Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: tsunami of lies

Showing posts with label tsunami of lies. Show all posts

Monday, May 01, 2023

Denmark buys Israeli artillery systems, backfilling weapons sent to Ukraine - and upsetting BDSers

ATMOS truck-mounted howitzer

Israeli defense company Elbit Systems said it won several deals in Europe this month, including a $119 million sale of ATMOS truck-mounted howitzers and a $133 million contract for PULS artillery rocket systems.

The deals, which Elbit said are with a European NATO member country, come as several governments on the continent continue their shopping sprees to resupply their troops, having sent munitions from their own stocks to Ukraine, which is under invasion by Russia.

“We are witnessing a trajectory of an increased demand for advanced artillery solutions from militaries around the world, including European countries and NATO members, as part of their efforts to increase the effectiveness of their armed forces. Our operationally proven systems provide an advanced, cost-effective solution to meet that demand,” said Bezhalel Machlis, the CEO of Elbit.

Although the buyer was not named, it is widely believed to be Denmark, based on an earlier press release that Denmark was negotiating with Elbit for those systems.

I'm surprised that we have not yet seen conspiracy theories that Israel is behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine in order to increase its arms sales to NATO members.

Anyway, the BDSers are livid, because they claimed to have scuttled another contract between Denmark and Elbit in 2015, a claim denied by the Danish authorities. And Mondoweiss blamed the Danish Left for this sale, saying that they were silent during the negotiations, unlike in 2015:

Few voices have raised concerns about the unusual speed this deal has gone through without due process or vigorous political scrutiny from the opposition. Is the Danish left happy to support a deal for weapons tested on the Palestinian civilians in the West Bank? Has the priority of the war in Ukraine meant all debate regarding arms procurement from Israel is frozen? Are Palestinians to remain second-class citizens in the eyes of the international community, only to be exploited for political capital as a means to express one’s ‘humanism’?

Well, you learn something new every day. Israel has been shooting artillery at Palestinian civilians in the West Bank! Somehow the media has missed this entire story, but Mondoweiss figured it out. It is amazing what scoops you can find when you don't know what you are talking about..

This little episode indicates that the 2015 arms sale was not blocked by BDS, and it was just another fake victory they claimed.

And it also shows that while Israel has not been directly supplying weapons to Ukraine, it has been supplying them indirectly, by backfilling weapons being sent from European countries. This way the EU countries get to upgrade their supplies while sending older weapons systems to Ukraine, which needs them badly. Everyone wins.

Except for BDSers and their Russian allies.

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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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The progressive Israeli High Court is to the right of the "fascist" Israeli government

From Times of Israel:

The High Court of Justice issued a sharp rebuke on Tuesday of the government’s recent request for yet another delay in the court’s order to evacuate the illegal Khan al-Ahmar Bedouin encampment in the West Bank.

Justice Noam Sohlberg rejected the government’s request for a four-month extension for the submission of its position on the issue, and instead set a hearing for a request by the right-wing Regavim organization that the court issue a final order requiring the hamlet’s immediate evacuation and demolition.

We've been inundated with articles from around the world about how fascist and theocratic the current Israeli government is, and how it is trying to eviscerate the only Israeli institution that is defending good old fashioned liberal values. But if that is true, why is the government trying to delay the demolition of Khan al Ahmar - and why is the High Court insisting that it be demolished immediately?

Why is the liberal High Court on the side of the right-wing Regavim NGO and the right-wing government on the side of the EU?

Because the memes are all wrong. Every biased assumption behind these articles is wrong. And this is the real outrage.

Clearly, the High Court insists the encampment is illegal. It always was illegal. Even though the Europeans and progressive Americans are saying that demolishing Khan al-Ahmar is a war crime or whatever, the Israeli courts see no validity in that argument.

Equally clearly, the current "most right wing government in Israeli history" is not anxious to demolish Khan al-Ahmar. It is engaging in realpolitik, and it doesn't want to antagonize the Europeans. I'm sure that the government knows Khan al-Ahmar is illegal but instead of using the court as a shield to destroy the outpost, it is fighting it.

