Anti-Jewish hate crimes in NYC continues to dwarf all others

Here is a chart showing the categories of hate crimes in New York City for the first half of the year.

Out of 235 incidents, 108 were anti-Jewish. This is a little less than half but still much, much more than any other kind of bias.

In 2022, 43% of all hate crimes in New York City were against Jews.

I am sure that the NYPD takes antisemitic incidents seriously, but - this is a lot. And it indicates that the usual ways of fighting hate need to be customized for anti-Jewish hate. For example, the NYPD keeps track of the race of the offenders and the districts the crimes occur in  - if there is a clear pattern, that could indicate a more specific plan for combating anti-Jewish hate rather than just using the same methods as for all other hate crimes. After all, Jews are often targeted for the perception of being privileged, unlike most other bias crimes.

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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!

 

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Some New York City Council members speak out AGAINST "End Jew Hatred" Day (video)

On Thursday, the New York City Council voted on a resolution recognizing April 29 as End Jew Hatred Day annually in the City of New York. It was introduced by Councilwoman Inna Vernikov.

One would expect that such a resolution would be approved unanimously. What could possibly be controversial about a resolution against antisemitism? It doesn't mention Israel. It notes the rising attacks on Jews in the city, which is obvious and supported by hate crime statistics. 

But antisemitism is alive and well and spouted on the record in the halls of City Council.

After Vernikov and others spoke in support for the resolution, Council member Charles Barron said that he would abstain. The reason the issue was not fully supported by all, he said, is because the Jewish community is inconsistent in opposing hatred, specifically hatred of Palestinians. He then went on a rant about Israel "murdering Palestinian women and children and stealing land." he then accused Jewish leaders of having supported not only crimes against Palestinians but also apartheid in South Africa. 

It was classic antisemitism, saying that because he (wrongly) perceives (some) Jews as supporting racism, he doesn't want to oppose a resolution condemning hate of Jews. Hate of some morphs into hate of all, a hallmark of bigotry everywhere.  

It is also a perfect example of how hate for Israel is just another form of hate for Jews - why should Israeli policies affect one's vote against antisemitism?

Later, Shahana Hanif - the first Muslim City Council member in New York - gave completely different reasons for voting against the resolution. She claimed that the organizations behind the resolution were far-right wing, Islamophobic and anti-trans organizations, and implied that the City Council members who introduced the resolution were anti-trans as well, so therefore she "refused to collaborate" with them. 

Of course, that should indicate an abstention, not a vote against the resolution. Alternatively, Hanif could easily have put on the record that she opposes the supposedly hateful organizations that she claims were behind the resolution but that she supports the idea of an "End Jew Hatred" day. Her choice to vote against the resolution can only mean one thing: she is against fighting Jew-hatred. And whether she likes it or not, she is sending the message to New York that the Muslim community is not against antisemitism. 

Here's video of the entire discussion and vote on the resolution.

Today, we have people in positions of power who are quite comfortable publicly calling Jews murderers, thieves and Islamophobes and using that as an excuse to oppose supporting a minority Jewish community that is being physically attacked on the streets of New York every day. 

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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!

 

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

From Ian:

A Blood Libel Against Israel on Netflix

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

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

Yet primary sources - from the Arab side - attest to the fact that the vast majority of Arabs who left their homes did so voluntarily, or under orders from the invading Arab armies, not the Israeli armed forces.

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

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

Anger over Netflix film ‘aiming to destroy Israel’

Netflix is under fire for screening a movie depicting Israeli soldiers executing a Palestinian family in cold blood, made by filmmakers who have a track record of inflammatory comments about the Jewish state.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The film director Darin J Sallam @DarinSalla and producers Deema Azar @DeemazTweets and Ayah Jardaneh @AyahJardaneh have all shared or made highly controversial posts, and in some cases, antisemitic social media posts. Details at @JewishChron https://t.co/tzlAcOGRzA pic.twitter.com/Bj3noJpyPD

— GnasherJew®????? #JusticeforMalkiRoth (@GnasherJew) December 5, 2022

Netflix blocks controversial Nakba film for Israeli subscribers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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11/14 Links Pt2: Israel Deserves Better than the NYTs Prophet of Doom; Chappelle and normalizing black antisemitism; CNN Producer Tweeted ‘#TeamHitler,’ Hamas Terrorists ‘Freedom Fighters’

