurdles and steps; it creeps in. People fall asleep at the wheel. It’s almost ignored. There’s this attitude of, ‘It could be worse. At least we’re not the situation in Europe.’” Hafeez warned that ignoring those small changes means losing the chance to halt anti-Semitism while there is still time. Hafeez encouraged participants, “You can make the difference.”

Former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who signed the nation’s first anti-BDS bill into law as governor of South Carolina, told participants, “We must keep telling the truth about Israel.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talked about realizing in law school “how anti-Israel some parts of academia can be” and that “Israel needs to be protected from BDS.” Among Pompeo’s examples of the importance of truth-telling was his simple statement, “Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”

Gangsters vs. Nazis

Emboldened by Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, and fueled by the Great Depression, anti-Semitism increased throughout the United States, and over 100 anti-Semitic organizations sprung up across the country. They had names like the Friends of the New Germany (Nazi Bund), the Silver Shirts, Defenders of the Christian Faith, the Christian Front, and the Knights of the White Camellia, among others. Protected by the constitution’s First Amendment, they held public rallies, paraded through the streets in their uniforms carrying Nazi flags, published scurrilous magazines, and openly flaunted their hatred for Jews. American Jews were intimidated and frightened. Fearful of stirring up even more anti-Jewish sentiment, the American Jewish establishment’s response was often tentative and cautionary. They worried that what happened in Germany, home to Europe’s elite Jewish community, could easily happen in America. One group of American Jews who had no compunctions about meeting the anti-Semites head-on were Jewish gangsters. Not bound by conventional rules and constitutional legalities, they took direct and violent action against the Jew haters.

Nazi Bund rallies in New York City in the late 1930s created a terrible dilemma for the city’s Jewish leaders. With 20,000 members, the Nazi Bund was the largest anti-Semitic group in the nation. They organized large public rallies and marched to drumbeats wearing brown shirts and swastikas, and carrying Nazi flags. Jewish leaders wanted the meetings stopped, but could not do so legally. Nathan Perlman, a judge and former Republican congressman, was one Jewish leader who believed that the Jews should demonstrate more militancy. In 1935, he surreptitiously contacted Meyer Lansky, a leading organized crime figure born on the 4th of July, and asked him to help. Lansky related to me what followed.

Perlman assured Lansky that money and legal assistance would be put at his disposal. The only stipulation was that no Nazis be killed. They could be beaten up, but not terminated. Lansky reluctantly agreed. No killing. Always very sensitive about anti-Semitism, Lansky was acutely aware of what the Nazis were doing to Jews. “I was a Jew and I felt for those Jews in Europe who were suffering,” he said. “They were my brothers.” Lansky refused the judge’s offer of money and assistance, but he did make one request. He asked Perlman to ensure that after he went into action he would not be criticized by the Jewish press. The judge promised to do what he could.

Lansky rounded up some of his tough associates and went around New York disrupting Nazi meetings. Young Jews not connected to him or the rackets also volunteered to help, and Lansky and others taught them how to use their fists and handle themselves in a fight. Lansky’s crews worked very professionally. Nazi arms, legs, and ribs were broken and skulls cracked, but no one died. The attacks continued for more than a year. And Lansky earned quite a reputation for doing this work.

Lansky later described to an Israeli journalist one of the onslaughts in Yorkville, the German neighborhood in northeast Manhattan:

“We got there in the evening and found several hundred people dressed in their brown shirts. The stage was decorated with a swastika and pictures of Hitler. The speaker started ranting. There were only 15 of us, but we went into action. We attacked them in the hall and threw some of them out the windows. There were fist fights all over the place. Most of the Nazis panicked and ran out. We chased them and beat them up, and some of them were out of action for months. Yes it was violence. We wanted to teach them a lesson. We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back and accept insults.”

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06/29 Links Pt2: Stephen Harper: BDS movement brings anti-Semitism into the mainstream; Simon Wiesenthal Center: Cancel Louis Farrakhan's July 4 speech on Fox

From Ian:

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Former Canadian PM Stephen Harper: BDS movement brings anti-Semitism into the mainstream

Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed a virtual conference of the Christians United For Israel (CUFI) organization Sunday evening, accusing the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement of bringing anti-Semitism ‘into polite society’.

Anti-Semitism is on “the rise, often in the guise of opposition to the State of Israel,” said Harper.

“Never forget that. And never forget that that is what the BDS movement is all about. It is nothing more than taking the old hatred of anti-Semitism and translating it into acceptable language for use in polite society.”

“People who would never say that they hate and blame the Jews for their own failings and for all the problems of the world, instead declare their hatred for Israel and blame the Jewish state for all the problems of the world.”

