Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: antisemitism

Showing posts with label antisemitism. Show all posts

Thursday, March 23, 2023

MSN helps spread Jew-hatred by syndicating antisemitic Arab content

Earlier this month I reported on an antisemitic Arabic article published on MSN, Microsoft's news network. It said that Israel is inflicting a "Holocaust" on Palestinians.

It is hardly the only example.

Just today, MSN published one article saying that modern Jews have no relationship with the Jews of Biblical times (while accusing modern Jews of racism, naturally), and another from a Jordanian who writes Israel is "an entire entity of murderous terrorists, who have pursued policies of apartheid and genocide against Palestinians and Arabs for nearly a century" and then concludes that Palestine is all Jordanian.

MSN gets many of its Arabic articles from a company called SyndiGate, which strikes deals with Arab and other international media companies to syndicate their content.

SyndiGate is owned by the Jordanian Albawaba Group. (Albawaba means "the gate" in Arabic.)

While Albawaba's news site is not nearly as antisemitic as much of Jordanian media, it publishes its share. Here, for example, is an English language article about how Jordanians protested a preacher attending a seminar in Abu Dhabi with a non-Israeli rabbi, with no mention that this was a classic example of pure antisemitism. They have pushed the discredited antisemitic Khazar theory as well. Last year they claimed, with no fact checking, that Jews in Hebron burned a Quran - which is pure incitement to violence among Muslims.

SyndiGate's editorial standards for republishing Arabic content are even lower than Albawaba's. They appear to blindly re-copy anything from their own content providers, with little regard for what they actually say. After all, that's their business model - content equates to cash from their client like MSN.

And just as SyndiGate blindly grabs content from its sources, Microsoft blindly publishes the SyndiGate content. It does it with other content providers as well - last year republishing a number of obvious hoax articles without even the pretense of editing.

MSN is the default page for new tabs in Microsoft browsers, and their articles show up by default on all computers with Windows. MSN gets nearly a billion views a month. By any definition, it is a media giant even if it has little original content.

Microsoft is complicit with spreading hate to a large global audience.

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!

Study indicates antisemites took advantage of Twitter's tumult after Elon Musk took over

A new study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue looks at the amount of antisemitic tweets before and after Elon Musk took over the company - and found that the amount of Jew-hate more than doubled:

New research from CASM Technology and ISD has found a major and sustained spike in antisemitic posts on Twitter since the company’s takeover by Elon Musk on October 27, 2022. Powered by the award-winning digital analysis technology Beam– and based on a powerful hate speech detection methodology combining over twenty leading machine-learning models– researchers found that the volume of English-language antisemitic Tweets more than doubled in the period following Musk’s takeover. In total, analysts detected 325,739 English-language antisemitic Tweets in the 9 months from June 2022 to February 2023, with the weekly average number of antisemitic Tweets increasing by 106% (from 6,204 to 12,762), when comparing the period before and after Musk’s acquisition.

There is a lot in the 32-page report, and its methodology appears to be largely sound. (I think if they would use my definition of antisemitism rather than the IHRA Working Definition, they might find it to be more accurate.)

But one statistic stood out to me: Antisemites were eager to take advantage of the apparent loss of moderation by creating new accounts at a much higher rate than before:

We identified a significant surge of new accounts posting plausibly antisemitic content. 3,855 such accounts were created between Oct 27 and Nov 6, an increase of 223% compared to the 11 days (the equivalent timespan) leading up to Oct 27.

To me, this indicates that much of the antisemitism on social media is not simply unintentional or naïve antisemitism. People go out of their way to not only post antisemitic content but to create new accounts dedicated to hate.

I would be interested in finding out if there was a similar surge in new accounts dedicated to racist, anti-Asian, homophobic or misogynist tweets in that time period. I'm sure there was an increase - if for no other reason than that antisemites have other targets of their hate - but I have a feeling that the antisemites are far more activist and willing to take the extra effort to showcase their hate than other bigots

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!

92.5% of Palestinians killed this year were members of terror groups or actively involved in attacks

As he did last year, Adin Haykin is documenting every single Palestinian killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year, and explaining the circumstances.

I put his current thread on a Twitter Thread Reader post.

Out of 80 killed this year, I count six who were uninvolved civilians. (I'm counting a father who was shot while trying to stop his son's arrest as a civilian.)

That means that 92.5% of those killed were actively part of hostilities, or members of armed groups. And that includes every single minor who was killed this year.

