10/23 Links: The gaping holes in the UN Commission of Inquiry report; From Oslo to Abraham; Rushdie ‘going to live’ but has lost use of eye and hand, says agent

From Ian:

The gaping holes in the UN Commission of Inquiry report

What is missing from this report as context for this difficult environment is startling. Not a word about Palestinian rejectionism for decades. Not a word on Israeli steps that completely contradict the narrative that Israel is all about permanent occupation and annexation.

Not a word about Israeli efforts to make Palestinian life better, despite Palestinian rejection and terrorism in the form of thousands of Palestinian workers making a decent living working in Israel every day. Not a word about the anti-democratic forces and corruption at work in Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, which have greatly contributed to the ills of the Palestinian people. Not a word about an educational system in the Palestinian community, which preaches and teaches hatred of Israel and Jews and the virtues of violence against the Jewish state.

Most significantly, related to the two major themes of the report — that Israel is engaged in moving toward permanent control of the West Bank and its Palestinian population and toward de facto annexation — is the complete failure to mention numerous Israeli peace offers that would have transformed Palestinians lives, including through the creation of a Palestinian state. Israel’s offer at Camp David, then later at Taba, in 2000, would have meant the withdrawal of Israeli from most of the territory and the removal of most settlements. The Palestinians said no and turned to violence and suicide bombs.

Then came Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, including from all settlements, only to have Israel met with a Hamas takeover, and years of attacks from Gaza on Israeli civilians. And then at Annapolis in 2008, Israel offered the Palestinians one more opportunity to end the conflict and move toward a state as Israel withdraws, only to be met again with no response.

In sum, there are real issues to discuss. But it’s impossible to do that in a serious and responsible way when the approach is the kind of biased one that the COI report represents. The consequence of such one-sidedness is to make the Palestinians think once again that history is on their side in their decades-old rejection of Israel’s legitimacy. This delusion has been harmful to Palestinians and is repeated here once again.

At the same time, a report like this plays into the hands of those Israelis who see the world as against them and prefer the status quo rather than creative solutions and initiatives.

The bottom line: Israel will surely reject this report for what it is: a continuing of counterproductive, anti-Israel propaganda by an arm of the UN that has a long history of bias against the Jewish state.

At the same time, the reality of the situation in the territories, even though it does not reflect either Israeli permanence or annexation, demands Israeli initiatives on the ground to improve living conditions for the Palestinians and to open up new possibilities for negotiations and solutions – even if the Palestinians have not shown they are ready for either.

American Jews must give up the illusion that they have ‘no enemies’ to the left or the right

The final straw came in 2000, when Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader held a massive campaign rally in Boston. From the stage, I was told, his running mate, Winona LaDuke, shrieked, “We’re going to stop the slaughter in Palestine!” This would have been bad enough, given that it erased Israel’s name from the map and, with it, the numerous Jews then being murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the name of “Palestine.”

But what made my blood run cold was the description of what followed: The crowd howled its approval and rose to its feet in a standing ovation. At that moment, what I saw in my mind’s eye was Hitler and the great crowd rising as one to hail him. These people, I suddenly realized, wanted to kill me.

What followed was not merely anger, but a horrific sense of betrayal. I believed in the catechisms of the left. I felt that I was one of them. But now, I suddenly realized, they did not think I was one of them. And this was because, despite everything, I did believe that the Jews have a right, at the very least, to defend themselves. I now knew that my former comrades did not believe in that right. But I did, and I would fight for it.

I will not go into the long journey that followed, which led me to Zionism, aliyah and everything that came after. Suffice it to say, I rejected the left in its entirety, and became very right-wing for a very long time.

I can no longer count myself an ideological right-winger. I believe I have learned a great deal from both the left and the right, from the likes of Orwell and Camus along with Burke and C.S. Lewis. These days, I prefer to keep my own counsel. But that sense of betrayal has never left me, and I am still angry about it.

That many Jews on the right now feel the same way is painful but also, I regret to say, not particularly surprising. All non-Jewish movements contain people who believe very ugly things about the Jews. The left has Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the right has its “alt” contingent and now Kanye West.

