Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: anti-Israel

Showing posts with label anti-Israel. Show all posts

Thursday, November 10, 2022

National Library of Tunisia stands up to antisemitic bigots

This week, The National Library of Tunisia sponsored an international symposium called "The Forgotten Languages of Tunisia," about works written by Tunisians in languages that are not widely studied in Tunisia nowadays, including Turkish, Berber, Hebrew and a flavor of Judeo-Arabic that is still spoken in Djerba.

Because of the latter two languages, the symposium was interrupted by antisemites, upset that Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic would be discussed in a scholarly environment. The protesters claimed that this was a form of "normalization" with Israel.

For two hours, the protesters stopped the symposium, chanting, "No to Zionism", "No to Judaism", "No normalization with Israel", "Brainless Jews", "No to Holocaust Museum" , "The Tunisian people are a free people who will not fold to the pernicious Zionist project."

Newspaper Al Chourouk complained that one of the speakers, Jonas Sinony, is a Jew with a Polish (Jewish) mother. (He is a scholar of semitic languages.)

The good news is that the story doesn't end the way that most of these do.

Unlike most cases of attempted cancellation in Arab countries, the library stuck to its guns.

The director of the National Library stayed calm in the face of the screaming protesters, repeating that they will not yield to intimidation.

On their Facebook page, they wrote,

The seminar "Forgotten Languages" was a success, and everyone resisted in the face of the forces of bigotry and extortion.

The presentations were valuable and posted on this page, the fair was a success, and the accusations of "normalization" are oppressive and unjust.

Many thanks to the attendees who sympathized with the National Library and remained in the hall waiting for the scholarly sessions despite the desire of a group of people to cancel them.

Many thanks to the helpers of the National Library who fought to defend and preserve the institution.
And many thanks to the members of the library core union for standing up to the aggressors.

Thanks also to the security forces who negotiated with the aggressors and forced them out peacefully.

66 years after independence, and 11 years after the revolution of dignity, we will not accept the confiscation of freedom of speech and academic freedoms, and we will not accept any arbitrary decision from those who forget that we have become free.

The newspaper "Kapitalis" was also angry at the protesters, writing, "This is our heritage and history, and we are the most worthy to study it. By knowledge we are liberated, not by cancellation, erasure and denial."

"These groups (that protested), who pretend to be defending Palestine, will drag the country into more ignorance and misery," the newspaper quoted observers. "These armies of ignorance, fools, ignorant people and promoters of violence are issuing fatwas against Professor Raja Ben Salama, director of the National Library. They will not rest until they get rid of all the enlightened people and assassinate knowledge..."

I do not recall reading such a direct attack at antisemites in any Arabic media. Normally the most extreme voices win by default, because moderates in Arab countries are not willing to risk being publicly slandered as "Zionists" or "Jews."

This is a very encouraging story, and it will take many more similar stories to root out the antisemitism endemic in the Arab world.

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!

A French court ruled Israel's "occupation" is legal. The UN makes up new laws to say otherwise.

The UN Commission of Inquiry - which is not a court - decided that Israel's occupation is illegal, which is pretty much new legal ground. And the Commission even admits it!

Its report says, "It is unclear in international law and practice when a situation of belligerent occupation becomes unlawful." But that doesn't stop it from trying - and then pretending it did!

A number of legal experts have identified several principles that, when adhered to, may be used to determine the legality of an occupation. These include whether sovereignty and title are not vested in the occupying power, the occupying power is entrusted with the management of public order and civil life in the occupied territory, the people under occupation are the beneficiaries of that trust in view of their right to self-determination, and the occupation is temporary.

In the present report, the Commission focuses on two indicators that may be used to determine the illegality of the occupation: the permanence of the Israeli occupation, already noted in its previous report to the Human Rights Council at its fiftieth session, and actions amounting to annexation, including unilateral actions taken to dispose of parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory as if Israel held sovereignty over it.

No legal precedent. Just asking some "experts" who are anti-Israel - and not asking legal experts who are not already antipathetic towards the Jewish state.

In short, the UN is making things up to come to a pre-determined conclusion by cherry picking legal scholars who agree with that conclusion - and not even seeking the opinions of anyone else.

Yet none of these assumptions as to what makes an occupation illegal - a concept that is virtually sui generis, made up for Israel - are based on actual legal rulings. They are making up novel arguments, treating them as established law, and hoping that people believe it.

There is one case that is precedent for the legality of Israel's presence in the West Bank. And, naturally, the UN doesn't cite it.

In 2013, a French court of appeals ruled in a mostly forgotten but quite important case (Association FRANCE-PALESTINE SOLIDARITE “AFPS” and PLO et. al. vs. SOCIETE ALSTOM TRANSPORT SA) that Israel's presence in the West Bank is a case of legal occupation.

The PLO had claimed that Israel's occupation is illegal based on a hodgepodge of arguments, such as claiming that Israel violates the Hague Convention IX of 1907, Article 5, that says "In bombardments by naval forces all the necessary measures must be taken by the commander to spare as far as possible sacred edifices, buildings used for artistic, scientific, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick or wounded are collected, on the understanding that they are not used at the same time for military purposes...."

The court acidly noted that there were no bombardments of Jerusalem.

More importantly, the French court ruled that the PLO's claims of being occupied under the Hague and Geneva Conventions were invalid to begin with, because those conventions are based on one nation invading the territory of another "high contracting power" and the PLO was not a state.

The case is summarized here.

