Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: follow the money

Showing posts with label follow the money. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Who Paid for the Simchat Torah Massacre? (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

On or around September 7, President Biden unfroze $6b in Iranian revenues. One month later, there was a massacre in Israel, sponsored by Iran. No less than a Hamas spokesman affirmed that Iran lent its assistance to Hamas as its proxy to murder Jews.

Was Biden’s generosity to Iran in September responsible for the war crimes committed by Hamas in October? While White House officials say that none of the $6b went to Hamas, they have yet to relate to accusations that Biden’s munificence served as a green light to Iran to do what it always says it will do: murder Jews.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, speaking from Tel Aviv, pretended that money was not fungible. The money, he said, had been sent from South Korea to a Qatari bank, and Iran hadn’t even had a chance to touch it, yet. “None of the funds that have gone to Qatar have actually been spent or accessed in any way,” said Blinken to Netanyahu during his diplomatic blitz of the Middle East in the wake of the atrocities.

Yes, dummy. We know that. But when there’s money in your future, you can take money from elsewhere to fund what you like. Iran likes to kill Jews. Tony Blinken knows this, because in reality, Blinken is no dummy. He is, however, a Biden hack.

Look (as Biden likes to say), it’s called “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” While Iran could not give the $6b straight into the hands of Hamas, there’s always a workaround. It’s called creative accounting. You take money away from a hospital or a school, whatever, and send it to Hamas. Wherever Iran took the money from, it used it to fund the massacre, secure in the knowledge that there would be $6b to cover the difference.

This really is not complicated, yet we can expect Blinken will continue to deliver the same unsatisfactory message each time he is called upon to answer for the October 7th war crimes. These were acts of war against Israel, against America and others, with various nationals among the hostages. What is now happening was brought to us by Iran, directly after they received a windfall from Joe.

Yes, we know the $6b is not a gift. We know that the money technically belongs to Iran. This is, however, an irrelevant factoid. Funds have been freed, released to madmen. Whether the money is a gift or just a case of restoring it to its rightful owner “in good faith,” matters not. The end result is the same: money in the pocket to buy weapons and pay savages to kill Jews.

One could write off the $6b as a miscalculation, a mistake by the Biden Administration. But not really. Joe Biden has been around a long time (cough). He has an equally lengthy history of browbeating and bullying Israel’s leaders, in spite of his intimate knowledge of the relevant actors in the region. President Biden knows that Iran and Hamas are evil. And he knows that Israel is not.

Israel is Joe Biden’s sacrificial lamb. Perhaps Biden reasons that everyone would like the Jews to be gone. Whatever his excuse, it is Joe Biden who strengthened the hand that fed us tragedy, in his final coup de grâce to the Jews.

We may never know all the ways in which Biden tied Israel’s hands to keep the Jewish State from defending itself. We don’t know what went on between Biden and Netanyahu behind the scenes. Rest assured, however, that Joe is using everything at his disposal to stall Israel as long as he can, from launching its inevitable ground incursion into Gaza. In so doing, Biden continues to strengthen the hand of the enemy. Each day that passes without the ground incursion gives the enemies of Israel that much more time to prepare, more time to get ready to slaughter the Jews (they will be sorry they tried).

We can see some of what Biden is doing against Israel, for example, forcing Israel to allow aid to go through to the “innocent people of Gaza,” unimpeded. Joe Biden himself is providing $100m to Gaza for humanitarian aid.

What does it mean to give $100m to “Gaza?” It means to give $100m to Hamas, the rulers of Gaza. The humanitarian aid, as well, is the opposite of that. Sure, the hundred mil is ostensibly to be used only for things like water, food, and electricity, but that will never happen. Thanks to yet more “creative accounting,” the money will not go to civilians. The $100m is right now literally funding Hamas, funding murder and inciting the world to war—whether we can see the actual transactions, or not.

Here too, a Biden hack offers an irrelevant response to criticism of Biden for sending aid and comfort to the enemy. This time it is Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman who pretends that money is not fungible. "Not a penny has been spent, and when it is, it can only go for humanitarian needs like food and medicine," says Miller.

Habibi, you are not fooling us. The hundred mil can only go to Hamas, the government of Gaza. And even if this filthy lucre is channeled through UNRWA, it will still go to Hamas. One way or another, wherever it lands in Gaza, that $100m will be lining the pockets of Hamas’ worst, the dutiful proxies of Iran.

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

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"Abrahamic religion is meant to destroy Islam"

The Muslim paranoia about something that doesn't exist remains high.

From the Turkey News Agency:

The new "Abrahamic religion"... a threat whose goal is to destroy Islam
Ali Demir23/02/2023

Intellectuals, preachers, and academics are raising their voices to warn of the danger of the new so-called “Abrahamic religion,” pointing out that its goal is to destroy the Islamic religion with attempts that will end in failure.

According to observers, the sources of the promotion of this religion are huge and mysterious research centers that have recently spread around the world and called themselves "centers of spiritual diplomacy", funded by the largest and most important international bodies such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United States of America.