But I must say, and perhaps this will comfort him, that I do not agree with Haworth’s despairing conclusion that “no one cares about us.” In fact, there are non-Jews on both the right and the left who care very deeply about the Jews, whether they be Ritchie Torres on the left or Meghan McCain on the right. Sometimes they are forced to fight a rearguard action against the haters, but they are there, they are not to be underestimated and we must work to embrace them all.

Indeed, for Jews to believe that we have “no enemies to the left” is as absurd as believing we have “no enemies to the right.” There is no single political movement—except Zionism—that is monolithically philo-Semitic. Jews, in the end, have no right or left. We have only ourselves and our friends or enemies, wherever they may be on the political spectrum. To wholly commit ourselves to one side or the other only sets us up for a rude awakening followed by a terrible disillusionment.

"Documentary Series Exposes 3,000 Hours of Vile Leftist Antisemitism Recorded by Swedish Spy"

Zvi Yehezkeli, an Israeli television journalist and documentarian who heads the Arab desk at News 13, on Sunday night is launching “Sh’tula” (implant), a five-episode espionage docu-series on Channel 13, which reveals for the first time authentic documentation of what goes on behind the scenes of human rights organizations operating in Judea and Samaria.

The series was three years in the making. “There are 3,000 hours of footage, all of which required legal backing, and the content features many characters,” Yehezkeli told Ma’ariv. “In general, this thing is explosive, with the possibility of international lawsuits, so this process has been crazy. And it’s also the longest series I’ve ever done.”

The series “Sh’tula” follows a pro-Palestinian young Swedish woman who came to Israel as a tourist to study architecture. She met someone from the Eli settlement who explained that there’s another side to the Israeli-Arab story.

“Slowly, she is gaining ground within the human rights organizations that operate in Judea and Samaria and is actually becoming an intelligence agent,” Yehezkeli relates. “After a year, she reaches the real leadership, the Hamas people, who reveal to her the mechanism of raising money for the organizations, and the connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Hamas headquarters in Europe and human rights organizations. This means that human rights organizations like BDS are operated by Hamas members.”

“It became a treasure trove of intelligence, including secrets that Hamas members told her and are documented on paper,” he continues. “So, we started building a series out of it. It’s very complicated because there’s a lot of use of hidden cameras, and we also have to protect her life.”

At some point, Yehez told Army Radio on Sunday, his spy recorded a European activist who confessed on tape that she wanted to see all the Jews dead, on both sides of the “green line,” arguing that their very existence was rooted in sin. Should be fun to watch, especially if at some point you thought European activists were fair and even-handed and wanted only to help poor suffering Arabs.

Read More

10/15 Links: Top Law Firms Fund Anti-Semitic Campus Groups at Berkeley; White House ‘deeply disappointed’ after Abbas tells Putin he doesn’t trust US

From Ian:

Nation’s Top Law Firms Fund Anti-Semitic Campus Groups at Berkeley

A host of the nation’s premier law firms are financially supporting organizations at Berkeley Law School that are accused of fostering anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel, according to a campus watchdog group.

Student groups at the elite law school, led by Law Students for Justice in Palestine, adopted what they called a pro-Palestine bylaw earlier this month pledging to ban all speakers who support "Zionism" or "the apartheid state of Israel." The resolution primarily targets Jews who identify as pro-Israel and support the Jewish state, fueling accusations of anti-Semitism among Berkeley law students.

An analysis by StandWithUs, a nonpartisan pro-Israel organization that combats anti-Semitism on campus, indicates that half of the student groups that backed the resolution are funded in part by some of the country’s most elite law firms, including Latham & Watkins, Jenner & Block LLP, and Cooley LLP. StandWithUs is demanding these firms pull their support from the student groups, but, as of Friday, none have committed to do so. A Washington Free Beacon request for comment to 10 of the law firms named by StandWithUs was not returned by press time.

Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs’s CEO and cofounder, told the Free Beacon that she is hopeful once these law firms learn that they are financially backing anti-Semitism, they will pull their support.