It is the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 that an independent, non-Israeli court has been called upon to examine the legal status of West bank territories under international law, beyond the political claims of the parties.

While this court does not decide international law, it examined international law and ruled according to those laws. As such, it should have been referred to by the UN COI as a precedent, or at least as a source for legal arguments.

Of course, the COI does nothing of the sort. The French court ruled the "wrong" way and therefore must be ignored, while wholly new legal opinions must be promoted.

Because the UN COI is not trying to determine the truth. Its entire purpose is to twist law and facts to create a new legal framework and a new "truth" tailor-made to damn Israel.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Alex Kane at Jewish Currents justifies terrorism

At the socialist site Jewish Currents, writer Alex Kane provides us with an excellent example of anti-Israel agitprop - and even justification of terrorism - disguised as a critical analysis of the definition of terrorism.

Like all good propaganda, the article starts off with a very reasonable point:

ON OCTOBER 9TH, a Palestinian shot and killed Noa Lazar, an Israeli soldier serving at a checkpoint near the Shuafat refugee camp. Three days later, a Palestinian gunman killed Ido Baruch, a soldier who was guarding Israeli settlers as they marched near the Palestinian town of Sebastia in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called the Shuafat attack a “severe terrorist attack,” and said the assailant behind Baruch’s shooting was a “despicable terrorist.” The Jerusalem Post, Israel HaYom and i24 News referred to the Shuafat shooting as a “terrorist” act. The centrist Anti-Defamation League as well as the liberal Zionist J Street also referred to the shootings as “terror” attacks.

This broad consensus across the Zionist political spectrum reflects a commonly-held view among many Israelis and Israel advocates that the killings of soldiers engaged in a military occupation are acts of “terror,” in the same category as indiscriminate attacks on civilians. But this view represents only one pole of a discursive struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, and, more broadly, Western countries and formerly-colonized nations, who have clashed in international fora like the United Nations (UN) over whether violence against agents of a military occupation ought to count as “terrorism.”

While different countries have codified their own definitions of terrorism in their national laws, “there is no international legal consensus on the meaning of terrorism,” said Ben Saul, Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney and author of the book Defining Terrorism in International Law. According to Saul, there is general agreement among states that the deliberate killing of civilians to achieve political goals constitutes terrorism; the disagreement lies in “whether insurgent or guerrilla attacks on soldiers in armed conflicts should also be called terrorism.”

Kane is partially correct - not only Israel but most Western nations and media usually refer to attacks on their own soldiers as terrorist attacks, but generally not attacks on other nations' soldiers (not just "agents of a military occupation" as Kane claims.) For example, the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed over 300 US and French soldiers was referred to as a terrorist attack in US statements and news articles even though the targets were military.

However, the official definitions of terrorism adopted by many countries do not give exceptions for attacks against soldiers. Most Western countries make no mention of civilian or non-combatant targets in their definitions. The FBI defines international terrorism based on the identity of the attackers being associated with designated terror groups; attacks against armed forces are not excluded.

Be that as it may, Kane's initial point has validity - one instinctively associates terror attacks with civilian targets - and he leverages that to skillfully pretend that other criticisms of the use of the term have equal validity.

Since 2000, countries at the UN have tried to come to a consensus on what’s called the Comprehensive Terrorism Convention, which would codify the criminalization of terrorism in international law. But consensus has again stalled due to disagreements on how to classify national liberation struggles. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a body of 57 mostly Muslim-majority countries, argues that violence committed by those in a struggle for self-determination—a term referring to a people’s ability to form their own state and govern themselves—should not be covered by the terrorism convention but rather by international humanitarian law, which governs the permissible use of force based in part on the “principle of distinction” between civilians and soldiers. The OIC’s argument is aimed at exempting Palestinian and Kashmiri fighters from being considered “terrorists” under international law when they launch attacks on Israeli or Indian soldiers who currently occupy their lands. The African Union and League of Arab States share the OIC’s perspective: Both bodies have adopted regional terrorism conventions that exclude struggles for national liberation from their definition of terrorism.

Here's where we see the depth of Kane's dishonesty. Building on his initial point, he frames the objections of the OIC and others in terms of their targets, saying that their main objections are against considering attacks on "occupying soldiers" to be terrorism.

But that is not what they are saying. The OIC's proposed definition would exempt any attack, even against civilians, even targeting women and children, from being considered terrorism as long as they are "in situations of foreign occupation" or any "armed conflict." It was written, at the height of the second intifada, deliberately to excuse Palestinian suicide and bus bombings.

And this is borne out by parallel activities by anti-Israel activists who have attempted to claim that even directly targeting Jewish civilians are part of a legitimate "right to resist" - by any means. Richard Falk, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, wrote that "Palestinian resistance to occupation is a legally protected right" specifically in reference to the second intifada attacks on Jewish civilians.

Kane is presenting these justifications for attacks on civilians as merely objections to use of the term "terrorism" against soldiers. By not mentioning these facts, he is framing the controversy over the definition of the term "terrorism" as two sides making reasonable, equally valid points and that their disagreements are only about attacking the military.

Kane then subtly justifies attacks on civilians, again by using misdirection to pretend he is only talking about soldiers:

According to George Bisharat, an emeritus professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, “terrorism” is “a buzzword” intending to cast violence against occupation soldiers as illegitimate. In Israel/Palestine, “it’s being used for its political and rhetorical impact to discredit any violent resistance against Israel’s occupation,” he said, which is why “the non-aligned nations, as they call themselves, are insistent on the principle that violence exercised to advance the right of self-determination is not illegal.”

