Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: ethnic cleansing

Showing posts with label ethnic cleansing. Show all posts

Monday, November 28, 2022

Elder Comix: The moral choice is always what's bad for the Jews

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10/24 Links Pt2: An Inconvenient Truth: The Jewish People Never Left the Land of Israel; Bari Weiss: Kanye West's Dark, Twisted Fantasy And Jewish reality

From Ian:

An Inconvenient Truth: The Jewish People Never Left the Land of Israel

I just finished reading former US Ambassador David Friedman’s recent article, in which he makes the point that Judaism and Zionism are inseparable. It is a fine article and I agree with him, but I wonder if it places too much emphasis on the return of the Jewish people to their homeland after a lengthy absence. I have the same concern with an upbeat review of Israel’s achievements in a recent article by David Weinberg, which refers to two millennia of Jewish dispersion.

To imply that the Jews left the Land of Israel for 2,000 years, after the fall of Masada, is not accurate. It feeds into the view that the modern state of Israel is a European colonial enterprise with no historical connection to the land. What’s more, the Jewish return did not originate with the modern Zionist movement in the early 1880s. Aliyah has been continuous throughout the ages.

The Jewish people never really left the Holy Land. Certainly, many were killed or expelled at the time of Masada and later, but many Jews continued to live in “Palestine” (the name given by the Romans after the Bar Kochba revolt, 132-135 CE) for a considerable time afterward. The evidence is clear from the extensive archeological sites visible today, such as those at Beit Alpha, Beit She’arim, Tzippori (Sepphoris), Baram, and many others. Jews formed a majority of the population of Palestine until at least the fifth century CE, and an autonomous Roman-recognized Jewish patriarchate in Palestine existed until 429 CE.

Archeological ruins point to the establishment of more than 80 synagogues, particularly in the Galilee, during the six centuries after the destruction of the Temple. After Masada, the Jewish population was substantial enough for three serious revolts against Roman or Byzantine rule to occur; the last one, against the Emperor Heraclius, was in the seventh century.

Evidence from the Cairo Genizah, and the writings of the Spanish-Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela, indicate that Jews continued to inhabit a number of towns, including Jerusalem, after the Byzantine defeat by the Arabs under Omar Ibn Al Khattab in 637, and even during Crusader rule. In fact, the 12th century witnessed an upsurge in Jewish immigration from Europe; 300 rabbis from England and France, including a number of prominent Tosafists, immigrated to the Holy land in 1211, while the noted Spanish rabbi and philosopher Nachmanides (the Ramban) made aliyah in 1267.

David Collier: Pete Gregson’s campaigns. Just where are the Scottish police?

A Holocaust denying antisemite created a partnership with a Gazan scammer who has family links to proscribed Islamic terrorist groups. They are still taking £1000s from people in Scotland for increasingly dubious and unbelievable campaigns. Why is it left to an independent Jewish journalist to investigate them? Just where are the Scottish police?

The unfortunate Mohammed Almadhoun
Mohammed Almadhoun is either scamming the people of Scotland or he is the unluckiest man alive.

About 18 months ago his house was bombed, and he ran a campaign to raise funds to rebuild it. The image he used for his ‘bombed-out’ house was a bombed out Hamas bank and had been swiped from the internet:

Mohammed Almadhoun houseTwo years before this he claimed that a school he teaches in was also bombed out – and once again he tried to raise funds to have it fixed. This time Almadhoun used an image of a school in Syria bombed during the Syrian civil war:

Mohammed also claimed he needed back surgery at the time – and once again ran a fundraising campaign to raise money to help him:

None of this was real – but nor did Mohammed succeed in raising much cash. What he lacked was a ‘sponsor’ in the UK so blinded by antisemitic hate – that he would promote every story that Mohammed gave him. Enter Pete Gregson – an antisemite who has bought into almost every conspiracy about Jews that can be found.

So earlier this year Gregson tells everyone that Mohammed would go to jail unless he could pay his debts – raising funds to help him. This despite the fact Almadhoun is a relatively wealthy man from a very powerful clan. Gregson was campaigning for a bogus story – and I told him so. Since then, things have only got worse.