From Ian:

Braving bigotry and enemy fire, Jews served the Union valiantly during the Civil War

Sgt. Leopold Karpeles had a dangerous job. Serving in the 57th Massachusetts Infantry’s E Company during the American Civil War, he was a color bearer, which meant carrying a flag that identified his unit’s position — a necessary role, but one that invariably drew attention from the enemy. In May 1864, his actions won him the Medal of Honor — a decoration created during the conflict. His citation credited him with encouraging fleeing men to reform ranks and drive back the Confederates during the Battle of the Wilderness in northern Virginia.

Karpeles’s story was one of the more prominent accounts of Jews in the US Army during the Civil War. A new book, “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army,” by Adam D. Mendelsohn, director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town, explores the wider narrative around Jews serving in America’s bloodiest conflict. Its release is scheduled for November 15, just a few days after Veterans Day.

“Individual cases obviously gave life and color,” Mendelsohn told The Times of Israel, including when it came to “their decision to enlist, their experience in the army — which was not an easy one, particularly for Jews.”

On the battlefield, there was deadly combat and fear, including the terror Karpeles experienced in Virginia. Jews in uniform also faced ignorance, antisemitism or both from fellow servicemembers and higher-ups. Notoriously, in General Orders No. 11, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews as a class from the war department he commanded in the American South in December 1862.

“Clearly, in the senior ranks of the army, we see in [William T.] Sherman, Grant, [Benjamin] Butler, others, echoing views current in American society at the time of Jewish speculators and shirkers, profiting at the expense of the Union,” Mendelsohn said. “All these things ultimately came to a head in Grant’s order.”

Yet there were also interfaith friendships formed through mutual dependence during wartime.

“What I sensed in the data was the nature of comradeship,” Mendelsohn said. “Serving alongside each other, the experience of fighting together, does bring down the barriers.”

After the war, many Jews joined a nationwide veterans movement called the Grand Army of the Republic, with some even taking leadership roles. While the book states that Jewish veterans were largely unrecognized immediately after the war out of a national desire to move on, this changed several decades later. In the 1890s, the Hebrew Union Veterans Association was established amid a wave of antisemitism sweeping the nation.

The antisemitic history of the Union Army and the US civil war - opinion

The contractor, smuggler, speculator and shirker, however, were more than just figures of scorn. Jews and other “shoddy aristocrats” came to be seen as the creators and beneficiaries of the new economic and social order produced by the war. This “shoddy aristocracy” — whose morals and manners marked them as undesirable, whose profits were ill gained, and whose power derived from money alone — was imagined to lord it over a new and unjust social heap summoned into being by the chaos and disruption of war.

Even as the heated rhetoric of the war years receded after 1865, these ideas remained primed for action. They were returned to service in the Gilded Age.

It was no coincidence that the episode traditionally identified as initiating modern antisemitism in America — the exclusion of Joseph Seligman by Henry Hilton from the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs on May 31, 1877 — had at its center a man who had made a fortune as a contractor and banker during the Civil War. Seligman, a friend of President Grant, was viewed as an exemplar of the new capitalism that was remaking America.

Henry Hilton slandered Seligman as “shoddy—false—squeezing—unmanly,” a social climber who “has to push himself upon the polite.” Hilton drew upon themes familiar from wartime antisemitism: the Jew as speculator who trafficked in credit and debt; the Jew as obsequious ingratiator who attached himself to the powerful; the Jew as profiteer who advanced by improper means; the Jew as vulgarian who flaunted his (and her) obscene wealth and did not know his (or her) place; and the Jew as overlord whose money allowed him (or her) to displace others. In short, the “Seligman Jew” was the “shoddy aristocrat” by another name.

In an age of inequality and excess, the antisemite imagined the Jew as embodying all that was wrong with American capitalism. And during an age of mass immigration from Romania and the Russian Empire, they soon added another theme familiar from General Butler’s wartime diatribe: The Jew could not be trusted to become fully American.

Sadly, even as Louis Gratz, Max Glass and many other Jewish soldiers became American by serving in the Union army, the Civil War produced a range of pernicious ideas about Jews that have proven remarkably durable. We have escaped the everyday torments that afflicted Max Glass, but are still haunted in the present by the fantasies of Benjamin Butler and Henry Hilton.