The legal distinction Kane is making has suddenly changed from target of the violence (ostensibly, soldiers) is to the reason for the violence - "self-determination." Kane introduces Bisharat as only talking about targeting soldiers, but Bisharat's words say otherwise. If "violence exercised to advance the right of self-determination is not illegal" then that includes all attacks, including civilians. (Bisharat himself knows that attacks on civilians is illegal, but he is unhappy about it, ludicrously complaining that the inaccuracy of Palestinian rockets makes it too difficult for Palestinians to adhere to international law by only hitting military targets.)

Which means that Kane is classifying attacks on civilians as just another valid position. He's too smart to say it explicitly, but the Bisharat sentence is in fact the main point that he wants to give the reader - that Palestinian terrorism is legitimate because it is resistance.

In fact, the tone of the article is that Israel is unjustifiably referring to legitimate resistance as terrorism, while those who have cheered and funded the murder of Jewish civilians (the non-aligned nations) have solid legal ground for their support.

There is another layer to Kane's propaganda techniques.

This entire article is meant to obfuscate a basic fact. By only talking about Palestinian attacks on soldiers, he is implying that soldiers are the main targets of the terror groups. But the terrorists, whether they are Hamas or Fatah or Lion's Den, make no such distinctions. Their own words and publications never say that they only want to attack soldiers - their targets are "settlers" and, to them, every Israeli Jew is a "settler." When they attack soldiers and guards it is because those are the ones on the front lines, not out of any concern for international law or the definition of terrorism. When the armed groups have the opportunity, they attack civilians, and indeed they prefer to attack civilians because they are softer targets.

This is why the attackers are terrorists by any definition. And that is exactly what Alex Kane and Jewish Currents wants you to forget.

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!

To Palestinians, women are only good for being terrorists - or mothers of terrorists

Today is National Day of Palestinian Women.

The theme of the day was to pressure Israel to release terrorists from prison.

The participants in supportive vigils for prisoners organized by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in coordination with the governorates, on the occasion of the National Day of Palestinian Women, today, Monday, stressed the need to form a fact-finding committee to study the situation of male and female prisoners and discuss it with the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, and to facilitate and facilitate regular and regular family visits for female and male prisoners.

For its part, the Ministry of Women's Affairs called, in a press release, on the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, to put pressure on the Israeli occupation, the occupying power, to end the file of administrative detention and to abolish the policy of solitary confinement and stop its use against Palestinians.

What does that have to do with women? Not much, but they tried to shoe-horn it in, by mentioning female prisoners (a whopping seven prisoners are mothers, out of 30 total) and that Palestinian women are suffering when their husbands or sons are in prison.

Nablus Governor Ibrahim Ramadan said, "The wounded, the martyr, and the captive represent the homeland. Without them, there is no homeland. We support their mothers who shed tears for their children for the sake of the homeland."

To Palestinians, women are there to make male babies to blow up Jews, and this is their highest purpose.

If you think this sounds sexist, that is because it is. Even a Palestinian Women's Day is hijacked into anti-Israel incitement, and Palestinian women are shoved to the side on their supposed special day.

The website of the Minister of Women's Affairs - who very ministry's existence is proof that Palestinian women are regarded as peripheral to society - features several statistics showing exactly how little women are regarded in their society:

96% of Chambers of Commerce members are men

15 of 16 governors are men

89% of foreign envoys are men

87% of cabinet members are men

95% of PA Central Council members are men

89% of members of the National Assembly are men

This is the reality of women's rights in the PA - and it is worse in Gaza under Hamas.

The Ministry of Women's Affairs, like the National Day of Palestinian Women, are symbolic shell institutions to make the gullible West (and pesky Palestinian women) believe that something is being done to address the inequalities in Palestinian society. They exist so the PLO can report to the UN how many accomplishments they have achieved - "look, we put resources into women's rights!" But none of it translates to anything that actually helps Palestinian women.

And the anti-Israel feminists of the world don't give a damn.

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!

The child and the bus: a tale of Israel in 15 seconds

This video of a Jewish child, no more than 6, flagging down a bus in Beit Shemesh and getting on by himself is starting to go viral:

Imagine a place where children could, without fear, go out by themselves and take the bus around town.

It sounds utopian, doesn't it?

And parents outside Israel would naturally flinch at seeing a video like this. So many dangers to worry about - kidnapping, abuse, or worse.

But this is how the world should be.

The reason Israelis can act this way in Jewish neighborhoods is because everyone is family. People aren't competing with each other - they are all on the same team, the same tribe, and they look out for each other. They have each others' backs.

And this is what the anti-Israel activists want to destroy.

They don't give a damn about Palestinian rights - their silence about Palestinians languishing in Lebanon and Syria makes that clear.

The modern antisemites want to take away the Jewish right to live in safety and security. Their enemy is this little kid, his tzitzit openly visible, able to freely travel around his hometown on the local bus without his parents worrying that he'll make it home safely.

Much of Israel, today, is the utopia that everyone else wants for themselves. And for some of them, their jealousy at Jews successfully building such a utopia is what animates them to want to tear it down.

Don't believe the lies that they care about justice or international law or, ludicrously, Palestinian "self defense." What they want is for Jews to return to being a frightened minority who are not safe, not secure, and not free.