"It is hard to fathom that such distinguished law firms would knowingly sponsor student groups that support anti-Semitism by punishing Jewish students for aspects of their identity," Rothstein said. "We are hopeful that as these firms learn about what their grantees have done, they will publicly and rapidly condemn the antisemitic action and cease further sponsorship of groups who are perpetrators of such hate."

Analysts offer pros and cons on Lebanon maritime deal but agree it will not make Israel safer

Opponents of the deal, among them opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, also complained that the agreement was a capitulation to Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy and the most powerful force in Lebanon. In July, the terrorist group launched three unarmed drones at an Israeli gas rig, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned that “no one” would drill gas as long as Lebanon’s “rights” to extract gas were not upheld.

Amidror said his central question was how Nasrallah would react. “What will be the assessment of Nasrallah? … If, sitting with his people, he says, ‘Guys, we won. Israel collapsed under the pressure. … The Israelis retreated because they don’t want another war with Hezbollah, and let’s think what will be the next space in which we can blackmail them.’… it might lead to escalation,” Amidror said.

David Schenker, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs during the Trump administration, shared Amidror’s concern during the JINSA webinar. “The big question for me is whether this agreement makes Israel safer. And this is what we’re hearing from the Israeli government. This is what we heard from the IDF. I think it’s to be determined. It could go either way. And the problem of Hezbollah doesn’t go away because of this agreement. It could potentially exacerbate the problem,” he said.

Schenker also offered a positive note, saying the deal would essentially turn Hezbollah and its Lebanese Christian allies into Israel’s business partners. “The Israeli government got … [them] … to sign off on a document that essentially recognizes Israel. This has never been done. … This discredits Hezbollah at home [and] undermines a little bit the resistance narrative,” Schenker said.

Amidror said proponents of the agreement have argued that what matters is that Israel can start drilling immediately, something “more important than all the symbolic lines in the sea.” He agreed that with the threat from Hezbollah at least temporarily shelved, oil and gas companies will more readily agree to explore in the area.

The U.S. has agreed to mediate between French oil giant TotalEnergies and Israel. TotalEnergies will drill in Lebanese waters and as part of the deal, Israel is to receive a percentage of revenue from gas that extends over the Lebanese line into Israeli waters. The U.S. also said that it would guarantee Israel’s security and economic rights should Hezbollah challenge the agreement. The U.S. provided Israel with a letter to that effect, Israeli sources said.

“It’s a PR paper. Legally, no one is obliged to fulfill it,” Amidror said. Schenker agreed, saying, “This letter, if it exists, doesn’t have any legal weight.”

Both analysts expressed concern that some of the funds from an offshore gas windfall could end up in the hands of Hezbollah. “I think the Lebanese already fear that this money will disappear into the abyss of corruption,” Schenker said. “There’s no transparency. The state does not have a sovereign wealth fund. Already there are contracts … by Total and others to shell companies that are partially owned by some of the most corrupt political elites in Lebanon.”

“We can expect that not only will it help Hezbollah’s allies benefit, but that Hezbollah to some extent will benefit as well,” he said.

Majority of Israelis Support Maritime Deal, Poll Shows

The majority of Israelis support the maritime border deal with Lebanon, believing it was the appropriate measure notwithstanding the coincidence with the election, according to an opinion poll released on Friday.

For 47 percent of respondents to Channel 12‘s survey, the signing of the agreement some three weeks before a general election represents the right decision, while 36 percent oppose it and 17 percent have no opinion on the matter.

On a separate topic, 47 percent of respondent believe that Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s main motivations for concluding the agreement were of a “political” nature, while 41 percent say the leader was guided by considerations of what is best for the security and economy of Israel.

In addition, 57 percent of those polled believe that former premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to the agreement and his harsh criticism of Lapid are political, compared to 31 percent who believe that his positions are motivated by Israel’s security and economy.

Israel’s security cabinet voted on Wednesday afternoon in favor of the maritime border deal with Lebanon. The text is now subject to approval by the parliament.

Lapid hailed the Lebanon deal on Wednesday, saying it was “a great achievement for the state of Israel, for Israel’s security and for Israel’s economy.”

Netanyahu meanwhile accused the government of caving in to external pressures and putting Israel’s security at risk.