Observers warned that “the apparent vision and message of these research centers depends on the assertion that religions are the main and fundamental reason for igniting the most violent conflicts throughout the ages, and the reason for not accepting the other is because of the lack of understanding of the texts of their religion.”

And the “spiritual diplomacy centers” that work within the framework of spreading love and tolerance have taken upon themselves the task of inviting the senior clerics of the three Abrahamic religions, in order to find general common values between religions such as “love, tolerance, equality, coexistence and acceptance of the other” and other good values, and then proceed to broadcast it, especially among the new generations, in order to instill a hidden hatred for the religions they follow and create a tendency towards embracing the new Abrahamic religion. And the “spiritual diplomacy centers” have already begun to implement their plans on a large scale, according to observers.

Warnings were raised that “what is taking place is a process of brainwashing with the aim of preparing generations to accept the adoption of the new Abrahamic religion when it is presented in the near future as the global public religion, and then the research centers will turn into sacred places and shrines that will replace the temple, church and mosque.”

The preacher and researcher, Mustafa Ibrahim, criticized the advocates of the so-called Abrahamic religion, stressing that “Abraham was Muslim according to what was confirmed by the Holy Qur’an."

Ibrahim added that “all the messengers sent by God Almighty were Muslims and called to Islam, and this matter is mentioned and confirmed in many verses in the Holy Qur’an, including the words of God Almighty on the tongue of Jacob, peace be upon him.

And he continued, “The advocates of the Abrahamic religion want to dilute Islam and mix the three heavenly laws of Islam, Judaism and Christianity into one religion in order to open the door to normalization with the Israeli occupation, and to end the cause of Palestine and honorable Jerusalem."

For his part, the doctor in comparative jurisprudence, Muhammad Musa al-Dali, said in a post on his Facebook account, “The people of falsehood claimed that there is a religion that includes Islam, adding to it what they call Judaism and Christianity, and that this religion is the Abrahamic religion in relation to the true Muslim, the Prophet of God Almighty, Abraham, upon him....This is a false claim, and a pure slander, because the Prophet of God, Abraham, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, is a Muslim according to the text of the Qur’an, God Almighty denied that he was a Jew or a Christian."

Sounds like a Jewish plot!

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!

Jimmy Carter, antisemite.

The announcement that Jimmy Carter is entering hospice care at his home is prompting a wave of fawning pre-obituaries about what a wonderful humanitarian he is.

No one is talking about his antisemitism.

Carter's animus towards Israel is legendary, but the source of that hate is not his progressivism or humanitarianism, but old fashioned Christian antisemitism.

For decades, Jimmy Carter gave a weekly Sunday sermon at his Georgia church. Some of his lessons promoted classic Christian antisemitism, way beyond what the Christian scripture says.

He says that modern Israeli Jews are persecuting Palestinian Christians in line with alleged Jewish persecution of Christians in the New Testament because of Jewish supremacism:

“…this morning I’m gonna be trying to relate the assigned Bible lesson to us in the Uniformed Series with how that affected Israel and how it affects us through Christ personally… It’s hard for us to even visualize the prejudice against gentiles when Christ came on earth. If a Jew married a gentile, that person was considered to be dead. … How would you characterize from a Jew’s point of view the uncircumcised? Non believer? And what? Unclean, what? They called them DOGS! That’s true. … What was Paul’s feeling toward gentiles in his early life as a Jewish leader? [Paul was not a Jewish leader. Ed.] Anybody? Absolute commitment to persecution! To the imprisonment and even the execution of non-Jews who now professed faith in Jesus Christ. … We know the differences in the Middle East. But the differences there are between Jews on the one hand who comprise the dominating force both militarily and also politically and the Palestinians who are both Muslim and Christians. …”

Carter bizarrely claims that sacrifices in the Jewish Temples were a means for rich Jews to avoid taking care of their elderly parents:

“Corban [sacrifices] was a prayer that could be performed by usually a man in an endorsed ceremony by the Pharisees that you could say in effect, ‘God, everything that I own all these sheep all these goats this nice house and the money that I have, I dedicate to you, to God.’ And from then on according to the Pharisees law those riches didn’t belong to that person anymore. They were whose? God’s! So as long as those riches were belonged to the person, that person was supposed to share them with needy parents right? But once it was God’s it wasn’t theirs and they didn’t have anything to share with their parents. So with impunity, and approved by the Pharisaic law, they could avoid taking care of their needy parents by a trick that had been evolved by the incorrect and improper interpretation of the law primarily designed by religious leaders to benefit whom? The rich folks! The powerful people! Because the poor man wouldn’t have all of this stuff to give to God. He would probably, in fact he might very well have his parents in the house with him or still be living with his own parents.”

This is a completely fictional reading of Jewish law.

Carter repeatedly said that Jewish leaders wanted to kill Jesus for various reasons, spreading the very source of Christian antisemitism as truth:

The subject of his first class was the tale of Jesus driving the moneylenders from the temple. The press soon reported that the president had informed his students that this story was “a turning point” in Christ’s life. “He had directly challenged in a fatal way the existing church, and there was no possible way for the Jewish leaders to avoid the challenge. So they decided to kill Jesus.”

