Showing posts with label apartheid lies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apartheid lies. Show all posts

Sunday, January 01, 2023


Indigo Traveller, a popular social media personality, visited a beautiful but very dangerous slum in Brazil and interviewed people there.

One of his subjects is a dancer who has traveled around the world. 

He describes how he experienced racism in Europe, especially Spain. 

But his favorite place to visit and perform is Israel - he says he even learned Hebrew.

(h/t Ezequiel Doiny)




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!

 

 


Friday, December 30, 2022

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Where the Netanyahu government differs from its predecessor
Over the course of the campaign, and in a steadily escalating fashion as he prepared to return to office, Netanyahu has spoken enthusiastically about the prospect of reaching a peace agreement that will formalize Israel’s relations with Saudi Arabia. Those still sub rosa relations were the foundation of the Abraham Accords.

The rationale for a Saudi deal is overwhelming for both countries. Leaving aside the economic potential of such an agreement—which is massive—the strategic implications are a game changer. An Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement, like the agreements Israel concluded with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan in 2020, is a means to withstand the Biden administration’s realignment away from America’s allies and towards Iran. By strengthening its bilateral ties with the Arab states bordering Iran and other key states in the region, Israel expands its strategic footprint and is capable of developing defensive and offensive capabilities by working in cooperation with likeminded governments. By working with Israel openly, Saudi Arabia sends a clear message to Iran and its people that Saudi Arabia will not be cowed into submission by the regime that is currently brutalizing its youth.

Netanyahu has already made a statement in support of the revolutionaries in Iran. At this point, with most experts assessing that Iran has crossed the nuclear threshold and has enough enriched uranium to produce up to four bombs per month, it is obvious that Biden’s nuclear diplomacy has nothing to do with nuclear non-proliferation.

There are only two ways to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed state—direct action targeting Iran’s nuclear installations and regime change. Netanyahu’s willingness to stand up to the Biden administration and stand with the Iranian people and Israel’s regional partners makes regime change more likely, and direct action against Iran’s nuclear installations more likely to succeed.

Over the two months since the Israeli elections, the opposition and its supporters on the Israeli and American Jewish left have stirred up hysteria by claiming that the most significant distinction between the Lapid-Gantz government and the Netanyahu government centers on social policies related to non-religious Jews. This claim is false, and maliciously so. The Netanyahu government has no intention—and never had any intention—of curtailing the civil rights of non-religious Jews. Their goal is to expand civil and individual rights, by among other things, placing checks and balances on Israel’s hyper-activist Supreme Court and state prosecution.

There are many differences between the previous government and the Netanyahu government. None of them have to do with civil rights. The main distinction is that the Netanyahu government has made securing Israel’s national interests its central goal in foreign and domestic policy. Its predecessors were primarily interested in getting along with the hostile Biden administration, under all conditions. Netanyahu and his ministers will work with the Biden administration enthusiastically, when possible.
Jonathan Tobin: Can US Jews love the real Israel—or only the fantasy version?
For the first decades of Israel’s existence, the above differences with Americans were papered over by the dominance of Labor Zionism, whose universalist rhetoric meshed nicely with liberal sensibilities, even if the security policies it pursued did not. But even in its most idealized form, a particularistic project such as Zionism has been a difficult sell for American Jews, the overwhelming bulk of whom see sectarian concerns not only as antithetical to their well-being, but possibly racist, as well.

Having found a home in which they were granted free access to every sector of American society, and in which the non-Jewish majority proved willing to marry them, they unsurprisingly have had difficulty coming to terms with an avowedly ethno-religious state with such a different raison d’être.

Moreover, an American-Jewish population in which the acceptance of assimilation has created a large and fast-growing group the demographers call “Jews of no religion” is bound to take a dim view of a country that specifically defines itself as a Jewish state, no matter how generous its policies toward the Palestinians or the non-Orthodox denominations might be. If many American Jews are no longer certain that their community’s survival matters, how can one possibly expect them to regard the interest of Israeli Jews in preserving their state against dangerous foes with anything but indifference?

Many Jews talk about their willingness to support a nicer, less nationalist and religious Israel than the one that elected Netanyahu and his allies. They support efforts by Democrats to pressure it to make suicidal concessions to Palestinians who, whether Americans are willing to admit it or not, purpose Israel’s elimination. They also want it to be more welcoming to liberal variants of Judaism that Americans practice, and for the Orthodox have less influence.

But even if you think those changes would make Israel better or safer, a majority of Israelis disagree. So, while much of the criticism is framed as a defense of democracy to sync with Democratic Party talking points that smear Republicans, there’s nothing democratic about thwarting the will of a nation’s voters or seeking to impose a mindset they regard as alien to their needs.

The challenge for liberals is not just how to cope with an Israel led by Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, or to put aside the partisan hyperbole branding it as a fascist or fundamentalist tyranny. It’s accepting the fact that Israel is not a Middle Eastern variant of the blue state enclaves where most American Jews live.

They need to grasp that simple, but still difficult-to-accept concept and forget about the Israel of liberal fantasies. If they can, it should be easy for them to understand that no matter who is running Israel—or how its people think, worship or vote—the sole Jewish state’s continued survival is still a just and worthy cause.
Ruthie Blum: Israel’s new government and ‘Pauline Kael syndrome’
Following the late and former US president Richard Nixon’s landslide re-election in 1972, New Yorker magazine film critic Pauline Kael voiced a mixture of dismay and surprise.

“I live in a rather special world,” she commented. “I only know one person who voted for [him]. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater, I can feel them.”

Her famous acknowledgment of existence in an elitist bubble, insulated from a faceless mass of aliens lurking menacingly in the shadows, may have been irritating, but at least it was honest. It also perfectly described the chasm between the chattering classes and the majority of the voting public.

Though this type of divide in the West tends to be viewed and treated as political – since it’s inevitably expressed at the ballot box – it’s actually more cultural in nature. The response in Israel and abroad to the outcome of the November 1 Knesset election is a case in point. What were the reactions to Netanyahu's coalition?

The initial shock and subsequent hysteria surrounding the emergence of Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s “full, full right-wing” coalition has been emanating from circles of the Pauline Kael variety. To them, it’s worse than irrelevant that the new government in Jerusalem is the result of the people’s clear choice; they call the rejection of the Left’s increasingly woke post-Zionism “undemocratic” and a sign of societal downfall.

Such baseless charges on the part of the “anybody but Bibi” camp would be funny if they weren’t welcomed so heartily by those in the international community who delegitimize the Jewish state, regardless of its leadership, and by fellow travelers putting Israel on perpetual probation. Take the hundreds of American rabbis (none Orthodox, of course) who signed “A Call to Action for Clergy in Protest of Israeli Government Extremists,” for instance.

Wednesday, December 28, 2022

The Journal of International and Intercultural Communication (JIIC) is published by the National Communication Association. JIIC says it "publishes original scholarship that expands understanding of international, intercultural, and cross-cultural communication"  and that "articles in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review, including screening by the editor and review by at least two anonymous referees."