Read More

10/13 Links Pt1: How to Lose Friends and Influence Over People; Lebanon's Bait-and-Switch Treaty; Israel Passing Intelligence to Ukraine on Iranian-Made Suicide Drones

From Ian:

Yeah, Buoy!!!

The government’s new pitch was that this would be the real benefit of the deal: preserving and enhancing Israel’s security interests through the now-famous buoy line. Barak Ravid, the local Israeli journalistic mouthpiece of the Obama-Biden policy team from the Iran deal days, relayed that government officials who briefed reporters on the deal said that anchoring the “line of buoys” was “very important” because “in the last 20 years the Israeli military operated along this line unilaterally and the Lebanese side had international legitimacy to challenge it.” The deal, however, “will allow Israel to treat it as its northern territorial border.”

In other words, in the two decades up to this moment, Israel has had total freedom to operate in the area to ensure its security against Hezbollah. However, without the deal, the terror pseudo-state to its north would suddenly have enjoyed “international legitimacy” to challenge Israel. That sounds very serious—and certainly warrants ceding territory with potential energy resources under threat of force to a terrorist group that is stockpiling and pointing tens of thousands of rockets at you.

Needless to say, the Lebanese side disagrees with the Israeli reading. Instead, it claims another point on land farther south at Naqoura. Squaring this circle, probably with some creative language, is what the U.S. mediator likely has been busy figuring out.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz was spit-balling another set of talkers: “This is an agreement whose essence is economic,” Gantz said last week. “And if it is signed, we, as well as Lebanon and its citizens, who are suffering from a severe crisis, will enjoy it for years to come.” The logic here was that if Lebanon gets its rig in its Block 9 opposite Israel’s rig at Karish, then Hezbollah will have a stake in maintaining calm and smooth operation of both rigs. So, in the future, if Hezbollah attacks Israeli energy infrastructure, Israel can target a gas rig owned and operated by France’s Total—putting France on Hezbollah’s side.

This pretense of hard security and pseudo-deterrence posture rang even more hollow as it clashed with another key government talker: that Israel had to conclude this awful deal ASAP if it wanted to avoid a new war with Hezbollah. An IDF official sent out to make this pitch put it this way: “There is an urgency and a necessity to reach an agreement in the near future and without delay, in order to prevent an escalation of security [dangers], which is [otherwise] highly likely, and to utilize the unique window of opportunity to reach an agreement.”

The logic here was itself unique in the annals of deterrence: If your psychopathic neighbor keeps slashing the tires on your shiny Mercedes, the solution is to buy him a spanking brand-new Mercedes of his own that you can then pretend to hold hostage.

The source of this weird pitch was again the Biden administration. As a senior U.S. administration official relayed through Ravid, the reason Biden wanted Lapid to wrap up the deal within weeks was “because the issue has become urgent and the lack of an agreement could lead to dangerous consequences for the region.”

Yet when U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted that he was troubled by how the Biden administration “pressured our Israeli allies” into a comically terrible deal, the Washington arm of the Obama-Biden messaging machine sprang into action. The progressive lobbying group J Street put out a brief that “fact checked” Sen. Cruz’s ignorant partisanship. Daniel Shapiro, Obama’s former ambassador to Israel who is intimately familiar with the communications environment in Israel, weighed in, regurgitating the same exact talkers and asserting that it was “definitely NOT” American pressure that pushed Israel into this deal.

Yet the reason the Biden administration announced that a gas deal was a key priority was precisely because it’s a deal with Hezbollah. Stabilizing and investing in Iranian regional “equities” is at the core of the Obama-Biden doctrine of realignment with Iran. It’s how you achieve “regional integration”—by publicly showcasing your ability to pressure your allies to prop up Iranian assets, even as the Iranian people are being mowed down in the streets.

How to Lose Friends and Influence Over People

Americans have a reputation, with others and in their own national literature, for being careless and breaking things. Often this is because they are so admirably creative, dynamic, and unattached to the past. But for the last two decades, the epicenter of American carelessness has been the Middle East, an area of the world that seems to encourage fantasies among all Westerners, yet where real-world margins for error are small. The result has been a series of disasters for the peoples of the region and for American prestige. This week brought what looks like another unforced error in policymaking, fed by hubris, fantasy, airy talk, and a refusal to acknowledge reality.