Moreover, the "extremist Likud" prepared a site for the residents to move that would have a sewage system and electricity - all on the Israeli taxpayer's dime, essentially rewarding the lawless Bedouin.

When you look past the headlines, none of the memes about Israel jive with the facts. Too bad most journalists prefer to parrot the memes and try to fit the facts to the narrative rather than point out the truth.

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

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Amazing how "pro-Palestinian" voices are being silenced on campus

On Monday, Human Rights Watch's Omar Shakir - a BDS advocate who was hired by that organization not in spite of but because of his rabid hate for Israel - spoke at Yale University about Israel's "apartheid."

During the course of his speech, he predictably engaged in the usual anti-Israel lies, based on the slanderous idea that Israel's non-equal treatment of non-citizen Palestinians is meant to be a system of Jewish supremacy over Arabs.

But then, while actually speaking at Yale, Shakir said the most self-contradictory thing possible:

Shakir then transitioned into a discussion addressing the issue of the academic freedom and space to speak about Palestine on American campuses, with specific reference to Harvard Kennedy School’s fellowship offer, retraction and reoffer to leading human rights advocate Kenneth Roth.

“What happened to Ken has been happening to academics who are critical of Israel and speak out for Palestinian rights, and young academics and Palestinians are facing the worst,” Shakir said. “Things are changing [and] the conversation is changing and the arc of history is bending, [but] this is happening at the very same time that the situation on the ground is getting worse and worse everyday, so we live in this dichotomy”

If the Zionists have such a stranglehold over academic freedom, how did Shakir manage to speak at Yale?

OK, maybe it is only on some campuses - like Harvard - that the Zionist overlords ensure that the campus only allows pro-Israel, anti-Arab messages to get to the students.

Oops, nope:

Join us for this coming year’s Arab Conference at Harvard, to be hosted between March 3-5, 2023 at Harvard University.

Previously known as the Harvard Arab Weekend, the Arab Conference at Harvard (ACH) is the largest pan-Arab conference in North America, bringing together over 1300 students and professionals as well as a 20,000-strong livestream audience from across the U.S. and globally to learn from leaders in a diverse array of sectors.

Strange "silencing" of pro-Palestinian voices at Harvard.

But perhaps these events are not academic events - and professors are silenced on campus as to what they are allowed to teach; that anti-Israel academics are severely limited in their "criticism of Israel."

Nope again.

The very same Omar Shakir who is telling roomfuls of students that academics who are critical of Israel are being silenced and their careers jeopardized tweeted this the very same day:

Yes, an entire course at Bard College by a well-known anti-Israel professor dedicated to spreading a message of racist Jewish evil towards Palestinians.

That instructor, Nathan Thrall, is so silenced for his views that he wrote a huge anti-Israel article for the New York Times Magazine filled with anti-Israel and pro-BDS lies.

The idea that anti-Israel opinions are silenced is a clear falsehood. But in the milieu of the "progressive" Left, victimhood is the coin of the realm, so the Israel haters and modern antisemites have to claim that they are being oppressed while at the same time bullying and shouting down any Zionist voices on campus.

The entire anti-Israel movement is predicated on lies, and they know that no lie is too absurd to be believed if it is repeated and amplified enough.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Harvard Kennedy School refutes @KenRoth lies; its written policy prohibits donor influence over hiring. Why has no one reported this?

Former Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth was interviewed on NPR and continued his jihad of falsely accusing Harvard University of denying him a fellowship because of rich donors objecting to his "criticism of Israel."

ROTH: ...the Carr Center called me up and sheepishly had to admit that the dean had vetoed my fellowship because of my criticism of Israel....Apparently, what they objected to in my case was that I'm not partial. I'm an impartial critic of Israeli repression. And that seems to have been the stigma that the Israeli government didn't like, that its supporters didn't like. And that was why my fellowship was vetoed.

FADEL: What does this say about freedom of academic expression on campus? This is an Ivy League campus in the United States.

ROTH: This would suggest that Harvard is allowing donors to compromise intellectual independence at the university.

The original Michael Massing article in The Nation - which was itself biased and filled with baseless allegations - did not say that the Carr Center told Roth he was rejected for "criticism of Israel" but because Roth had an "'anti-Israel bias'; Roth’s tweets on Israel were of particular concern." There is a world of difference between "bias" and "criticism," bias means Roth is not impartial, as he claims he is.