Its most recent issue featured the theme, "Writing occupied Palestine: Toward a field of Palestinian communication and culture studies." Of course, the articles in the issue have little to do with Palestinian culture and everything to do with demonizing Israel under the rubric of "communications studies."

Besides the introduction and forward, there are four articles in the issue on this theme. 


Following (Kraidy, M. M., & Murphy, P. D. (2003). Media ethnography: Local, global, or translocal? In P. D. Murphy & M. M. Kraidy (Eds.), Global media studies: Ethnographic perspectives (pp. 299–307). Routledge; Kraidy, M. M., & Murphy, P. D. (2008). Shifting Geertz: Toward a theory of translocalism in global communication studies. Communication Theory, 18(3), 335–355. 10.1111/j.1468-2885.2008.00325.x) call to look at global communication through lenses of translocalism and hybridity, I find that global boycotts are hybridized sites that facilitate translocal recognition. Using Boycott Eurovision as a case study, two locales are investigated: petitions and Globalvision. By uncovering the translocal recognition in each locale, global boycotts become crucial avenues of inquiry to understand how global social movements grapple with globalization. The essay describes the importance of understanding the vulnerabilities of international boycotts’ hybridized status, calling forward analysis of structure, specific initiatives, and the enactments of hegemonic ideologies found in locales.   
The article itself should not have passed even a cursory editorial review, let alone a "rigorous peer review." It is a polemic, not analysis. It deliberately uncapitalizes "Eurovision," it refers to the IDF as the "Israeli Occupation Forces," it fully accepts as truth that Israel engages in "settler-colonialist, apartheid, and military violence against Palestinians." 

The author, Sarah Cathryn Majed Dweik, writes, "I focus on introducing vocabulary innate to Boycott Eurovision, heeding Lechuga’s (2020) call to develop praxis-driven theory within rhetoric." In other words, she can write whatever she wants because she creates her own vocabulary. 

An example is in how she calls Israel racist by defining it as "white:"  
[T]he Israeli national identity replicates the historical whiteness and settler-colonialism crafted by early Zionists and the British empire. I define whiteness as a global system of domination that reflects the logics of colonialism, racism, anti-Blackness, patriarchy, classism, ableism, and heteronormativity to recenter the white subject as that which is normal and required to attain (see Al-Saif & Ghabra, 2016; Ahmed, 2009; Ghabra, 2020a; Nakayama, 2020). In the historical moves that Israel made to establish itself as a country, Israel crafted the Jewish national subject in relation to Europeanness, whiteness, and settler-colonialism through the juridical exclusion of the Palestinian and Arab Others (Erakat, 2015) and relying on the state to guide where whiteness presents itself within the Israeli national identity (Yadgar, 2011). By utilizing whiteness as a heuristic to obscure specific meanings of Jewish-ness and Israeli-ness, material spaces are necessary to participate in this work, such as a fun singing competition.  

Why bother to mention that Israel has had Mizrahi,  Arab and Black Ethiopian contestants for Eurovision? Facts get in the way of the all-important discourse. Dweik can simply define them all as "white" for her purposes, and the reviewers are none the wiser.

Another article, "Disability as metaphor or resilience: A Palestinian poetic inquiry," parrots as fact the absurd thesis by academic fraud Jasbir Puar that Israel has an intentional policy to maim Palestinians. 

A third article is called "Structural violence and sources of resistance among Palestinian children living under military occupation and political oppression." Based on an interview with 22 Palestinian children, it makes it sound as if most of them experience direct violence from Israel for no reason. Yet the methodology of choosing the interview subjects was biased:
The participants were recruited between November and December 2020 from a pool of children who accessed a local center organizing psychosocial activities. Researchers targeted a purposive convenience sample of 22 participants across various settings (villages, cities, and refugee camps) in the West Bank....[B]oth caregivers and participants were carefully informed about the aim of the task, the purposive confidentiality procedures, and their right to refuse or discontinue their participation at any time. All participants and families provided informed consent. 
And what were the aims of the task that the caregivers had to agree to? We don't know the exact words used, but it is very clear both from the very title of the paperand the contents that they were told that this was a study meant to demonize Israel:
Thus, the present study explored the diverse everyday experiences of structural colonial oppression in children living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Our research aimed to investigate the main antecedents and determinants of risk and violence exposure in a setting characterized by settler-colonial violence and military occupation. 
Only those who agreed to participate with that purpose in mind are included in the study! If there was ever a self-selecting group, this is it. 

There are well over a million children in the West Bank. The vast majority live in Area A, under full Palestinian control where Israeli forces only rarely enter (as they did this year when the PA did not act to restrain the "Lion's Den" terrorists.) If they don't participate in demonstrations, they would only see Israeli soldiers at checkpoints, and the vast majority pass right through. Yet the study includes a very high number of kids who supposedly experienced Israeli forces invading their schools or homes, or even shooting them. 

Statistically, this isn't close to a random sample. But the peer reviewers don't know that.

This issue, except for the last article on how Palestinian kids use Tiktok, shines no new light on Palestinians and communications. On the contrary, it is anti-Israel propaganda that hijacks an academic discipline for promoting hate - just as Palestinian academics do with other disciplines.

It is a shame that the social sciences are so susceptible to being manipulated and taking part in incitement disguised as academic studies.




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!

 

 

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Monday, December 26, 2022

From the official English translation of Mahmoud Abbas' Christmas message:

Today we are facing the policies and actions of our occupier with unity, commitment to our national values, steadfastness on our land, and with the world standing on the side of truth and justice. We will not accept the continuation of the occupation’s colonial-settlement policies targeting the Christian presence and Christianity in our region, which is an integral part of the social fabric of our people and of our region, something we always affirm and will continue to encourage all to preserve the mosaic of religious heritage that Palestine is proud of.

On this occasion we commend the positions of the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, in which they accused extremist Zionist groups of carrying out continuous attacks on churches, intimidating Christians, attempting at expelling them and seizing their property.

We assure that we will continue to present our Palestinian narrative, refuting the false Zionist narrative, confronting any racist measures aimed at erasing our national identity, including our Christian and Muslim heritage. We will confront attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Holy Sepulcher, Mount of Olives, Jaffa Gate, New Gate, the Armenian Quarter and others and attacks on every inch of the homeland.

We will not accept the practices of the colonial-settlement occupation and will confront them with peaceful popular resistance, in all international forums and courts. On this blessed occasion we call upon the international community break its silence and take concrete measures to stop  Israeli crimes, including  colonial-settlement expansion and ongoing annexation, the consolidation of a racist Apartheid regime, attempts at changing the identity and the character of the city of Jerusalem, the desecration of its Christian and Muslim holy sites ,  the seizure of church properties and all Palestinian properties, the forcible displacement of Palestinians from their homes,  demolitions, as well as murders and other crimes and violations of international law. The homeland is mourning its martyrs, and we shall do everything we can to hold the criminals accountable.  