On Tuesday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby announced that President Joe Biden will be reevaluating America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia after OPEC+ announced the previous week that it would cut oil production. Kirby’s announcement followed a statement by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., claiming that Saudi Arabia is helping to “underwrite Putin’s war” through OPEC+. “As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” Menendez said, “I will not green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the Kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine.”

As a Saudi who loves the United States, and believes deeply that our two countries need each other, the only word that comes to mind regarding the contemporary “reevaluation” of our relations is: obscene.

It was the Obama administration that decided to give Vladimir Putin a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean, which it sold to the American people as a way to “deescalate” the civil war in Syria. As the United States romanced Putin, offering him Crimea and warm water ports in Syria in exchange for pulling Iran’s irons out of the fire over the past decade, U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Israel have had no choice but to cope. Last month, while Russian-operated Iranian drones and missiles were pounding Kyiv, Riyadh used its diplomatic leverage to obtain the release of American and British POWs from Putin.

America saddled us with the reality of a neighboring country controlled by Iranian troops and the Russian air force. Worse, as part of its Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Obama administration sent tens of billions of dollars flowing into Iranian coffers—money that was used to demolish Iraq, crush Syria, create chaos in Lebanon, and threaten Saudi territory from Yemen. Iranian rocket and drone strikes on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia are now routine. In response to the barrage of missiles on Saudi infrastructure last year, the Biden administration withdrew U.S. missile defense batteries from Saudi territory.

Having watched Russian forces support or directly commit atrocities against innocent civilians and facilitate the use of chemical weapons for seven years in Syria, the Saudi government was quick to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Unlike many in the West, who expected a short, parade-ground war, the Saudis understood full well what Putin was capable of. So did the Israelis.

Why Jerusalem Is the Right Location for the UK's Embassy

Up until 1948, the world generally referred to "Palestinians" as the Jews who lived in what was to become modern Israel. The "Palestinian" flag until 1948 contained a Magen David, the Palestine Post was the region's Jewish newspaper and Palestinian football teams comprised Jews.

Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Old City and eastern Jerusalem by the invading Jordanian and Arab armies in 1948. Jews were the majority of the population of the Old City. Synagogues were desecrated and destroyed and the vibrant Jewish community erased. The Jewish neighborhood of Simon HaTsadik (Simon the Just) became the Muslim area of Sheikh Jarrah.

The default position for the location of an embassy is a country's capital city, and it is for the country itself to decide its location. Israel has declared that Jerusalem is its capital city and this must be respected. The UK already has a consulate in eastern Jerusalem to serve the local Arab communities. Why, therefore, should there not be an embassy in Jerusalem to serve Israeli citizens?

The Abraham Accords and the immense benefits for the region flowing from them has shown that the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem has had no adverse effect. Neither would the relocation of the British embassy.

Read More

10/05 Links: The Yom Kippur War: Fifty minus one; On Yom Kippur, Cornell Set to Host Professor Who Compared Jews to Nazis; Medics treat 2,741 for cycling injuries, Yom Kippur fasting effects, deliver 1 baby

From Ian:

The Yom Kippur War: Fifty minus one

Next year will mark fifty years. Fifty years ago, as a young, almost twenty-three-year-old, I had the experience of a lifetime.

Was I a foolish idealist? Perhaps. I had wanted to be “kravi,” a warrior soldier. I had wished for a combat unit. I excelled and had all of the recommendations that accompanied that excellence. Although assigned to guard an IDF intel unit and fully aware of what was happening “de facto” in front of my eyes, nothing prepared me for the brutality of what was to come a few months later, Yom Kippur, October 6th, 1973. Nothing.

The sounds, the deafening roar of low-flying fighter jets, the explosions of artillery and mortar shells all around, the firing of my own weapons. The smell, cordite and death, fire and destruction smoldering everywhere, along roads and fields. The sights, yes, those sights, leaving indelible imprints on my memory to this very day.