A review of 'Woke Antisemitism', by David Bernstein

The American linguist and political commentator John McWhorter coined the term Woke Racism to refer to the latest wave of elite, radical, ‘anti-racist’ campaigners who posit that racism is so deeply embedded in the fabric of American life that it’s impervious to traditional civil rights and anti-racist legislation.

In order to level the playing field, liberal democratic systems of government – which aren’t up to the Utopian task of achieving perfect racial parity – must be radically re-constituted to allow for what Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How To Be An Anti-Racist”, refers to un-ironically as “anti-racist discrimination” against groups who are ‘disproportionately successful’.

The only thing that matters to such campaigners is the racial disparity in economic and social outcomes, which is viewed as sufficient evidence to demonstrate racism. Not only are all other possible factors for unequal results ignored, but it’s considered racist to even consider other explanations.

Thus, “privileged” whites and those labeled as “white adjacent” must accept a future where they will face ‘progressive bigotry’ until there’s complete racial parity in all areas of life.

Though the proponents of this Woke Racism typically focus only on the Black-White paradigm, the question of where Jews (and other successful, yet historically disadvantaged minorities) stand within this racial binary is rarely prominent within the public discourse.

Jason D. Greenblatt: Israel Deserves Better than the New York Times' Prophet of Doom

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote last week that in the new Israeli government coalition, Benjamin Netanyahu will soon preside over a parade of right-wing horribles whose very existence dooms Israel itself. Friedman then makes a giant leap of logic to suggest that if Jews in America share his distaste for two members of the new Israeli government, they will turn their backs on Israel once and for all. Apparently, these days, members of the Israeli government must pass muster not just with Israeli voters but also with newspaper columnists like Friedman - when in fact Israel, like the U.S., gets to choose its own leaders through free and fair elections.

Friedman claims that Arab countries entered the Abraham Accords only because "they wanted to trade with Israel." First, there's nothing wrong with that. And second, the Arab nations made peace with Israel because they're tired of pointless, expensive hostilities and because they recognize a common enemy in Iran. Friedman ought to have more respect for the courageous Arab governments that normalized their relations with Israel, and for those who may have quietly supported it from behind closed doors.

I abhor Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' anti-American comments, his payments to Palestinians to reward them for harming and murdering Israelis, and his comments about the Holocaust - yet I would still work with Palestinians and their leaders to try to improve their lives and seek peace between them and Israel. We don't burn everything down just because we disagree, however strongly, with the views of some of those in power.

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11/12 Links: Lapid slams UN after pro-PLO measure advances, calls move 'prize for terrorist organizations'; To anti-Zionists, Ben Gvir is not a problem, he is an opportunity

From Ian:

Lapid slams UN, calls pro-Palestinian vote 'prize for terrorist organizations'

Israel lambasted the United Nations on Saturday after a key committee approved a draft resolution Friday calling on the International Court of Justice to urgently issue its opinion on the legal consequences of supposedly denying the Palestinian people the right to self-determination as a result of Israel's actions since the 1967 Six-Day War.

The measure was vehemently opposed by Israel, which argued it would destroy any chance of reconciliation with the Palestinians.

"This step will not change the reality on the ground, nor will it help the Palestinian people in any way; it may even result in an escalation. Supporting this move is a prize for terrorist organizations and the campaign against Israel," Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement, adding that "the Palestinians want to replace negotiations with unilateral steps. They are again using the United Nations to attack Israel."

The vote in the General Assembly's Special Political and Decolonization Committee was 98-17, with 52 abstentions. The resolution will now go to the 193-member assembly for a final vote before the end of the year, when it is virtually certain of approval.

The draft cites Israel's supposed violation of Palestinian rights to self-determination "from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures."

It would ask the court for an opinion on how these Israeli policies and practices "affect the legal status of the occupation, and what are the legal consequences that arise for all states and the United Nations from this status."

The International Court of Justice, also known as the world court, is one of the UN's main organs and is charged with settling disputes between countries. Its opinions are not binding.