Our hearts are squeezed with pain and suffering due to the killings of the Israeli occupation that led to the martyrdom of hundreds during this year, including the martyr journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, as well as the recent martyrdom of the hero Nasser Abu Hmeid, who died denied of his basic human rights as he was in the last stages of his struggle with cancer. We insist in the need for the international community to assume its responsibility to protect our people.

We affirm that the only way for our people, and all peoples of the region, to enjoy security, stability, prosperity and good neighborliness is for  Palestinians to fulfil their legitimate and long overdue rights in accordance with international law and resolutions, including the end of the Israeli occupation and the freedom of the State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, including our Muslims and Christian sanctities, the right of return of our people and living in our homeland in freedom and dignity. 

I extend my greetings and congratulations to our people wherever they are, and I say to them, be proud of your history and identity, tell the world that Christmas is a Palestinian message of hope which  our people continues to embrace with love and hope to achieve justice, freedom and peace in the Holy Land.
In short:  Jews are criminals who have no business to live here, people who murder Jews are heroes and we intend to destroy the Jewish state via "return."

7 paragraphs that were anti-Israel, and only two that talked about the usual Christmas messages of peace on Earth, goodwill towards men,

This is what happens when you define your entire purpose - and the purpose of your people - as destroying the Jewish state.




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!

 

 

Sunday, December 25, 2022

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Happy inclusive holidays!
What a minefield this whole identity thing is. Thank goodness Chanukah doesn’t present this problem, eh?

For many diaspora Jews, Chanukah is regarded as Christmas-lite with gifts, diet-destroying delicacies and a lighted menorah in place of a glittering tree.

And there can hardly be much danger of offending anyone with a card displaying a chanukiah, dreidel or doughnut, or standard anodyne message such as “Festival of lights”, “Love, light, latkes” or “Peace, love and miracles”.

Hold on a minute. Chanukah is not actually a festival of peace and love. It celebrates instead the victory of the Maccabees who went to war against both the Seleucid Greeks and the Hellenists, Jews who were themselves drawn to the pagan ways of their Greek overlords.

The Maccabees were not apostles of peace. They were more like resistance commandos, fierce and uncompromising warriors who fought their Greek oppressors.

Moreover, they also committed violent atrocities against the Hellenised Jews who had absorbed Greek universalism and as a result had taken aim at circumcision, Shabbat observance and Torah study.

The Maccabees regarded those overly-assimilated Jews as traitors to Judaism and dealt with them accordingly.

In the saccharine world of much Chanukah observance, the Maccabees are commonly presented as heroes fighting and defeating the tyrannical Greeks. This was undoubtedly true.

But other commentators equally plausibly describe them as zealots, violent religious extremists who forced Jews to conform to a strict interpretation of Judaism and expelled non-Jews from the land. To the Hellenised Jews, they were religious nuts.

Ring any bells? Today, many diaspora Jews (and liberal Israelis) are hyper-ventilating over the likely inclusion in the new Israeli government of three men whose agenda has distinct echoes of the Maccabees.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the putative security minister, called in his younger days for the expulsion of the Arabs from Israel (although he says he has changed his views). Bezalel Smotrich, tipped as a finance minister, has said his ultimate aim is an Israeli theocracy.

And Avi Maoz, who is set to run an office of “Jewish identity”, has taken explicit aim at the “Hellenising Jews” of the Israeli left and progressive denominations whom he terms “the real darkness”.

Celebrating the Maccabees might therefore be seen as celebrating Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and Maoz.

Well that’s the end of Chanukah cards, then.
PMW: Jesus the Palestinian terrorist and his 72 dark-eyed virgins
One of the many ways in which the Palestinian Authority distorts history in order to invent a centuries-old Palestinian identity, is to turn Jesus the Judean (Jew), who promoted peace on earth, into a Palestinian terrorist who was murdered by the Israelis, thus becoming the first Palestinian “Martyr,” who is now reveling in heaven with Allah, in the arms of 72 dark-eyed virgins.

While the language the PA uses to describe Jesus as a terrorist and as someone enjoying his virgins is less direct, the meaning is the same.

When referring to Palestinian terrorists, the PA calls them “self-sacrificing fighters,” or “fidai”. So, when the PA and its officials use the same terms to describe Jesus, they are in fact saying he is a terrorist.

As Palestinian Media Watch has shown, here, here, here, here, and here, among other places, the definition of Jesus as a terrorist enjoying his virgins is not a fringe idea, but rather one expressed by the highest order in the PA.

Jesus the “Palestinian” terrorist murdered by the Jews

When PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh sought to declare Jesus a terrorist, and link him to Palestinian terror, he referred to him as a “Palestinian self-sacrificing fighter” who, similar to the PA descriptions of suicide bombers, “paid for his mission with his life” and whose birth takes place “at the same time as the anniversary of the outbreak of the Palestinian revolution” – i.e the anniversary of the first Fatah terror attack:
“The birthday of our lord Jesus, peace be upon him - the first Palestinian self-sacrificing fighter from whom we learned Martyrdom-death, and who paid for his mission with his life - takes place at the same time as the anniversary of the outbreak of the Palestinian revolution (i.e., the anniversary of “the Launch” of Fatah, counted from its first terror attack against Israel), for which thousands of Martyrs have paid with their lives so that we will live and remain, and so that our children will dream of a better future.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 28, 2020]


Muwaffaq Matar, a member of the Revolutionary Council of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and regular columnist for the official PA daily similarly adopted Jesus as a Palestinian and compared him to terrorists calling him a “self-sacrificing fighter”:

Monday, December 19, 2022

From Ian:

Daniel Greenfield: The light of Hanukkah that has continued to shine for 74 years
A candle is a brief flare of light. A wick dipped in oil burns and goes out again. The Hanukkah light appears no different, but it is.

Two thousand years after the Jews had come to believe that wars were for other people and miracles meant escaping alive, Jewish armies stood and held the line against an empire and the would be empires of the region.

And now the flame still burns, though it is flickering. Seventy-four years is a long time for oil to burn, especially when the black oil next door seems so much more useful to the empires and republics across the sea. And the children of many of those who first lit the flame no longer see the point in that hoary old light.

But that old light is still the light of possibilities. It burns to remind us of the extraordinary things that our ancestors did and of the extraordinary assistance that they received. We cannot always expect oil to burn for eight days, just as we cannot always expect the bullet to miss or the rocket to fall short. And yet even in those moments of darkness the reminder of the flame is with us for no darkness lasts forever and no exile, whether of the body of the spirit, endures. Sooner or later the spark flares to life again and the oil burns again. Sooner or later the light returns.