They hate this child because he goes against everything they want to believe about Jews.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Thank Allah: Yemen closes shop that sold "Zionist" clothing, bringing charges against the owner

Field teams of the Yemen Ministry of Industry and Trade in Sanaa closed a shop selling children's pajamas with the Star of David on them on Wednesday.

The Minister of Industry and Trade, Muhammad Sharaf al-Mutahhar, stressed his ministry will not be lenient towards those involved in importing and trading Israeli goods or those bearing symbols of the Israeli enemy.

Al-Mutahar expressed his thanks for citizens who reported this horrendous crime.

Samples of the offensive pajamas were taken and through intensive investigation, the importer was identified.

The Deputy Director of the Industry Office in the Secretariat, Muhammad Sudan, said that the field teams closed the shop of the merchant who imported the awful clothing, stressing that the necessary legal procedures are being completed to refer him to the competent authorities.

The streets of Yemen are safe again.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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FAIR - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - shows extreme disrespect towards Israeli Arabs

FAIR - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - issued a report by Nora Lester Murad that claims that books for toddlers and youngsters that introduce kids to Israel are pretty much racist against Palestinians, because - they aren't about Palestinians.

However, Murad's critique exposes her own disdain for Arabs who live in Israel as well as her own hate for Israeli Jews.

Even though the books aren't about Palestinians, and aren't meant to be, she says that they"erase" Palestinians.

First, Murad claims that they erase through "appropriation:"

Rah! Rah! Mujadara!, for example, is a 12-page board book for ages 1–4 that has an attractive tagline: “Everybody likes hummus, but that’s just one of the great variety of foods found in Israel among its diverse cultures.”

There’s a subtlety in that tagline that may be lost on some. While diversity is acknowledged, it is represented only within the Israeli sphere, without its own history and separate identity. This is a political position that jibes with Israel’s intentional deployment of the term “Israeli Arabs” to refer to Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, whom Israel wants to incorporate as an Israeli minority, fragmenting them from the larger Palestinian community and from their national identity.

To progressives, referring to someone in ways that they object to - say, by using the wrong pronoun - is an unforgivable crime. But only a small percentage of Israeli Arabs refer to themselves as "Palestinian." According to a 2020 poll from Jewish People Policy Institute, only 7% referred to themselves as "Palestinian" while 74% referred to themselves as "Arab Israeli" or simply "Israeli."

FAIR is showing great disrespect to the people they are claiming to be defending from this book. And the simple children's book is far more accurate in its depiction of Arabs in Israel than FAIR is.

The critique then veers into the absurd:

Newbies to the the Israeli/Palestinian narrative war may also not realize that food is an active battleground. Palestinians consider Israel’s claiming of hummus and falafel, among other foods, to be cultural appropriation.

Palestinians, therefore, are likely to consider both the people and the food appropriated when the same [Muslim] girl is featured behind the text:

Blow, slow.
Taste. Whoa!
Brown fa-LA-fel,
big green mouthful!

Since the state of Israel is not even 75 years old, any food with a longer pedigree must have been originated by someone else. But while Kar-Ben Publishing is surely aware of this contention, they either choose to ignore it or intentionally intend to steer readers towards the Israeli narrative—by hiding the Palestinian one.

But does the book say that falafel is an Israeli-created dish, or does it say that it is a dish that Israeli citizens of all backgrounds enjoy? Clearly it is the latter - "the great variety of foods found in Israel among its diverse cultures." It mentions bagels too - does anyone claim that they are Israeli? Other foods in the book are meant to highlight the different cultures that come together in Israeli society: nowhere does it claim that malawach, mujadara, hummus, or bourekas were created by Israelis except in the fevered imagination of Nora Lester Murad.

Murad is apparently opposed to kids from different backgrounds finding things in common that they like from different cultures. This hardly seems progressive.

Murad then says that books about Israel that show the Dome of the Rock are "erasure through deception" because, she claims, "east Jerusalem" is not part of Israel. However, Israel disagrees, and so do many international jurists. To Jews, the idea of an Israel without the holy places is anathema and extraordinarily offensive. There is no deception there - people who say that all of Jerusalem is part of Israel have that right.

But FAIR doesn't recognize that right. We must all believe as they do, or we are racists. So tolerant!

The next "erasure" is "Erasure through both-sidesism." Yes, books about Israel that go out of their way to show Arab Israelis are awful, too - and her main target is, believe it or not, Sesame Street.

Welcome to Israel With Sesame Street (Christy Peterson, Lerner Publishing, 2021)...[has a] “both sides” approach, starting by teaching children how to say hello in both Hebrew and Arabic (pages 4–5). This “both sides” approach makes a nice visual while hiding Israel’s disrespect for Arabic and Arabic speakers, which is clear in the fact that Arabic had been an official language of Israel until it was officially downgraded in the 2018 Jewish Nation State Law.

Of course, Murad pointedly doesn't mention that the use of Arabic in government documents and in the public sphere is still mandated under Israeli law. Israel still supports and funds its Arabic-language schools. There is no disrespect in reality. But why let the facts get in the way of anti-Israel soundbites?

Presenting “both sides” is a device used to appear neutral, which conjures a sense of objectivity and truth. It is also a way to stake a claim to antiracism and respect. For example, page 11 says that Jerusalem is “special to people of many religions,” over a photo of Palestinian school girls, some wearing the Muslim hijab.