And yet, the war itself prepared me for my love of peace. After countless days in Syria, after a new call to duty to become a tank commander, after so many deployments to Israel’s southern front, the Sinai at first, later Egypt and the new border, and then the Gaza Strip and Gaza City itself, all that prepared me for the love of peace.

I served with farmers, kibbutzniks like myself, and like myself watched as we collectively allowed our idealism to slip away. I served with small-town entrepreneurs, small business owners, calculating their economic losses while they bravely defended the homeland. City dwellers, bankers and professionals, CEOs and police detectives, we all wore green and we all came when we were called. And with our own eyes, we saw the dire poverty within the Strip and the contrasting opulence of the villas in Gaza City.

And then Hebron, where some residents of Kiryat Arba went on nightly excursions to vandalize Palestinian property. And, the next morning it was our small two-jeep patrols who would pay the price, having rocks and Molotov cocktails hurled in our direction.

Yes, the Yom Kippur War, fifty years less one ago, prepared me for all that and prepared me for peace. Do not mistake my love of peace. I remain a hawk when it comes to dealing harshly with those who wish to harm the citizens of Israel. Do not mistake my love of peace for weakness in the face of terror. I have seen it. I have experienced it. I have lost dear friends to terror.

The trauma of Israel's Yom Kippur War was fully justified

One of the first decisions that Gen. David Elazar faced when he was appointed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff in 1970 was whether to continue resting Israel’s front line on the Suez Canal. Gen. Ariel Sharon and others warned that such a deployment in an area dominated by massive Egyptian artillery and anti-tank weapons could become a trap – not just for the soldiers in scattered outposts along the 100-mile-long canal but for the tanks that would undoubtedly be sent to rescue them if war broke out. Sharon recommended establishing the front line well back from the canal, beyond Egyptian artillery range, to reduce the danger of a surprise attack. But Elazar decided to remain on the canal where – for political reasons – Israel could “show the flag.” Of the 500 Israeli soldiers manning the line, a third would be killed, a third taken prisoner and a third would manage to escape at night through the Egyptian encirclement.

THE SAGGER
The Armored Corps had been informed by AMAN that the Arab armies had acquired large stocks of a new Soviet anti-tank weapon, the Sagger. Unlike the ubiquitous RPG, which could kill a tank within 300 meters, the Sagger could be fired accurately by a soldier lying in the sand a mile away, virtually invisible to the Israeli tank crews. The armored corps was attempting to devise tactics to deal with the threat but meanwhile it had not informed the corps as a whole about the Sagger’s existence. When Israeli tanks attempted to reach the beleaguered Bar-Lev Line in the opening hours of the war many were knocked out by Saggers without the tank crews knowing what hit them. For several days, these weapons succeeded in keeping Israel’s formidable tank units at bay just as the air force was being kept at bay over the battlefields.

Despite the war’s nightmarish opening, the IDF succeeded, after the ground steadied under its feet, in staging one of the most dramatic turnarounds in military history, a feat too complex to be described here. The war ended with the Israeli army on the roads to Damascus and Cairo. It was a victory not only over Egypt and Syria but over the Arab world, from North Africa to Iraq, which sent fresh contingents to the battlefronts, even as Israeli troops were being steadily eroded. In Iraq’s case, two tank brigades blocked the Israelis who had reached artillery range of Damascus.

The cost of the fierce battles on both fronts would be high. Israel suffered three times more fatalities per capita in 18 days of combat than the Americans suffered in Vietnam in a decade.

It would be years before Israelis could view the war as anything but a disaster. Eventually, however, most would concede to themselves that it had been a military victory. In fact, Israel’s greatest. If the country could overcome the terrible hand it had dealt itself on Yom Kippur it would survive. The war was an extraordinary demonstration of Israel’s resilience and the Arab world would see it too. Six years later Israel would sign a peace treaty with its most formidable opponent, Egypt – the first with an Arab country but not the last.

Yom Kippur War: Why Israelis haven't made fictional films about it

Why have so many years gone by since the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and so few Israeli filmmakers have turned their hands to depicting it? There have been a plethora of television documentaries about bereavement and about the soldiers – those who survived and those who didn’t – but, not many feature films have been made about this important war in Israel’s history.