So the Jews wanted to kill Jesus because he opposed the moneylenders! And in another lesson, Carter doubled down on Jewish hate of Christians:

He soon spoke at a Sunday-school class again; and, with an AP reporter in attendance, told those assembled that Jesus, in proclaiming himself the Messiah, was aware that he was risking death “as quickly as [it] could be arranged by the Jewish leaders, who were very powerful.”

There is a theme of rich, powerful Jews who want to oppress the gentiles - that informed Carter's view of the modern Middle East.

And his opinion of American Jews reflected that same animosity he has towards the Jews of Jesus' time. he blamed Jews for his loss in the 1980 election, more than once.

Kenneth Stein, who worked with him and interviewed him for his own book, quotes Carter as railing against the "Jewish money" that opposed him:

"[Vice president] Fritz Mondale was much more deeply immersed in the Jewish organization leadership than I was. That was an alien world to me. They [American Jews] didn't support me during the presidential campaign [that] had been predicated greatly upon Jewish money."

Carter's aide Stuart Eizenstat also says that Carter blames Jews for his 1980 loss: “From the New York primary [in March 1980] onward, I believe Carter was left with the view that New York Jews had not only defeated him in the primary but were also a factor in his loss in November.” However, while New York Jews did vote overwhelmingly for Ted Kennedy in the primary, more voted for Carter than Reagan in the presidential election.

Reagan took over 90% of the electoral college in 1980. It was a landslide. For Carter to blame New York Jews for his huge loss is nothing less than pure antisemitism.

Carter's antisemitism doesn't end there. He noted how Palestinian Christians were fleeing, but he blamed not the Muslim supremacists who are persecuting them, but Israel, continuing his theme of powerful Jews persecuting Palestinian Christians - even though Israel's Christian community has stayed steady.

His hate of Jews naturally spread to his supporting antisemites. When Helen Thomas lost her job for calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Israel, saying Jews must "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Germany or Poland where they were massacred, one of the very few people who supported her was....Jimmy Carter. She told Playboy that he was very sympathetic but didn't want to go into details because it would get him into trouble.

Carter also condoned terror attacks against Jews in Israel. Really.

In his "Peace, Not Apartheid" book, Carter wrote, "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel."

This "humanitarian" didn't call for suicide bombings against Jews to end unconditionally. He advised Palestinians to use them as a bargaining chip to force Israel to give in to their demands. That is literally the definition of terrorism, and Carter is saying that he supports the goals of Palestinian terror.

Carter made many hateful statements about Israel which clearly cross the line into antisemitism. For example, he once downplayed the Iranian nuclear threat because they would only have a couple of bombs while Israel has hundreds, as if dropping a nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv is no big deal. Carter's support and even compliments for Hamas, for Palestinian "democracy" and other outrageous anti-Israel statements could fill a book. But even without mentioning Israel, his antisemitism is clear and unambiguous.

The single most damning example of Carter's antisemitism comes from an incident in 1987.

Neal Sher was the head of the Office of Special Investigations, the Justice Department’s Nazi prosecution unit. They had iron-clad evidence that a Chicago resident, Martin Bartesch, a member of the SS Death’s Head Division at the Mauthausen concentration camp, was a war criminal and a murderer.

Bartesch's family started a huge campaign against the OSI, writing letters to members of Congress and other prominent people asking for help. Most politicians contacted the OSI to find out the details, OSI provided them with evidence of his guilt, and they would drop the matter.

But, Sher says, not Jimmy Carter.

In September 1987, after all of the gruesome details of the case had been made public and widely reported in the media, I received a letter sent by Bartesch’s daughter to the former president. Citing groups that had been exposed for their anti-Semitism, it was an all-out assault against OSI as unfair, “un-American” and interested only in “vengeance” against innocent family members.

...Not even the staunchest and most sincere devotee to humanitarian causes could legitimately claim that an SS murderer who deceived authorities to obtain a visa and citizenship was somehow deserving of exceptional treatment.

That’s why I was so taken aback by the personal, handwritten note Jimmy Carter sent to me seeking “special consideration” for this Nazi SS murderer. There on the upper-right corner of Bartesch’s daughter’s letter was a note to me in the former president’s handwriting, and with his signature, urging that “in cases such as this, special consideration can be given to the families for humanitarian reasons.”

Unlike members of Congress who inquired about the facts, Carter blindly accepted at face value the daughter’s self-serving (and disingenuous) assertions.

Here is Carter's note supporting the case of a known Nazi war criminal.

Carter took the side of a family of a Nazi against his own government. And he couched it in "humanitarian" terms.

Maybe, maybe one could excuse one or two of these examples in isolation. But in the aggregate, there is no denying it: Jimmy Carter is an antisemite, and anyone who doesn't think that this detracts from his humanitarian work is condoning world's oldest hate.

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!

US gives millions to Palestinians without reporting where, exactly, the money goes

The United States has a very nice web page that shows how much foreign aid is given and the specific recipients every year.

Here's a detail of what the West Bank/Gaza page looked like in 2020:

The highlighted text says, "USAID redacted this field in accordance with the exceptions outlined in the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2016."

I count about $90 million given to these anonymous Palestinian recipients since 2016.