But there has been not a single thread of evidence that Harvard's decision was based on donor pressure. That was completely made up in The Nation article. Roth - who clearly coordinated his anti-Harvard campaign with the writer of that article - has deliberately been pushing that narrative even though the entire theory is based on antisemitic tropes of rich Jews controlling how people could think.

At the very end of the NPR piece comes a piece of information that we had not seen before:

Kennedy School media relations director James Smith said the decision not to offer Roth a fellowship was based on an evaluation of his potential contributions to the school. Smith also said “[It is Harvard Kennedy School’s explicit and consistent policy that] we do not engage with donors or funders in our deliberations or decisions related to fellowship appointments."

(Bracketed quote fragment from this Daily Beast article.]

So Harvard's Kennedy School forcefully denies that donors are part of any decision-making. They have refuted The Nation and Roth's entire accusation - and yet this refutation is only mentioned as an afterthought, after allowing Roth to freely spread his antisemitic conspiracy theories of rich Jewish donors controlling HKS' academics.

But it turns out that even if the Kennedy School was not pro-active in getting this message out while Roth has been spouting his lies, the information about Harvard's policy has been on its website for years.

Any reporter could have looked at Harvard Kennedy School's statement on transparent engagement and funding, written in 2020. HKS explicitly says that funders do not and cannot have any influence over academic matters, including hiring:

It bears emphasis that HKS’s funders do not control the way we carry out our work. For all of our activities conducted using external funding, we protect our academic integrity and independence by maintaining full intellectual control: HKS faculty and staff make the decisions about research methodologies and policy findings, about the content of our courses, and about whom we accept into our community as students, faculty, staff, and visitors. No funder is allowed to interfere with those decisions, and all of our funders are aware of that point. We work to ensure that public communications about gifts and grants are clear that HKS is the intellectual driver of the activities.

Written policies have the force of law. The institutions that do not follow their own policies can be sued. Any major corporation or institution takes them very seriously, and Harvard clearly does based on how extensive these and other policies are.

The idea that donors pressured Harvard is complete fiction - that has been spread by media that also happens to share Roth's anti-Israel bias.

If donor pressure wasn't the reason for Harvard's decision not to hire Roth, then what was? Well, NPR quoted the reason: they did not think that he would provide a positive contribution to the school.

It is also notable that Dean Doug Elmendorf who vetoed Roth's proposed fellowship has spoken about this exact topic, about the potential downsides of inviting someone who can tarnish HKS' reputation, in a 2018 speech:

One key reason to invite visitors with a wide range of views is that a vigorous discussion of their actions and words can illuminate crucial issues in public policy and leadership, and thereby improve policy and leadership over time. Another key reason to invite visitors with a wide range of views is that the values of our community, and assessments of who is living up those values or not, are often matters of debate themselves.

At the same time, inviting visitors inevitably conveys, to at least some people, positive recognition by Harvard Kennedy School, whether we intend it or not. That positive recognition is greater for visitors who receive a particular title or honor, such as giving a named lecture or becoming a “Fellow.” We should not ignore the effects of such recognition in inviting visitors or choosing visitors to give named lectures or become Fellows. I learned this lesson the hard way. As a consequence of my learning, we are now adopting a set of standards and processes for naming Fellows, including the ideas that people proposing the appointment of a Fellow should affirm that the candidate has a professional record consistent with the values of public service to which the Kennedy School aspires, and that the dean may ask an ad hoc faculty committee to evaluate a proposed Fellow.

As part of HKS' stated policies, because of the potential of Roth to embarrass Harvard Kennedy School, Dean Elmendorf almost certainly created an ad hoc faculty committee to discuss the pros and cons of allowing Roth to become a fellow. They decided that the cons of hiring someone with a track record of lies and bias outweigh the pros.

And one does not need to prove Roth's anti-Israel bias to see that he would not have provided a positive contribution to the school. His constant lies about this Harvard episode and his baseless accusations themselves prove that Roth has no regard for the truth or fairness.