But presenting Palestinians only as linguistic and religious minorities of Israel, and not as a national group in and of itself, is an Israeli narrative tactic that dehumanizes Palestinians and undermines readers’ ability to understand Israel. While appearing respectful of diversity, the text and photo cleverly omit that Israel is an explicitly, self-declared Jewish state, that enshrines Jewish supremacy over non-Jews (and the corresponding inequality of Palestinians) by saying, in law, that only Jews have the right to self-determination.

A book for children that celebrates Israel's diversity is regarded as flawed because it should show what Murad declares to be the truth, that Israel is a racist state that doesn't give its Arab citizens equal rights.

This is all a lie, of course. The same poll I mentioned above shows that virtually the same percentage of non-Jews as Jews feel comfortable being themselves as Israeli citizens. Most Arab citizens of Israel are proud to be Israelis - but Murad the racist wants them to be considered part of a different nation that the vast majority want little or nothing to do with. The bigotry is in Murad's head and in her poison pen, not in the reality of Israel's non-Jewish citizens.

And by the way, virtually every Arab state declares itself to be an Arab state in their constitutions. By Murad's logic, they are all enforcing Arab supremacy. Does anyone think FAIR will ever mention that?

In Murad's twisted mind, Israel is by definition racist, so any children's book that doesn't highlight how terrible Israel is must be guilty of racism as well. The most bizarre part of her argument is that while it is obvious to all that children's books are meant to teach tolerance, which these books are doing, she is against it. Murad is the racist. Her arguments are as racist as those of a white supremacist upset at American schoolbooks that show white children playing with children of color without mentioning comparative crime rates for different groups.

Finally, Murad freaks out over a map in the Sesame Street book:

The 1949 armistice lines are clearly drawn, and Israel is only shown inside those lines. Egypt, Jordan and Syria are not named. But Murad looks hard to find bias, and of course she succeeds:

Page 6 of Welcome to Israel With Sesame Street incorrectly displays a map of Israel (“and Surrounding Area”) including the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the same shade of yellow. The outlines of the occupied Palestinian territory are visible but not labeled.

This is her entire argument - the yellow on the map of the territories is slightly different than the yellow of other countries. The actual lines that represent borders, prominently displayed, are meaningless to Murad's bizarre brain - the shade of yellow is offensive.

Hilariously, she sent this litany of paranoid complaints to Sesame Workshop, and they properly ignored her:

Welcome to Israel With Sesame Street, however, is not harmless. It uses subtle messages to contribute to erasure and distortion of Palestinians, which should cause concern among people who care about the educational reputation of the brand. Unfortunately, Sesame Workshop failed to respond to my several inquiries about this book.

Maybe because if she was honestly being as fair as FAIR pretends to be, she would realize that every single one of her complaints is baseless.

It would be amusing to see the same methodology used for children's books about "Palestine." Do they even mention or show pictures of Jews? Do they admit that Jews have the right to live in their historic homeland? Or are Jews not mentioned at best, and called "sons of apes and pigs" at worst?

If FAIR was fair, they would have a Zionist Jew do the exact same type of analysis on books pushing the Palestinian narrative, and see how they fare. Like the alphabet book that says "I is for Intifada." How are Jews represented there? How do they represent the emotional Jewish ties to Jerusalem? How are the feelings of millions of Jews taken into account?

Which side actually tries for coexistence, and which side wants to see the other be ethnically cleansed in the books meant for children?

The books being critiqued by her show smiling Arab children, some in hijabs. Find me a single children's book about Palestine that shows a smiling child in a yarmulke or tzitzit.

Just one.

That is the comparison that needs to be made to see which side is the side of progressiveness and tolerance, and which side is both implicitly and explicitly antisemitic.

For example, this drawing for Palestinian children contrasting Arabs and Jews is not exactly sending tolerant message. Yet I suspect it is a message that Murad wholeheartedly endorses all children should be exposed to..

Pro-Israel books go out of their way to teach tolerance. Pro-Palestinian books do the opposite. FAIR promotes the former as racist and doesn't want you to look at the latter.

FAIR isn't fair, and this article is exhibit A.

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!

Terror group publishes great list of BDS Fails last month

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) is one of those communist terror groups, like the PFLP, that tries to destroy Israel both with bombs and with BDS. And left-wing "human rights" groups love to conveniently overlook the bombing part.

Anyway, the DFLP published a list of announcements about BDS for August, whether praising pro-BDS actions or condemning "normalization" with Israel. It turns out the list of things it condemns is a great list of BDS failures.

Here is their inadvertant list of good news for Israel in August:

The American Sierra Club returns to sponsoring annual trips to Israel, which includes hiking in a variety of nature and wildlife reserves, as well as walking tours in places such as the Old City of Jerusalem, Caesarea and Jaffa.

An Israeli delegation of investors, technicians and commercial officials visited Indonesia, with the aim of identifying opportunities for investments, projects, start-ups and social impact initiatives, to complement the Israeli initiatives to normalize with a number of Islamic countries.

Israel's El Al Airlines started flying into Saudi airspace.

French channel BFMTV edited out an excerpt from the interview with a French journalist denouncing Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced the resumption of diplomatic relations with Turkey.

Bahraini hotels began to offer Israeli channels.

The UAE is financing the construction of an Israeli sports stadium.

Morocco signed an agreement to build the Israeli embassy in Rabat.

Israel announced the establishment of a joint industrial zone between Israel and Jordan.

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!

Opposition to Ramon Airport plan proves the hypocrisy of "pro-Palestinian" groups

Here's yet another way to know that the biggest self-described supporters of Palestinians really don't give a damn about them.