London Centre Study of Contemporary Antisemitism: Alvin Rosenfeld: ‘The Jews are Guilty’: Contemporary Echoes of Old Religious Tropes

Alvin H Rosenfeld, the Director of the Indiana University Bloomington Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism talks about how centuries old tropes of religious antisemitism are being recycled and expressed in today’s America.

The difference between a "Palestinian" and an "Arab Palestinian" - according to the PLO

The 1968 Palestinian National Covenant (Charter) has an interesting paragraph:

Article 6:
The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.

The Palestine Ministry of Information notes that the year of the "Zionist invasion" is considered to be 1917. It does not appear that they are including descendants of those Jews, so the issue is moot, but it points to something interesting in official Palestinian language.

This is one of the few uses of the word "Palestinians" in the document. Most of it refers to "Palestinian Arabs." So, for example:

Article 3:
The Palestinian Arab people possess the legal right to their homeland and have the right to determine their destiny after achieving the liberation of their country in accordance with their wishes and entirely of their own accord and will.

If the only people that have the legal right to the land are Arabs, then the Jews - even those they call "Palestinians," who had been there continuously for thousands of years - do not.

In other words, the Charter gives legal rights to Arabs that it withholds from non-Arabs.

Isn't that apartheid?

This is besides the explicit antisemitism in the charter itself - which has never been revoked - that denied the existence of the Jewish people to begin with. "Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong."

Now look at the 2003 Palestinian constitution. There, they refer repeatedly to the Arab Palestinian people. The first paragraph of the preamble says:

The continuous attachment of the Arab Palestinian people to the land of their fathers and forefathers, on which this people has historically lived, is a fact that has been expressed in the Declaration of Independence, issued by the Palestine National Council. The strength of this attachment is confirmed by its consistency over time and place, by keeping faith with and holding onto national identity, and in the realization of wondrous accomplishments of struggle. The organic relationship between the Palestinian people, their history and their land has confirmed itself in their unceasing effort to prompt the world to recognize the rights of the Arab Palestinian people and their national entity, on equal footing with other nations.

Why the need to emphasize "Arab Palestinian people"? By 2003 (and unlike 1968), the term "Palestinian" was well known.

It appears that the term is used specifically to exclude Jews from calling themselves "Palestinian."

The Palestinian Arabs are well aware that the term "Palestinian" usually referred to Jews before 1948. They want not only to make sure that they are the only "Palestinians" with rights to the land but to ensure that they assert that Jews have no historic or legal rights to the land.

That explains why they call themselves "Palestinian Arabs" or "Arab Palestinians."

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Did Jews buy land in Transjordan as early as the 1870s?

Jamil Youssef Al-Shaboul, writing in Sawaleif, tells a story about a brief episode of Jewish settlement in Transjordan.

Palestine was not alone as a destination for the Jews and the Zionist movement. With the intention of establishing the slandered national homeland, the eastern part of the river was also targeted.

When the Zionist Montefiore built the first neighborhood for the Jews outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem in 1862, after he purchased a plot of land specifically for that, the first two agricultural settlements for the Jews were built in both Jerash / on the Zarqa River and Salt, and through bribes received by some Ottoman officials to facilitate their entry into the country and their ownership for the land.

The Jordanian clans sensed the seriousness of the matter early on, especially after the Jews tried to buy other lands adjacent to the Zarqa River in order to bring in another group of immigrants. The northern and Bani Hassan clans came together and held a meeting in the guesthouse of Sheikh Mustafa al-Ayasra headed by Sheikh Mufleh al-Obaidat, the father of the martyr Kayed al-Obaidat, and they unanimously agreed to expel these Jews. With all the simple light weapons they had, they burned the settlement of Rachel in Jerash and expelled the Jews from it. They headed towards Al-Balqa and burned the settlement of Kfar Ehud near Salt. The presence of these bastards from East Jordan ended.

The Jordanian clans were able to save Jordan from the clutches of the Zionist movement, which was announced at the Basel Conference in Switzerland in 1891, and this confirms that the choice of force in the time of lies and hypocrisy is the one who restores things to their rightful place and that the thief will not escape punishment.

