Showing posts with label bbc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bbc. Show all posts

Monday, December 12, 2022

12/12 Links Pt2: The Apartheid Libel to Destroy Israel; Teaching Terror to Tots - reevaluating the Oslo Accords; Collier: An open letter to Gary Lineker

From Ian:

PMW: Teaching Terror to Tots - reevaluating the Oslo Accords
Many observers have been puzzled why the 1993 Oslo peace accords did not lead to peace but precisely the opposite. Sporadic Palestinian terror attacks prior to 1993 were replaced by repeated Palestinian terror waves murdering more than 2,000 Israelis. PMW’s report "Teaching Terror to Tots” is the key to understanding the post-Oslo terror enigma.

Palestinian Media Watch as been documenting official PA/Fatah ideologies, policies and messages disseminated through every framework they control for over 20 years and everything that PMW has exposed has raised questions about the sincerity of the PA/Fatah in the peace process. PMW recently published a report on Fatah’s Waed magazine for children ages 6 – 15, covering every issue published over the last eight years. The messages for Palestinian children spread through Waed confirm that the PA/Fatah end game was, and remains, Israel’s destruction and Israel’s replacement by “Palestine”.

The hundreds of examples in the 70 page report show that through Waed, Fatah – that has dominated and controlled the PA since its creation – has been teaching Palestinian children that:
“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” after “the Zionist invaders will go to the garbage can of history” because “the period of Zionism will eventually pass.” As a last step all “the Jewish settlers in Palestine will disappear.”

Israel must be destroyed because Jews/Israelis are:
“Zionist thieves who stole our land”… “Jewish invaders”… “foreigners from all ends of the earth who did not know Palestine and did not live in it – neither them nor their forefathers.”

Since Jews have no rights, Palestinians have the “right to wage an armed struggle to take back its stolen homeland.” This is the only PA/Fatah path, because “the liberation of Palestine will only be achieved through armed struggle.”

In short, the PA/Fatah’s message to children is that Israel was created by theft, its continued existence is a crime, and its destruction via the armed struggle is justified and inevitable. The children who read Waed are taught that they have the responsibility to bring about the future world without Israel.

The PA/Fatah education that is documented in the report is the driving force behind the current Palestinian terror wave that is led by Palestinian youth who have been raised on these hate messages. If no action is taken to combat the PA/Fatah education to hate and terror, it will continue to be the driving force for Palestinian violence for generations.

PMW’s exposure of the PA/Fatah messages through Waed should have far-reaching political implications. Attitudes towards the Oslo Accords and policy towards the PA must be reassessed based on the reality of what the PA is and not the illusion of what the international community imagined it would be. If Palestinian terror is to be stopped and stability returned to Israel, the newly exposed PA/Fatah teachings must be the impetus for a new attitude towards the PA.

PMW is releasing this report at the GPO’s Christian Media Conference in Jerusalem.

To read PMW's "Teaching Terror to Tots" click here.

The following is an Executive Summary of "Teaching Terror to Tots":
Khaled Abu Toameh: The Apartheid Libel to Destroy Israel
Recently... however, with the UNHRC's persistent allegations that Israel is an apartheid state, that label is being pushed even further in an apparent effort to make it stick. The complicity of recent reports from NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch appear to be trying to ensure that their libel will be complete.

The campaign emboldens the radicals among the Palestinians, including the Iranian-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), whose declared goal is to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Islamist state.

Terrorist groups such as Hamas and PIJ are undoubtedly happy to see non-Arabs and non-Muslims -- and even ostensible human rights organizations -- join their effort to falsely depict Israel as an apartheid state.

Former UNHRC chief Navi Pillay, despite extensive evidence of massive anti-Israel bias, was recently appointed to chair the UNHRC's first and only open-ended Commission of Inquiry.

Basically, [the New York Times] is saying that although the two countries cannot be equated, the comparison is being forced and twisted into place for the sake of furthering an alternate agenda which has little to do with the facts on the ground.

Israel's founding charter pledges to safeguard the equal rights of all residents: "... It will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations."

Among many of South Africa's Apartheid laws, the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act effectively stripped all Blacks of their South African citizenship and of the right to vote.

Israeli Arabs, however, have full citizenship, including the right to vote and to public demonstration. They are represented in all levels of government, including positions as members of Knesset (parliament), in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and as Supreme Court justices. Israeli Arabs hold positions as high-ranking officers in the Israel Defense Forces, including that of major-general in the Central Command.


David Collier: An open letter to Gary Lineker
Last week a Palestinian tried to attacked Israelis in the car. He then stabbed a nearby border guard in the face. When he lost a struggle to steal a weapon he was shot and killed. A UN spokesperson reduced it to a ‘scuffle’. This vile rewriting of history was then repeated in the Guardian newspaper.

There is no correlation remaining whatsoever between the event (the terror attack) and the way it was reported (an innocent man was shot). It is the lie that goes viral. Raw propaganda packaged for the international virtue signallers.

Why on earth would you want to get involved in this?

Spreading myths empowers the extremists. It perpetuates the conflict and pushes peace further away. Nobody in their right mind seriously believes those people attacking Israelis want a two state solution. Nor do those putting up illegal structures. They have deliberately created a battlefield (it doesn’t actually exist unless they come out to confront Israelis).

All this ends with people on the outside, people such as yourself – making it all worse by promoting the propaganda.

So please, can you virtue signal at someone else’s expense – and leave what you do not understand alone.

12/12 Links Pt1: Shireen Abu Akleh Death ‘Witness’ Turns Out To Be Islamic Jihad Terrorist; Hady Amr’s Fantasy; Palestinian teen said killed in Jenin firefight with IDF forces

From Ian:

Matthew Continetti: Why Is the FBI Investigating Israel?
The State Department treated the IDF statement as the final word. “We welcome Israel’s review of this tragic incident, and again underscore the importance of accountability in this case, such as policies and procedures to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future,” said spokesman Ned Price. The bureaucratic tut-tutting was unnecessary and offensive to Israeli ears—American history, after all, is replete with evidence that the best policies and procedures cannot prevent human error or freak occurrences. Still, though, after months of controversy and two investigations, the unfortunate matter appeared finally settled.

Then things got weird. On November 14, months after the IDF report and not long after elections in both Israel and the United States, Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz acknowledged that the FBI had opened an investigation into the Akleh killing. Even more remarkable than this unprecedented move was the fact that neither the White House nor the State Department seemed to be aware of it. The National Security Council provided Axios a banal statement of regret for Akleh’s death. Both the White House and the State Department let it be known that they had had nothing to do with the FBI inquiry. And the Department of Justice would not comment.

The only government that seemed to have its business in order was Israel’s. Gantz said the obvious thing: There was no way Israel would cooperate with the FBI. Van Hollen, meanwhile, cheered the news from his office in Washington. Yet imagine his reaction if the Shin Bet announced an investigation into the U.S. Army.

At the time of writing, no one knows the details of the FBI inquiry, or the identity of the official who authorized it, or how long it will go on before the U.S. government realizes its ineffectuality. What is known is that the anti-Israel gang successfully bullied an agency of the United States government into taking the extraordinary step of treating the military of the Jewish state as a criminal enterprise, with no consideration of the potential fallout in the Greater Middle East or the precedent that might be set for U.S. soldiers in future actions.

Tyrannical governments in China, Iran, Venezuela, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip murder, unjustly imprison, and violate the dignity and human rights of individuals every day, yet the Biden administration sees fit to crack down on Israel. It’s hard to decide whether to be more outraged at Biden’s appeasement of Israel’s enemies or at the confusion and incompetence of his lieutenants.

In early December, Secretary of State Blinken spoke to the anti-Israel group J Street and pledged his commitment to expanding the circle of peace encompassing Israel and her Arab neighbors. “Integrating Israel,” Blinken said, “also means continuing to fight for Israel to be treated the same way as every other nation—no more, no less.” Maybe he should tell that to the FBI.
HonestReporting EXCLUSIVE: Shireen Abu Akleh Death ‘Witness’ Turns Out To Be Islamic Jihad Terrorist
A key “civilian” eyewitness in the formal complaint against Israel filed by Al Jazeera at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the death of Shireen Abu Akleh Tuesday is a terrorist affiliated with the US-designated terrorist organization Islamic Jihad, HonestReporting discovered exclusively on Sunday.

Jenin resident Sleem Awwad’s social media profiles reveal that he is a staunch supporter of Islamic Jihad, having posed with the flag of the jihadist terror group. Our editorial team found at least five photos of Awwad brandishing firearms, including military-style rifles with scopes.

“The credibility of the investigations of Al Jazeera in probing Abu Akleh’s death are questionable now that HonestReporting exposed their chief witness as an active member of a murderous terrorist organization,” HonestReporting executive director Gil Hoffman said.

On December 6, Al Jazeera filed a formal complaint against Israel with the International Criminal Court over the death of Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American reporter tragically shot on May 11 during a counter-terrorism operation in Jenin.