As we've been reporting, Israel is setting up a plan for Palestinians to be able to travel through Ramon Airport in the southern Negev.

This will make it easier for most Palestinians to travel internationally.

Assuming that the passengers are vetted for security, no one should oppose this. Human rights advocates should be celebrating. For years, they have been complaining about Palestinian "freedom of movement" - and here, Palestinians are about to be given an easier, heaper and more convenient option to escape their supposed prison.

Yet not one of the groups that claim to support Palestinians are happy. And because this makes no sense whatsoever, each one is making up their own reasons to oppose it (or to ignore it altogether.)

The Palestinian Authority is against the plan, threatening any Palestinian who takes advantage of Ramon Airport. Their stated reason? Because they insist they should have their own airports. Apparently, their people must suffer because they want something that is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. (And for some reason, traveling through Jordan or Egypt to get to airports is fine, but traveling though Israel is a crime.)

The head of the Palestinian transportation ministry added that they feared that Palestinian criminals would be able to escape justice through Israel. That reason makes as little sense as the other one.

And the head of Human Rights Watch used an unfounded - and clearly false - rumor as an excuse for his opposition to the plan. Which shows that HRW doesn't care about Palestinian rights - instead, they subscribe to the old Arab idea that anything that benefits Israel in any way must be inherently bad.

Jordanians are also decrying the plan - and they are pretending that they are opposing it for the Palestinians' own good. A group called the National Forum to Support the Resistance and Protect the Homeland urged Palestinians to boycott Ramon Airport - because using it would be considered "normalization" with Israel!

They went on to say:

The National Forum affirms the popular position that normalization is treason that constitutes the greatest service for the Zionist entity to market itself as providing humanitarian facilities by facilitating movement and travel for Palestinians who suffer the scourge of the continuous Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people and their sanctities. ...The occupation wants to cover up its crimes and whitewash its ugly image in front of the world...

Their twisted logic says that Israel only wants to treat Palestinians nicely in order to cover up the fact that Israel treats Palestinians poorly.

The real reason that Jordanians oppose the idea is because right now they have a captive customer base where West Bank Palestinians have no choice but to go through Jordan, which helps Jordan's economy - especially when they are forced to pay "VIP" fees to try to reduce their interminable wait times at the border crossing to Israel. They want to retain their right to treat Palestinians like dirt, and Palestinians know that the Israeli side of the crossing treats them far better than the Jordanian side does.

Closer to the truth is what a PA official said in July: “Israel failed to the turn Ramon Airport into an international terminal. Now, the Israelis are offering us something that didn’t work for them."

Yes, this would benefit Israel. But it would also benefit Palestinians. Why cut off your nose to spite your face?

What about B'Tselem, which has lots of articles on Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement? Shouldn't they support this plan?

They haven't said a word.

What about Gisha, an Israeli NGO whose entire goal is to protect the freedom of movement of Palestinians? Surely they must have written something positive about a plan that helps Palestinians travel internationally?

Actually, not only has Gisha ignored this story - they also said nothing about the huge delays at the Jordanian crossings that make travel for Palestinians a giant hassle. Not on their website, not on their Facebook page, and not on Twitter, as far as I can tell.

Palestinians can choose to use Ramon Airport if they want. They can choose to continue to use Jordan's airport if they want. This plan does not and cannot hurt a single Palestinian, and it has potential to help thousands of them save hours of time and hundreds of dollars. There is no rational reason to oppose it - if one really cares about Palestinians.

Which is the entire point.

People and organizations who swear that they support Palestinians really don't. The multiple and disparate reasons they give to oppose making Palestinian lives easier is proof that they have no good reason to oppose this plan.

The only consistent thread through this negative reaction, or non-reaction, to a plan that can only benefit Palestinians is that these groups aren't "pro-Palestinian." They are anti-Israel. And anything that benefits Israel in any way is to be strenuously opposed.

And indeed these groups oppose anything Israel does that helps Palestinians. They have built their quasi-governments and organizations on the falsehood that Israel is unparalleled evil. When Israel does anything to help Palestinians, this threatens their entire business model. Their funders don't want to read reports about how Palestinian lives have improved due to Israeli decisions. These organizations' existence is based on churning out papers and reports and articles and interviews that will be eagerly read and paid for by modern antisemites.

Ramon Airport is proof positive of the hypocrisy of so-called "pro-Palestinian" groups.

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A convenient list of As-A-Jew groups who love to lie

A group of Israel hating groups that have the word "Jewish" or a Hebrew word in their names issued a statement against Israel's attack on Islamic Jihad.

We, member groups of the International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine, are filled with sorrow and outrage at Israel’s unprovoked aerial bombardment of the community of Gaza, Palestine. We condemn it and its dishonest rhetoric.

This is not a dispute between two sides. An occupying military is attacking an occupied, blockaded community. Israel called this a ‘pre-emptive’ assault, although it provided no evidence for its just-in-case bombardment of crowded cities. Israel has no legal right to military aggression to bolster a blockade which is, itself, in violation of law. This has nothing to do with Israel’s self-defense. We saw with our eyes that it is occupied Gaza that needs defense, and has the right to defend itself.

Meaning, they support thousands of rockets to Israeli cities.

In three days, Israel killed 44 Palestinians including 15 children, and wounded 350. Scores of Gazan families are homeless and 650 homes were damaged in just the first 24 hours. No Israelis were killed.

By the time this statement came out, even Palestinians knew quite well that many of the dead came from Islamic Jihad rockets. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights counts 27 dead, because it knows that most of the children killed were killed by the terror groups. And many of those 27 were killed by terrorist rockets as well that PCHR doesn't admit.