Earlier today I appeared on Sky News, Australia to discuss the madness that is washing across all of our societies. https://t.co/5Sm0f6myIz

— Douglas Murray (@DouglasKMurray) June 28, 2020

Spectator PodCast: The creepy doctrines of Black Lives Matter

With Professor Richard Landes, an expert on millennial or apocalyptic movements.

99.9% of the negative things about Israel on social media are fake. Please watch this very important video & then retweet.

I do this for free. It is very tiring. All I ask is people to share. Not enough do.

H/T to @kweansmom who cared enough to question and ask me about it. 🙏🏽 pic.twitter.com/s95iI3b0Uv

— AZ עם ישראל חי (@americanzionism) June 28, 2020

Maajid Nawaz accused online platforms of hypocrisy for banning people like Katie Hopkins, but ignoring hatred and anti-semitism from "black and brown" extremists like Louis Farrakhan.@MaajidNawazhttps://t.co/7yQvtZmwYi

— LBC (@LBC) June 28, 2020

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06/08 Links Pt2: Hen Mazzig: No, Israel Isn't a Country of Privileged and Powerful White Europeans; Jonathan Tobin: Defunding police will sacrifice Jewish security

From Ian:

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Hen Mazzig (Los Angeles Times): No, Israel Isn't a Country of Privileged and Powerful White Europeans

There is a growing inclination to frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of race. According to this narrative, Israel was established as a refuge for oppressed white European Jews who in turn became oppressors of people of color, the Palestinians. As an Israeli, and the son of an Iraqi Jewish mother and North African Jewish father, it's gut-wrenching to witness this shift.

The majority of Jews in Israel today are of Middle Eastern and North African descent. I am baffled as to why mainstream media and politicians around the world ignore or misrepresent these facts. Israel was established for all Jews from every part of the world - the Middle East, North Africa, Ethiopia, Asia and, yes, Europe. No matter where Jews physically reside, they maintain a connection to the Land of Israel, where our story started and where today we continue to craft it.

Those who misrepresent Israel try to position it as a colonialist aggressor rather than a haven for those fleeing oppression. That all but erases the story of my family. In Iraq, my family experienced ongoing persecution. My great-grandfather was falsely accused of being a Zionist spy and executed in Baghdad in 1951.

Any erasure of the Mizrahi experience negates the lives of 850,000 Jewish refugees. They would also deny the existence of almost 200,000 descendants of Ethiopian Jews who were airlifted to Israel in the early 1990s in a daring rescue operation.

Israel is a place where an indigenous people have reclaimed their land and revived their ancient language, despite being surrounded by hostile neighbors and hounded by radicalized Arab nationalists who cannot tolerate any political entity in the region other than their own. Jews that were expelled from nations across the Middle East, who sacrificed all they had, have been crucial in building and defending the Jewish state since its outset.

Hetz Webinars: Modern Blood Libels

Tuvia Tenenbom, Ricki Hollander (CAMERA), Prof. Richard Landes (h/t Arie)

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06/03 Links Pt2: From Disillusioned Muslim to Christian Arab Zionist; Why Western Media is Biased Against Israel; The video BDS doesn't want you to see

From Ian:

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Melanie Phillips: The opportunity to develop a United Democratic Nations

Before Covid-19 struck, Boris Johnson had decided to invite the Chinese tech giant Huawei to provide parts of Britain’s 5G communications network. Now, with China condemned for causing the pandemic through its reckless behaviour and then behaving like a gangster state in resorting to lies, threats and manipulation, the government is proposing an alliance of ten democratic nations to develop alternatives to Chinese technology.

This “D10” would be composed of the G7 nations — the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan — plus Australia, South Korea and India. It’s an idea that is not only excellent in itself but encapsulates an insight with far-reaching potential to restructure global institutions.

What’s actually outdated is the idea that peace and justice can only be advanced by the world acting as one big united family. This belief in the brotherhood of man lay behind the foundation of the United Nations in 1945. Yet the UN has not only failed to live up to its ideals of confronting aggression, preserving peace and defending human rights, but has in fact helped thwart them.

Given that most countries are tyrannies, kleptocracies or rogue states, a global body which brings them all together will inevitably be dominated by their unsavoury characteristics.

What’s needed instead is a United Democratic Nations. This is an idea that has often been floated wistfully by critics of the UN but dismissed as quixotic. The D10 proposal, however, could be the launchpad for just such a body. Going beyond the issue of Huawei and 5G technology, democracies should band together to defend freedom and justice by standing up to the depredations of regimes that seek to extinguish them.

The UN might have been created as a result of the shattering impact of the Second World War. It was founded, however, on a starry-eyed denial of the fact that if a lion lies down with a lamb, the lion doesn’t turn vegan but the lamb gets eaten.