Notice that they admit that the land was purchased by Jews but the author still considers the land "stolen."

A similar story was published in 2020 in Rai al Youm, another Jordanian news site. It said that the Jews were there from 1870 to 1876 when thy were driven out, and the names of the settlement are the same.

The writers are gleeful that they ethnically cleansed Jews from Transjordan, and they regard this as an honorable story to tell today.

I cannot find English-language documentation of any of these Jewish settlements in Transjordan in the 19th century. But the story is not altogether implausible. Zionists did buy land across the Jordan, in the Golan Heights. See my previous articles about that here and here.

Moreover, I found an Arabic book about about a dozen plans for Jews to include parts of Transjordan in the Jewish homeland, from the mid-19th century up until the 1940s. Dr. Issam Muhammad Al-Saadi wrote "Zionist Aspirations in Transjordan, 1862 - 1946." It includes all of these attempts (autotranslated so the names might be misspelled):

■ February 1867 AD, Charles Warren publishes his study, which called for the necessity of beginning Jewish settlement in the region of "Gilead" in eastern Jordan

■ January 1871 AD, Yehoshua Yellin establishes a company to invest and reclaim the lands of the "Nimrin Valley" northeast of the Dead Sea in preparation for the Jewish settlement operations in eastern Jordan

■ April 1879 CE, Lawrence Oliphant after his trip to the Golan and Ajloun lays out the "Gilead Settlement Plan" that called for the establishment of a Jewish political entity in Transjordan

■ June 8, 1880 AD, Ottoman historical document, Sublime Porte rejected Lawrence Oliphant's proposal to establish a Jewish settlement with some privileges in Gilead "Sanjak of Ajloun, Transjordan"

■ July 27, 1888 AD, Eliyahu Shed was able to purchase land as part of Baron Rothschild's plan for the settlement of Jews in northeastern Jordan.

■ January 1891, Paul Friedman put forward the "Midian Project" for Jewish settlement in Midyan / the western region of the Arabian Peninsula

■ May 1891 AD, Lord Ghosh presented to the Ottoman government his project for the settlement of Jews in the regions of Gilead and Moab in eastern Jordan

■ October 7, 1894 AD, Zionist settlement attempts in Karak, Transjordan in 1896, and the letter of the Mutasarrif of Karak to the Mutasarrif of Jerusalem

■ June 1896 AD, the expulsion of Jewish settlers and the destruction of their property in Jerash and Hauran, east of Jordan

■ March 22, 1901 AD, Hillel Yefeh's plan and a meeting with the representative of the Zionist movement "Aes Nattoot" to purchase large lands in Karak, Transjordan, for Jewish settlement

■ March 8, 1903, Aharon Blum signs a lease contract for Zizia lands south of Umm al-Amad for the settlement of Jews in eastern Jordan

■ November 24, 1904 AD, a delegation from the Zionist movement headed by Yitzhak Levy visits Transjordan to learn about the "Lepontine" project for Jewish settlement in southern Jordan

■ On April 29, 1905 AD, Aharon Blum signed a contract to purchase land in Hamra in the Salt region for the settlement of Jews in eastern Jordan.

■ On September 20, 1906 AD, Aharon Blum signed a contract to purchase land in Tanib, in the Madaba region, for the settlement of Jews in eastern Jordan.

■ October 1910 AD, Najib al-Asfar's project for Jewish settlement in the Ottoman princely lands in the Jordan Valley

■ On February 15, 1917 AD, the Zionist movement announced through the "Palestine of Palestine" the borders of the national home it aspired to.

■ On June 28, 1919, the Zionist movement announced its strong protest against the separation of Transjordan from Palestine and expressed the importance of Transjordan for the future of the Jewish state in Palestine

■ July 13, 1928 AD, Pinhas Rotenberg presented to the British commissioner Henry Cox his plan for the Jewish settlement in the lands of Al-Baqura east of Jordan

■ January 18, 1931 AD, The New York Times publishes a land lease agreement in Ghor Kebd.