A thorough Israel Defense Forces probe previously concluded that she was likely mistakenly shot by a soldier who failed to identify her as a member of the press. After pinpointing every spot where troops had come under fire, the investigation found that they had strictly complied with the IDF’s rules of engagement.

In July, a report issued by the US State Department similarly said that Israeli forces probably fired the deadly shot, but that there was no indication Israelis intentionally killed Abu Akleh.

Nevertheless, Al Jazeera last week announced it contacted ICC prosecutor Karim Khan in the wake of “new evidence” it uncovered “based on several eyewitness accounts.” Without presenting proof, the Qatar-run broadcaster argued that their correspondent was somehow “targeted” as part of a campaign by “Israeli Occupation Forces [sic]… to silence Al Jazeera.”

The network’s submission under article 15 of the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the ICC, followed just days after the airing of “The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh,” a 40-minute documentary produced by Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines series, which set the stage for Israeli soldiers to be prosecuted in The Hague.


Defending the Jewish State: HonestReporting Exposé Featured on Israeli Prime-time News Program
In an exclusive report, HonestReporting revealed that the star witness in the complaint against Israel filed by Al Jazeera at the International Criminal Court over the death of Shireen Abu Akleh is a terrorist affiliated with the US-designated terrorist group Islamic Jihad.

On December 11, 2022, HonestReporting Executive Director Gil Hoffman was invited to discuss our findings on Channel 13, one of Israel’s most-watched television stations. In the broadcast, outgoing Diaspora Affairs Minister and former IDF spokesperson Nachman Shai praised our work in defending Israel from media bias.


When antisemites sue the Jews: Lessons for Al Jazeera - opinion
The Al Jazeera media network has filed suit against Israel over the accidental shooting of its reporter, Shireen Abu Akleh, last May. The history of extremists suing prominent Jews suggests that Al Jazeera may regret what its lawsuit will reveal.

The lawsuit that Al Jazeera has filed in the International Criminal Court (ICC), could shine an embarrassing spotlight on the network itself. Those who do not regularly follow Al Jazeera might be surprised to learn that it is, “a major exporter of hateful content against the Jewish people, Israel, and the United States,” according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

The ADL points out that Al Jazeera: “has sought to cast doubt upon the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people” (referring to it as “the alleged Holocaust”); “routinely glorifies violence against Israeli Jews”; and has ranted against what it calls, “the control of the Jews over the pornography industry.”

Al Jazeera also has a record of “providing a platform to all manner of virulent anti-Israel and even antisemitic extremists” in its commentary sections, the ADL notes.

Another question is whether Al Jazeera should be compelled to register with the US Justice Department as a foreign agent, just as the Russian television channel RT was required to register as an agent of the Russian government. Al Jazeera was founded by the government of Qatar, receives funding from the government, and maintains “extensive ties to the Qatari regime,” according to the ADL.

Both Al Jazeera and the Qatari corporation for public broadcasting are overseen by the same government official. The US ambassador in Doha “determined a number of years ago that Qatar’s government uses Al Jazeera as a tool of Qatari statecraft,” the ADL reports.

Hearings before the ICC about the Abu Akleh case, would enable the defense to ask uncomfortable questions about both the content of Al Jazeera’s reporting, and the details of its relationship with Qatar.
BBC News again promotes Al Jazeera lawfare
Readers are not informed that the UK based lawyer’s previous activities at the ICC include representation of the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation in the Mavi Marmara case.

As has been the case in the past, BBC audiences are not provided with any of the relevant context concerning Al Jazeera such as its throwing of a birthday party for a terrorist, its record of Holocaust revisionism, its hosting of antisemitic content from the late Muslim Brotherhood leader Qaradawi, its acceptance of an award from Hamas for ‘exemplary coverage’ or the fact that it is funded by the same government that has poured millions of dollars into the Gaza Strip.

Gritten’s report continues with amplification of a statement from a person who was invited to Al Jazeera’s press conference concerning its submission to the ICC: “Abu Aqla’s family, who submitted their own complaint to the ICC in September, said they supported Al Jazeera’s submission.

“The evidence is overwhelmingly clear, we expect the ICC to take action,” her niece, Lina Abu Aqla, told a news conference in The Hague.”

Thursday, December 08, 2022

12/08 Links Pt2: Does Europe Support This? Al-Haq Tells the World to Dismantle Israel; BBC faces parliamentary probe over its coverage of Jews and Israel

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Does Europe Support This? Al-Haq Tells the World to Dismantle Israel
On November 29, 2022, the Palestinian NGO Al-Haq published yet another antisemitic screed dedicated to denying the Jewish people sovereign equality, by defining Zionism and the State of Israel as inherently illegitimate. For 200 pages, the Palestinian NGO – designated as a terrorist entity by Israel in October 2021 over its ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization – extorts the international community to dismantle the Jewish State. To achieve this goal, Al-Haq absurdly distorts Israeli policy and practice beyond recognition, and misrepresents international legal standards.

Central to Al-Haq’s publication is the repetition of the claim that Israel’s existence as a Jewish State represents “apartheid.” This assertion was debunked in NGO Monitor’s 2021 and 2022 analyses: “False Knowledge as Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State” and “Neo-Orientalism: Deconstructing claims of apartheid in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

Al-Haq’s publication is intended to influence the UN Human Rights Council’s permanent Commission of Inquiry’s (the “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel,”) plan to formally declare Israel to be committing “apartheid”; to pressure the International Criminal Court to indict Israeli officials for crimes against humanity; and for third states to apply a wide variety of sanctions against Israel, associated institutions, companies, and individuals.

While broader in scope, this publication echoes the same ideological position expressed by Al-Haq in a formal submission to the COI in May 2022. (For more information, see “Al-Haq’s Antisemitic Submission to the UN’s Permanent COI”)

EU and member states support for Al-Haq
If not for the millions of Euros in support from the EU and its member states Al-Haq has received over several years, the Palestinian NGO would not enjoy nearly the same level of influence and access as it currently does. Despite the organization’s reported ties to the PFLP, and its campaigning to dismantle Israel, Europe has yet to denounce and reject its longtime partner.

While the EU froze financial support to Al-Haq in May 2021 as a result of its links to the PFLP, in June 2022, the organization claimed that this freeze had been lifted – and as yet uncorroborated assertion.

Notably, in May 2022, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra, met with Al-Haq officials in the West Bank – despite the Israeli designation.

Moreover, Al-Haq is listed as an implementing partner on multi-grantee projects funded by the French (€900,000 for the entire project) and Swedish (Al-Haq receives over $2.5 million of the over $8 million project) governments.
John-Paul Pagano: What Is a Conspiracy Theory?
When I began studying Antisemitism two decades ago, one of the first things that occurred to me was its essential nature as a conspiracy theory. While mundane anti-Jewish bigotry is always found, the form of Jew-hatred that is historically salient identifies “the Jews” as a preternaturally powerful, secretive, evil elite which enslaves and exploits humankind. Even a surface examination of conspiracy theories shows that while the identity of the elite changes, this narrative outline is common to all of them. Alternately—and with good reason we will explore later—Antisemitism is sometimes singled out as the ultimate conspiracy theory.

So we can better understand conspiracy theories if we widen our scope to include insights from the much larger literature on Antisemitism. The history of the “Longest Hatred” is an opportunity to examine more than a thousand years of the consistent social practice of a single conspiracy theory. In this vast and detailed record, we will detect patterns and peculiarities that expose the essence of the thing.

The definition I propose hence will leverage scholarship on conspiracy theories and conspiracism, but be situated in the living context of Antisemitism—the up-punching form of racism that is centrally rooted in the cultural heritage of the West and has done so much to shape its social and physical reality. This approach yields a dense definition, but one that is also—after some clarification of terms—comprehensive and empirically legible.

It is, as follows:
A conspiracy theory is a belief that a circumstance or event is a deliberate, connected, and occulted product of the timeless struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, attributable to the malign influence of a secret elite that supernaturally coordinates to enslave and exploit humankind, fabricates false consciousness to hide its activities, and indulges in pleasures and rites of extreme misanthropy.

In upcoming (though not necessarily contiguous) posts, I will clarify the terms I highlighted above and will also discuss three conceptual domains—Manichean, Epistemic, and Magical—in which many of the features and themes of conspiracy theories should be evaluated. I will explain and justify my definition over posts that I will specially mark for this purpose, so they become a series that readers can revisit and reference.

As a variety of racism, the historian Paul Johnson viewed Antisemitism as “so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in a quite different category.” Defining that peculiarity also helps to reveal what is a conspiracy theory—a mode of thought that is in some ways more corrosive than caste-based racism, but against which we’ve mustered no social movement to stigmatize and diminish it.
An open letter to progressives: It’s time to speak out
I wanted to believe perhaps I’d simply missed something. After all, I have always worked in progressive spaces myself. I know how much this movement cares about the safety, dignity, and flourishing of all communities in this country.