Looking at the text of that Act, it appears that there are only two reasons to redact the names of the recipients:

(3) REPORT IN LIEU OF INCLUSION.—
(A) HEALTH OR SECURITY OF IMPLEMENTING PARTNERS.—
If the head of a Federal department or agency, in consultation with the Secretary of State, makes a determination that the inclusion of a required item of information online would jeopardize the health or security of an implementing partner or program beneficiary or would require the release of proprietary information of an implementing partner or program beneficiary, the head of the Federal department or agency shall provide such determination in writing to the appropriate congressional committees, including the basis for such determination.
(B) NATIONAL INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES.—If the Secretary of State makes a determination that the inclusion of a required item of information online would be detrimental to the national interests of the United States, the Secretary of State shall provide such determination, including the basis for such determination, in writing to the appropriate congressional committees.

Could it be that the reason that some of the recipient names are redacted is because they would be threatened if it was known they were accepting aid from the US? Or perhaps some of the programs are "under the radar" grassroots peace initiatives, that the Palestinian Authority tries to quash as "normalization"?

Either way, it seems like there is a bit of money sloshing around without any transparency.

One other interesting note. In 2019, the Trump administration announced that it ceased all aid through USAID to the Palestinians. Yet somehow USAID still managed to send millions to the Palestinians in 2019 and 2020 - much less than during the Obama and Biden administrations, but not close to zero.

It seems that the "Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2016" leaves a lot of wiggle room for non-transparency.

(h/t Irene)

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!

Eldertoons: Anyone can be a "human rights activist"

AI helped me get a terrorist in a suit, but it wasn't easy.

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!

Donations to groups that encourage Palestinians murdering Jews are tax deductible in the US

Last year, a group of anti-Israel groups co-sponsored rallies in New York City titled "By Any Means Necessary."

The phrase isn't even a dog whistle, It literally is a call to murder Jews in Israel. it says that bus bombs, suicide bombings of pizza shops and Passover seders and murdering children via sniper are all legitimate "resistance." And if they thought that murdering Jews around the world would help their cause, then that is included in "any means necessary."

One would think that groups that literally call for murdering Jews would be banned. But not only are they legal - incitement to murder Jews is apparently free speech - but donations to these groups are tax deductible.

The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network was founded and is led by members of the PFLP terror group. It proudly promotes the PFLP which recruits children to attack Jews. Yet donors to Samidoun get a tax deduction, as it launders the donations through the Alliance for Global Justice, which claims to support "peace, anti-war and liberation." But AGJ happily partners with a group that openly advocates terror.

"Within Our Lifetime" apparently coined the phrase "Globalize the Intifada," which they explicitly say means "to win liberation by any means necessary."

In this case, it sounds even more like a threat to Jews worldwide, not just in Israel.

Yet donations to Within Our Lifetime are also tax deductible, laundered through Wespac, which describes itself as wanting a more "just and peaceful world" - which apparently includes blowing up Jews.

The Palestinian Youth Movement, another co-sponsor of "By Any Means Necessary," also launders its donations through Wespac.

It seems to me that IRS rules against terrorist organizations are general enough to include any of these groups that say they support violence against civilians as a legitimate means of "resistance." The organizations that launder the money, Wespac and the Alliance for Global Justice, should be examined and put on notice - the contents of these groups' websites should be enough to make an initial determination that they support terror.

This is way overdue.

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!

Meanwhile,. Arab states send billions to US universities. Who believes they aren't trying to influence academia?

While Ken Roth and The Nation are trying to stoke outrage that Roth was not hired for a fellowship at Harvard University, blaming rich Jewish donors for the decision without any actual evidence, foreign money pours into US universities with the obvious intention of influencing academia - and more.

Here's a long forgotten incident. In 1989, then-governor Bill Clinton lobbied Saudis to donate to the University of Arkansas. He even met with the Saudi ambassador to the US in 1991. But the Saudis didn't give any money to the university - until Clinton became the Democratic nominee for President in 1992. And only weeks after he became president, the Saudis gave the university $20 million to establish the King Fahd Middle East Studies Center.

Early efforts by oil-rich Arab kingdoms to donate to prestigious universities in the US were heavy handed, and most universities rejected them because of their demands that the money be used in specific, illegal ways. Over time, they moderated their demands - but the attempt to influence is still quite obvious. As Mitchell Bard writes in a detailed article on the topic:

In 1975, Saudi Arabia was asked to finance a $5.5 million teacher-training program, but several schools, including Harvard, would not participate after the Saudis banned Jewish faculty from participating. MIT also lost a $2 million contract to train Saudi teachers because it insisted that Jewish faculty be allowed to participate.

Georgetown and Harvard accepted $20 million gifts in 2005 from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, whose offer of money to victims of 9/11 was rejected by then mayor Giuliani because of the prince’s suggestion that America rethink its support of Israel. Georgetown’s funding was used to support a center for Muslim-Christian understanding, which was subsequently renamed the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (the center was originally created in 1993 with $6.5 million from a foundation of Arab businessmen led by an Arab Christian, Hasib Sabbagh).As I noted in The Arab Lobby, “Prospective Jewish donors to Georgetown might ask why it is not a center for Muslim-Christian-Jewish understanding, but Jews aside, other donors might wonder why a Jesuit university is accepting funding for such a center from a government that does not allow the practice of Christianity.”