From Disillusioned Muslim to Christian Arab Zionist

I am a Jordanian Arab from a Muslim family. I was born in 1989. In 2010, I decided to leave Islam after becoming fed up with all the jihadist violence and intolerance and persecution of non-Muslims. What made my decision final was the realization that this violence and hatred was justified by verses of the Koran and Hadith.

From 2010-2012, I was an atheist, though I continued to seek the truth regarding God and religion, even visiting Buddhist temples in Amman.

I was a university student at the time, and announced my newfound atheism through social media, which immediately turned many friends and colleagues against me. They felt I was backwards in my thinking, and I came to feel the same about them.

As you are no doubt aware, atheism is detested in the Arab and Islamic world. I faced a lot of hurtful opposition from those around me, but I kept my head down and focused on completing my university studies. It wasn’t easy. There were those who tried to have me kicked out because of my stance against Islam, but they failed.

In 2012, I decided to visit a church and learn more about Christianity. I was curious about Jesus. After four months of investigating, I joined an international church under the auspices of an American priest. On the very first day, I was asked to pray for salvation, after which one of the Christian brothers gave me weekly Bible lessons. Shortly after, I was baptized in the Jordan River.

Jordan is seen by many as a moderate Arab Muslim country. But even here, it is illegal to leave Islam. The civil courts are still governed by Sharia law, and to have someone complain against you for rejecting Islam can result in criminal punishment.

This didn’t deter me, and in 2012, I made an online video telling people in Arabic about how I’d become a Christian. Several days later, I was attacked by three radical Muslims. I also received threats from a radical Salafi movement under the leadership of Jarrah Rahahleh, an international terrorist, who used to send jihadists to Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and was arrested many times by Jordanian authorities. Further threats came from others.

Jewish Vengeance

Thus it was that the group that would come to be known as the “Nakam,” Hebrew for “Avengers,” was born. In the spring of 1945, a Passover gathering of survivors in Bucharest was addressed by Abba Kovner, the young leader of the Jewish uprising in the Vilna ghetto. Kovner was born in 1918 in Sebastopol, Russia, and spent his high school years in Vilna, where he joined Ha-Shomer Hatzair youth movement. When the Germans invaded and occupied Lithuania, they rounded up the Jews and put them in a ghetto. Kovner pleaded with Vilna’s Jews to join the partisans in a popular uprising, but they refused. After briefly fighting the Germans, Kovner and other partisans fled to the forest. While there, they destroyed 180 miles of train tracks, five bridges, 40 enemy train cars and killed 212 German soldiers. He returned to Vilna with the Red Army on July 7, 1944, capturing the city from the Germans on July 13, 1944. After the war, he and 50 other partisans attempted to poison thousands of Nazi and SS prisoners in a Nuremberg POW camp. It is unknown how many Germans were killed. In 1961 he testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. In 1970, he won the “Israel Prize” in literature for his poetry.

At that gathering, Kovner spoke passionately and invoked Psalm 94, in which God promises that he shall deal with the enemies of the people of Israel. “He will turn upon them their own violence and with their own wickedness destroy them.” This, Kovner suggested, was the fate that should be meted out to the Germans. And if the courts of international justice would not do it, then the Jews should do it themselves.

Calmly, the group set about implementing the death sentences they themselves had passed. First, they would identify a Nazi who had melted back into civilian life. They would then stage an arrest and spirit the German away. Some of these ex-SS men were strangled, others hanged. The deaths of those who were hanged could be passed off as suicides. Hangings might take place in a garage, with the subject forced to stand on a car roof while his neck was placed in the noose attached to an overhead beam. An Avenger would drive the car away and the man would be strangled. These efforts endured into the 1950s. The executioners kept their mouths shut and took their secrets to their graves.

The Nakam went to Spain, Latin America, Canada, and other places where Nazi murderers found refuge. In one such operation, the Nakam tracked down Alexander Laak, responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Jews at the Estonian concentration camp of Jagala. One evening they waited for Laak’s wife to leave for the movies, went to his home, and confronted him with his crimes and their intended punishment. They gave him a choice: They would kill him, or he could do it himself. He hung himself.

Benjamin Levi, one of the avengers, recalled that period in his life saying, “I saw a lot of things. I saw very noble people become animals. And very plain people become noble.” He had joined the partisans during the war and helped to liberate Vilna. He and his comrades rounded up Lithuanians who had collaborated with the Germans and shot them on the spot. “We didn’t keep prisoners,” he said. “There was no discussion. It was a normal thing.” All enemies were immediately shot. “The moment I start to think about this more and more memories come,” he said to a later interviewer. “We don’t talk about this anymore. But it’s alive inside.”

After the founding of the State of Israel, the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, undertook the task of tracking down former Nazis and killing them, and in some cases, putting them on trial. But that’s another story.

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