But diving into various digital channels and searching through recent public statements yielded nothing. I saw plenty of commendable statements of solidarity aimed at other groups. Perhaps I wasn’t searching hard enough.

It shouldn’t take this much effort to uncover sentiments of support in a time of need.

The progressive movement should be a seamless, natural ally to the Jewish community. But despite the fact that so many Jews in this country find themselves ideologically aligned with the progressive left, for a long time now that movement has behaved as if we are either inevitable supporters – no matter their approach to our oppression – or unimportant ones.

Throughout my tenure in progressive environments, I encountered deafening silence through the violence in Pittsburgh, Poway, and Colleyville. I was told my identity didn’t qualify me to join workgroups focusing on diversity, solidarity, and inclusion. I was called a Zionist (I am one – they meant it as a slur). Assumptions were freely and unapologetically made about my political leanings, my perspectives, and my general pleasantness based on the fact that I was born in Israel and that I am a Jew. Throughout it all, I was expected to continue supporting the causes that have always meant so much to me – and I still do. (h/t jzaik)

Wednesday, December 07, 2022

12/07 Links Pt2: Every Time You Wish Someone ‘Happy Hanukkah’ You Acknowledge The Historic Jewish Claim On Jerusalem; Israel is 5th safest country in the world for tourists

From Ian:

'Herzl is our George Washington and Thomas Jefferson all wrapped in one'
"Today, Theodor Herzl is best known for his beard, not his books," laments Gil Troy, editor of "The Zionist Writings of Theodor Herzl," in his introductory essay to a new edition of Herzl's diaries.

Troy, a professor of history at Canada's McGill University now living in Israel, wants to make Zionism's founders come alive for the next generation. His latest effort is a three-volume collection of Herzl's writings.

The brainchild behind the series is Matthew Miller, owner of Koren Publishers, a Jerusalem publishing house producing mainly religious texts. Drawing inspiration from the Library of America, a publisher of notable American classics and historical works, Miller decided to create a Library of the Jewish People to bring together the best writings from Jewish history in the fields of religion, the arts and politics.

"The Zionist Writings" are the first titles in that ambitious effort. They include a fairly comprehensive collection of Herzl's diaries and other works, including his play "The New Ghetto" (1894), of which Herzl biographer Alex Bein said, "Herzl completed his inner return to his people"; Herzl's 1896 manifesto "The Jewish State"; and important essays, like "The Menorah" (1897), showing how, through Zionism, Herzl reconnected with his Judaism.

The series uses translations from the original German made by historian Harry Zohn in the 1960s. Other works, like "The New Ghetto," are newly translated by Uri Bollag.

Troy, who spoke to JNS the day after the book launch at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, said the Herzl series is his fourteenth book project and the first where he stood before an audience and said "Shehecheyanu" – a Jewish prayer to give thanks for special occasions – both to mark the 75th anniversary of the date the UN General Assembly voted in favor of a Jewish state (Nov. 29, 1947) and to celebrate the launch of Library of the Jewish People.

"It's an attempt to invite the Jewish people to build a bookshelf, because we've been building a bookshelf for thousands of years, but most of us don't know the Jewish texts, the Jewish canon," he said.

Troy sees no better place to start than Herzl. "He's our George Washington and our Thomas Jefferson all wrapped in one," said Troy. "Washington's diaries are interesting, but they're not ideological. That's why, when talking about Herzl in American terms, we say he's a cross between Washington and Jefferson, because he's also a conceptualizer."

Troy, who pored through 2,700 pages of Herzl's diaries, described them as "a political-science version of an artist's sketchbook."

"Herzl draws in the contours of the Jewish state. He plans different dimensions from a flag to the architectural aesthetic, from labor-capital relations to the dynamics between rabbis and politicians," Troy writes in one essay.
Every Time You Wish Someone ‘Happy Hanukkah’ You Acknowledge The Historic Jewish Claim On Jerusalem
On Hanukkah eve, I tweeted out a somewhat reductionist thought commemorating the bloody Maccabean rebellion against the Seleucid Empire and their traitorous Hellenized Jewish accomplices. It seemed to upset some of my followers.

Every time you wish someone a Happy Hanukkah you are acknowledging the historic Jewish claim on Jerusalem. — David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) December 12, 2017

Why are you politicizing such a pleasant holiday? Does wishing someone a “Merry Christmas” now mean that you accept Jesus as your lord and savior?

Well, first of all, the story of Hanukkah isn’t pleasant. Violent, brutal, and passionate, maybe. But not pleasant. And of course wishing someone a “Happy Hanukkah” isn’t an endorsement of any theological position, any more than wishing someone Merry Christmas is (although we appreciate the recognition of the Jewish presence in ancient Bethlehem). Mostly it’s convention and good manners. Thank you.

Fact is, there isn’t a ton of theology to worry about. Hanukkah is not a Jewish “yom tov,” which in the literal translation means “good day” but in religious terms means the holiday was not handed to the Jewish people through the Torah. Unlike Passover or Yom Kippur, there are no restrictions on work. The two books that deal with the Maccabees aren’t Jewish canon. The “miracle of the lights” — which you might be led to believe is the entire story of the holiday — is apocryphal and was added hundreds of years later in the Talmud. (To be fair, the story of miraculous oil is far more conducive to the holiday gift-giving spirit than, say, the story of the Jewish woman who watched her seven sons being tortured and slaughtered by Antiochus because she refused to eat pork.)

But whatever reasons you have for offering good wishes, Hanukkah itself is a reminder that Jews have a singular, millennia-long historic relationship with Jerusalem. By the time Mattathias rebelled against Hellenistic Syrian king Antiochus, who had not only ordered a statue of Zeus to be erected in the Holy Temple but that swine be sacrificed to him, Jerusalem had likely been a Jewish city for more than 1,000 years. As some readers have suggested, Hanukkah might be the only Jewish holiday that celebrates events confirmed by the historical record. The Hasmonean dynasty, founded by Mattathias’ son Simon, is a fact.

Tuesday, December 06, 2022

12/06 Links Pt2: Jewish Life Is Cheap; How academia omits facts to make Palestinians the perpetual victim; It sucks to be a Jew on the left; Glick: The US liberal Jewish establishment is failing at fighting antisemitism

From Ian:

Jewish Life Is Cheap
For the past five years, the dominant media narrative about race—perhaps the dominant media narrative, period—has built up a hierarchy of racial justice. At the top are the perennially marginalized “BIPOCs,” victim to the lash of the ever-present colonial whip. At the bottom lurks the “white male,” inherently and ineluctably racist, even when (or perhaps especially when) they’re trying hard not to be.

In a manner true to our history, Jews have been sucked into this Manichean whirlpool, cast by radical academics and their media acolytes as an essential, almost distilled element of the global system of racial oppression. We are not just white; we are the plotters and financiers of the entire sysyetm of white supremacy.

Worse still, if Jews are white then they are not, well, Jews. The largely successful effort to assign Jews to the white race means Jews do not have the moral privilege of determining our own identity. The perverse result of dispossessing Jews of their own history is that it grants the mantle of Jewishness to our enemies. Thus Ye, in the same Twitter thread where he threatened to go “death con 3” on Jews, also claimed: “I actually can’t be antisemitic because Black people are actually Jew also.”

When Whoopi Goldberg asserted on The View that the “Holocaust was not about race,” she was advancing a version of the same arguments made by virulent Black Hebrew Israelite hate preachers, professors who insist on the indelible whiteness of Jews, and anti-Zionists who deny the legitimacy of Jewish historical identity. It’s true that only the last two groups tend to have their ideas promoted by the media, but all three share the idea that “Jew” is not a meaningful or legitimate category. Palestinians can be Jews—thus the Democratic political activist and Louis Farrakhan fan Linda Sarsour is invited to participate as an expert in a prominent panel on antisemitism. And by the same logic, Black Hebrews can be Jews. Ye can be a Jew. Only Jews are not allowed to be Jews.

Over and over, Jews have watched this trend play out, and largely we’ve been silent.

In a key scene in the 2014 Oscar-nominated Selma, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leads a group of activists and protesters across a bridge alongside Black civil rights leaders. Not pictured in the scene was a man who walked in that front line of protesters, fighting for civil rights: the great American Jewish rabbi and leader Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Why would Ava Duvernay, the film’s director, compromise the film’s historical integrity to erase one of America’s most prominent Jewish spiritual figures out of the image? The answer is that over the past decade, the anti-racist movement that has been the media’s single most championed social cause has turned a syllogism into a truism: Whites are by definition white supremacists; Jews are the whitest of whites because they falsely hide behind their fake ethnicity; Jews, therefore, are at the top of the white supremacy totem.