It is also entirely possible that some of the civilians listed were killed by Palestinian fire, which as we've seen has been quite wild.

A far as I can tell, never in the history of urban fighting has the percentage of innocent civilians killed been this low.

In contrast, over 50% of those killed in Operation Banner in Northern Ireland by the British Army were uninvolved civilians.

Western troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have never achieved anything close to this record.

The mainstream media emphasizes the uninvolved, as they should. But they do not contextualize their deaths with these facts that the IDF is far exceeding what is considered acceptable by any other army in history, especially when it often operates in an extremely challenging environment when there stone throwers and firebombs coming from attackers on all sides.

If any other army went under the same microscope that the IDF does, they would look horrible by comparison.

For example, the New York Times reported in 2021 about an attack by US forces five years earlier that no one knew about:

Shortly before 3 a.m. on July 19, 2016, American Special Operations forces bombed what they believed were three ISIS “staging areas” on the outskirts of Tokhar, a riverside hamlet in northern Syria. They reported 85 fighters killed. In fact, they hit houses far from the front line, where farmers, their families and other local people sought nighttime sanctuary from bombing and gunfire. More than 120 villagers were killed.

Do you remember reading about this incident, or the dozens of others that were uncovered in that story using Pentagon records? No, the story disappeared from the news media radar in no time.

Now, imagine the tsunami of coverage from multiple news outlets, the UN resolutions and condemnations from every nation on the planet, that would result if Israel killed 120 civilians in an air strike and claimed it was a successful strike on dozens of fighters.

That is not just a double standard. That is treating Israel as uniquely evil and ignoring far, far worse things done by "the good guys."

And that is the entire point. Israel's critics do not want you to know this context when they accuse Israel of war crimes. They do not want you to see how Israel compares to other armies. They never make 3D models of US bombing of wedding parties.

There is only one possible explanation for putting Israel under an electron microscope for doing an amazing job targeting terrorists while virtually ignoring the horrible mistakes that every other professional western army does. It isn't "concern over taxpayer dollars" or "humanitarian concerns" or any of the dozens of other excuses used to justify this obsession with how Israel fights terror. None of the Western armies who wantonly bombed dozens of innocents had to worry about an immediate threat of someone slipping through a porous border and attacking their own citizens who live only a few kilometers away.

The only explanation is antisemitism.

Maybe not the explicit, neo-Nazi kind, but this crazed obsession with finding everything wrong with Israel defending itself from real, imminent threats while ignoring everyday Palestinian terror cannot be logically explained any other way except to say that a Jewish state is assumed to be automatically criminal the way Jews have lived under that assumption for thousands of years.

The truly remarkable thing is that the IDF, like the Jews throughout history, don't respond by saying that they might as well act the way they are being accused of acting. Instead, they continue to improve their methods and work towards a 100% record of only killing those who are actively trying to kill them first. (In attacks on Iranian targets in Syria, they are very close to that 100%.)

The IDF is truly the most moral army in the world. It isn't even close.

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!

Israel Says Yes, Poland Says No: On the Resumption of Israeli Youth Trips to Poland (Judean Rose) (update)

One day after the Netanyahu government issued a statement claiming that Israel and Poland had reached an agreement over the resumption of Israeli youth trips to Poland, Poland denied that any such agreement had been reached. The trips were suspended a year ago due to a dispute over security arrangements. Israeli students are accompanied on these trips by armed security guards from the Shin Bet. Poland, however, says that Israel’s insistence on providing its own Israeli security for the students is a slap in the face to Poland, making it look like a hateful, antisemitic country.

Here is the Israeli press release on the supposed agreement between Israel and Poland:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Comments on Resumption of Youth Trips to Poland

After a prolonged stalemate in Israeli-Polish relations, and pursuant to contacts and a round of talks led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, together with Minister of Foreign Affairs Eli Cohen and Education Minister Yoav Kisch, a solution was found today (Tuesday, 7 March 2023), to the crisis that prevented the arrival of youth trips to Poland.

Prime Minister Netanyahu:

"After a wasted year, we are returning the youth trips to Poland. There are many ways to study the lessons of the Holocaust but the best is with one's own eyes. I welcome our success in the resumption of our pupils' trips to Poland in order to study the horrors of the Holocaust from up close.

I thank Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and Education Minister Yoav Kisch for their contributions to the effort. 'Know from whence you came and where you are going.’"