■ March 8, 1936 AD, Pinhas Rothenberg presented his plan for the Jewish settlement in Wadi Zarqa, east of Jordan

■ August 15, 1936 AD, a meeting was held in Ghor al-Safi for members of a Jewish group to discuss the plan for the Jewish settlement in the al-Safi Valley in eastern Jordan

Outside of Pinhas Rutenberg, I have never heard of any of these plans. But I found Aharon Yitzchak Blum did indeed attempt to buy lands across the Jordan and even founded an organization called "חברת חלוצי עבר הירדן", Association of Pioneers of the Transjordan.

This may be a very neglected chapter of Zionist history. I found this paper in Hebrew about Blum that begins with confirmation that there were many Jewish attempts to settle across the Jordan as well as the resistance of the local tribes.

In the second half of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the present century, until close to the establishment of the state, organizations, institutions, individuals and sometimes even private entrepreneurs made attempts to acquire land for settlement across the Jordan. ...There was no hesitation about moving across the Jordan; It was, like the West Bank, part of the Ottoman Empire and was perceived in the minds of the many as an integral part of the land, the land of the patriarchs, emphasizing the acuteness of the security problem there, due to the Bedouin ruling the land. The idea of settlement there was intertwined with political ideas, both during the Ottoman rule - to establish Jewish autonomy - and of a desire - especially during the rule of the French and British Mandates - to secure the full territory of the country.

There may be lands in Jordan that were purchased by Jews who were ethnically cleansed by the Arab tribes!

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!

Even Israeli lab-grown meat is colonialist, according to this academic

Israel is a leader in lab-grown cultured meat. But according to at least one academic, this is symbolic of Israeli colonialism.

Yes, really.

Efrat Gilad is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Bern. She wrote "A Colonial Legacy of Cultured Meat" describing how Israel's meat industry, including its recent leadership in lab-grown cultured meat, is really all just a history of Jewish colonialism.

Without the politics, the article would be a pretty good overview of the history of the meat industry in Palestine since Ottoman times. But instead, it is a screed about how evil Jews have upset the wonderful balance of nature in Palestine by introducing a meat-based diet into the region.

You see, native Palestinians didn't consume much meat. But the evil Ashkenazi Jews who selfishly returned to Palestine to save their lives from pogroms brought with them a love of meat, and that transformed the country into something it was never meant to be.

In Europe, Jews had been associated with the cattle trade since the Middle Ages. But in Palestine, consuming meat depended on Palestinian peasants and regional Arab breeders. Jewish actors (importers, butchers, religious authorities, urban officials) tried to gain more ground in the country’s meat trade. In the 1930s, Jewish cattle dealers began to import cattle from Europe, relying on their old continental networks. By shipping in animals from overseas, Jewish dealers expanded Palestine’s regional trade into a transcontinental trade. This ...allowed Jewish dealers to penetrate the country’s meat trade by importing to Palestine European bovines three times the size of local species.

...Tel Aviv, for example, was the settlement’s most important city financially, demographically, and also in terms of meat consumption. Its emerging meat infrastructures – especially its slaughterhouse built in 1931 – facilitated the expansion of the city, and by proxy, the entire Jewish settlement.

Rather than a land of milk and honey, settlers hankered for meat as the material manifestation of arriving at a utopia of prosperity and plenty. Increasing Jews’ access to meat in Palestine under British rule may have been against economic ideals, but still served the Zionist goal: the expansion of the settlement and the colonization of Palestine.

I suppose that their draining the malaria-infested swamps was also a colonialist interference to destroy the natural beauty of Palestine.

Gilad goes on to describe the austerity period after the War of Independence when there was very little meat, and Israeli attempts to create vegetable-based substitutes, as a precursor to today's cultured meat industry. She includes this marvelous cartoon from Maariv in 1949:

“We have been informed of the invention of “artificial meat” in our country, and it was produced from mushrooms and eggplant..” - “What kind of animal is this?” - "It's an artificial cow!"