The media has actively spread these ideas by turning woke racialism into the defining moral cause of our time, while at the same time ignoring the consequences of this campaign. While Ye was “canceled” for making open threats and affirming his love for Hitler, little more than a week earlier hundreds of Black Hebrew Israelites marched through central Brooklyn, uniformed and in formation, chanting “we are the real Jews.” Save for some coverage in the New York Post and in Tablet’s daily newsletter, The Scroll, the rest of the media was virtually silent. The media is still talking about the alt-right’s 2017 hate march in Charlottesville, treating it as one of the defining events of the modern era, but when hundreds of virulent antisemites march in Brooklyn—the mecca of America’s media establishment—it was crickets. The silence was appalling but also unsurprising given that the same media has largely ignored the routine violent attacks against religious Jews in New York.
Ben-Dror Yemini: How academia omits facts to make Palestinians the perpetual victim
Recently, Prof. Shay Hezkani claimed in an article he wrote for “Haaretz” newspaper that I misled my readers when I wrote that the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine faced an existential threat in 1947 and 1948.

I challenge Hezkani to an intellectual debate. I am even willing to provide him here with some of the arguments at my disposal - shall he answer my call.

“Every week Ben-Dror Yemini tells readers of ‘Yedioth Ahronoth’ about Arab leaders in 1947 who called to throw the Jews into the sea, planning to systematically murder them,” Hezkani wrote in his Haaretz column last week.

“Throughout 15 years of my research, looking into hundreds of propaganda pieces from 1947-1949, I ran into only one case in which Hassan al-Banna - founder of the Muslim Brotherhood – mentions the ‘sea’ and ‘Jews’ in the same sentence - while calling to expel the Jews from Egypt,” Hezkani wrote.

“The quote [used by Yemini and attributed to ex-Secretary General of the Arab League in Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam] is not backed by credible sources in Arabic, and it’s unclear whether or not it was actually ever said.”

I read the Haaretz article and could not believe my eyes. In the book I published titled “Industry of Lies,” I presented a more detailed list of threats made against the Jews, with credible sources, during that time period.

But, Hezkani looked into hundreds of documents and somehow found nothing. It’s a little weird that I did not spent 15 years researching this topic in an academic setting, yet found so much more information. To clear all doubts, prior to publishing the research-backed chapters of my book, they were reviewed by three prominent academics.

It could be that Hezkani has difficulty reading books. So, let’s start with the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who in 1941 arrived at Nazi Germany and called to kill every Jew, before returning to lead the Palestinians.

If Hezkani believes that al-Husseini had changed his mind later on, he should refer us to the relevant sources. In an interview to the “Al Sarih” newspaper, al-Husseini said the Arab goal during the 1948 War of Independence wasn’t to undo the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, but to “continue to fight until the Zionists are dead.”
Hadley Freeman: It sucks to be a Jew on the left
As Hadley Freeman leaves the Guardian for the Sunday Times, she opens up about her Jewish experience

Honestly, what a dumpster fire that whole period was, to the point that it’s almost hard to remember what actually happened. But just off the top of my head, here is a list of things I remember lefty non-Jews saying to me back then:
1. “I don’t think you should write about antisemitism because you obviously feel very passionately about it.”
2. “What, exactly, are Jews afraid of here? It’s not like Corbyn is going to bring back pogroms.”
3. “Jews have always voted right so of course, they don’t like Corbyn.”
4. “It’s not that I don’t believe that you think he’s antisemitic. It’s just I think you’re being manipulated by bad-faith actors. So let me explain why you’re wrong…”
5. “Come on, you don’t really think he really hates Jews.”

All of the above were said to me by progressive people, people who would proudly describe themselves as anti-racism campaigners. And yet. When Jews expressed distress at, say, Corbyn describing Hamas as “friends”, or attending a wreath-laying ceremony for the killers at the Munich Olympics, or bemoaning the lack of English irony among Zionists, we were fobbed off with snarky tweets and shrugged shoulders.

What we were seeing, they said, we were not actually seeing. You could not design an exercise more perfectly structured to cause madness. It was, to be blunt, gaslighting.

Anyway, that’s all in the past now, right? Well it is for me, because I’m walking away. A lot of illusions were broken, and I lost a lot of respect for a lot of people I thought I knew, but it turned out I didn’t. Not really. Not at all. So I have left the garden. And it feels bloody great. (h/t messy57)
A rock star channels Jewish outrage at antisemitism
The antisemitic utterances of Kyrie Irving and Ye (formerly Kanye West) prompted condemnations from many celebrities, both those with Jewish backgrounds and those who weren’t Jewish but who issued solemn pledges of support for their Jewish friends and colleagues. Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon went as far as to tweet, “This is a very scary time,” to which one follower chimed in with an anti-Israel rejoinder.

Solemnity, however, unexpectedly yielded to outrage at the annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles. What was no doubt expected to be one of the evening’s least momentous junctures, the honoring of lawyer-agent Allen Grubman, turned into a consciousness-raising session when rock star John Mellencamp took the stage for a profanity-laden introduction speech.

“Allen is Jewish, and I bring that up for one reason,” Mellencamp said. “I’m a gentile, and my life has been enriched by countless Jewish people.”

Mellencamp then turned it up a notch. “I cannot tell you how f***ing important it is to speak out if you’re an artist against antisemitism,” he continued. “Here’s the trick: Silence is complicity. I’m standing here tonight loudly and proudly with Allen, his family and all of my Jewish friends and all of the Jewish people of the world. F*** antisemitism!”

Whoa.

What was surprising about Mellencamp’s speech was not his principled stance, but the sheer indignation and the unbottled emotion that gave voice to it. For millions of Jews who have fearfully observed the growing normalization of antisemitic motifs in today’s popular culture, such a righteous outburst was surely a welcome surprise, but it begged a question for the entertainment industry: “Where have you been until now?”

Monday, December 05, 2022

12/05 Links Pt2: A Blood Libel Against Israel on Netflix; The Navel-Gazing Inanities of MESA; The story of Jewish expulsion from Arab countries must be told

From Ian:

A Blood Libel Against Israel on Netflix
On Dec. 1, Netflix started streaming the Jordanian film "Farha," which depicts fictionalized, heartless Israeli soldiers viciously killing Palestinian men, women and children in cold blood. These events never actually happened and the film admits that it is "dramatized." But that does not mean it will not have an outsized impact on anti-Jewish hate and violence.

The movie offers a fanciful retelling of the 1948 war in which the would-be genocidal Arab armies failed to destroy a newborn Jewish state (and kill all its inhabitants in the process). Those who tried to help them do it are romantically recast as the helpless victims of a horrible catastrophe.

Yet primary sources - from the Arab side - attest 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 Israeli armed forces.

This is not a matter of perspective or worldview. A movie that malevolently depicts Israeli forces murdering defenseless Arab children in order to feed the nakba mythology is nothing short of a modern blood libel.

In a world of rising antisemitism, it is dangerous and disgusting for Netflix to feed false and anti-Jewish information to the masses by giving a film like this a platform.


Anger over Netflix film ‘aiming to destroy Israel’
Netflix is under fire for screening a movie depicting Israeli soldiers executing a Palestinian family in cold blood, made by filmmakers who have a track record of inflammatory comments about the Jewish state.

The film, Farha, set in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, is being launched on Netflix in most countries from 1 December, and is likely to be Jordan’s entry to next year’s Oscars.

Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, told the JC that the film was intended to “destroy [Israel] by all means possible”.

He said: “I find it deeply troubling that Netflix has apparently failed to do the most basic due diligence before supporting and promoting this project.”

In an investigation into the filmmakers, the JC and activist group GnasherJew discovered that producer Ayah Jardaneh tweeted last year that “Israel is the real terrorist” and posted a “map of Palestine” that erased all trace of Israel.

She also tweeted that Mike Pence was supporting “an apartheid state, an occupier and Zionism”.

Addressing Mr Pence, she wrote: “If you love them so much give them your land and leave your house live as a refugee and let them live there instead”.

In 2014, Ms Jardaneh retweeted a post that said “Hamas or his firecracker rockets is not a problem, but seven decades of Israeli brutality and oppression is”.

She has also used the hashtag #27027KM, described as “the area of all Palestine from the river to the sea”.

Ms Jardaneh, who works at the Amman-based company TaleBox, is not the only member of the team to have made such controversial statements online, the JC found.


Netflix blocks controversial Nakba film for Israeli subscribers
The Jordanian movie "Farha" – which shows Israeli soldiers executing a Palestinian family - became available on Netflix several days ago, but it seems not for all the subscribers of the popular streaming service.

Although many Israelis have expressed outrage and terminated their Netflix subscription after the streaming platform announced that it would upload the film, Israelis who chose to keep their subscription would not be able to view it after it was blocked for them.

Many Netflix subscribers in Israel said that when they tried to upload "Farha" in the Netflix search engine, and could not find it, while others received a message saying "this title cannot be viewed in your country." It should be noted that for some subscribers who had an English interface, the film remained available for them, but still many had an error message and couldn't watch it.