It is the miracle that we commemorate because it is a reminder of possibilities. Each time we light a candle or dip a wick in oil, we release a flare of light from the darkness comes to remind us of what was, is and can still be.
Israel is one of the most progressive countries in the world
While so-called “progressives” and biased media in the United States level a relentless stream of accusations against Israel, these “critics” uniformly ignore the fact that Israel is one of the most liberal, progressive nations in the world. If Israel’s “progressive” critics really cared about social justice, they would be the country’s most fervent supporters.

Enemies of Israel falsely accuse Israel of white colonialism, apartheid, ultra-nationalism, unfair treatment of its Arab citizens, LGBT “pinkwashing,” theocracy and violations of international law.

In fact, Israel is a mature democracy with high-functioning government and judicial institutions, plus a long track record of moral behavior and the rule of law. It guarantees expansive civil liberties, equal rights and economic opportunities to its citizens.

This includes, of course, Israel’s two million Arab citizens—20% of the population—who share all the benefits of Israeli society.

Israeli Arabs are currently represented in the Knesset by two political parties, one of which is an Islamist party that was part of the outgoing government. An Arab Muslim judge serves on Israel’s Supreme Court. An Arab Christian also served as a Supreme Court justice and was chair of Israel’s Central Elections Committee.

An Arab Muslim is the head of Bank Leumi, Israel’s largest bank. Arabs also make up 30% of the country’s doctors and 50% of the country’s pharmacists.

Thousands of Israeli Arabs volunteer for service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), even though military service is not required of Arab Muslims or Christians.

So much for the myth of Israeli apartheid.
General Washington’s Christmastime Hanukah Encounter
There is a particularly American Hanukah story that occurred when Washington and his troops were at Valley Forge during Christmas of 1777. Dan Adler’s article “Hanukkah at the White House” recounts this tale of George Washington’s encounter with a Jewish soldier: “In December, 1778, General George Washington had supper at the home of Michael Hart, a Jewish merchant in Easton, Pennsylvania. It was during the Hanukkah celebration, and Hart began to explain the customs of the holiday to his guest. Washington replied that he already knew about Hanukkah. He told Hart and his family of meeting the Jewish soldier at Valley Forge the previous year. (According to Washington, the soldier was a Polish immigrant who said he had fled his homeland because he could not practice his faith under the Prussian government there.) Hart’s daughter Louisa wrote the story down in her diary.” Rabbi Susan Grossman has written that, “[l]ike generations of Jews before him, that soldier served as a ‘light unto the nations’ (Isaiah 42:6), bringing inspiration and courage to a nation in its birth pangs. And he did so in a perfectly American way, a way in which a miracle did result, the miracle by which the light from one religion helps give comfort and courage to another.”

Washington “was welcomed at the home of Corporal Michael Hart,” which is described as “a two-story stone building on the southeast corner of the public square, directly opposite the courthouse. His general store was on the first floor, his residence on the second. Michael Hart’s wife, Leah, prepared a kosher meal... in honor of the Hanukah festival, it being the sixth day of the holiday.” (To offer a mild correction, December 21, 1778, was the eighth and final day of Hanukah that year, since Hanukah ran from sundown, Sunday, December 13, 1778, until sundown, Monday, December 21st.)

Further, Louisa Hart would “proudly record” in her diary: “Let it be remembered that Michael Hart was a Jew, pious; a Jew reverencing and strictly observant of the Sabbath and festivals, dietary laws were also adhered to although he was compelled to be his own Schochet [ritual slaughterer]. Mark well that he, Washington, was then honored as first in peace, first in war and first in the hearts of his countrymen. Even during a short sojourn he became, for the hour, the guest of the worthy Jew.”

Thursday, December 15, 2022

From Ian:

Herzog: Comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa is a ‘blood libel’
Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Thursday slammed as a “blood libel” comparisons of the Jewish state’s policies towards the Palestinians to South African apartheid.

“The comparison between the State of Israel and the apartheid regime is not a legitimate criticism—it is a blood libel,” Herzog said in a video address to the World Zionist Organization’s annual conference in Tel Aviv.

“It is a dangerous and intensifying terrorism, since the legitimacy of the State of Israel and the justification of its existence is directly related to its ability to protect itself and hence they are trying to undermine this ability,” he added.

Herzog also described the BDS movement as a “brutal campaign” spearheaded by organizations “spreading lies and false facts and seeking to build a long-term policy that will undermine the existence of the state.”

He continued: “Let’s make no mistake, this is not a peace-seeking campaign, it is a campaign promoting hatred and incitement.”

For his part, WZO chairman Yaakov Hagoel warned of a resurgence in antisemitism, which he called a “malignant cancer” that required “major medical surgery to remove… at its roots.”
Melanie Phillips: How the White House attempt to counter Jew-hatred undermines itself
Then there’s Hady Amr, who was recently made deputy assistant secretary of state for “Israel-Palestine” in order to promote the Palestinian Arab cause. One year after the 9/11 attacks, Amr wrote about his work as the national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice Network: “I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” the murderous terror campaign against Israelis from 1987 to 1993.

Or how about Maher Bitar, the senior director of intelligence at the National Security Council, who spent years promoting the boycott of Israel and was on the executive board of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Students for Justice in Palestine, which hounds Jewish students on campus and disseminates antisemitic propaganda.

Then there’s Reema Odin, deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, who justified Palestinian suicide bombings of Israelis in 2002—when hundreds of Israelis were being blown up in buses and pizza parlors during the second intifada—as “the last resort of a desperate people.”

And let’s not overlook Uzra Zeya, the under-secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights. As Alana Goodman reported in the Washington Free Beacon last year, during Zeya’s time working for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs she compiled research for a book arguing that “the Israel lobby has subverted the American political process to take control of U.S. Middle East policy” by establishing a secret network of “dirty money” PACs that allegedly bribe and extort congressional candidates into taking pro-Israel positions.

In a section entitled “Jewish Power in the Formulation of U.S. Middle East Policy,” the book claimed that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee gave American Jews secret marching orders on how to vote and which candidates to support financially.

It further argued that “non-Jewish Americans increasingly perceive their Jewish fellow citizens as members of a single-issue voting bloc which, at best, divides its loyalties between an increasingly exploitative Israel and an increasingly exploited United States.”

“The more strident lobbyists for Israel must also accept a major share of the blame for whatever changes have taken place in American public perceptions of the loyalties of America’s Jews,” it continued. “The inevitable public perception is that such ardent supporters of Israel have no real interest in making the United States a better place for all of its citizens, but only in making Israel a more secure and prosperous place for Jews.”

In other words, the book blamed Jews for antisemitism.

The chances of the new White House group calling out the bigotry of all these officials are clearly zero.

The likelihood is that this new strategy will as ever pin antisemitism on the “far-right” while ignoring it where it is most ubiquitous and powerful: In black and Muslim communities, the Democratic party—and the Biden administration.

The White House statement said the new strategy will “raise understanding about antisemitism and the threat it poses to the Jewish community and all Americans.” It would seem that the White House itself needs someone to teach it just what antisemitism is.