But she absurdly interprets a brief history of the Israeli meat market by the Tnuva conglomerate as evidence of how Israelis hate Palestinians:

On its website, the company recalls how it entered the meat business: Until 1948 meat supplies depended on “Arab agriculture and nomadic Bedouins. But with the creation of the state, this main source of meat disappeared”. Echoing the hegemonic Israeli stance, Tnuva’s website reduces Palestinians to a “source of meat” and their forced exodus to a “disappearance”.

If you write a history of meat that doesn't center Palestinian suffering, you must be a racist colonialist pig.

In short, when Zionists import beef, it is colonialist. When they try to create ersatz substitutes, it is colonialist. When they lead the world in cultured meat, it is colonialist.

Anti-Zionist glasses are a requirement for academia

Her very thesis that meat is an alien part of the Middle East diet brought in by colonialist European Jews is another manifestation of viewing the world through anti-Zionist glasses. The consumption of meat in Arab countries today roughly corresponds with wealth, not historic diet habits. The per capita consumption of meat in Gulf states - almost all of it imported - is not much different than that of Israel.

And guess who consumes the most meat in the Arab world? Palestinians, by far!

No doubt, Gilad would blame Israel for irrevocably ruining the diet of the natives.

As countries become richer, they buy more meat. It has nothing to do with colonialism. It has everything to do with the crazy idea that people like meat.

Ascribing Jewish colonialist and racist motives for what is a consumer preference and economic issue is just a more sophisticated - and academically approved - version of antisemitism.

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

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The purpose of the yellow star in Nazi Germany was EXACTLY the same as that of BDS today

In 1960, Life magazine published small excerpts of transcripts of tapes from a fellow Nazi interviewing Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in the 1950s.

This excerpt explains the similarities between Nazis in the 1930s and the fanatic Israel haters today.

We did not devise the yellow star to put pressure on the Jews themselves. On the contrary, its purpose was to control the natural tendency of our German people to come to the aid of someone in trouble. The marking was intended to hinder any such assistance to Jews who were being harassed. We wanted Germans to feel embarrassed, to feel afraid of having any contact with Jews. So our administration was quite happy to distribute these bolts of yellow cloth and to regulate the time limit by which the stars would have to be worn.

The yellow star was not to punish the Jews, but to make it difficult for non-Jews to express sympathy with them.

Today, the people who advocate boycotts of Israel aren't primarily trying to hurt Israel. They are trying to make it difficult for other people to be pro-Israel.

Those who accuse Israel of "apartheid" or "ethnic cleansing" or "genocide" aren't trying to get Israel to treat Palestinians better. They are trying to make tar anyone who supports Israel's right to exist as supporting war crimes themselves.

"We wanted Germans to feel embarrassed, to feel afraid of having any contact with Jews. " Is there any better description of the purpose of BDS and anti-Zionism? Just look at how celebrities who visit Israel are treated by the "woke" crowd.

It is exactly the same.

Only exceptional people could stand up to the social pressure to ostracize Jews in Germany. And only exceptional people can stand up for Israel in Leftist circles. The weaker ones in both cases cower, and then it is but a small step to claim that their cowardice is really a moral, righteous position.

The yellow star was not meant to hurt Jews. It represents the original cancel culture.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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74 years ago: World compliments Arabs on how humanely they ethically cleansed Jews from Jerusalem

This is the 74th anniversary of the surrender of the Old City of Jerusalem.

This article shows how both the Jordanians and the Swiss acted like the Arabs were supreme humanitarians - because they didn't massacre every man, woman and child and "allowed' them to leave their homes with only a few possessions.

This was ethnic cleansing.

Not a single Jew remained in the Jordanian administered part of Jerusalem for 19 years. But since Arabs are assumed to be vicious animals, when they act a little less horribly, everyone praises them.

And in another article in the Palestine Post on May 30, 1948:

Of course, within days some 50 synagogues were deliberately destroyed by the humane Transjordanians.

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

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Nothing proves Jordanian and Palestinian antisemitism like Jerusalem Day

Today is Jerusalem Day.

Like every other Sunday through Thursday, Jews are visiting the Temple Mount, although many more today than usual.

And like every other Sunday through Thursday, both Palestinian and Jordanian media are reacting with antisemitism, although more today than usual.