Last week, Far-right lawmaker and destined National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir slammed the new Jordanian film.

"The inciteful Jordanian film that will be broadcast on Netflix demonstrates how hypocritical the world could be," Ben-Gvir said.

"Israel has been attacked by murderous terror before it was even established, this consciousness engineering should be handled by the Foreign Ministry with advocacy that shows the real picture, and who the real bloodthirsty murderers are," he said.

Thursday, December 01, 2022

12/01 Links Pt2: Cultural appropriation and the Jews; UN envoy to Hamas: ‘You have the right to fight Israel’; Kanye praises Hitler, says every human has value, 'especially Hitler'

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Cultural appropriation and the Jews
The notable aspect of West’s behavior is that whereas Irving issued a groveling apology for his antisemitic outburst, West doubled down. In every public appearance since he openly defended Irving’s anti-Semitism, West has not only restated his antisemitic positions, he has expanded on them, and escalated his attacks on Jews as a people, a community in America, and as individuals. In redefining himself as an antisemite first and a rapper and public figure second, West has chosen to associate himself most closely with other antisemites, particularly white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

West’s decision to act as a bridge between black antisemitism, which is generally associated with the progressive political camp, and white supremacist antisemitism, which is generally associated with the political far right, exposes a much-ignored but fundamental fact about antisemitism: it isn’t a political position. It is a cultural outlook; a way of understanding the world. Antisemites hail from the political left, center and right. They come from all religions. Their antisemitism directs their politics. Consequently, antisemitic policies have advocates in all political camps.

This brings us back to the Israeli reporters in Doha.

Black Israelites and the Nation of Islam, which base their identity on the appropriation of Jewish identity, comprise a small but powerful minority of the black community in America. They impact the Congressional Black Caucus and other key black power centers, which in turn impact the Democratic Party. And while their cultural and political power are growing, they are still limited.

In contrast, embrace of the Palestinian narrative is all but universal across the Arab world, across the wider Muslim world and across large sections of the Western world. It is nearly universally accepted in Europe and by progressives in America. All of the people who accept and champion the Palestinian narrative accept the validity of a political cause that is entirely based on the appropriation of Jewish peoplehood.

Shechnik and his fellow reporters were stunned to discover the truth about the war against them as Jews, and against their state. The antisemitism that animates their antagonists in Doha has nothing to do with who leads Israel’s government or what the Israeli military does in any given war or operation. Support of the Palestinians, and their goal of wiping Israel off the map, is rooted in Jew hatred, shared by billions of people across the world.

The Palestinians are popular because they provide a vehicle for expressing and advancing that hatred, including in the halls of power across the world. Israel’s endurance is unacceptable, because simply by surviving, simply by having reporters to send to cover the World Cup in Doha, the Jewish state proves that the Palestinian narrative is untrue, and based on a rejection of observable reality and the historical record, not on justice or truth.

Likewise, American Jews are stunned to discover that black antisemitism, like Palestinian-predicated assaults on Jews from Peoria to Miami, has nothing to do with who is in power in Israel or whether American Jews identify with progressive or conservative politicians and causes. It has nothing to do with whether or not American Jews are willing to accept “white guilt.”

Irving, West, the Black Israelites, the Nation of Islam and their ilk don’t hate Jews because of anything any particular Jew may or may not think, say or do. They hate the Jews because they have stolen Jewish history, heritage, nationhood and culture and appropriated all of them to themselves. Having done so, they have no choice but to demonize the Jews, because Jewish endurance and legitimacy expose the fraud at the heart of their invented identity.
From New York City to the Negev Desert: Who Are the Black Hebrew Israelites?
From Jews to Israelites: The Third Wave
The third wave of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement began in the 1960s and 1970s as a response to the civil rights movement and the subsequent Black Power movement.

The third wave is defined as a period when BHI denominations emerged that were more patriarchal, more militant and more extreme.

The third wave is also when the movement began to self-identify as “Black Israelites” instead of “Black Jews.”

Initially, the third wave continued in the footsteps of the second wave by adopting Jewish traditions and learning Jewish texts.

However, as the third wave continued, new BHI denominations began to emerge that were influenced by Black separatism and the militancy that colored 1960s America.

One of the most prominent Black Hebrew Israelite denominations that emerged during this period was the Israeli School of Universal Practical Knowledge (commonly known as “One West”).

Founded in the late 1960s by Eber Ben Yomin (also known as Abba Bivens), a former member of the Commandment Keepers, One West espouses the belief that white Jews stole the identity of Black, Latin and Native Americans (who are the true Jews) and that the mainstream Jewish community is responsible for all the challenges that face these communities.

One West also adopted the tactics of confrontational street preaching and wearing colorful garments, emulating the clothing that they believe that the original Israelites wore thousands of years ago.

Some of the most radical, militant and bigoted Black Hebrew Israelite sects to emerge in the past 40 years are offshoots of One West.

These groups include Israel United in Christ, the Israelite school of Universal Practical Knowledge, the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, the Sicarii, House of Israel, True Nation Israelite Congregation and Israelite Saints of Christ.

Of all these groups, Israel United in Christ (IUIC) is one of the most vocal and public. They are also one of the most militant and bigoted. They are known for street-preaching, rallying (including on behalf of Kyrie Irving) and marching.

In its writings and speeches, IUIC has made a wide variety of antisemitic statements, including that Jews are demons, that “everything they [Jewish people] do is about lying” and that Jewish people are responsible for a “Holocaust” that Black people have been experiencing since the 1400s.

The Black Hebrew Israelites in the State of Israel
One of the sects that emerged during the third wave was the Original African Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem.

This sect was founded by Ben Ammi Ben Israel, a Chicago-born man who claimed that he had received a vision in 1966 that he was to return the African-American descendants of the ancient Israelites to the Promised Land.

By 1967, Ben Israel had persuaded 400 people to leave the United States with him for the Promised Land. After a brief sojourn in Liberia, that was seen as a means of purging the negative influence of captivity, this group arrived in Israel in 1969.

When they arrived in Israel, the group was given temporary visas and housing in the southern Israeli development town of Dimona.

Soon after the initial group’s arrival in the country, the Israeli government noticed that more members were arriving and illegally staying in the country (since it was determined that they were not Jewish, they were not eligible to become citizens under the Law of Return).

The State of Israel’s attempt to bar more members of the African Hebrew Israelite Nation from moving to the country led to a protracted conflict between the state and the sect.

During this nasty fight, which lasted 13 years, members of the sect took part in a public campaign against the State of Israel, which included calls for a halt to American aid to Israel and a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses.

In 1990, the Israeli government and the African Hebrew Israelites came to an agreement whereby members of the sect would be granted permanent residency.

In 2004, the first member of the African Hebrew Israelites enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces and by 2006, 100 members were serving in the Israeli military. In 2009, the first member of the sect gained Israeli citizenship.

There are currently between 3,000 to 5,000 members of the African Hebrew Israelites living in Israel, the majority of whom are in the southern towns of Dimona, Arad and Mitzpe Ramon.

The African Hebrew Israelites place a strong emphasis on healthy living. They follow a vegan diet and highly limit their intake of sugar and salt. In addition, members are forbidden from smoking, taking drugs or drinking alcohol (aside from naturally fermented wines). The African Hebrew Israelites also follow a strict exercise schedule.

Until 1990, members of the African Hebrew Israelite community practiced polygamy due to its existence in the Biblical tradition and because there were many more women than men in the first years of the community.

Aside from the Biblical holidays, the African Hebrew Israelite community also holds a special festive celebration every May: New World Passover, which commemorates their exodus from the United States in 1967.


UN envoy to Hamas: ‘You have the right to fight Israel’
Italian lawyer Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ special rapporteur for the Palestinians, spoke at a Hamas-organized conference in Gaza on Monday.

She plans to continue on to Israel, which is considering refusing her entry.

Senior members of the U.S.- and E.U.-designated terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) were among those in attendance, including Hamas’s Basem Naim, Ghazi Hamad, Isam al-Da’alis and Abdul Latif al-Qanu, and PIJ’s Ahmad al-Mudallal and Khadr Habib.

In her speech, translated in real-time to Arabic, Albanese told the crowd: “You have a right to resist this occupation.”

The UN official recently said, “If they [Israel] don’t let me in….I’ll be able to claim that I’ve been denied access.”

Albanese has a history of supporting violence against Israelis. In June, she said, “Israel says ‘resistance equals terrorism,’ but an occupation requires violence and generates violence.”

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

11/29 Links Pt2: What happened to the 1947 UN Partition Plan?; The Failed British Double-Cross of Israel; Kanye walks out of interview after being questioned about antisemitic beliefs

From Ian:

What happened to the 1947 UN Partition Plan?
Today, Nov. 29, 2022, is the 75th anniversary of the 1947 UN Partition Plan – UN General Assembly resolution 181 - which divided the geographical area to the west of the Jordan River, into two states: A Jewish state and an Arab state. In its essence, the Partition Plan was a fundamental breach of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which placed that entire area under the governance of Great Britain, for the sole purpose of creating a Jewish state on all of the land.