Benjamin Netanyahu: The Biggest Lie in the Palestine vs. Israel Debate - Jordan B Peterson
Benjamin Netanyahu was recently reelected as Prime Minister of Israel, having previously served in the office from 1996–1999 and 2009­–2021. From 1967–1972 he served as a soldier and commander in Sayeret Matkal, an elite special forces unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. A graduate of MIT, he served as Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations from 1984–1988, before being elected to the Israeli parliament as a member of the Likud party in 1988. He has published five previous books on terrorism and Israel’s quest for peace and security. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Sara. In his newest book "Bibi: My Story" the newly reelected prime minister of Israel tells the story of his family, the story of his people, his path to leadership, and his unceasing commitment to defending his country and securing its future.

Thursday, December 08, 2022

From Ian:

Lies, libels and the justification of terror
Nov. 29 marked the 75th anniversary of United Nations Resolution 181, which called for the creation of two states, a Jewish state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine. The Jewish community accepted those terms, and declared the State of Israel, while the Arab community refused, and launched a war that they then lost. Over time, however, Palestinians developed their own version of the “big lie” in the form of the “nakba” myth, a retelling of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war in which the would-be genocidal Arab armies that failed in their mission to eliminate the Jewish state are reimagined as the helpless victims of a horrible catastrophe (or “nakba,” in Arabic) of destruction and displacement. The legend of the nakba is at the heart of much of modern anti-Zionism.

Right on cue, on Nov. 30 the United Nations General Assembly voted to officially commemorate the founding of the State of Israel as a nakba. U.N. resolutions are not legally or morally binding, and they obviously cannot create truths. But they do lend a sheen of credibility to an otherwise ridiculous claim. Such a resolution makes it easier for the big lie to spread, because people can rely on and appeal to the GA’s “authority” on the matter without having to defend or even care about the details of such a heinous accusation. And once a lie has become officially acceptable to speak in the halls of power, it is only a matter of time before it gets picked up and amplified by popular culture. This one certainly did not take long.

On Thursday, Netflix began streaming the Jordanian film “Farha,” which purports to focus on the experiences of a young girl during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The hero watches as Israeli soldiers, portrayed as inhumanly cruel, brutally and graphically murder innocent Palestinian families, including children. While the film claims to be “based on” true events, the director has admitted that it is not factual, and that these scenes did not actually occur. But that does not mean they will not have a very real-world effect on anti-Jewish hate and violence, because many will watch the movie, and few will read the disclaimer.

There are two reasons to publicly correct the record on the nakba. First, it is simply not true. There are primary sources, from the Jordanian side, attesting to the fact that the vast majority of Arabs who left their homes did so voluntarily, or under orders from the invading Arab armies, not the invaded Israelis. Many left confident that the combined armies of Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt would quickly overwhelm the tiny Jewish state. As the Jordanian newspaper Filastin reported, “The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.” But as another refugee quoted in another Jordanian newspaper, Ad Difaa, explained that “The Arab government told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.”

Second, it is incredibly dangerous. In 1976, Mahmoud Abbas said that “The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live” (emphasis added).
Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Lironne Bar Sadeh (Irish Times): Israel Is Not an "Apartheid" State
The letter in the Irish Times, "Israel and the Palestinian people" (Nov. 30), signed by various Irish luminaries, repeats the usual canard that Israel is an "apartheid" state.

This is an outrageous falsehood. Israel is in fact the only long-lasting liberal democracy in the entire Middle East. It is the only country in the region with freedom of speech, party, press, and association and judicial transparency.

It has equality under the law for all its citizens, a fifth of whom by the way are Israeli Arabs, both Muslim and Christian. It is also the only country in the region with rights and equality for the LGBTQ+ community. In terms of its legal and political systems, its vibrant press and rich civil society, Israel is remarkably similar to Ireland.

Those who signed the letter think they are helping in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, but in fact they are not. By constantly demonizing Israel and ignoring the deep flaws on the Palestinian side, such as the Islamic fundamentalism of Hamas, and the squalid corruption of the Palestinian Authority, they make themselves morally and intellectually bankrupt.

People who genuinely want to help the Palestinians should encourage democratic, moderate forces within Palestinian society and those who will eventually realize that peace with Israel can only come about through dialogue and mutual compromise, not by demonization and intransigence. It is tragic that some people in Ireland, instead of supporting Israel and the moderate Arab forces in the region, prefer to demonize Israel as much as possible and fail to condemn Iran and the forces of extremism which blight the region.
12% of Gazans Have Fled Gaza Since Hamas Took Over
In the 15 years since Hamas seized control of Gaza, 12 percent of the Strip’s population has fled, according to a study released by an organization associated with the terror group. The report appears to mark the first time Hamas is acknowledging — indirectly — widespread Gazan emigration since it violently seized control of the Strip in 2007.

The report, written by the Hamas-affiliated Council on International Relations, was published in September and recently seen by the Tazpit Press Service. It claims that over 60,000 Gazan residents have migrated from the Gaza Strip in recent years to escape poverty and war.

The CIR report blamed Israel’s blockade of Gaza for the Strip’s poverty driving Gazans to flee. Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2007 to prevent weapons smuggling.

The Strip has seen several waves of immigration due to dire unemployment rates, growing poverty, sanctions imposed by the Palestinian Authority, and rounds of conflict with Israel. The CIR did not acknowledge Hamas’s authoritarian rule as a contributing factor.

“Gaza is being emptied of its residents,” the authors of the report said.

The Palestinian Authority has no data on the scope of migration from the Gaza under Hamas rule. Till now, Hamas hid the data, making accurate numbers difficult for human rights organizations to gather. The CIR’s chairman of the board is Basem Naim, who is also a senior figure in Hamas.

Various estimates in the past year shed some light on the Gaza exodus.

Between 2007-2021, approximately 236,000 Gazans left the Strip, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, reported during the summer. That number is also about 12 percent of the total residents of the Strip.

Based on those numbers, it appears that an average of around 17,000 Palestinians have left Gaza every year since 2007.

Friday, December 02, 2022

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Diaspora Jews keep making the same mistake
A perverse feature of the Jewish people is that they make one particular mistake over and over again. They are persecuted. They frantically try to assimilate into their host community in the belief that this will avert future persecution. They are persecuted again. They frantically assimilate again.

This week saw the publication of the first collected works of Theodor Herzl, the founding father of modern Zionism. The set initiated the Library of the Jewish People, a new series of works by classic Jewish writers issued by the Koren publishing house.

Publishing this now is particularly fitting because of striking similarities between Herzl's time and today.

Gil Troy's masterful introduction to the collection draws attention to the complexities of Herzl's tortured life. This rings a loud contemporary bell, not just about the persistence of antisemitism but about the current attitudes of Diaspora Jews.

Assimilated and sophisticated, Herzl had an ambivalent attitude towards his Jewishness. Infatuated with the German high culture that was dominant in Europe, he refused to circumcise his son and lit Christmas tree candles for his children.