Israel chose to attack a besieged community on Tisha B’Av – a day when Jews lament our losses by siege, two thousand years ago. This choice shames the religion that Israel appropriates to launder the image of its settler colonialist project.

Of course, what would an anti-Israel letter from As-A-Jews be without throwing in a mention of something Jewish? Tisha B'Av is about not hating one's fellow Jew, and this letter is the perfect example of baseless hatred against the vast majority of Jews in the world.

Who is appropriating religion? These groups' entire purpose is to weaponize Judaism to attack the Jewish state.

So here's the list of the As-A-Jew signatory organizations who are willing to lie and promote antisemitic terror, in the name of a religion that they use only to attack Jews.

Independent Jewish Voices – Canada

Jewish Voice for Just Peace – Ireland

Boycott from Within (Israeli citizens for BDS)

Jews Say No! – US

Jews against the Occupation – Sydney, Australia

Jewish Voice for Labour – UK

Jewish Voice for Peace – US

Independent Australian Jewish Voices – Australia

Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East – Germany

Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa New Zealand

Tzedek Collective Sydney – Australia

South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) – South Africa

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The UN Commission of Inquiry says Israel's legal basis is UNGA 181. That is not true at all. (But they are lying for an anti-Israel reason.)

UN investigator Miloon Kothari gave a half-hearted, obviously insincere apology for his statements from over a week ago that the "Jewish lobby" controlled social media and his questioning of Israel's legality altogether, saying "I would go as far as to raise the question as why are they [Israel] even a member of the United Nations."

His response to that was,

I also wish to clarify that my comment on Israel's membership of the United Nations was made to highlight the fact that every member of this body should uphold. and respect findings and recommendations issued by it. in accordance with relevant UN General Assembly resolutions. What I wanted to highlight is the non-compliance of Israel with UN decisions related to its obligations under international law, a concern the Commission extensively covered in its first report to the Human Rights Council. At no place in the interview did I question the existence of the State of Israel. On the contrary, in several instances, during the media interview in question, I have defended the existence of the State of Israel. This is fully consistent with the position of the Commission, as also stated in our first report and stressed in the letter of our Chair to the President of the Council: “The Commission does not question the status or United Nations membership of either of the concerned states of its mandate. The foundations for the legality of the State of Israel, alongside that of the State of Palestine were laid out by General Assembly resolution 181 and are not and never will be in question by this Commission” I did not intend to suggest that Israel should be excluded from the United Nations.

He is asserting that UN General Assembly Resolution 181 is the legal basis for the State of Israel.

This is not remotely true.

First of all, General Assembly resolutions do not have the status of international law.

Secondly, you can read Resolution 181: it did not declare the Jewish and Arab states in Palestine. It recommended the Security Council implement the provisions listed there and suggested that if either or both states declare their independence then the UN should treat their application for membership with sympathy.

When the Arabs rejected the resolution, it became a dead letter. It is valuable in the sense that it showed that the UN overwhelmingly supported a Jewish state in Palestine, but it is has no legal weight.

Some people claim that Israel itself has used UNGA 181 as its legal basis in its Declaration of Independence. It is true that Israel's Declaration of Independence referred to the resolution as onne of many reasons supporting the right of the Jewish people to a state, but that is not the legal basis for it. The Declaration says:

In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country.

This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home.

The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations.

Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.

In the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations.

On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.

This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.

ACCORDINGLY WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE'S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

Resolution 181 was one of many pieces of evidence showing that Jews have the right to a state of their own. It was not the legal basis for that state.

So what is the legal basis for the State of Israel?

This 2004 legal analysis notes:

Sir Lauterpacht, a renowned expert on international law and editor of Oppenheim’s International Law, clarified that, from a legal standpoint, the 1947 UN Partition Resolution had no legislative character to vest territorial rights in either Jews or Arabs. In a monograph relating to one of the most complex aspects of the territorial issue, the status of Jerusalem,⁷ Lauterpacht wrote that to be a binding force, the “Partition Plan” would have had to arise from the principle pacta sunt servanda,⁸ that is, from agreement of the parties at variance to the proposed plan. In the case of Israel, Lauterpacht explains:
“… the coming into existence of Israel does not depend legally upon the Resolution. The right of a State to exist flows from its factual existence – especially when that existence is prolonged, shows every sign of continuance and is recognised by the generality of nations.”
Reviewing Lauterpacht’s arguments, Professor Stone added that Israel’s “legitimacy” or the “legal foundation” for its birth does not reside with the United Nations’ “Partition Plan,” which as a consequence of Arab actions became a dead issue. Professor Stone concluded:
“… The State of Israel is thus not legally derived from the partition plan, but rests (as do most other states in the world) on assertion of independence by its people and government, on the vindication of that independence by arms against assault by other states, and on the establishment of orderly government within territory under its stable control.”⁹

That is Israel's legal claim to statehood - surviving and being recognized as a state. And if the COI doesn't know that basic fact, it is incompetent to do anything.

But it does know the truth, and it is lying for a specific reason.

Kothari is making two wrong assertions here: that Israel's legal foundation is based on Resolution 181, and also that the "State of Palestine" has the same legal basis. This is doubly absurd: not only is 181 not legally binding, but the Palestinian Arabs of the time rejected it - which is the exact reason it cannot be legally binding! They cannot turn back the clock and say that, sorry, we now accept UNGA 181 decades after we ripped it up.