Three years after the halt to the arrival of youth trips to Poland, and pursuant to the contacts led by Prime Minister Netanyahu with the Polish government, the almost to-year stalemate in bilateral relations has ended; the sides have agreed on the resumption of Israeli youth trips.

Pursuant to the round of talks between the two countries led by Prime Minister Netanyahu with his Polish counterpart, and to the talks held by Minister of Foreign Affairs Cohen with the Polish Foreign Minister approximately one month ago, in the framework of which he sought to move forward on a solution for the resumption of the trips to Poland, a representative of the Polish Foreign Ministry announced today that Poland views positively the resumption in the arrival of youth trips to Poland and recognizes their importance to continued progress in bilateral ties.

This morning, however, Tovah Lazaroff, who is no fan of the Netanyahu government wrote:

“Poland denied that Israeli high school trips to visit the concentration camps in Poland are set to resume after a one-year suspension, one day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Office announced the return of the trips.”

Lazaroff offers no source for her assertion of Polish denial. What is the truth of the matter? Did Israel and Poland reach an agreement regarding the Israeli student trips? And what is the real reason for what still looks like a stalemate? Is it really about security? Or something else.

Łukasz Jasina, spokesperson for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, tweeted a link to the MFA statement on the affair, an embarrassing slap in the face to Israel/Netanyahu, and likely the source for Lazaroff’s claim.

Statement on the state of arrangements regarding the return of trips of organized groups of Israeli youth to Poland https://t.co/uZl5ShHffY
— Łukasz Jasina (@RzecznikMSZ) March 8, 2023

From the statement:

Although a final agreement has not been reached yet, during talks held in recent days through diplomatic channels we have been observing a convergence of positions, giving hope that a comprehensive agreement on the visits of organized groups of Israeli youth to Poland can be signed between Poland and Israel in the near future.

Poland is sensitive to accusations of antisemitism, hence the passing of a 2018 Polish law penalizing public speech attributing responsibility for the Holocaust to Poland or the Polish nation. The passing of the law appears however to only underscore the idea that Poland is antisemitic, but doesn’t want to be seen as such. Why else shut down free speech on the subject of where blame for the Holocaust rightly lies? To paraphrase Hamlet, Poland “doth protest too much, methinks.”

Back when the Polish law denying complicity in the Holocaust was passed, I argued that parents of Israeli teens should not be sending their children to that country to visit. Not because of the security issue, though I agree that Israel should be allowed to use its own people for this purpose, but because I don’t believe in supporting the economy of a country I see as absolutely antisemitic, law or no law:

This year, when it came time for my son, the youngest of 12 children, to register for the class trip for Poland, I was ready. I sat Asher down for a talk and explained that he wasn’t going, that even if we had the money for such a trip, even if the school were to give him a full scholarship, he wasn’t going. I wasn’t going to allow my son to become a source of income for a country of antisemites . . . why, of all countries, should the Jewish State be propping up Poland’s economy with these trips that have become a rite of passage for Israeli high school students? We’re talking some 30,000 children, spending at the very least, a few thousand shekels each for this “privilege.”

At the same time, I acknowledged the fact that many see the trip as a valuable tool for teaching the Holocaust:

What of the people who say the experience of visiting Poland is moving, and a good way to teach the Holocaust?

I say hogwash. I never traveled there and I have an acute understanding of the Holocaust and so do my children. In fact, I’d say that boycotting the place is every bit as powerful a teacher as going there.

I still believe today that we don’t need to send kids to Poland to make them “feel” the horrors of the Holocaust. And I still believe that Poland is antisemitic to the bone. In fact, the very day that Netanyahu claimed an agreement with Poland had been reached, the Algemeiner reported that the National Bank of Poland will be issuing a special commemorative coin honoring a Polish antisemite:

Poland’s National Bank has announced that it will issue a special silver coin commemorating a leading figure in the post-war anti-communist underground who was accused of murdering Jews in the country’s Podhale region . . .

. . . Several historians have charged that Kuraś was responsible for the murder of dozens of Jews in the Podhale region during his struggle against the communists. In his book “Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz,” Prof. Jan Gross of Princeton University described Kuraś as as “legendary outlaw in the mountainous region of Podhale, where he battled the regime by killing Jews who were fleeing Poland by one of the Brikha exit routes.”

Gross specified that Kuraś had recorded the murder of Jews in his diary, citing the killing of twelve Jews near the village of Kroscienko on May 6, 1944.