"Israel strongly rejects the Palestinian resolution at the United Nations. This is another unilateral Palestinian move which undermines the basic principles for resolving the conflict and may harm any possibility for a future process," Lapid tweeted and thanked that handful of countries that voted against the resolution with Israel. "We call upon on all the countries that supported yesterday's proposal to reconsider their position and oppose it when it's voted upon in the General Assembly. The way to resolve the conflict does not pass through the corridors of the UN or other international bodies," he continued.

Jonathan Tobin: Don’t apologize for Ben-Gvir or anything else about Israel

When Netanyahu became prime minister again in 2009 and in the 12 years that followed, when there was no thought of Ben-Gvir being a minister, the same arguments about Israeli policies being oppressive and alienating American Jews were heard over and over again.

During this time, as the anti-Semitic BDS movement gain footholds on American college campuses and on the left-wing of the Democratic Party, there was no talk about Ben-Gvir or the evils of Israel being governed by right-wing and religious parties.

To the contrary, the so-called centrists of Israeli politics—Lapid and Gantz—were just as reviled by those who spread the “apartheid state” smear as Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are today. The same claims about a mythical old “good” Israel being destroyed were made by those who opposed Netanyahu.

Those who think one Jewish state on the planet is one too many didn’t need Religious Zionists in Israel’s cabinet to be convinced that Israel shouldn’t exist. American Jews who are embarrassed by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich were already embarrassed by Netanyahu and even some of his left-leaning opponents in the Knesset. Their failure to magically make the conflict with the Palestinians disappear has been cited by those who note a decline in support for Israel in the years since the collapse of the Oslo peace process, and even before that while the delusion that it might succeed was still alive.

This goes beyond the fact that the claims that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are fascists is without real substance. As I’ve noted previously, the talk about the winners of last week’s election being enemies of democracy is just an echo of the Democratic Party talking points about Republicans in the U.S. and just as specious. Whatever one may think of either man, their party doesn’t oppose democracy.

None of that matters because this discussion isn’t rooted in the facts about Israel or those who will make up its next government. Rather, it is an expression of unease with the reality of a Jewish state that must deal with a messy and insoluble conflict with the Palestinians as well as one where the majority of its Jews don’t think or look like your typical liberal Jewish Democrat.

Israel-haters will work for its destruction no matter who is its prime minister or the composition of the government. As has always been the case, the anti-Semites don’t need any new excuses for their efforts to besmirch and delegitimize the Jewish state.

One needn’t support Netanyahu or his partners to understand any of this.

Rather than apologizing for Ben-Gvir or the other aspects of Israeli reality that make readers of The New York Times cringe, those who care about the Jewish state and its people need to stop longing for an Israel which looks like them and embrace the one that actually exists. By buying into the disingenuous claims that this government will be less worthy of their support than its predecessors, they are merely falling into a trap set for them by anti-Semites.

Those who support the right of a Jewish state to exist should stop apologizing for it not conforming to some idealized liberal vision of Zionism, and understand that the people who voted for Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are just as deserving of respect and representation as they are.

Fred Maroun: To anti-Zionists, Ben Gvir is not a problem, he is an opportunity

While Ben Gvir calls for Palestinian terrorists to be expelled from Israel, we know that Arab entities (including the Jordan-occupied West Bank and the Egypt-occupied Gaza) indiscriminately expelled all Jewish residents decades ago. We also know that Israel’s enemies are “bent on wiping the Jewish state and its inhabitants off the map” (as Canadian National Post columnist John Robson put it). As racist and as anti-democratic as Israel’s far right is, it is nothing compared to Israel’s enemies. That is of course cold comfort to those who are genuinely concerned about Ben Gvir and his ilk, but it points to a double standard.

Criticizing Ben Gvir and the Israeli extreme right while giving a pass to far worse Palestinian groups is a double standard. It sets high expectations of Jews while setting much lower expectations of others. It is obviously a form of antisemitism.

Using Ben Gvir to demonize Israel is not a new concept. Before Ben Gvir and the Israeli extreme right became popular, it was Netanyahu and his Likud party who were the favorite target of anti-Zionists. Anti-Zionism was not born with Ben Gvir’s entry into Israeli politics, nor was it born with Netanyahu’s entry into Israeli politics. It has existed ever since Israel exists. Anti-Zionism was just as strong, and perhaps even stronger, when Israel was governed by socialists like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir.