Jews had risen to the highest levels of German and Austrian political, professional and cultural society. Yet at the same time, Germany and Austria were becoming more and more pathologically hostile to the Jews.

Herzl was caught in a permanent identity crisis – a conflict between his "enlightened" Europeanized self and the Jewish culture whose fundamental importance he only gradually came to understand.

As he reeled from one antisemitic shock after another, he repeatedly tried to reconcile the high degree of assimilation achieved by European Jews with the fact that, for non-Jewish Europeans, the Jews were unassimilable.


Not just Kanye – it’s an online coalition of hate
Some dismiss TikTok as an innocuous forum for children who want to be creative. Yet TikTok’s pattern of catering to young, impressionable, naïve audiences, combined with the impact of bad-faith actors who post hateful content, must be taken more seriously. Despite claims that TikTok and other platforms are monitoring content, a new variety of antisemitism has emerged in which hatred is articulated through “dog whistles” or coded language used for a specific audience. Jews, for example, are referred to as Skypes (to rhyme with kikes). Black people are “Googles,” Latinos are “Yahoos,” and Muslims are “Skittles.”

Current concerns also extend to more mainstream platforms like Twitter, whose acquisition by Elon Musk casts doubts on whether the social media giant will engage in any form of content moderation – even when it comes to hate speech. Advertisement

But it is on the Dark Web where antisemitic content truly thrives and festers. Inaccessible via what’s known as the “Surface Web,” where you and I search for restaurants, order books and play Wordle, the Dark Web operates in the vast walled-off realm of the Deep Web. It’s a lawless and faceless environment where hateful groups find a comfortable home not only on their own but more concerningly together, as a coalition that amplifies their individual and collective impact.

While it may be tempting to shrug off Ye’s defenders as a hateful nuisance, it is crucial to remember that violent terrorist groups spew similar rhetoric and also have access to the Deep Web. ISIS had to use cloud storage when navigating mainstream platforms became impossible. Thousands of films from Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah are floating in internet archives.

In an ideal world, Ye’s words should not matter. However, they reflect the cesspool of online hate that translates to violence on the streets. The Anti-Defamation League has documented a rise in antisemitic incidents in the US from 927 in 2012 to a record-high 2,717 in 2021. That is no coincidence.

We are missing a vital opportunity to call out not just Ye the individual, but the chronic trend of Jew-hatred itself. And what starts with Jews never ends with them. It spreads to other groups and reflects a decay in the moral fiber of society.

Let’s not talk about Ye. Let’s redirect the conversation toward forming a new coalition that counters the fusion and coalition of hate. While the Dark Net presents a tough challenge and there is no way to regulate it, however, it can be studied. Because words — whether they are uttered by an anonymous source or a celebrity — can and do kill.
Trivializing antisemitism based on politics
After news broke that former President Donald Trump carelessly dined with both Ye and avowed holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at Mar-A-Lago, Ben Shapiro, who has been outspoken about his support for Ron DeSantis should the Florida governor run for president in 2024, was quick to voice his disgust. "A good way not to accidentally dine with a vile racist and antisemite you don't know is not to dine with a vile racist and antisemite you do know," Shapiro posted, setting off a back-and-forth Twitter squabble between the defamed rapper and Daily Wire executives that had me reaching for the popcorn.

No doubt, Trump's meeting deserves public condemnation. But it's unfortunate that Shapiro can see the splinter in Trump's eye and not the log in his own. Shapiro coming down on Trump for associating with antisemites rings hypocritical in the face of his absence to do just that as his colleague, Candace Owens, continues to prattle on regularly about Ye being her "friend." Waving Owen's defense of an antisemite, presumably because of a shared, mutual interest says much more about Shapiro's character than Trump's dinner says about him.

According to a recent article by Dennis Prager, Owen's former boss, Owens is wrongly being smeared as an antisemite. Prager provides a laundry list of evidence that points to her allegiance with the Jewish people and her support of the Jewish state. But that woman who Prager stands behind has been nowhere to be found this past month. And after Ye's embrace of Fuentes, Dennis should ask himself some tough questions about her. That Shapiro and Prager refuse to publicly identify the brute that she has become on this issue not only has former supporters wondering if they are suffering from a mercenary conflict of interest but if they, like the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt and other establishment Jewish leaders, have become so comfortable in their untouchable elite status, that they are now detached from the harsh realities of hatred their fellow Jews face every day on the streets of New York and Los Angeles.

If Shapiro and Prager honestly respected Ms. Owens, they would hold her to a higher standard, the standard that both the Daily Wire and Prager U profess to hold all people to. And certainly, the standard that Shapiro is currently holding Trump to. And no, this does not mean firing her, but it does mean straightening out their priorities by taking her to task for her concrete thinking and moral failings. What a fantastic exercise in free speech that would be, would it not?
Israel Advocacy Movement: Ben Shapiro is wrong about Kanye
In this video we examine the Ye effect

Wednesday, November 30, 2022



Although it took way longer than I would have liked, NGO Monitor released a thorough, line by line debunking of the Human Rights Watch 2021 report that accused Israel of "apartheid."

No unbiased person can read the NGOM report and end up concluding that the HRW report has a shred of intellectual honesty.

The HRW report is not just filled with errors. That is an understatement. When they cherry pick parts of an article that support their thesis, and ignore the parts that debunk it, it is not an error - it is willful lying.

I could make 200 blog posts out of the lies listed here. Here is a very minor example that illustrates the whole, perverted attempt to paint Israel as an apartheid state:

HRW cites disparity in playgrounds in one location as evidence of apartheid 

HRW consistently cherry-picks statistics, misrepresents data, and makes broad claims of Israeli evil based on minor incidents and minutiae. This example discusses charges of “playground apartheid.” HRW claims: “Israeli authorities sharply discriminate in the provision of resources and services between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis in Jerusalem” (p. 115). The first specific evidence to back this charge is the fact that in 2016, there were two playgrounds in the Arab Jerusalem neighborhoods of Shuafat and Beit Hanina with a combined population of 60,000, compared to nearby Jewish neighborhoods with a playground for every 1,000 residents. HRW cites an article in Haaretz discussing how the Jerusalem District Court ordered the construction of playgrounds in response to a lawsuit filed by two East Jerusalem residents in these specific neighborhoods. The rest of the news story reveals key information that HRW ignores. The Court acknowledged the contention by the City that one could not compare older Arab neighborhoods to newer, planned neighborhoods that incorporated space for playgrounds. Indeed, it was shown that playground density in Arab neighborhoods was similar to ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, contradicting the notion of “playground apartheid” favoring Jews over Arabs. The municipality also demonstrated efforts to build playgrounds in these Arab neighborhoods but explained “that most of the appropriate land for such playgrounds is in private hands, and arrangements must be reached with the owners.” Despite these explanations, the Court ordered the City to build playgrounds in these two Arab neighborhoods, evidence that the government-run courts consistently apply laws that contradict apartheid.
HRW cited a Haaretz article that showed there was no difference between how Israel treated Jewish and Arab neighborhoods - and extracted half-truths to make it look like the opposite.