A separate article by Karolina Panz — a Polish historian based in the town of Nowy Targ, where Kuraś was active — concluded that during 1945-47, “the number of Jewish victims exceeded thirty, including children from Jewish orphanages. Among the perpetrators of those acts of terror were partisans from the group commanded by Józef Kuraś ‘Ogień’ – one of the most important symbols of anti-communist resistance.”

Poland’s leading anti-racist organization condemned the coin’s issuance as another example of the Polish state lionizing wartime figures with established records of antisemitism.

The Algemeiner quotes a response from Rafal Pankowski, executive director of the “Never Again” Association:

“Since the publication of Jan Gross’s groundbreaking books in the 2000s, Poland made a lot of progress as a democratic nation in dealing with the legacy of antisemitism – but over the last years much of that progress has been reversed and a far-right nationalist outlook on Polish history has prevailed in many institutions . . . This is one more instance of a glorification of a notorious antisemitic figure by an important state institution.”

It is obvious that Polish antisemitism is alive and well. Why then does Israel seem so desperate to reach an agreement to prop up the Polish economy with high school trips? Why does Israel want its children to think of Poland as a hospitable country that has learned its lesson, when quite clearly, it has not.

One might argue that Netanyahu has failed to see the true meaning of the quote he used in his statement to the press: “Know from whence you came and where you are going.”

That quote, from Ethics of the Fathers, was used by Netanyahu to suggest that high school trips to Poland are a form of experiential learning: that only by traveling to the land of Auschwitz can one come to understand what happened there. But one could just as easily interpret that quote as a cautionary tale or warning: Know when you go there that Poland was and still is an antisemitic country, even as it makes it illegal to discuss that fact. Know that Poland is a place where the soil is soaked with Jewish blood. Know that Poland, even now, issues commemorative coins honoring as heroes those who murdered Jews. Know that if you go and spend your hard-earned shekels to support Poland and the Polish people, you betray the memory of the millions of Jews who were sent there, not by choice for a learning experience, but to be gassed and burned, their generations to come, ended forever.

UPDATE: After I contacted her on Twitter, Tovah Lazaroff commendably updated her piece to reflect that her source is the Polish Foreign Ministry.

The source should be there now . .
— Tovah Lazaroff (@tovahlazaroff) March 8, 2023

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!

Palestinian op-ed: "Jews have nothing in their dictionary besides crime and bloodshed" They aren't even pretending to be "anti-Zionist" anymore

Aziz Mohammed Balousha writes in an Amad.ps op-ed:

For those who wreak havoc on the earth in the Holy City, and in its Al-Aqsa Mosque, from desecration and almost daily raids, and to Judaize the landmarks of the Holy City and the first two qiblahs, and in historical Palestine, by killing, demolishing, and terrorizing children, women, and the elderly...

Those who make lies and lie to God, violated the covenants, and on top of that, they tried to kill the Chosen Prophet - may God’s prayers and peace be upon him and his family and companions - several times, but God - blessed and exalted - saved him and preserved him.

They have nothing in their dictionary except crime and bloodshed. They are the ones who killed the Prophet of God, Zacharias,....And they killed Ezekiel, peace be upon him, and the Jews tried to kill Jesus Christ , peace be upon him, but God lifted him up and saved him from their plot, and many, many others, so only the Jews were killed by the prophets of God, and whenever they made a covenant, a group of them rejected it, and it is their nature to break the covenants, betrayal, and distort the words, Their hearts are hard as stones and devoid of mercy, and they are creative in igniting strife and wars.

The Jews, gentlemen!!!!

They aren't even trying to hide their Jew-hatred.

But Allah forbid you call Palestinians antisemitic - that is just a means to demonize them, you see.

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!

Here's proof positive that @Amnesty is antisemitic

(Based on a Twitter thread.)

Amnesty International tweeted:

"Human rights" organization Amnesty International is openly advocating the forcible removal and ethnic cleansing of 670,000 Jews from their homes.

Normally, that's a war crime.

They have never insisted on that in Western Sahara or Northern Cyprus or anywhere else.

Only for Jews.

The Encyclopedia of Human Rights says settlers have human rights and ethnically cleansing them wholesale is clearly a violation of those rights.

It was talking about Northern Cyprus.

"Human rights" groups are saying, of course, Turkish settlers have human rights and compelling reasons to stay where they are - but Jews don't.