Why have our most successful filmmakers, all of whom have made serious (anti-)war films, not made fictional accounts of the Yom Kippur War?

The answer is certainly complicated, mostly dealing with the deep and long-lasting trauma of the war, which makes it so difficult to confront.

According to Aner Preminger, who teaches cinema studies at Hebrew University and is a well-known filmmaker, the Yom Kippur War is “the most traumatic war that Israel ever went through, for a number of reasons: its intensiveness; the number of deaths, wounded, and victims of shell shock during such a short period; the surprise; and the downfall after the euphoria of the Six Day War,” he says.

“In fact, we are still today in the post-traumatic period of this war,” Preminger says. “Dealing face-on with such a difficult wound of trauma is complex and complicated, psychologically speaking. It is more natural to hide from it and to deal with it only from afar.”

According to this view, the trauma of the surprise attack and the terrible losses on the battlefield of the Yom Kippur War remain very much with us, and therefore it is very difficult to portray it in fictional films.

Another reason that Israeli filmmakers have kept away from the difficult subject matter of this war has to do with the fact that this particular war was accepted – throughout Israeli society – as a war of defense, a war for which we had no choice, thereby making it difficult to look at it critically: cinematically, politically or militarily.

In contrast, the War in Lebanon from 1982-2000 lent itself to criticism from the very beginning. It was a war of choice, a war entered into recklessly and without forethought about the long-term implications, which provided excellent material that filmmakers could easily dig their teeth into.

Read More

Rashida Tlaib, the Lion's Den, and the ubiquity of Jew-hate across political boundaries (plus comic)

Last week, member of Congress Rashida Tlaib said  at a Palestine Advocacy Day event, “I want you all to know that among progressives, it becomes clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values yet back Israel‘s apartheid government.” 

The formulation asserts both the lie that Israel is an apartheid state and that people cannot be both progressive and support Israel. 

One does not see similar litmus tests for progressives. Indeed, the virtually unanimous support that the anti-Israel crowd has for the emphatically Islamist, regressive groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad shows the absurdity of the idea that these supposed progressives support only progressive causes.

This was already evident back in 2006 when gender theorist Judith Butler said, "Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important." 

If Hamas is part of the global Left, and an Israel where there are equal rights for Arabs and women and gays is cast as part of the bigoted far-Right, then the terms have lost all meaning.

But there is another political theory that is far more powerful than the arbitrary Left/Right divide. 

Jew-hatred explains the obvious contradictions between what "progressives" claim to believe and what they actually believe. 

And it works both ways. Far right Jew haters, who are far more willing to take pride in their bigotry, regularly pretend to be pro-Palestinian - happily quoting the most far-Left personalities. The racist shooters at Overland Park and Pittsburgh  were partly fueled by the antisemitism of the Left. 

The far-Right pretense of caring about Palestinian human rights is as transparently false as the far-Left pretense of caring about women's and gay rights while supporting Hamas. 

Another proof that antisemitism trumps Left/Right politics comes from the new West Bank terror group, called The Lion's Den. As Khaled Abu Toameh reports:

This is the first organized armed group that consists of gunmen belonging to a number of Palestinian factions – including Fatah, Hamas, IJ and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The PFLP is a Communist group. Islamic Jihad and Hamas are Islamist groups. How can they work together?

Because for antisemites, there is no Right and Left. Those political affiliations are excuses for their hate of Jews, not the reasons for it. Arab antisemites are far less wedded to their supposed Leftist or Islamist Rightist causes than they are to hating Jews - but it is the exact same logic that allows Western "progressives" to be as hypocritical as Western white supremacists who pretend to love Palestinian Arabs. 

The only consistency is Jew-hate. 

Perhaps it is time to resurrect the political parties like the late 19th century Deutschsoziale Antisemitische Partei whose primary ideological basis was antisemitism, so these people on the Right and Left can join together and enjoy consistent political positions. 

The Lion's Den is a model for how today's antisemites can put aside their differences for the greater good of ethnically cleansing Jews from the planet.

---

---

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!

 

Read More