Jordan's Minister of Foreign Affairs issued a statement condemning Jews visiting the site:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates on Sunday condemned allowing Israeli extremists and a Knesset member to storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Haram Al Sharif compound, warning of escalation due to permitting an Israeli march scheduled to begin today in Jeusalem.

The Ministry's spokesperson Haitham Abu Alfoul said the Israeli raids, protected by the Israeli police, are a violation of the historical and legal status quo and the international law, stressing that Al-Aqsa Mosque is purely a place of worship for Muslims and that the Jordanian-run Waqf (endowments) and al-Aqsa Affairs Administration in Jerusalem has the exclusive jurisdiction to run all the affairs of the holy site.

In short, Judaism's holiest spot must be restricted to Muslims only.

The official Palestinian Authority statement went further, saying that any Jew who stepped foot on the Temple Mount was "desecrating Al Aqsa:"

Presidential Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said that "Israel is playing with fire irresponsibly and recklessly by allowing settlers to desecrate sanctities in occupied Jerusalem and escalate the killings."

Abu Rudeineh stressed that the road to security and peace in the region passes through meeting the rights of our people, stressing that Islamic and Christian sanctities are a red line, and their desecration can never be accepted.

It is rare for news media nowadays to recall what the Old City of Jerusalem was like in the 19 anomalous years that Arabs controlled it and created the so-called "status quo" of a Judenfrei Jerusalem.

The South China Morning Post, on July 3, 1978, journalist Barry Choi laid out the difference between how tolerant Israel is compared to how intolerant the Jordanians were:

Nothing has changed - but nowadays the news media is more likely to take the Arab side that anything Jews do in half of Jerusalem is illegal and immoral.

The antisemitism that was obvious even to a Chinese journalist in 1978 is the same we are seeing today - but the Western media take the side of the antisemites. Their coverage today says that "illegal settlement" is the lens through which to view Jerusalem - and the complete ethnic cleansing of Jews that today's Palestinians and Jordanians demand is not at all newsworthy.

(h/t Ahron Shapiro)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

A 1976 book documents the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Jerusalem in 1948 with stunning photographs

Richard Pollack writes in JNS:

I recently stumbled upon a photography book shot by the acclaimed Life magazine wartime photographer John Phillips. The large, innocuous-looking book was simply titled, A Will to Survive. After flipping through the pages, I realized I entered a time capsule that memorializes the Arab destruction of Jerusalem’s ancient Jewish Quarter in 1948.

Not only is it a dramatic firsthand account of the fall of the Jewish Quarter in 1948, but it documents the Arab Legion’s scorched-earth tactics that razed and burned to the ground every structure there, including all its synagogues and yeshivahs. The Arabs expelled all of the city’s residents, mainly defenseless, old Orthodox Jews. They were given about an hour to vacate homes that most extended families had lived in for centuries.

And there never has been a reckoning by any international body about the Arab Legion’s barbaric actions after it captured the Quarter.

To get his shots in May 1948, Phillips posed undercover in Jerusalem as a British officer in the Arab Legion. He also smuggled out his photos to avoid Arab censors who were eager to keep the sacking of the Jewish Quarter secret.

Phillips faced personal danger to do the shoot. He entered the Middle East undercover and wore the uniform of the Arab Legion, a British-created Arab army led by British officers, many of whom stayed on with their units to fight the Jews. “Mistaking me for a British officer, the Arab populace left me alone,” he wrote.

He was appalled about the Arab censorship. “Aware that the sack of the Jewish Quarter would shock the western world, Arab authorities across the Middle East tried to prevent the news from leaking out. Jerusalem could not be mentioned under any circumstances,” he wrote.

“I knew my pictures of the agony of the Jewish Quarter would end up in a censor’s wastepaper basket. I did not want this to happen and decided to smuggle them out of the Middle East.”

I found a copy of the book online. The photographs in the book are stunning.

Here is the Hurva synagogue in ruins.

A view of the destruction of the Jewish Quarter from what is now the Kotel plaza, with the Porat Yosef synagogue and yeshiva in the center.