And remember, there are thousands of Arab "settlers" - Israeli Arabs who have moved over the Green Line in Beit Safafa, Beit Hanina, French Hill and elsewhere.

Amnesty never calls them "settlers."

No, the only people in the WORLD they want to ethnically cleanse are Jews!

When Jews have a different set of rules than everyone else, that is the definition of antisemitism. And Amnesty is guilty.

There is another proof of Amnesty's antisemitism in Amnesty's tweet.

Even though most Jews in Judea and Samaria do not support the violence in Huwara, Amnesty wants to use the event as an excuse to collectively punish all Jews who live in Judea/Samaria.

Yes, the most prestigious human rights organization is stereotyping all Jews who live across the Green Line as if they are the same - and wants to punish the peaceful ones because of the actions of a tiny minority.

That is classic bigotry.

Organizations like Amnesty and other "human rights" organizations that insist that the only people in the world who must be forcibly removed from their homes are Jews. For everyone else, it is a crime, but to remove Jews who have lived in their homes for three generations now - it is obligatory.

How can you explain this without antisemitism? What kind of hoops must one jump through to figure out some crazy distinction that makes it a mere coincidence that Jews are the only people on Earth who must be ethnically cleansed - under "international law"?

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!

" Palestinian suffering today is much worse than the Holocaust"

Another day, another example of outrageous antisemitism in Palestinian media.

Dr.. Mustafa Youssef Al-Lidawi holds a Ph.D. in political science and is a frequent writer. He has also been (and probably still is) a member of Hamas. He was deported by Israel to Lebanon in the early 1990s, where he still lives.

He writes in Shms.ps that the real victims of the Holocaust are...Holocaust deniers!

They ask the countries and peoples of the world to recognize the massacres they were subjected to during the Second World War, and they hold the international community responsible for the consequences of the Holocaust, in which they claim that “millions of Jews” were exterminated unjustly and aggressively, and they force them to apologize to them and compensate them, and they blackmail and embarrass regimes and rulers, and put pressure on peoples and organizations ....

The Israelis weep over what befell them, claim injustice for what befell them, punish anyone who denies the Holocaust or questions it and refuses to recognize it, declare war on him, prosecute him, harass him, expel him, strip him of all his characteristics and deprive him of his most basic rights, and consider silence about it a crime, and many European thinkers and historians suffered from their intellectual terror and racial tyranny, some of whom were afraid, retreated and cowardly, and narrated their story and accepted it, while those who insisted on their position were punished and exiled, and were expelled from their jobs and deprived of their rights.

Then comes the point we all knew was coming:

What the Israeli occupation is doing in occupied Palestine, against its people, their land and sanctities, and their homes and properties, is greater than the crime of the "Holocaust" with which they cracked the heads of the world, and forced them to express permanent remorse and regret because of it, and perhaps they plan every day to commit more of these crimes.

This is hardly unusual.

What would be unusual would be if the media reported it.

Even more unusual would be if a single Palestinian would criticize this article in Arabic.

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!

There is no inoculation for the virus of Jew-hatred

My post about Jimmy Carter's antisemitism last week prompts a question: but what about all the wonderful things he has done?

One cannot argue that Carter has not been sincere when he works with Habitat for Humanity, for example. His Middle East work may be influenced by his antisemitism, but he has worked on many other worthy causes. How can those things fit together?

But one can ask the same thing about lots of other antisemites. Alice Walker is a gifted poet and storyteller, but that doesn't make her immune from antisemitic attitudes. Roger Waters was a good songwriter in the 1970s, but that doesn't mean he doesn't harbor antisemitic attitudes. Roald Dahl wrote fantastic children's books, but also hated Jews.

Then again, we can go back in history and ask the same questions. Voltaire was a groundbreaking philosopher, but he was also a racist and antisemite. Martin Luther was a brilliant theologian and an obsessed Jew-hater.

If theology can coexist with hate, perhaps that invalidates the theology. But pioneers in theology and philosophy and humanitarianism and progressivism and socialism and science and even medical ethics have been found to be antisemites - and these are all fields that, in theory, if you believe their self-definitions, should be immune to antisemitic thought.

Obviously, theory is very different from practice.

Some people say that antisemitism is a conspiracy theory. Or that it relegated to the Right. Or that is is a form of bigotry that is part of a larger group of discriminations against race or sexual preference or age.