It seems that the Commission making up the claim that 181 is the legal basis for Israel in order to pretend that Palestinians have an equal claim to nationhood as Israel does!

That is a breathtakingly cynical twisting of international law to create a legal basis for Palestinian statehood - and once you realize that this is a lie, one may wonder what exactly the legal basis for a nonexistent State of Palestine is to begin with?

This analysis shows that this commission is pretty much founded on lies.

(h/t Myths and Facts)

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J-Street proves yet again that it is not "pro-Israel"

Last week, AIPAC-backed Glenn Ivey defeated J-Street candidate Donna Edwards for the Democratic nomination for Maryland’s 4th Congressional District.

J-Street's backing of Edwards should put to rest the lie that J-Street is in any way pro-Israel.

The Washington Examiner summed up Edwards' congressional record on Israel:

During Edwards's first year in the House, she voted "present" on a resolution "recognizing Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza." And Edwards voted present on a resolution expressing support for direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. She also voted present on 2012 legislation to enhance security cooperation between the United States and Israel. All three measures passed with overwhelming majorities, at times when Democrats and, later, Republicans were running the House.

J-Street pretends to be pro-Israel, but it supports someone who cannot even vote that Israel has the right to defend itself? Or that there should be direct Israel-Palestinian negotiations?

Clearly, Edwards is an outlier in her hate for Israel compared to most members of Congress.

J-Street cannot credibly claim to be pro-Israel in any context if this was the candidate that they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to support.

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There's been a "Marshall Plan" for Palestinians for decades. It didn't work.

World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder made a splash earlier this month when, in Arab News, he suggested a new "Marshall Plan" for Palestinians to help bring peace.

It might seem counterintuitive, given the decades of failed peace efforts, but I believe this is exactly the right time to offer the Palestinians a new initiative — one that they cannot turn down. What I am suggesting is a “Marshall Plan” that would offer the next generation of Palestinians a future of wealth, success and self-reliance, rather than the dismal prospects of the past.

Just as the Marshall Plan put Europe on a sound financial footing, the Palestinian plan should focus on the creation of small businesses, home building, hotels, restaurants and job creation that would offer a positive future to the next generation.

A fixed sum of money could be given to young entrepreneurs to create new businesses, which would be closely monitored. If they prove to be viable but need a financial boost after a year, another small infusion could be given. In other words, provide Palestinians with all the things that made Israel and other countries financially viable, which would help create a new and successful Palestine.

Within three-to-five years, I believe per capita wealth would double annually. The wealthier a future Palestinian nation becomes, the more likely it is that it could be the viable, successful country it should be — and every country in the region would benefit from this change.

This is short-sighted, for a number of reasons.

First of all, for decades, the per-capita aid to the Palestinians has dwarfed that of every other nation. In other words, they have already been the recipients of the most extensive "Marshall Plan" in history - and it has not moderated them one bit.

Notice that even in 2019, when the US has sharply reduced aid to the Palestinians under Trump, they still received nearly double the aid per capita of the next highest recipient and quadruple that of #3.

In 2009, they received some six times what the next highest recipient was. But that didn't stop three more wars from Gaza.

Throwing money at the problem doesn't solve anything when it comes to Palestinians.

Secondly, while the PA budget is in very bad shape, a lot of that is because the government itself insists on giving a significant percentage of its budget to reward terrorism. As long as that is happening, the PA cannot and must not be a recipient of aid, directly or indirectly. The message from the world must be that this is unacceptable - not that we will send yet more money.

Thirdly, the Palestinians themselves ridicule the idea. They want Jerusalem and Hebron to be Judenrein, they demand "return" to destroy Israel demographically, they think that the ICC and UN and "human rights" NGOs will destroy Israel given enough time so they can sit back and wait.

What about aid to individual entrepreneurs, as Lauder suggests? That is also already happening. The US, Canada and private initiatives are already investing tens of millions to help Palestinian businesses. And it is not a bad idea. Palestinians high tech teams are already partnering with their Israeli counterparts. Israel is expected to increase 4G wireless networking in the territories during Biden's visit, which should help Palestinian high tech firms find partners worldwide. The Palestinian Authority does not seem to recognize that services that could be done remotely like coding should be a national priority.

Creative Palestinians will find ways to build up their businesses anyway. But they aren't the problem that needs solving.

The main problem is that the majority of Palestinians think that terrorism is the best Palestinian strategy, as the most recent poll shows.

Throwing money at people who believe in terrorism is not how to bring peace. The PA, Hamas and those who support the goals of destroying Israel should be getting less money, not more. The linkage should be explicit.

Which is what Israel is already doing. It links work permits to calm. When there is relative peace, more Palestinians can enjoy the benefits of being neighbors with an economic powerhouse. As soon as a rocket is shot towards Israel or a Jenin terrorist stabs someone in Tel Aviv, the borders get sealed - an obvious and logical response to a country under attack. Palestinians can see the linkage between their actions and consequences, and they don't want to suffer the consequences. Even Hamas has been acting to keep things calm.

This is not peace. With the current Palestinian mindset, it will never bring peace. But it brings calm, and that is the best we can hope for.

Throwing money at the problem gives a disincentive for Palestinians to cooperate with Israel. It gives the false impression that they don't need to think about working together with Israel because the cash is coming in anyway.

Linking their actions with immediate consequences - both positive and negative - is the best and most effective way to save lives, and, ultimately, to allow both sides to prosper.

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