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) asked in February 2008 whether “the center has produced any analysis critical of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for example in the fields of human rights, religious freedom, freedom of expression, women’s rights, minority rights, protection for foreign workers, due process and the rule of law.”...

Georgetown president John DeGioia responded by extolling the virtues of Prince Talal as “a global business leader and philanthropist.” Without answering Wolf’s questions directly, DeGioia simply pointed out that the center had experts who had written about the extremism of Wahhabism and human rights issues. He also lauded the center’s director, John Esposito, the man who had said before 9/11, “Bin Laden is the best thing to come along, if you are an intelligence officer, if you are an authoritarian regime, or if you want to paint Islamist activism as a threat.”

To bolster the credibility of the center, DeGioia revealed the real reason for the Saudis’ interest in Georgetown, and the ultimate threat it poses: “Our scholars have been called upon not only by the State Department, as you note, but also by Defense, Homeland Security and FBI officials as well as governments and their agencies in Europe and Asia. In fact, several high-ranking U.S. military officials, prior to assuming roles with the Multi-National Force in Iraq, have sought out faculty with the Center for their expertise on the region.”

In its investigation of institutional compliance with reporting requirements, the DoE noted that “Prince Alwaleed’s agreement with Georgetown exemplifies how foreign money can advance a particular country’s worldview within U.S. academic institutions.”

The Department of Education began to crack down on universities not properly reporting their foreign donations in 2020, under the Trump administration. It created a website where universities must report the country sources of such donations, although it doesn't publicize the specific donors due to privacy issues.

Although it is unclear now what percentage of total donations have been reported (many retroactively to the early 2000s), the website currently lists these donation totals to Harvard alone:

Egypt - $44M
Iran(!) - $22K
Jordan - $622K
Kuwait - $22M
Lebanon - $2.5M
Malaysia - $21M
Morocco - $335K
Oman - $1.7M
Pakistan - $1.5M
"State of Palestine"[!] - $1.6M
Qatar - $16M
Saudi Arabia - $61M
Tunisia - $700K
Turkey - $28M
UAE - $80M

The database details some $10 billion in donations from Arab Gulf countries to US universities, many of them earmarked for specific projects. And, as the article I quoted above details, there is plenty that is not reported here.

Harvard, Yale, Georgetown and other schools are awash in Arab funds. The DoE database lists that Qatari donors alone gave Cornell nearly $1.8 billion!

Who can even pretend that the purpose of these funds is not to influence the universities, their faculties, their students and politicians that have these institutions in their districts?

To be fair, much of the Arab money is earmarked to departments with no political focus, with much being spent for science nd medicine. But a significant amount does go towards Arab studies which are almost reflexively anti-Israel. And sometimes the Arab money is not used to create an anti-Israel chair or department, but to lavishly fund an existing anti-Israel department - after all, there are plenty of anti-Israel academics who don't need Arab money to fund their hate, but they welcome that money to promote it further.

The people screaming about "academic freedom" to force a university to hire a specific person known for his bias seem very unconcerned about the billions that are being sent to universities with the obvious intent to influence the academic direction of the university.

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!

12/16 Links P2: Liberals, Progressives, Wokeness and Israel; Smearing Israel from the Ivory Tower; US Congressman Slams FBI Hate Crimes Data As Bipartisan Criticism Grows

From Ian:

Liberals, Progressives, Wokeness and Israel

Putting all this together, what the JILV survey powerfully documents is a troubling phenomenon that has pervaded the larger American political system today: namely political sorting. In its most basic form, political sorting, which is often confused with polarization, is a fairly new phenomenon and is where ideological and attitudinal positions no longer vary but are expected to align to particular liberal or conservative attitudes. The result today is that Democrats are more uniformly left-leaning and Republicans are more uniformly right-leaning than they were decades ago. Both the left and the right promote packages of ideas and attitudes that must be adopted wholesale if one is not to fall into disfavor. Today, dissent and divergence become almost impossible if one is to avoid adverse social consequences and possibly real professional ramifications as well. And for macro-political development, as Democrats are more habitually liberal and Republicans become more conservative, compromise and bipartisanship becomes harder to achieve. This is exactly what is happening with respect to Israel and ideology and represents an existential threat to the Jewish community and American support for Israel as well.

The recent uproar at Berkeley Law School is a case in point. Nine student groups at the law school banded together to amend their bylaws so as to exclude any Zionist speaker from ever speaking at the law school. That Women of Berkeley Law, the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association and the Law Students of African Descent felt compelled to join forces with the Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association in this endeavor, illustrates how powerful this ideological sorting can be. Under the guise of intersectional solidarity, groups that have nothing to do with the Middle East conflict institute a litmus test that permanently excludes the vast majority of Jews who believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. To be part of the community of the good is to expel people with improper beliefs.