Yet it fits in no clear category. It morphs into new forms every few decades.

It is a virus with new strains coming out all the time.

Viruses have only one imperative - survive by adaptation. Right now the most virulent strain of antisemitism spreads by pretending to be outraged at how Jews act in Israel - and it cloaks itself by insisting that this current hate of Jews in Israel has nothing in common with the previous instances, despite the obvious parallels.

This is hardly the first time antisemitism pretended to be the opposite. In 1873, the Southern Baptist Convention issued a resolution on antisemitism that pretends to be philosemitic - but ends up wishing that all Jews should convert to Christianity.

Is this any different than modern antisemites who wish just as fervently that the Jewish state be destroyed, that Jews should live as second class citizens in a Muslim majority state and most of them should be ethnically cleansed? Is the Southern Baptist desire that all Jews see the light different from those who want all Jews to be "good Jews" who shed all nationalism and all attachment to the land of their ancestors?

And both of them claim to be doing it because they care so much about Jews.

The other strains of the antisemitic virus didn't die out. The Middle Ages strain is still there, the Christian strain still thrives in many places, the Nazi strain stays stubbornly alive and spreading. Social media has been a huge boon to the virus, allowing it to spread at the speed of light. People can work very hard for years to come up with a way to minimize the threat of one strain but another one can emerge and propagate in days.

Today, we hear people arguing against accusations of antisemitism. How can Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch be antisemitic when their entire organizations are based on human rights? How can Jeremy Corbyn be antisemitic when he is an avowed anti-racist?

The virus doesn't care what philosophy you have. Whatever you hate most in life can be linked to Jews, and usually is.

Instead of reflecting on the history of antisemitism that shows that anyone can catch the virus of antisemitism, many pretend that they are immune. Worse, they pretend that their progressivism or humanitarianism or anti-racism inoculates them from antisemitism - that they aren't and cannot be antisemitic because their worldview does not allow it.

On the contrary, the virus can grow in any medium. The anti-racists become antisemites by accusing Jews/Israelis of racism. The humanitarians become antisemites by accusing Jews of inhumanity. The very ideas that people believe make them immune to infection are the ones that spread it.

Just like before, they justify their hate as being based on facts, unlike all of their predecessors. even though those predecessors said the exact same thing. They write their articles and posts and tweets that show the exact same kind of irrational, obsessive hate that previous centuries of antisemites had.

As we know from recent experience, viruses are hard to eradicate. We still need to try. But we need to understand that the virus does not avoid anyone because of their belief system. On the contrary, it often uses that very belief system as a means of spreading further.

Beware of anyone who says they cannot be antisemitic because of their worldview. Instead, teach them about the history of antisemitism, and show that they have very prominent Jew-hating forebears, who were the world's leaders in theology, the arts, philosophy, science and the Enlightenment.

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!

Is "Day of Hate" really different than "Day of Rage"? (plus cartoon)

From Times of Israel:

Law enforcement and Jewish groups in the US are urging vigilance ahead of an antisemitic “national day of hate” planned by white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups for Saturday.

The white supremacists have called for followers to distribute antisemitic messaging with banners, stickers, fliers and graffiti. There are no known threats of violence and a Jewish security group said it did not expect widespread participation.

“Take a stand, and expose the international clique of parasitic vermin that infest our nation,” said a statement attributed to the hate groups. “Make your voices heard loud and clear, that the one true enemy of the American people is the Jew.”

It is definitely getting American Jews spooked. But I can't help but think that "Day of Hate" is just a far-Right version of the many Palestinian "Days of Rage" we have seen dozens of times.

And it is not like the "Days of Rage" are only in the territories. Israel hating groups have organized plenty of them in the West:

In both cases, they are angry at Jews and only Jews. In both cases, they call for the masses to join and show their hate. The emotions are the same. The antisemitism is the same.

But the anti-Israel "Days of Rage" are far better organized, more professional and attract far more people.

Of course, the far-Right are more likely to engage in violence. I don't want to minimize the threat - Jewish communities across the nation are being told to be careful and watchful this Shabbat.

But don't pretend that the hateful Right and the hateful Left are all that much different.

When it comes to Jews, they are practically twins.

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 lying left-wing antisemite from +972 dies

+972Mag writes an obituary for Yossi Gurvitz:

It is impossible to imagine Israeli anti-occupation writing without thinking of Yossi Gurvitz. A relentless, fearless, incredibly knowledgeable, prolific, and sharp writer, Yossi passed away last week at the age of 53.....