In essence, there are two types of criticisms of Ben Gvir. There is the criticism that aims to make Israel better (or at least not worse). This criticism comes from Zionists in Israel and abroad. And there is the criticism that uses Ben Gvir as a new and more convenient way to demonize Israel. This criticism comes from anyone who hates Israel and does not give a fig about Israeli Arabs but looks on with glee as Ben Gvir weakens the fabric of Israeli society.

To Zionists, Ben Gvir is dangerous for several reasons. He is likely to weaken Western support for Israel, he is likely to weaken Israeli democracy, and he is likely to increase Israel’s investment in West Bank settlements which make a one-state bi-national solution increasingly likely. To Zionists, Ben Gvir is a problem. But to anti-Zionists, these are all reasons to celebrate. To them, Ben Gvir isn’t a problem, he’s an opportunity.

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11/03 Links Pt2: Israeli Film Purports to Expose the Story of a Massacre That Never Happened; Melanie Phillips: The Jihadi Onslaught Against Christians; The Deception of Palestinian Nationalism

From Ian:

A New Israeli Film Purports to Expose the Story of a Massacre That Never Happened

Beginning this evening, the Manhattan Jewish Community Center is hosting its Other Israel film festival. Featured movies include Boycott, described as an “inspiring tale of everyday Americans” engaged in “legal battles that expose an attack on freedom of speech across 33 states in America”—namely, legislation that prevents states from doing business with entities that discriminate against and boycott Israel. Another film featured at the festival is about smugglers who help Palestinians evade Israeli soldiers, while a third film focuses on Mizra?im who were “denied their right to a better life in Israel” by the Israeli government.

At the festival’s opening night, there will be a screening of the documentary Tantura, directed by Alon Schwartz, which investigates allegations of a massacre perpetrated by the Haganah during the 1948 war. But like the “massacre” at Lydda, or the more famous one at Deir Yassin, it’s unlikely this atrocity ever took place. The distinguished historian Benny Morris sets forth the evidence:

In both [a recent article published in Haaretz] and the film, Schwarz maintains that Israeli forces, specifically the 33rd Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade, perpetrated a large massacre against the inhabitants of Tantura immediately after they captured the seaside village on May 23, 1948. The film is based on the allegations made by Teddy Katz in his master’s thesis, submitted to the University of Haifa in 1998. . . . Katz is the film’s hero and chief narrator.

Schwarz maintains in the article that his film is based on Katz’s paper and on “documents, military aerial photographs, and other archival materials.” This is just another crude lie, which points precisely at the central historiographic problem with Katz’s thesis and Schwarz’s film: there is no written evidence from 1948—not in Israeli archives, not in United Nations’ archives, and not in the archives of the Red Cross or the Western powers—that describes or even mentions a big massacre at Tantura. Katz and Schwarz base the “big massacre” thesis entirely on interviews with Arabs and Jews who “remembered” or claimed that they remembered it 40 years after the event.

Particularly damning is the absence of reports on this supposed outrage from contemporaneous Palestinian sources. Radio Ramallah, for instance, reported on the Israeli victory at Tantura, but said nothing about a massacre.

It’s noteworthy that a memorandum of the Arab Higher Committee, titled “The Atrocities of the Jews,” which was sent to the UN in early July 1948, makes no mention of Tantura—another puzzling omission if a large-scale massacre had recently taken place there. It’s worth noting that Palestinian historiography in the decades after 1948 also did not mention a massacre at Tantura. The book deemed the Nakba bible, the six-volume al-Nakba published between1956 and 1960 by the chronicler Aref al-Aref, does not mention a massacre at Tantura.

Melanie Phillips: The Jihadi Onslaught Against Christians

Last Saturday, there was violence in the vicinity of Bethlehem. You won’t have read a word about this in the mainstream media. That’s because the perpetrators weren’t Israelis but Muslim Arabs, and the targets weren’t Palestinians but Christians.

This was but the latest in a serious of attacks on Christian Arabs in the Bethlehem area. You won’t have read about those in the mainstream media either — just as you will have read hardly anything there about the horrific attacks on Christians that continue to take place in Nigeria and other African countries.

This is what happened on Saturday, according to contemporaneous reports on social media. A Christmas bazaar opened in Beit Sahour, a town near Bethlehem. A young Muslim Arab went to the bazaar and started taking videos of Christian girls wearing western clothes, which to his eyes probably seemed immodest.