More specifically, to understand sorting what is critical to understand is that the electorate has not changed significantly in the aggregate as generations have aged in and out, but voters have sorted. Consider that in the 1990s there were many pro-choice and pro-immigration Republicans and pro-gun Democrats. These variations have disappeared with issues all lining up on the left or right such that if you are a Democrat, you have to believe and promote a particular agenda wholesale and thus one can predict an individual’s political positions based on partisanship alone. Thus, the United States is experiencing increased partisan polarization now even though Independents have grown as a share of the electorate while the number of partisans has shrunk

Turning to the JILV survey itself, support for Israel has become part of the larger political sort of the American public. Today, vast majorities of Republicans support Israel, while Democratic backing is much lower. To be on the left these days means that one cannot support Israel and be ideologically pure; backing Israel is a conservative value and that line cannot be crossed in the ideologically sorted world of today. Thus, it is also the case that those who score lower on the woke scale are appreciably more aligned with Israel than those who are highly woke. Attitudes toward Israel are now part of the liberal or conservative packages that partisans must uniformly adopt, constituting a new norm in American politics evident in the data here. As Abrams and Wertheimer pointed out, sorting has become so deep that it has influenced views and sharply divided Americans on ideas as varied as the nuclear family, the structure-enabling philanthropy and, of course, the police and justice systems.

Moreover, views toward religion, tradition and history have become part of the story now. To be liberal today means real disdain for people of faith and their rights to religious liberty including support for Israel, while conservatives take the exact opposite approach. As Zaid Jilani has written with respect to race, the vision of the now sorted left is one where, “America isn’t a land of opportunity. It’s barely changed since the days of Jim Crow. Whites, universally privileged, maintain an iron grip on American society, while nonwhites are little more than virtuous victims cast adrift on a plank in an ocean of white supremacy.” The emergent narrative and anti-racist policy positions are now stories, “where whites are the villains and minorities are the victims” making “honest discussion of why homicide is the leading cause of death for young Black men … off limits” for instance. The JILV data show the exact same trend with respect to Israel; support for Israel, even with its faults and complex narratives, is simply on the wrong side of the story and cannot be supported if you are on the liberal side of things.

Given the growth of woke culture and the inexorable sorting process in American political life, friends of Israel must ask themselves some tough questions: Should they continue to focus attention on progressives with deeply held woke commitments who seem to be sorting themselves out of support for Israel, or seek to strengthen support among those who don’t share those ideological commitments and are more inclined to support Israel? To what extent should friends of Israel continue to focus efforts on making Israel’s case in the public realm, and to what extent should they join forces with others in opposing the ideology that gives rise to the growing antipathy toward the Jewish state?

Now is a good time to rethink the mainstream Jewish posture in American politics.

Ungrateful France’s ‘national narrative’ ignores the Jews

France has had Jews for over 2,000 years, and their contributions to the economy, politics, culture and science cannot be denied. But the journalist and blogger Veronique Chemla notes that Judaism and the Jews are virtually absent from the “national narrative” in school curricula and textbooks as well as in exhibitions in French museums. This post is an extract from a talk she gave about this blindspot to the Tsedek Lodge of B’nai B’rith France. She also discussed the issue in her interview with André Barmoha on Radio Chalom Nitsan on 13 December 2022.

Revolutionary, Republican, secular France fought the influence of Catholicism. The state remains embarrassed by the history of religions and by the Jews whom she nevertheless emancipated. France also feared fragmenting the nation by isolating the Jews, while not daring to seem to exclude them. The revolutionary Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre had affirmed: “We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation, and grant everything to the Jews as individuals” – a phrase that still inspires French diplomacy. But even as individuals, the ungrateful homeland ignores them in its national narrative.

Other factors were a pro-European France which denied the “Jewish and Christian roots of Europe” (Jacques Chirac), choosing instead multiculturalism, cultural relativism, atonement. History was perceived through an anachronististic moral lens – the Rights of Man, “political correctness”, making France feel guilty for slavery or colonization. The Crémieux decree was hidden from view while Eurabia ( an European-Arab alliance – ed) was rejected. French Jews are caught between, on the one hand, “pedagogues’ who “deconstruct” history, and, on the other hand, “political correctness”, the disintegration of the nation, European political “elites”, the claims of the “racialized” – Eurabia in different guises.

Jewish historians – Jules Isaac, co-author of school textbooks during the first half of the 20th century, and Marc Bloch – may have felt awkward writing about their co-religionists.

Most important of all, generations of historians, whose studies have skirted around Jews and Judaism, have produced a vicious circle of ignorance, bias and misunderstandings of Jewishness, Judaism and Jews.

Smearing Israel from the Ivory Tower

Israel, a tiny country the size of New Jersey, is the only state in the Middle East that substantially recognizes individual rights, such as legal equality for men and women, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the freedom to engage in same-sex relationships. Compared to its neighbors—Islamic dictatorships that trample rights and violently oppress their populations—Israel is an oasis of enlightenment and liberty. Yet many American and European professors increasingly show support for anti-Israel movements and tyrannical regimes that aim to erase Israel from the map.