Yossi’s roots were as far from the left as one could imagine. He was born to a national-religious family and educated at Nehalim Yeshiva, an Orthodox boarding school...Yossi hated religious studies, and even more so the racism and nationalism he encountered at school, including among the rabbis. Gradually, he began to lose his faith. “I started devouring philosophy books,” he would later write: "By the time I started grade 11, I was Orthodox in name only. Earlier, I rejected Jewish law as racist; now I could no longer believe in a deity which was managing the world and interested in our lives … "

I only wrote about Gurvitz twice, over a decade ago, but he stuck in my mind as an exemplar of everything a journalist shouldn't be: a bigot, a liar, and an antisemite.

In 2012, Gurvitz claimed that a person wrote a halachic question to a rabbi essentially asking whether it is permitted for Israeli soldiers to rape women, and that the answer was that they could. He completely misrepresented the question and answer - as well as the rabbi's clarification after the fake story exploded. The question was about how horrible the thought of such a thing was, and the rabbi agreed. It was obvious the rabbi was saying that such an act is forbidden today, the exact opposite of Gurvitz's claim.

Gurvitz let his inner antisemite out in his original text: "Those texts were written mostly in a barbaric period by ignorant people, fuelled by the hatred of mankind which is endemic to Judaism." It leaves no doubt that Gurvitz could not be trusted to write about Judaism at all. (The +972 editors quickly changed that when they realized how bigoted Gurvitz's words were.)

In the +972 obituary, they say, "During his time at +972, his writings on the racism found in some Jewish religious texts was a constant source of editorial frustration. No matter how much the other editors and I explained that some phrases that worked in Hebrew would not translate well into English, and could lead to accusations of antisemitism (or that we should simply pick our battles), Yossi would hear none of it. What made matters worse was that none of us had the depth of knowledge to argue with him."

Notice that not one of the "journalists" at +972 even considered that Gurvitz's hate of Jews and Judaism, which he didn't hide, might color his reporting. Not once did they fact check his lies against what a knowledgeable religious Jew would say.

That is the state of +972's "journalism."

But the other time I looked at Gurvitz's work was perhaps even more damning to him and to +972. Gurvitz repeated the lie,that there were Israelis dancing in celebration of 9/11 in New Jersey. He wrote this in context of claiming that Israelis are all inherently supportive of international terrorism, a truly libelous and absurd assertion, based entirely on a couple of comments in a news article.

Again, the professional editors at +972 didn't bother to fact check Gurvitz. And again, Gurvitz's own bigotry drove the story - not the facts. The only place to find the "dancing Israelis" lie is on the very same right-wing conspiracy theory websites that +972 readers would consider antisemitic in any other context.

Why was Gurvitz reading them? Because he shared their opinion of Jews.

Yes, Gurvitz wrote thousands of other articles. I haven't read any of them. Once I saw these two, why assume that they are anomalous? It isn't like Gurvitz or 972 apologized for the lies they published.

I'm sorry Gurvitz is gone. But I am not mourning the loss of a bigot and antisemite whose hate of Jews that started when he was a teen informed his entire adult life.

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

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A few Eldertoons for the weekend

All of the artwork by Stable Diffusion.

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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Increased harassment of Jewish merchants in Djerba, Tunisia

Edy Cohen writes in Israel Today:

Tunisian Jews are again in the eye of the storm. The arrest of a local Jewish merchant has shaken the peace of the island community of Djerba that dates back to the times of King David.

Today there are only about a thousand Jews left in Djerba, a quiet Mediterranean island just off the coast of Tunisia. There is almost no crime or politics on this idyllic refuge, where most of the Jewish residents observe the Sabbath.

The event that shocked the Jewish community in Djerba took place on Tuesday of last week, when the police, accompanied by large forces of undercover officers, arrested a 60-year-old Jewish merchant named Mishleh Bitan. According to the authorities, he was accused of smuggling gold. The Jews of Djerba have been dealing in gold for generations and many of them own gold shops on the island.

Police planned to apprehend the wife and son of the Jewish merchant, but dozens of Jews showed up to protect the family and physically prevented the arrest.

In a conversation I had with a number of Jews in Djerba, it appears that every two or three weeks the police come to the neighborhood and try to harass them under the pretext of hunting smugglers. Sometimes they conduct searches and force the Jews to report their sales and tax statements. Other times the police show up for random inventory and often steal gold during the count. No one dares say a word because of the fear of further harassment.