The 1922 Mandate for Palestine had already taken the entire geographical area then referred to as “Palestine” and divided it in two: The eastern part of Palestine - the Arab country - was placed under the rule of the Hashemite family and changed its name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The western part of Palestine was to become the Jewish state.

Despite the breach of the Mandate, the Jewish leadership of the day – represented by David Ben Gurion - accepted the plan. The Arab leadership and countries, on the other hand, rejected the plan and immediately started planning how to eradicate the Jewish state before it even came into existence.

75 years later, speaking at the UN, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has now decided to accept the plan and even demand its implementation:
“Therefore, I present today to this UN organization, the title of international legitimacy in this world, with a formal request to implement General Assembly resolution 181, which formed the basis for the two-state solution in 1947…”

[WAFA, English edition, Official PA news agency, Sept. 23, 2022]

In making this demand, Abbas ignores a number of fundamental realities.

First, Abbas is demanding the implementation of a plan that has been defunct for 75 years. Living up to their promises, even before the British Mandate came to an end on May 14, 1948, the Arab countries attacked the nascent Jewish state.

[Boston Evening Globe, May 1, 1948]

While Israel managed to survive and expand in a war in which 6.000 Israeli men, women, and children were killed, a full 1% of the population most of the areas allocated for the Arab state - Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip - were occupied by Jordan (which was not yet recognized by the UN as a state) and Egypt, respectively.

In its original charter from 1965, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is now headed by Abbas, disavowed its connection to the areas provisionally allocated for the Arab state openly declaring:
“This Organization [The PLO] does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area”.

Indeed, while Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria (which it renamed “The West Bank”), from 1948 to 1967, they and the other Arab countries refrained from creating what could have been the “Palestinian” Arab state.
The Failed British Double-Cross of Israel
When the warrior poet Avraham “Yair” Stern founder and leader of Lohamei Herut Israel (Lehi, “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”) who believed that the British had to be forced out with assassinations and bombs and would never leave voluntarily, was killed after being captured and handcuffed by British detectives on Feb. 12, 1942, no Jew could celebrate his death.

But the leaders of the Jews of British Mandatory Palestine, already then led by David Ben-Gurion, viewed Stern’s death as a gain for the national cause rather than a loss—and not only because the poet and his followers were reckless political dilettantes: Some fantasized alliances with Mussolini, even the Nazis, as well as Arab nationalists in a common anti-British cause.

At a time of maximum danger—Rommel seemed to be on the verge of conquering Egypt, with Palestine next—Ben-Gurion and his allies doggedly pursued cooperation with the British in spite of bitter disappointments. Perhaps the worst of these was the May 1939 White Paper which limited the immigration of Jews to 75,000 over five years, sentencing countless European Jews to death at the hands of the Nazis. Yet Ben-Gurion believed, and rightly so, that the British were the least-bad allies the Jews could have.

Nor did Ben-Gurion have much choice. The Americans had refused to enter the war even after the Germans had conquered most of Europe. They still refused to act when the Germans seemed on the verge of defeating Russia, which would soon mean Britain’s defeat, too. On Dec. 2, 1941, German tanks were 14.7 miles from Moscow’s Red Square. America was only at war when Stern died in 1942 because the Japanese had attacked them.

It was unimaginable that the Americans would intervene on behalf of the Jews in the distant Middle East—indeed the U.S. only lifted its total weapons embargo on Israel in August 1962!—to allow the sale of defensive antiaircraft missiles, seven years after the Soviets had agreed to deliver bombers to Nasser’s Egypt (part of a huge Soviet weapons gift package misrepresented as “Czech” at the insistence of the CIA to avert hostility from their own man Nasser: That always-wrong agency was betting on Nasser’s mighty Arab nationalism rather than on seemingly puny Israel).

When Avraham Stern was killed, the communists still gave all their loyalty to Stalin. According to Ben-Gurion and the majority of Jewish leaders in Palestine, Churchill was still the best bet the Jews could have, even after the exposure of his crass duplicity toward the Yishuv. Having vehemently condemned the May 1939 White Paper to please his Jewish benefactors while out of office and short of ready cash, Churchill refused to change the policy once he became prime minister—thus denying escape from death to millions, and incidentally preventing my father, mother, two brothers, and myself from leaving Arad, Romania, to reach safety by a comfortable Orient Express ride to Istanbul and thence Haifa. A 5-inch-by-2-inch Palestine entry slip was enough to obtain Bulgarian and Turkish transit visas, but the British refused to issue them, even in 1944—by which point detailed eyewitness accounts and impeccable documentation of the operation of every part of the Nazi killing machine had reached London and Washington.

In spite of all that, on the evidence available at the time, Ben-Gurion was still mostly right and Avraham Stern was still mostly wrong. The British did eventually, and very reluctantly, agree to the U.N.’s termination of their mandatory rule on May 15, 1948, thus allowing the Jews to fight for their state. The qualifier is necessary because a factor in the British decision was the terrorist attacks inspired by Stern, including the July 22, 1946, bombing of the British headquarters in the King David Hotel whose 91 killed set a deadliest-attack record that lasted for decades.
I Was Robbed of 70% of the Land of Israel
Jordan ruled over Judea and Samaria, Egypt ruled over Gaza and Syria ruled over the Golan Heights. For those that do not understand the importance of the sentence above, it means that all the lands that the Arabs call “occupied” were under Arab control between 1948-1967! Was there peace?

It was Jordan, Egypt, and Syria that built the refugee camps and stuck their own Arab brothers and sisters in them to create a refugee problem in order to bash Israel. If creating a new State called Palestine was the goal and all the Arab countries are in favor of such a State, why didn’t Jordan Egypt and Syria help the “Palestinian” Arabs start a State during those 19 years (1948-1967).

Israel liberated Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan from Arab States occupation and it has nothing to do with an Arab people who call themselves (since 1964) Palestinians. We never occupied an Arab place called Palestine and there never was an Arab place called Palestine before Israel that could have been occupied.

You are probably saying this is enough to completely destroy the anti-Israel propaganda, but it gets much better (or worse). Today, Jordan is ruled by a king.

Over 75% of Jordan’s population are Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians”! So why hasn’t the majority of “Palestinians” taken over? Because Jordan does not give them full rights!

In fact, Jordan has the largest “Palestinian” refugee camps!

Where is the UN? Where is UNWRA? Where are the SJWs? Where are all the Leftists who care about Human Rights?

Just to sum up, Jordan sits on 77% of British Palestine and has a majority of over 75% of Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians”. Why aren’t the Arabs, who so want to create a Palestinian State, not fighting over 77% of the Land where they are a 75% majority? Why are they fighting over a small sliver of 23% where they are the minority? The answer is simple.

This has never been a struggle to build a new state called Palestine, it’s a struggle to destroy the one called ISRAEL.

Now, can we start fighting for truth and stop giving into false diplomacy that is based on lies?


Monday, November 28, 2022

11/28 Links Pt2: IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Is Only "Polarizing" to Israel's Detractors; Anti-Israel activists and human sacrifice; Ye x Milo x Fuentes

From Ian:

IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Is Only "Polarizing" to Israel's Detractors
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) "working definition" of antisemitism is not polarizing to anyone other than Israel's detractors and antisemites.

The IHRA definition has been adopted by three dozen nations, at least six Canadian provinces and numerous states in the U.S.

The IHRA's detractors refuse to acknowledge that modern antisemitism is often tied to the Jewish State (e.g., Jewish soldiers being called Nazis).

They accuse those of us who defend the definition of being "right-wing" and of "weaponizing antisemitism" in order to defend Israel.

This is meant to undermine our efforts to protect ourselves against hate.

In the case of the IHRA definition, it's often the same people who call for universal rights and freedoms who oppose those very same rights for the Jewish people, particularly as they define their relationship with the State of Israel.

The IHRA definition is not "polarizing" to anyone other than those who either lack an historical understanding or are with an agenda to exacerbate the problem of hate and defame the Jewish state.
Anti-Israel activists and human sacrifice
In the anti-Israel context, there is the more recent case of Rachel Corrie. A college senior, Corrie became a member of the International Solidarity Movement, a terror-connected NGO that exploits foreign activists in service of the Palestinian cause. It is likely that she had already been indoctrinated in anti-Israel ideology, but the ISM almost certainly compounded it by orders of magnitude via a cult-like environment of hate.

Corrie lived for some time in Gaza, where she became infatuated with the people and decided that Israel was committing genocide against them, in which, as an American, she was complicit. In 2003, she knelt in front of an Israeli bulldozer, ostensibly in protest of a house demolition. The driver could not see her, and she was crushed to death.