Jews gathering for deportation in front of the destroyed Tiferet Israel synagogue.

More photos of Jews as they rush to leave - they had one hour to gather their belongings.

Here are Arabs looting the remains - including taking the Torah covers from a Sephardic synagogue, and a woman with a box of matzohs on her head.

This is what ethnic cleansing looks like.

Phillips returned in 1976 and interviewed dozens of Jews who had lived or fought in the final battle for the Old City in 1948.

Ilhan Omar's principles: She used to demand the US boycott China. Now she fights to cooperate with China. (Daled Amos)

Ilhan Omar's reputation for anti-Israel attacks and antisemitism dates back to 2019, when she made her famous accusations that defenders of Israel were guilty of dual loyalty. In her latest controversial comments, just last month Omar compared the US and Israel with the Taliban and Hamas, with accusations of "unthinkable atrocities."

Those latest comments created an unexpected pushback that led to Omar's supposed "clarification" of her remarks.

There are, though, some instances when Omar's criticism of foreign countries are not controversial at all.

In November 2019, Ilhan Omar condemned the Chinese government for the "ethnic cleansing of Uighurs:"

And Omar did not stop there.

Earlier this year, she doubled down on her criticism of China's treatment of the Uyghurs, with a vehemence she normally reserves for Israel:

And just last year, Omar went beyond mere words and took action that amounts to the equivalent of BDS -- against China. In her April 2020 press release, Rep. Omar Leads Letter to CEOs, including Apple, Amazon, and Google, Condemning the Use of Forced Uyghur Labor in China:

According to the text of that letter:

The treatment of Uyghur and other Muslim people by the Chinese government – which the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has determined may amount to crimes against humanity – has drawn fierce and sustained bipartisan condemnation. That American companies would be using forced Uyghur labor, intentionally or unintentionally, is profoundly disturbing.

...Among the acts that comprise crimes against humanity, Uyghurs have been allegedly subjected to enslavement, arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearance, and persecution against a collective group of people. Put simply, it is our strong belief that nobody should be profiting from these conditions. [emphasis added]

As you are well aware, American companies represent this country in your business abroad. It is essential that your values are in line with the basic principles of human rights.

She asks that those companies ensure that Uyghur slave labor is not used in the manufacture of their products.

Good for her!

Too bad she did an about-face

While in November 2019, Omar tweeted:

We must hold officials responsible for this fully accountable

And in February 2021 she tweeted:

Yes, politics and relationships shouldn't stop us from the pursuit of justice...Now is the time for full accountablility and justice. [emphasis added]

Suddenly, just 2 months ago, in May 2021, Politico reported that Ilhan Omar changed her tune, from a call for "justice' to a call for "justified criticism":

“We need to distinguish between justified criticisms of the Chinese government’s human rights record and a Cold War mentality that uses China as a scapegoat for our own domestic problems and demonizes Chinese Americans,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one of a group of lawmakers pressing Biden and congressional leaders to take a more cooperative approach to relations with Beijing. [emphasis added]

What accounts for Omar's about-face?

In the article, Politico notes the concern that progressives have that in its eagerness for justice, the US attitude towards China's ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs may endanger the battle against...climate change.

According to Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.):

We won't be able to solve the challenges of the 21st century like the climate crisis and global health unless we have relationships that harness partnerships across the globe, including China.

Bowman is not alone. In May, Bowman and Omar were among "more 60 activist groups and at least four prominent lawmakers [who] are stepping up their criticisms as the Senate pushes through this week a package of anti-China bills that enjoy backing from members of both parties and the White House."

And the pressure on the Biden administration by progressive groups continued this month. In another article, Politico reports Biden’s new Cold War with China will result in climate collapse, progressives warn:

Over 40 progressive groups sent a letter to President Joe Biden and lawmakers on Wednesday urging them to prioritize cooperation with China on climate change and curb its confrontational approach over issues like Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong and forced detention of Uyghur Muslims. [emphasis added]

According to the letter:

...While we are encouraged by stated commitments from the United States and China to work together and with other countries to enact urgent climate policies, we are deeply troubled by the growing Cold War mentality driving the United States' approach to China — an antagonistic posture that risks undermining much-needed climate cooperation.