Life has turned upside down in recent years for these Jews. Everyone I spoke with expressed deep concerns and even disbelief at the harassment that has suddenly descended upon this ancient Jewish community.

Police took Mishleh in a police car to the capital of Tunis, a journey of about seven hours. Then unexpectedly, and following pressure exerted by various parties both in Israel and in other countries, Mishleh was released after less than a day in detention.

Another Jewish source told me: “We didn’t stay. We first of all prevented the arrest of the family’s mother and son. They wanted to arrest them to put pressure on Mishleh to make a confession. But we prevented that. For the whole day after the arrest, we sat and waited and closed the shops. In protest we put up signs saying ‘We will not be silent any longer.’”

This is the only place I could find the story, although Cohen has been tweeting about it from the time of Mishleh's arrest.

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Every country is proud to help earthquake victims. Only Israel is vilified.

Romanian media are reporting that a team from Romania rescued a family from under the rubble in Turkey.

Chinese media are proud that a Chinese team rescued a pregnant woman.

The UK government issued a press release about the large team they sent to Turkey.

Algerian officials are proud of their rescue team.

So are Palestinians.

UAE media are similarly reporting on their own teams who have rescued people in Syria.

It is natural to be proud that your own people are helping others. Even local media in Los Angeles are showing pride that rescue dogs being sent by the US were trained in Ventura County.

Yet when Israel sends a massive number of experienced experts to set up a field hospital, and shows pride in helping save ten people so far, some people bristle.

Palestinian media have had multiple articles that say that Israel's rescue efforts are only for PR purposes, and they are not interested in saving any Muslim lives.

"Rabbi" David Mivasair calls it "cynical propaganda." Someone named Dan Easterman gleefully tweeted and defended, "Every time there is an earthquake or humanitarian disaster, Israel immediately tries to exploit the tragedy to gain political capital and improve it’s [sic] international image. The cynicism makes me sick."

This has been a theme for previous rescue missions, where "critics" even accused Israel of using the rescuers as cover for doing crimes in the disaster zone.

It is yet another case where Israel acts like every other country on Earth - and people single it out as being immoral.

Yes, this is the definition of antisemitism.

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It only took a day for people to blame Jews for Turkey/Syria earthquake

Maria Dubovikova, "prominent independent analyst and media expert • researcher • RIAC expert • THE RUSSIAN • Ex Al Arabiya / Arab News Columnist" with tens of thousands of followers, has been pushing a conspiracy theory about the Turkey earthquake.

Israel knew about the quake ahead of time and only told her friends.

She removed the Twitter thread but I was able to reproduce it with her Telegram and the Google cache:

Israel was boasting that it has elaborated the system for predicting earthquakes with 80% precision. A week ago, the Western embassies were closed in Turkey, and the Westerners were advised to leave the country ASAP due to the "terrorist attack threat."

Today, Turkey and Syria are hit with an extremely strong earthquake.

My guess is that Israel has informed its western counterparts about the upcoming earthquakes.

The Western supremacists are caring exclusively about their own precious lives, giving a shit about those who are considered inferior to them, those third-rate Arabs and Turks. “There is no need to inform them about the threat. Let them die! Who cares!”

How many lives would be saved, if people were aware of the upcoming threat.

If anybody — Israel, Western powers — was aware of the upcoming earthquake and didn’t urge Ankara and Damascus about it — that’s a crime.

Bearing in mind “coincidence” of the earthquake in Iran and Israeli drone attack. Then the closure of the Western embassies and a call to Westerners to leave Turkey prior to the earthquake.

These are the dots. Connect them your own way.

This is...nuts. It has the same quality as the popular "Israelis warned NYC Jews not to go to work on 9/11" meme.

Yes, last year Israeli researchers claimed that they could predict an earthquake with 80% accuracy - but that was only within 48 hours of the event, not a week ahead. And only antisemites would conflate all Israelis with the Israeli government.

The warnings to embassy personnel came after the Quran burning in Sweden in late January.

Her claim that it is no coincidence that Israel's drone attack in Iran happened around the time of an earthquake is really unhinged. That would mean that the Israelis could accurately predict an earthquake days or weeks ahead of time - to within minutes.

And her Telegram channel also reproduces a map that implies that the US might have exploded nukes under Turkey to cause the quake.