She has, of course, become a martyr, and her letters and emails have been transformed into books and plays. Yet what they reveal is a deeply insecure and troubled young woman, possessed by existential guilt and desperate to redeem herself. Corrie’s death, in other words, was less a tragic accident than a kind of seppuku—a ritual suicide that she hoped, perhaps unconsciously, would be a moral expiation. She did not come to this conclusion on her own. She was the victim of unscrupulous people who wanted, or at least knew they were likely to acquire, a martyr.

One should not look away from what this means: Emotional blackmail kills. It is a kind of murder. Murder at third hand, perhaps, but murder nonetheless.

It is also part of a very ancient tradition. What the blackmailers are after, in the end, is the most primal of all forms of absolution: the human sacrifice. It is sometimes an emotional sacrifice, but far too often it is also physical.

From their origins in prehistory, such sacrifices were, almost invariably, expiatory acts. They were attempts to redeem a person or a community from their sins, to appease the gods and turn them away from stern judgment. And above all, such sacrifices made the victim a sacred object.

There are many among us, often young and vulnerable, who wish to become sacred objects and are told that if they sacrifice themselves, whether in life or in death, they will become so. It is tragic that many choose to believe this, but that does nothing to redeem those who lead them to the altar.

Judaism has always seen human sacrifice as an abomination, which indeed it is. We should not forget this admonition. No one, however righteous they consider themselves to be, has the right to demand such things from anyone. Like the priests of Moloch, those who use emotional blackmail of vulnerable individuals to achieve such an end stand accused.
Ye x Milo x Fuentes
Stop me if you've ever heard this one before:

Fueled by his hatred of Jews, one of the most recognizable black man of his era decided to forge an alliance with one of its most high-profile white nationalist, or, at the very least, the one whose juvenile stunts attract the most attention. One of the men behind the scenes who worked on arranging the meeting is himself Jewish, though he has long repudiated his heritage, is known to have engaged in antisemitism, as well as for being a grifter, and is distrusted by many in the movement. On the other hand, he has shown an uncanny ability to ingratiate himself with its leaders and keep the spotlight on himself. All of this revolving around grand political ambitions on both sides.

Obviously, I'm referring to the infamous 1961 entente of George Lincoln Rockwell, Malcolm X, and Daniel Burros which culminated in years of friendly relationships between the American Nazi Party and the Nation of Islam.

On June 25th, 1961, ten members of the American Nazi Party quietly arrived at the Nation of Islam rally in Washington, DC. In the Uline arena, they were surrounded by more than 8000 members of the Nation of Islam. They were not there to disrupt, attack the attendants, to protest the speech; instead, they were front-row guests. That night, Elijah Muhammad had called in sick, so Malcolm X took the stage to give the keynote speech in his stead. Rockwell contributed $20 to the cause and, while having his picture snapped by Jewish photographer Eve Arnold, he barked at her, 'I'll make a bar of soap out of you.' (She answered, "As long as it isn't a lampshade”).

At first glance, it would seem highly bizarre that members of the American Nazi Party, in full regalia and occasionally Sieg Heiling, would be tolerated amongst the Black Nationalist movement. Still, it more than made sense once you realized that they shared the same antisemitism and views on racial separatism. There was also a historical precedent; the units described as the most vicious, brutal, and antisemitic of the SS were the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar, composed almost entirely of Muslims.

Eight months after their first public meeting, George Lincoln Rockwell addressed more than 12,000 black audience members at the Chicago International Amphitheatre, urging them to ally with Nazis to be truly uplifted. "You know we call you niggers," he addressed the crowd. "But wouldn't you rather be confronted by honest white men who tell you to your face what the others all say behind your back?". He later praised the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad as the 'Adolf Hitler of the black man.'
The Decline of Islamism, and the Rise of the Muslim-American Far Left and Far Right
Born in St. Louis, Umar Lee (né Brett Darren Lee) converted to Islam at the age of seventeen, and was quickly drawn to its stringent Salafist form, and to Islamist political radicalism. He subsequently broke with extremism, although he remains a committed Muslim. In conversation with Dexter Van Zile, Lee discusses his own experiences—including a recent visit to Israel—and his observations about Islam in the U.S.
Islamism is no longer popular. Back in the day, it was very popular. . . . I attribute that to reality—the failure of the Arab Spring, the disaster of what happened in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Islamist politics has become so unpopular in the Muslim world that historians in 100 years are going to write that there was a 40-year period—from the mid-to-late seventies until the late 2010s—of Islamist political revival that faded away after the Arab Spring. In the U.S. we don’t see people talk about Islamist politics.

Conversion had some negative consequences [for me]—a period of extremism and Islamist politics—but it also kept me out of trouble and away from a criminal lifestyle. You have to remember that a very high percentage of guys who grew up where I did ended up addicted to drugs, or alcoholics. Many didn’t live to see forty and quite a few didn’t make it to twenty-one. For all of the problematic aspects of the Muslim experience in America, there is a track record of conversion keeping some men off the streets and clean.

On the subject of how American Muslims fit into contemporary political divides, Lee comments:
What you’re increasingly seeing in the Muslim community in America is a gender divide. You’re seeing that progressive politics [are] very popular, especially with women, especially young women. We know after 9/11 there was [a] leftward shift in the American Muslim community. . . . But you’re [now] seeing an insurgency led by men, particularly younger men, that are rejecting this progressive shift. They’re rejecting it in very harsh terms and going very far to the right. What you’re seeing in the Muslim community is—especially the young people—the left, and now this segment of the far right, are really taking up all the oxygen and moderate politics is very unpopular.

Unfortunately, there is more uniformity when it comes to attitudes toward the Jewish state:
By far, the least popular thing you can do [in the Muslim community] is support Israel. I could get on video and drink liquor [or] smoke weed and people would say, “Hey everybody, no one’s perfect. Everyone makes mistakes.” I could be in a [pornographic film] and people would say, “Hey, well, . . . ” But support Israel? That is the worst thing that you can do.

When it comes to Israel, everyone is still unhinged. It doesn’t matter what segment of the communities they’re in. There are very few rational people. And even the rational people I talk to, [who] agree with me in private, won’t say anything in public.

Saturday, November 26, 2022

11/26 Links: Second person dies of injuries days after Jerusalem bombing attack; How do human rights orgs operate in the West Bank?; Kanye West's antisemitism inspired by Louis Farrakhan

From Ian:

Second person dies of injuries days after Jerusalem bombing attack
A victim of this week’s terror bombing in Jerusalem succumbed to his injuries on Saturday, raising the death toll from the attack to two.

Tadese Tashume Ben Ma’ada was critically injured in an explosion Wednesday morning at a bus stop at the main entrance to Jerusalem, one of two bombings that rattled the capital.

A statement from Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem said trauma and ICU teams “fought for his life but unfortunately his injuries were too serious.”

“We offer our deepest condolences to the family,” the hospital added.

Ben Ma’ada’s family said they were thankful for the support they’d received since the attack but asked the public and the media to respect their privacy.

Ben Ma’ada, 50, immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia 21 years ago. He leaves behind a wife and six children.

Responding to the reports of Ben Ma’ada’s death, Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu sent his condolences to the family and praised medical teams who had treated him.

“Last week, I visited his dedicated family, who wrapped him with love, and the doctors who bravely fought for his life. I embrace the family at this difficult hour. May he rest in peace,” Netanyahu said on Twitter.

Outgoing prime minister Yair Lapid said he was “heartbroken” to hear of Ben Ma’ada’s death.

The double attack in Jerusalem initially left one person dead and 22 others injured. The first victim was named as 16-year-old Aryeh Schupak, a yeshiva student from Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood, and a dual Israeli-Canadian national.


How do human rights orgs operate in the West Bank?
All the material that journalist Zvi Yehezkeli gathered for the documentary series Double Agent(Shtula in Hebrew), which just began airing on Channel 13, sat in his desk drawer for three years, until it was approved for broadcast.

“I’d gathered 3,000 hours of footage and recorded numerous interviews for which we needed legal approval in order to use them,” Yehezkeli explains. “This type of content involves a great number of individuals, and so the risk of being saddled with international lawsuits is huge. The whole process was absolutely insane. I’d never worked on such a long series before,” he says.

The series Yehezkeli created is being broadcast on TV as the security situation in the West Bank is worsening, just after the controversial gas agreement with Lebanon was signed and while protests over the wearing of the hijab in Iran are escalating.

“If you’ve spent any time with regular people who live in Iran, you’ll see that the story is different from what you hear about the Middle East,” says Yehezkeli, the Arab Affairs correspondent at Channel 13.

“They want to be like us – they admire us. They don’t care at all about Khamenei and all the complicated politics. This is a generation that grew up after the Islamic Revolution, and they want freedom. They want to be able to make money.

“The intensity of this wave of protests has shown us how stressed out Iranians feel, and that Iran is like a powder keg that is going to explode at any moment.”