A Christian scout leader threw him out of the bazaar. A short time later, he returned with a gang of men. They started stoning the Holy Forefathers Greek Orthodox Church near the bazaar. They smashed up cars parked nearby belonging to Christians and struck the scout on the face. In the absence of the Palestinian police, the church rang its bells — a known danger alert for churches.

Videos of these events started circulating on social media. You can see one here, in a tweet which suggests the perpetrator had tried to enter the church.

2008: The Deception of Palestinian Nationalism

The evidence that simple autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza was never the PLO’s true goal is everywhere. In 1970, US Secretary of State William Rogers suggested that the West Bank and Gaza be given up by Israel in return for peace and recognition. This plan was accepted by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Only Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, rejected it, opting instead to attempt an overthrow of Jordan’s King Hussein.

The evidence runs deeper. Yassir Arafat, who was head of the PLO until 2004, was under the direct tutelage and control of the KGB. Ion Mihai Pacepa, KGB officer and onetime chief of Romanian Intelligence, was assigned to handling Arafat. Pacepa recorded several of his conversations with Arafat when they met in Romania at the palace of brutal dictators Nicolai and Elena Ceausescu. In these conversations, Arafat unequivocally states that his sole aim is to destroy Israel.

Pacepa and the KGB were delighted. They consulted General Giap, a close associate of Ho Chi Minh, who was involved with the North Vietnamese propaganda effort during the Vietnam War. Giap recommended to Arafat that he “stop talking about annihilating Israel and instead turn your [Arafat’s] terror war into a struggle for human rights.” It had worked in Vietnam, he claimed, because transforming the conflict from one of ideologies (Socialism vs. Capitalism) to one of an “indigenous” people’s struggle for liberty had turned the tide of popular support in the West against the war.

Similar advice was provided to Arafat by Muhammed Yazid, minister of information in two Algerian wartime governments. He wrote “wipe out the argument that Israel is a small state whose existence is threatened by the Arab States, or the reduction of the Palestinian problem to a question of refugees; instead present the Palestinian struggle as one for liberation like the others. Wipe out the impression that in the struggle between the Palestinians and Zionists, the Zionist is the underdog. Now it is the Arab who is oppressed and victimized in his existence because he is not only facing the Zionists but also world imperialism.”

Yasser Arafat heeded this advice, and with the help of bi-weekly plane-loads of Soviet supplies brought in through Damascus as well as the Soviet propaganda machine, he began to portray the Palestinian Arabs as a supposedly indigenous population whose human rights were being tarnished by Israel.

The fact is that after the War of 1967, Israel inherited Arab refugees living in the West Bank and Gaza that were forced to live there in the period of Egyptian and Jordanian control from 1948 to 1967. Israel immediately offered to return the lands it won in 1967 (West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights) in return for a peace treaty. This offer was rejected by the Arab countries in the Khartoum Conference (Aug. 29- Sep. 1, 1967). In Arafat’s authorized biography, Arafat: Terrorist or Peace Maker, Arafat claims this moment as one of his greatest diplomatic victories.

It is telling that Zahir Muhse’in, member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee, said the following in a 1977 interview with the Amsterdam-based newspaper Trouw. “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”

Palestinian nationalism is therefore a historical fabrication born out of a communist thirst for expansion and an Arab resentment of the existence of Israel. The “need” and “desire” for Palestinian is a veiled expression of the “need” and “desire” to end Israel’s existence.

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10/25 Links Pt2: The New Progressivism Makes No Room for Jews; How did a radical Islamist fool the West?; Adidas drops Kanye West

From Ian:

The New Progressivism Makes No Room for Jews

In 2016, as “intersectionality” escaped from academia to become a progressive buzzword—and came to to signify a doctrine that all just causes are linked and complementary—David L. Bernstein began to suspect that it was apt to be used against the Jews. As he pointed out in an article published that year, activists argued under the banner of intersectionality that anyone opposed to racism in the U.S. should also oppose the existence of Israel. He thought, however, that there was hope:
While I didn’t say so explicitly, I’d come to believe that the mainstream Jewish community needed to find a way to include the Jewish narrative in the intersectional matrix—to complicate it—so that Jews and Israel were not viewed as the perennial oppressors and Palestinians the perennial victims. Concerned about the growing backlash to my article, I used the opportunity [to participate in a panel discussion with some of my critics] to soften my stance on the topic, stating “I still have much to learn,” and that “intersectionality is a complex, interesting, and nuanced phenomenon that we need to understand, not just from the perspective of the pro-Israel community, but from its own perspective as well.”