Iran is among the most brutal. According to the U.S. State Department, “The Islamic regime in Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terror,” and the “regime elites squander the people’s resources and opportunities, while suppressing freedom and basic human rights.”1 As of this writing, for more than a month Iranian “security forces” have been violently cracking down on widespread protests, which sprang up after the regime’s so-called morality police reportedly killed a young woman for not wearing a hijab correctly.2

Iranian leaders call for “death to Israel,” “death to England,” and “death to America.”3 They fund terrorist groups that wreak havoc in countries neighboring Israel, forming a “ring of fire” around it with the goal of annihilating the tiny democratic republic.4

Yet according to the academic watchdog group Canary Mission, which documents people and groups promoting hatred of the United States and Israel, more than eight hundred professors on North American campuses participate, to varying degrees, in efforts to undermine Israel. So do many in Europe. Among the most vocal anti-Israel professors are David Miller, recently fired from the University of Bristol; Amin Husain at New York University (NYU); and Marc Lamont Hill at Temple University. They are working to erode Israel’s stability, credibility, and security. This despite—or perhaps because of—the fact that Israel is a vital partner and strategic ally of the West.

Miller, previously a tenured professor who served as chair of Bristol’s sociology department, has spent years maligning Israel by advancing conspiracy theories in the classroom and via articles, social media, a website, and a talk show. In his quest to delegitimize the country—which he calls “a violent, racist foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing”—he has claimed, for instance, that British Jewish students are “being used as political pawns.”5 Without evidence, he accuses these students of being “constitutionally bound to promoting Israel and campaigns to silence critics of Zionism or the State of Israel on British campuses.”6 To achieve his goal, Miller advocates prohibiting pro-Israel groups from exercising their right to assemble, saying, for example, that Israel “depends for its lifeblood on the transnational Zionist movement. To dismantle the regime, every single Zionist organisation, the world over, needs to be ended. Every. Single. One.”7 (Zionism is the belief in and support of a Jewish homeland.)8

Antisemitic cartoons in Falastin newspaper (Jaffa), Summer 1936

During the summer of 1936, a couple of months into the Arab revolt, the Jaffa-based Falastin newspaper started publishing on its front cover editorial cartoons that were shown in English as well as Arabic.

Some were blatantly antisemitic.

Here are a few:

The Zionist crocodile to Palestine Arabs: "Don't be afraid!! I vill swallow you peacefully..."

Note the accented "vill."

Years before "Maus," this cartoon showed Jews as mice and Arabs as cats, with the text, "Cats & Mice, living in peace and harmony...did you ever see such a thing in your life???"

"Jewish money speaks"

"Jewish immigration, protected by British bayonets"

"Danse Macabre - Weizmann & Jabotinsky dancing over skulls to establish Jewish National Home in Palestine"

(h/t Michelle)

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!

Hamas is just as involved in European left wing anti-Israel activities as leftist Palestinian groups

During the past few weeks, Israel's Channel 13 has been showing a five part documentary, "Shtula" ("Double Agent") It features a young Swedish woman who came to Israel as a tourist, fell in love with the country, and eventually was recruited by the Ad Kan organization to infiltrate Palestinian "human rights" groups.

With multiple hidden cameras, the woman captured 3000 hours of footage that was turned into this documentary series. Much of it is in English.

The woman eventually becomes one of the activists aboard the "freedom boat" that tried to go to Gaza in 2018. She meets with "human rights' activists who admit that they would love to kill all Israelis.

On the way, she meets with Hamas members, including even the one-armed head of Hamas in Europe, Amin Abu Rashid. In an almost unreal sequence, Rashid drive her to his office, describing how he lost his arm in Lebanon. At the office, she witnesses someone give him a wad of cash, and he describes how Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood raises millions of euros from mosques all over Europe to send to Gaza. She even films some of the paper receipts.

Rashid was not only involved with this "freedom boat" but also was behind funding the boats in previous Gaza flotillas, which he freely talks about with his new, attractive Swedish friend.

We know well about the connections between so-called human rights groups and leftist groups like the PFLP. NGO Monitor describes the links between the leaders of the 2018 "freedom boat" that this operative was on and various Palestinian socialist groups.

However, the connection between Hamas and the leftist "human rights groups" in Europe is little told. After all, Islamist groups would seem to have little in common, philosophically or politically, with the Left.

Clearly, this is not the case - Hamas and the PFLP have something in common that cuts across ideological lines.

They hate Jews.

I haven't watched the whole series yet - it is five hours long - but it looks amazing. I hope that it gets English subtitles.

(h/t Yoel)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Israel's minimum wage is FAR higher than Palestinian average salaries

The Palestinian Authority negotiated with Israel this week agreements to help Palestinian workers in Israel.

Senior Palestinian Authority official and close Abbas aide Hussein al-Sheikh met Sunday with Israel's Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. At the time, he didn't describe the subjects of the meeting. But today, it was revealed that at least one of the topics dealt with Palestinian workers in Israel.

One was to have Israel pay Palestinian workers through Palestinian banks, which would ensure that deductions that are meant for social security benefits and insurance payments end up going to Palestinians.

Palestinians claim that money that these salary deductions have accumulated since the 1970s to over 60 billion shekels. It is unclear whether Israel intends to pay that much.