This is only one of hundreds of similar, egregious misreporting of facts. 

Another tiny example: HRW says that it takes hours for Palestinians to cross the Qalandiya checkpoint, citing an article from 2017. This is used as evidence of how badly Israel treats Palestinians. But Israel overhauled the checkpoint in 2019 - at great expense - and now it takes only minutes for Palestinians to cross. Is it remotely possible HRW is not aware of that overhaul, which was widely reported?

Or HRW's assertion that the very concept of a Jewish state is evidence of apartheid, ignoring the many states that are officially Christian or Muslim. 

The sheer number of these clearly purposeful omissions, double standards and outdated facts is overwhelming, but all of them point to the same conclusion: HRW decided that Israel was guilty first, and manufactured the evidence afterwards, secure in the knowledge that very few people would fact check them - and by the time it happens, they have already gotten their message out.

Put it this way: Public trust in the media is at near an all time low.  The media, however, often corrects mistakes. Human rights NGOs never correct the mistakes in their reports. 

Which means that human rights NGOs are less trustworthy than the media is.





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Tuesday, November 22, 2022

From Ian:

Hold Abbas accountable
We should recall here that last March, then-ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced the launch of an investigation into suspected crimes committed in the territories of Judea and Samaria, in east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since June 13th, 2014. Her announcement followed a preliminary investigation in the wake of a Palestinian complaint that determined – contrary to Israel's position – that the court has the jurisdiction to deliberate on such complaints. Israel called this decision a moral and legal disgrace and officially informed the court that it would not cooperate with it.

It should be noted here that ICC investigations enable arrest warrants to be issued against suspects without any public notification. The court's signatories are required to cooperate with the investigation, honor arrest warrants, and hand over suspects located in their territory to the court. Beyond immediate harm to such persons, the opening of processes against could impact its comportment in the international arena and severely damage its international standing. In any event, in practical terms the investigation against Israel has yet to commence and this is also something that the Palestinians wish to advance through the move at the ICJ.

In fact, what Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his people are trying to achieve is a decision that the "occupation" is permanent and that it is in its entirety (not just measures within its framework) is illegal and therefore Israel should be subjected to pressures and a price should be exacted for its continued presence in Judea and Samaria. The ICC will find it hard to ignore an advisory by the ICJ that adopts these conclusions in their entirety or in part.

At present the ICJ should be busy dealing with the war in Ukraine and events in Georgia, Afghanistan, Africa, and elsewhere. But Israel should not count on the court being too busy to deal with it.The ICJ (once the UN General Assembly officially turns to it) will approach Israel, which will be required to answer the question of whether it is willing to cooperate. It would seem that the considerations that in the past led to a decision to turn down any such request, still hold.

Without any connection to all of the above, Israel will have to consider changes to its approach to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. It should weigh measures that will make it clear to Abbas and the PA that there will be consequences to the incessant campaign to negate Israel's legitimacy. The means at Israel's disposal are not meagre. If they don't deter Abbas, they should at the very least encourage a rethink of his approach among leaders who support it.
The history of apartheid proves Israel is not an apartheid state
By contrast, in Israel, there is an official policy of affirmative action administered by the Israeli government aimed at including minority Israelis in all aspects of public life. The Arabs who chose to stay in Israel during and following the 1948 war are Israeli citizens and are entitled to the rights granted to all citizens under the law. Arab Israelis serve in public institutions as ministers, Supreme Court judges, parliament members and governmental clerks. Furthermore, the former parties of the Joint List, an Arab-Israeli political bloc, hold seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. For the first time, in 2019, the Joint List endorsed a candidate to become prime minister of Israel.

It is also common to find many Arab Israelis holding only Israeli citizenship. Between 2011 and 2013, Professor Sammy Smooha, a researcher from Haifa University, conducted a poll among Arab Israelis, asking if they identify as Israeli or Palestinian. More than 20% responded “Israeli” or “Israeli-Palestinian.” Furthermore, according to his findings, when Arab-Israeli participants were asked if they would move to a Palestinian state if it is formed, 65– 77% percent of them replied that they would not.

A walk through the streets, shopping malls and hospitals of Israel will permit one to see and appreciate the integrated society that exists within all of Israel. People of all religions, all races and all beliefs are treated with respect in all public places; have access to all religious places; are protected in their right of prayer and assembly; have full access to healthcare treatment without regard to their race, religion, sexual orientation or beliefs; and enjoy freedoms not known anywhere else in the Middle East.

Where South Africa intended to and did impose a segregationist regime and called it apartheid, the allegation that Israel is similarly an apartheid state originated not from fact or from governmental policy but from Israel’s enemies as an intentional distortion of her commitment to building a wholesome society where diversity is cherished and rights are protected by the rule of law. Applying the moniker of apartheid to Israel today is another example of an antisemitic double standard applied exclusively to the Jewish state and ignores much greater injustices suffered by minority ethnic and religious groups around the world.

To put it bluntly, the attempt to equate Israel with South Africa is defamatory and disingenuous. Moreover, calling Israel an apartheid state under these circumstances does great injustice to Israel’s vibrant democracy and further disrespects the real and genuine struggle against the racism of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Moreover, the accusers against Israel who are in the Palestinian territories are obligated to look at their own leadership, and to look inward, as they essentially call for the future Palestinian state to be judenrein—free of Jews.

Who is it that is practicing apartheid?
'The New York Times’ demonstrates why Israelis have turned right
From Abdulrahim’s previous dispatches for the Times, it is clear that she has visited Gaza. That means either she is suffering from hallucinations that Israel is “controlling” things there, or she is fully aware that it is not, but wants to give the impression that it is in order to blame Israel for the Gaza fire.

Either of those two possibilities should be grounds for immediately firing her.

Not that Ms. Abdulrahim’s journalistic misbehavior relieves her editors of any responsibility. After all, they knew what they were getting when they hired her earlier this year. She had previously received awards from the anti-Israel organization CAIR after she wrote a letter denying that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations.

A staff reporter for one of the world’s most influential newspapers maliciously smears Israel with a blatant falsehood, and her editors look the other way.

This is one reason Israelis have been turning more hawkish in their voting preferences. No matter how many concessions they make, no matter how many risks they take, no matter how many territories they withdraw from—they still get blamed for anything and everything.

You can’t blame Israelis for feeling like, no matter what they do, they just can’t win. Israel’s critics will never play by the rules. They will lie and smear in order to turn public opinion against the Jewish state. They want to see Israel isolated, hated and harangued. And when Israel is threatened, they want the international community to stand idly by.

That leaves Israelis to conclude that their only hope for survival is to strengthen their military resolve and fortify their security policies—in other words, to vote for parties on the political right.