The Double Agent series follows a pro-Palestinian Swedish woman who arrives in Israel as a tourist to study architecture. One day she meets a man from the settlement town Eli, who explains the Israeli angle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to her.

“Slowly, she integrates herself into a human rights organization in the West Bank and becomes an intelligence agent for the Israelis,” Yehezkeli explains.

“After a year, she goes to a meeting with senior Hamas leaders, who reveal details to her about their fundraising apparatus, and the connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas headquarters in Europe and the human rights organizations. In other words, the human rights organizations, including BDS, are operated by Hamas personnel.

“This agent ends up uncovering a wealth of intel, including secrets that Hamas operatives told her, some of which are documented in written correspondence.

“So, we started creating a documentary series. It’s extremely complicated, since we used a lot of hidden cameras, and we also need to make sure that our agent remains safe.”
Why German intellectuals link Nakba and Holocaust
It’s not just a shocking exception. This summer, the German Documenta, one of the world’s most important art shows – also publicly funded – was run by an Indonesian curators’ collective that included BDS supporters and presented at least one blatantly antisemitic artwork. Despite ongoing attempts to help them make it right, its organizers proved incapable of issuing a clear apology, taking responsibility, and engaging in a productive debate about what had transpired.

The state-funded House of World Cultures in Berlin is now run by a director who wrote this Facebook post: “They will pay a million fold for every drop of blood in GAZA! Palestine shall be free!” and a Palestinian activist, speaking to an applauding audience at a House of World Cultures event this past June, referred to debates about the Holocaust as “Jewish psychodrama.” Again, these are institutions funded by the German state.

Frequently, such events are framed in terms of postcolonial perspectives on the assumption that Israel is a colonial project that has violated an indigenous people’s rights without even questioning whether that assumption applies (it doesn’t, but it’s obviously a topic that needs to be discussed). Yet that still doesn’t really explain the strange urge to mix in Palestinian narratives when the topic is the Holocaust or Holocaust remembrance. What does the German culture of remembrance, or “Erinnerungskultur” – a broad term that refers to the nation’s historical consciousness or, simply put, to those parts of its history that German society deems worthy of remembering and that is widely used to refer to the Third Reich – have to do with the Nakba, one may ask?

Many Germans think that the State of Israel defines itself as the answer to the Holocaust – that the Shoah is basically its raison d’etre. This incorrect and specifically German take on Israel courses daily through the media, statements by public figures, and cultural events. And that very deeply-rooted German view of Israel comes with an underlying sense of guilt and responsibility towards the Palestinians as victimized by Israel’s status as a reparation for Germany’s crimes. The title of the indefinitely postponed Goethe-Institut event suggests this, too, because it includes the Nakba in the German culture of remembrance.

It would be productive and enlightening to launch a discussion about whether the German culture of remembrance has anything to do with the Nakba at all – to start at the root, so to speak, and to shed some light on the assumptions guiding those who think it does. Why do decision-makers in German cultural institutions think it makes sense to discuss the Nakba together with the Holocaust rather than, say, within the obvious historical context of the war that Arab states waged on the Jewish state after it became independent – also a source of pain from an Israeli perspective? Has the German culture of remembrance taken on the tragedy of the Palestinians to relieve its very own heavy load? Hopefully, after all the scandals of these past months and years, these are some of the questions that will be debated at cultural institutions in Germany in the future.

Thursday, November 24, 2022

11/24 Links Pt1: Jerusalem Bombings Don't Mark Beginning of 3rd Intifada; Learn from the Druze and get results; Ending Jew-bashing at the UN; BBC pundit calls Jerusalem bombing 'Palestinian World Cup'

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Terror is still here, Israel needs secure government to stop it - editorial
Attacks that are carried out by lone attackers are usually more difficult to thwart. They can be perpetrated by people who wake up one morning and decide to try and kill some Jews without any prior warning. An attack like the one that took place on Wednesday is something else.

This was an attack that required the involvement of a number of people – to assemble the bombs and obtain the necessary ingredients, smuggle the bombs into Israel and plant them next to their targets.

This is already what is called “terrorist infrastructure,” the kind that likely is affiliated with a known organization, which should have been on the Israeli intelligence community’s watch list.

What this also shows is the need to focus now on establishing a government. The sooner there is a stable government in Jerusalem the sooner Israel will be able to create a clear strategy for how to stop the terrorist wave that is not going away. Fights about ministries and portfolios

Fights about ministries and portfolios might interest the politicians who are supposed to occupy those offices, but they are not of real interest to Israelis, who want to see safe streets and to know that their children – like Shechopek – are safe when they stand at a bus stop waiting to go to school.

Comments like the one made by an Army Radio reporter on Wednesday – that the attack was connected to the pending appointment of Itamar Ben-Gvir as the next public security minister – do not do any good. Neither are appearances at the scene soon after the crime by Ben-Gvir, who promised as presumptive internal security minister to wield an iron fist against terrorism.

After 75 years of statehood that has been marred by wars and terrorist attacks, we do not need to look for excuses for why Arab terrorists want to try and kill Israeli Jews. This has been part of the Israeli story since it was created as an independent state and will, sadly, likely continue as long as some of our neighbors refuse to come to terms with our existence here.

There was terrorism when there were left-wing governments in power and there was terrorism when there were right-wing governments. Israelis have not forgotten, for example, how Benjamin Netanyahu promised to topple Hamas in the Gaza Strip during an election campaign in 2009 and how through 12 consecutive years as prime minister he refrained from ordering the IDF to do so.

Netanyahu was quick to respond to Wednesday’s attack, saying his administration would once again make the country safe. What Israelis need right now is security, not boasting of how the incoming government is going to do things differently. Let’s hope they can put their actions where their mouths are.
David Singer: Ending Jew-bashing at the UN
The United Nations favourite sport – Jew bashing - was on full display this past week at the 77th Session of the United Nations Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) - which approved six draft resolutions - all highly critical of Israel.

One of these draft resolutions - approved by 98 voting in favour to 17 against, with 52 abstentions - was titled “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” (document A/C.4/77/L.12/Rev.1).

By its terms, the UN General Assembly would demand that Israel cease:
all measures that violate the human rights of the Palestinian people, including the killing and injuring of civilians,
the arbitrary detention and imprisonment of civilians,
the forced displacement of civilians
the transfer of its own population into the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”
and that:
“the General Assembly should request the International Court of Justice to render urgently an advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967”.

Vituperative verbal attacks on the Jewish State made by Bangladesh, Venezuela, South Africa, Iran, Libya, Niger, Türkiye, Algeria, Brunei Darussalam, Namibia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Japan, Qatar, Lebanon, Sudan, Malaysia and Yemen, all bastions of civil liberties, ensured Jew-bashing would continue at the United Nations whilst the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict remains unresolved.
It is unacceptable for the ICJ to deliver opinion on Israel, West Bank
THE HISTORICAL, political and legal issues are extremely complex. An Israeli take on them was set out in convincing detail in a recent study by Professor Abraham Sion, which he called, “To whom was the promised land promised?” Sion is a former deputy state attorney of Israel and is a professor emeritus of law at Ariel University. If the world were governed by reason, logic and conscientious adherence to the rule of law, Sion’s book would be a game changer.

He submitted the entire legal process leading to the establishment of Israel to meticulous forensic examination and he demonstrates beyond any doubt that judicial rulings from the UN, the EU, the ICJ and elsewhere have often been at odds with a scrupulous interpretation of their legal basis. Over the past few decades, international bodies have reached a consensus that the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem are Palestinian territories, and that Israeli towns and cities in Judea and Samaria are illegal. Sion uncovers the solid legal building blocks that have been ignored or overlooked and that prove different.

In short, he demonstrates with chapter and verse that the almost universally accepted consensus on Israel’s legal position regarding the West Bank, settlements and Jerusalem is legally flawed.

In undertaking his scrupulous legal analysis, Sion’s original purpose was to ascertain who owned the legal right to the territory of Mandatory Palestine under international law. He identified the two competitors as the Arab nation on the one hand and the Jewish people on the other. Concerned solely with the legal position and not with political or related issues, he set out to establish the legal rights under the international law of both parties.

Sion demonstrates that in concluding that Israel is illegally occupying territory, international bodies never refer to the treaties that shaped the legal structure of the Middle East. He shows that the rights derived from those binding international commitments were still valid when Israel occupied the West Bank.

Sion is not alone in reaching conclusions like these, but of course, they have never been tested openly in any international judicial forum. If in due course the UN General Assembly asks the ICJ for an opinion, how could the court possibly render a valid legal determination without having the issues raised by Sion and many others argued before it?

On the very day that the UN committee voted to appeal to the ICJ for an opinion – November 11 – the ICJ began public hearings in The Hague in a long-running dispute between Venezuela and the former British colony of Guyana on the issue of the border between them. Each party is presenting its case to the court in preliminary hearings scheduled to last until November 22. The proceedings are not only open to the public but they are being videoed and publicized widely on social media.
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