Bernstein, at the time still president of the left-leaning Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), soon learned that there was little room for such a compromise position:
[In 2020], the JCPA pulled together a Zoom meeting for a coalition called Jews for Criminal Justice Reform, which included top Jewish criminal-justice activists from around the country. After an inspiring talk by Paul Fishman—a former federal attorney from New Jersey—on the need to end mass incarceration, we broke up into smaller groups to discuss next steps. A lawyer named Jared, the group facilitator for my breakout session, asked, “What do you all think our criminal-justice reform priorities ought to be?” Ariella, a young professional staffer from a Jewish civil-rights organization, interjected, “Before we talk about strategy, there’s a lot of internal work we have to do in the Jewish community. We need to recognize our complicity in white supremacy and ensure we have black Jews at the forefront of these efforts.”

More and more, that’s how it is now: a young staff person holding the work process hostage until we recite some prescribed litany of woke pieties. What, pray tell, did Ariella think all this self-reflection would do to help black people get out of being jailed for low-level drug charges? I suspect she didn’t have a clue. And as things turned out, our breakout session never discussed a single criminal-justice reform measure.

In short, Bernstein discovered that there is no room in this brand of progressive ideology to see Jews as anything but oppressors, and for Jews to do anything but proclaim their own imagined sins. This discovery is the subject of his newly published book, Woke Antisemitism.

How did a radical Islamist fool the West? - analysis

Many articles written about Qaradawi after his death emphasized his condemnation of al-Qaeda and ISIS and his moderate rulings permitting certain Western conduct for Muslims living as minorities in Western countries.

These articles portrayed him as many Westerners wanted to see him: a widely accepted authentic Islamic scholar who wanted to dialogue with the West and rejected violence.

However, the intelligence center noted that many of these articles left out that he helped shape “the concept of violent jihad,” especially justifying “carrying out terror attacks, including suicide bombing attacks, against Israeli citizens, the US forces in Iraq, and some of the Arab regimes.”

Qaradawi supported violent jihad and suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians. He was a source of supreme religious authority for Hamas at a time when many Islamic scholars still prohibited suicide of any kind.

Qaradawi claimed that violence was a legitimate expression of the so-called “resistance” and that Israel was a militaristic society in which every civilian is a potential soldier, said the report.

His antisemitism was not limited to Israel, with the report saying he frequently expressed antisemitic statements worldwide and even issued a fatwa authorizing attacks on Jews around the world.

In that fatwa, “he claimed that there is no essential difference between Judaism and Zionism, and therefore every Jewish target equals an Israeli target,” according to the report.

‘The Squad’ urges Biden administration to negotiate ceasefire in Ukraine

30 Democratic US Congressmembers – most notably the young progressives who have become colloquially known as “The Squad” – penned a letter to President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday in which they ask the administration to avoid direct military conflict and attempt to bring Russia and Ukraine to a ceasefire.

“Given the catastrophic possibilities of nuclear escalation and miscalculation, which only increase the longer this war continues, we agree with your goal of avoiding direct military conflict as an overriding national-security priority,” the letter read. A call for diplomacy

The congress members noted the difficulties involved in a settlement, particularly with the issue of annexed territories in the east of Ukraine, though they also mentioned Biden’s commitment to end the war. While no concrete plan of action was presented in the letter, the congress members suggested that easing sanctions against Russia would be a natural step to take.

“Such a framework would presumably include incentives to end hostilities, including some form of sanctions relief, and bring together the international community to establish security guarantees for a free and independent Ukraine that are acceptable for all parties, particularly Ukrainians.”

“The alternative to diplomacy is a protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks,” the letter continues.

The signers of the letter also pointed to the food and commodity crises brought upon by the war as reasons to seek an end to the war. “Economists believe that if the situation in Ukraine is stabilized, some of the speculative concerns driving higher fuel costs will subside and likely lead to a drop in world oil prices.”

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