Israel’s critics complain that such thinking represents a “siege mentality.” Maybe that’s because Israel really is under siege—including in the information war, where combatants such as Raja Abdulrahim, pretending to be journalists, hurl dart after dart at the Jewish state without the slightest regard for the facts.

Tuesday, November 01, 2022



This photo is not from today, but it is such a great picture of Arabs participating in the democratic process - the exact opposite of how Israel haters frame things. 





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!

 

 

Sunday, October 30, 2022



There is one overarching rule that both the antisemitic Right and Left share: everything is always the Jews' fault.

A truly absurd example can be seen in an article in The Intercept today, accusing Israel of "weed apartheid" because Palestinians under Palestinian Authority rule have different laws than Israelis under Israeli rule.

Really.

In the dusty occupied hills west of the Jordan River, segregation shapes the smoking experience of Palestinians as much as every other aspect of Palestinian life. For Israelis, the police’s relaxed attitude toward weed carries over to the occupied West Bank. Rather than face military justice, Israelis living in Jewish West Bank settlements are protected by an entire legal system built on inequities so rife that it has contributed to Israel being accused of the crime of running an “apartheid” system.

The disparity in treatment for Palestinians and Israelis when it comes to cannabis constitutes a facet of this system that might be called weed apartheid. A Palestinian and Israeli breaking the same law in the same place in the West Bank, for instance, will be dealt with by different security forces and processed in different legal systems.
This is of course not true. A Palestinian in Area C lighting up with an Israeli will not have to worry about going to Palestinian jail, because Israel is responsible for security there. Writer Jesse Rosenfeld spends a lot of time fudging the truth, by comparing Palestinian laws in Areas A and B with Israeli laws - both military and civil - in Area C.

The deception given in this article is remarkable. It emphasizes that Israeli citizens in the West Bank are subject to Israeli civil laws while Palestinian non-citizens are subject to military law - a mainstay of the "apartheid" charge that ignores that every country on Earth treats citizens and non-citizens differently.

But when it talks about draconian anti-pot laws for Palestinians, it suddenly pivots to Palestinian laws, not Israeli laws. You have to carefully parse the article to see how deceptive it is. For example, the article makes clear that Israeli military law doesn't give a damn about Palestinian pot use unless they are major dealers, smuggling drugs to Israel. But Palestinian laws are much harsher for minor offenses.

And The Intercept blames Israel for that!

To show how this analysis is ultimately antisemitic, let's pretend that Israel does what the article pretends it wants. 

If Israel applies the exact same laws to Palestinians in the territories as to Israeli citizens, and therefore cannot be accused of "weed apartheid," that would mean that Israel is annexing the entire West Bank. This is the very definition of annexation - applying the same laws to a new area.

No matter what Israel does, short of national suicide, Israel is oppressing Palestinians!

Nowhere in this article is there any criticism of the Palestinian Authority for their anti-marijuana laws and strict enforcement. Somehow, this is all Israel's fault. Just as the Left blames Israel for Palestinian men beating their wives, every dysfunctional part of Palestinian society is ultimately blamed on the Jews. 

Because to these bigots, Palestinian Arabs are not mature enough to be responsible for their own actions. 

UPDATE: I hadn't noticed it first, but the "Jewish Israelis" in the headline is another way to know that The Intercept is functionally antisemitic. 

Because "Muslim Israelis" and "Christian Israelis" have exactly the same laws as "Jewish Israelis."



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

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Friday, October 28, 2022

I've seen bias from the UN before, but I don't recall ever seeing a document that looks like it was written by a hardened Israel hater. 

The reports usually at least pretend to be unbiased. Not this one.

Francesca Albanese, UN "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967," issued a report in September that apparently was just made public. The summary gives a flavor of how crazily biased it is.

One of her goals in this report, in the inevitable path to soon officially calling Israel an apartheid state, Albanese accuses Israel of "settler colonialism" without going into any arguments why, just footnoting lots of equally biased papers. 


Throughout the report, Albanese fully accepts the Palestinian narrative as true and doesn't even mention any Israeli counter-claims. The reader sees only one side of the argument, and is not even informed that perhaps Israel has its own arguments. Albanese doesn't want to acknowledge even the possibility that Jews have a right to their own state. 

Her one-sidedness is quite deliberate. She describes the Palestinian right to self-determination this way:
The right to self-determination is an “inalienable right” of the Palestinian people, as affirmed by the General Assembly. The origins of Palestinians’ right to self-determination can be traced back more than a century, preceding the first codification in the Charter of the United Nations. The people of Palestine (Muslims, Christians and Jews), like other peoples in the Levant, also had their right to self-determination recognized under the Covenant of the League of Nations of 1919. Article 22 of the Covenant stipulated that “Class A” mandates (Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Trans-Jordan and Syria) would enjoy provisional independence “until such time as they are able to stand alone”. The “wishes” of the local communities were to be “a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory”. 
But she doesn't mention the Mandate for Palestine which specifically says that Jews have the right to self-determination - and no one else!
The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion. 
This is lying by omission. Albanese knows the contents of the Mandate document - but wants to hide it from those reading this propaganda.  And it happens over and over again.

She offers a brief history of the region where Jews are the only people who ever do anything wrong:
The culmination of centuries of antisemitism and persecution of Jews in Europe in the genocidal horror of the Holocaust strengthened support for political Zionism. This movement saw Palestine as the land to realize a “State for the Jews” through settlement and colonization. However, in that land a native Palestinian Arab population had resided for millennia. In 1947, the United Nations resolved to reconcile the separate claims to the land of the indigenous Palestinian people and the largely European Jewish settlers and refugees from Europe, by recommending the partitioning of British Mandate Palestine into an “Arab State” and a “Jewish State”. Soon after, the creation of the State of Israel in most of the territory of Mandate Palestine was accompanied by massacres and the mass expulsion, wholesale denationalization and dispossession of most of the Arabs of Palestine. They continue to be deprived of their right to self-determination, together with their descendants, the refugees further displaced in 1967 and other non-refugee Palestinians. 

She doesn't once mention that Jews have historical ties to Israel. She doesn't mention the attacks by Arabs on Jews in Palestine decades before 1948. She doesn't mention that the Arabs rejected partition. She doesn't mention that the Arabs attacked the Jews. She doesn't mention that the territories annexed by Jordan ethnically cleansed  every single Jew.

It would take weeks to show the depth of Albanese's dishonesty, but here is just one paragraph of many:
The transformation of the Gaza Strip into a heavily populated, impoverished enclave controlled by Israel through a suffocating sea, land and air blockade, is part and parcel of that same settler-colonial design. The containment of the colonial population into heavily controlled reserves is at the core of the settler-colonial goal to ensure the demographic supremacy and prevent Palestinian self-determination. 
How do these assumptions fit in with the fact that Israel forcibly removed every Jew from Gaza in 2005? Was that part of the plan too? And did Israel plan for Hamas to take over Gaza so it could have an excuse for blockading it? 

This is not just re-writing history. This is Soviet-level propaganda.





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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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