Will it go towards "pay for slay?" Hopefully there will be transparency mechanisms in place.

Another topic was for the 20,000 Gazans who have permits to enter Israel. Right now they have commercial permits for vendors, but some of them are workers, and they should have worker's permits so that they can be paid at least the Israeli minimum wage.

"This ensures that the Palestinian worker receives the minimum wage (6000 shekels), and various insurances such as health insurance, work injuries, and other rights," a PA official said.

Israel's minimum monthly wage is actually 5300 shekels, or daily NIS 244.62 for a five day a week worker.

I've noted before that the average salary for a Palestinian worker in Israel is more than double that of those in the West Bank (and quadruple that of Gaza Strip workers.) So it turns out that Israel's minimum wage is also far higher than the average Palestinian salary.

Scandal: Anti-Israel NGOs hide the truth for their own profit

An eye-opening article from "This Week in Palestine:"

Ala’adin from Al-Bireh used to greet new foreign arrivals to Palestine with a cheerful, “So you’re here to save my country too?” He was fond of mocking good intentions.

Still it’s fair to say that most international visitors to Palestine, particularly those in relief or activism campaigns, do so at least partly out of conscience. In Britain, and I daresay most of Europe, Palestinian liberation is widely seen as a “good” cause. While many Palestinians feel abandoned by the international community, surely Egypt has taught us not to confuse a nation’s rulers with its population.

In London, where I grew up, this conflict was a “red-line” topic. If you took the wrong position on Palestine-Israel, it was as bad as supporting the death penalty, or liking Margaret Thatcher, and you would be considered the devil incarnate. As I overheard at a Kensington dinner party: “You cannot be a good person if you think the Occupation is okay.”

...While the vast majority of ex-pats living here genuinely believe in the cause of liberation, it is far from the only reason for our mass invasion. Since the International Solidarity Movement was established in 2001, over 200 NGOs have sprung up in the West Bank and Gaza. Their presence is proof of how favourable Palestinian conditions have become.

“Palestine is the best-kept secret in the aid industry,” I am told by Emily Williams, an American project manager at a medical NGO. “People need field experience and Palestine sounds cool and dangerous because it can be described as a war zone, but in reality it’s quite safe and has all the comforts that internationals want. Quality of life here is so much higher than somewhere like Afghanistan, but we don’t tell anyone so that we are not replaced or reassigned.”

That quality of life is becoming rapidly more apparent in the “A” areas. In cities like Ramallah and Nablus, expensive restaurants and high-powered financial institutions are common now. Nightlife and entertainment is expanding to cater for international tastes.

At times these tastes sit uneasily with local values. More than once I’ve heard the fear voiced that our influence will damage the traditions of Palestinian society. Most internationals at least attempt to be culturally sensitive, but our differences can be striking. I can only imagine how West Bankers feel to see us breezing over to Jerusalem or even Tel Aviv, but these trips have an allure to visitors from the West, who can be somewhere more like home just half an hour away. In my experience, these guilty pleasures are also popular among young Palestinians with the necessary ID.

It is no coincidence that a rise in the number of international visitors here coincides with economic downturn in the West and a shrinking jobs market. With the proliferation of NGOs, the degrees that were just paper back home entitle us to prominent positions in growth industries.

For media professionals, there is a wealth of material to be uncovered here, along with the experience of working on such a major issue. Palestine has been a reliable source of news stories since the conflict began, and it receives forensic, albeit often misguided, analysis across the world. For Western students, Arabic language skills are becoming increasingly desirable and many English universities now arrange placements in exchange for volunteer work. Throw in a warmer climate, Palestine’s natural wonders and holy sites, lower crime rates, and a preposterously welcoming host population, and it’s little wonder that Bi’lin resembles a model United Nations on a Friday morning.

Here we see the truth. Being "pro-Palestinian" (which means, of course, anti-Israel) is trendy and cool. Going there establishes one as a daredevil, willing to risk one's life. Thousands of young, faux-humanitarians go there to find a use for their useless degrees, and get paid by hundreds of NGOs that pop up to accommodate them, who can always be counted upon to raise all the money needed to keep the Palestinian Arab NGO industry going. But these same Israel haters will happily travel to Tel Aviv to enjoy the comforts of home.

And the NGOs, flush with cash from Westerners who feel that this is the holiest cause on Earth, dutifully churn out reports about how horrible the conditions are, as they live it up in this "war zone." Those reports, filled with lies and exaggerations, are used to raise more money so that these fake adventurers can continue to live it up.

Money that could be used to actually help people in need is instead diverted to help young people live it up and write anti-Israel reports.

This article raises the curtain, only a little, on an entire industry dedicated to demonizing Israel.

It is an entire financial and social ecosystem where everyone knows they are part of a game but they do not want to let the world in on the truth, because it would risk them losing their comfort, stature and prestige - not to mention their salaries. They raise money by claiming life in the territories is terrible and dangerous while they happily flock to live there because it is so safe and comfortable.

It is a scandal - but the only people who can expose it are the ones who are profiting from it, so it remains a dirty little secret.

(h/t Anne)