We, the undersigned organizations, call on the Biden administration and all members of Congress to eschew the dominant antagonistic approach to U.S.-China relations and instead prioritize multilateralism, diplomacy, and cooperation with China to address the existential threat that is the climate crisis. [emphasis added]

Where is that going to leave Omar, who has publicly accused the Chinese government of the ethnic cleansing, enslavement, torture, rape, forced sterilization and mass detention of Uyghurs?

It was recently reported that Biden wants to follow in Omar's footsteps in addressing Chinese products being allowed to enter the US:

In particular, the Biden administration has prioritized boxing products with ties to forced labor out of U.S. markets. On Friday, the U.S. added 14 Chinese entities to its economic blacklist that are believed to be complicit in human rights abuses and forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. The blacklist means American firms will have to obtain clearance from the U.S. government before doing business with those companies.

Will Ilhan Omar come out publicly in support of Biden's BDS-style measures against Chinese persecution of Uyghurs?

Omar claimed that one of her concerns was a mentality that "demonizes Chinese Americans."

Can we expect her to show a new concern not to add to a mentality that demonizes Jewish Americans?

Or is all of this just another round in the game of politics -- where both Chinese Uyghurs and American Jews get thrown under the bus?

Absurd article posted by fake academic Juan Cole blames Israel for "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinian Christians

The Hamas-supporting Middle East Monitor (MEMO) site has an article by the always ridiculous Ramzy Baroud, claiming that Israel is engaging in "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinian Christians.

After quoting lots of statistics on the disappearance of Christians and blaming Israel, not Muslims or the PA, the article brings its only piece of "evidence:"

A study conducted by Dar al-Kalima University in the West Bank town of Beit Jala and published in December 2017, interviewed nearly 1,000 Palestinians, half of them Christian and the other half Muslim. One of the main goals of the research was to understand the reason behind the depleting Christian population in Palestine.
The study concluded that “the pressure of Israeli occupation, ongoing constraints, discriminatory policies, arbitrary arrests, confiscation of lands added to the general sense of hopelessness among Palestinian Christians,” who are finding themselves in “a despairing situation where they can no longer perceive a future for their offspring or for themselves”.

There are three problems with this study.

One is that it is biased against Israel. One of the authors, Bernard Sabella, was at the time also a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. There is no way that this study would look objectively at Muslim persecution of Christians, well documented not only in the territories but also throughout the Middle East.

And when Christians think that the survey is associated with the government, they are unlikely to say anything that might upset the government.

Two is that in order to prove Israeli "ethnic cleansing" of Christians, it would mean that Israel is somehow targeting Christians more than Muslims. Yet this same study showed that Palestinian Muslims shared nearly the exact same level of fear as well as optimism as the Christians surveyed.

If they suffer equally, and the Muslims aren't persecuting the Christians, then why are only the Christians leaving and not nearly as many Muslims?

The third issue is methodological. If one wants to understand why Christians are fleeing the PA-controlled areas, you don't ask the people who are still there - you ask the people who left!

To be sure, part of the reason more Christians leave than Muslims because Christians were more middle class and had more economic opportunity to leave, as well as welcoming communities to go to where there are already many established Palestinian Christians, in the US and South America. But it is just as certain that there has been many cases of reported persecution of Christians by Muslims.

The most hilarious part of this absurd article is that after invoking this ridiculous report as the be all and end all on proof of Israeli persecution of Christians, it adds:

Unfounded claims that Palestinian Christians are leaving because of religious tensions between them and their Muslim brethren are, therefore, irrelevant.

I've published many articles over the past fifteen years documenting how Muslims have been attacking Christians in the West Bank and Gaza, forcing the Christians to look to live elsewhere. This study does not refute that at all.

Another problem with the article itself is that if Israel wants to persecute Christians, why is the Christian population in Israel itself steady and growing?

It is no surprise that MEMO publishes this garbage. Interestingly, eleventh-rate professor Juan Cole was so enchanted by this piece of bad reporting that he copied the entire thing to his blog.

(h/t Dan)

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