No decent school would want a vindictive liar on their staff.

Unless, of course, that person is only hired to attract rich donors to begin with.

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!

Ken Roth's jihad is yet another choreographed anti-Zionist campaign

The timing of the current torrent of articles and posts about Harvard's Kennedy School denying a fellowship to Ken Roth is most curious.

According to the initial article that started this all off in The Nation, Roth was denied his fellowship in the end of July 2022.

It took nearly six months for this news to hit the media.

What happened during those six months? Why didn't Roth lash out at the time - why was he silent for so long?

The answer can be seen in his history at Human Rights Watch.

HRW would issue many reports about human rights abuses worldwide. But only a subset of them would be turned into media events - with much longer reports, behind-the-scenes partnerships with other organizations, embargoed reports to be released on specific days to coincide with their splashy press conferences, and lining up sympathetic reporters and media outlets to publish their articles at the times that would maximize the impact of the campaign.

A large proportion of these campaigns would be against Israel. Relatively minor issues with questionable human rights dimensions, such as the fact that Booking.com and AirBnB listed Jewish-owned properties in the territories, would be promoted far more than actual deadly attacks in Syria or elsewhere.

In short, Ken Roth has a lot of experience creating campaigns that greatly exaggerate what he considers Zionist crimes.

A real victim of a real injustice does not have the luxury of creating a campaign to gain maximum publicity. They need to cry out and hope that a sympathetic person of prominence will help them get the message out to the world. Most of them fail, and real victims of real crimes are almost never heard from.

Every employer can choose not to hire any person for any (legally valid) reason, and they don't have to explain themselves to the world. And a university choosing not to hire someone is in no way "violating academic freedom" - that would mean that they have to hire everyone, no matter how toxic their ideas or methods. Academic freedom applies to faculty members and students, no one else.

Here is an extensive definition of academic freedom. In no universe did Harvard's dean violate it.

In this case, all we know is the second-hand report that the reason for the decision was "anti-Israel bias" and "Roth’s tweets on Israel were of particular concern" - which no one can argue with! Any analysis of his own tweets, in his own words, proves Roth's bias beyond a doubt. This is why Roth and his defenders falsely claim that he wasn't chosen because he is a "critic of Israel," an absurd lie - there are plenty of critics of Israel at Harvard, including Stephen Walt himself, co-writer of the infamous Israel Lobby book, whose position includes the name of the supposed Harvard donor who (Massing guesses) didn't want Roth - yet he still holds that position 15 years after the book controversy.

If the rich Jews who fund Harvard have any say on the contents of Harvard's academic program, it sure isn't obvious how.

Contrast this with the billions of dollars that pour into US universities from Saudi Arabia and especially Qatar, specifically to influence them politically.

For a wealthy, connected and privileged man like Ken Roth, it is not enough to just move on when he doesn't get a job and find the next one (which he did, at another Ivy League school.) He has to use all of his expertise to get revenge at the people who insulted him: the dean at Harvard and the rich Zionist Jews whom he believes (with zero proof!) were behind the decision.

Campaigns take time. Roth had to find a reporter and a media outlet that would maximize the impact of his newest attack on Zionist Jews. And he found both with Michael Massey, a reporter who defended Walt and Mearsheimer's "Israel Lobby" book, and The Nation, which publishes outrageously anti-Israel articles that include boldfaced lies.

Roth made sure not only that they would promote his new jihad against the few Zionists left in academia - but that it would be a cover story.

Now the six month gap makes sense. Front page stories take time.

Note the irony of the illustration - Roth is the little guy, a victim of a God-like thumbs-down from Harvard. A little guy who has the connections to build a months-long campaign that gets him on the cover of The Nation!

The follow-on stories, some probably planted and the others naturally following what looks like news, were a fait accompli. So was his own account of the episode for The Guardian, where he again falsely claims that he didn't get the job "because of my criticism of Israel." That is not what The Nation reported.

He can't stop lying when it comes to Israel.

Roth, with half a million Twitter followers, has plenty of clout to do his own direct promotion as well. And he is tweeting about this as much as he used to tweet his monomaniacal anti-Israel campaigns.

And now he claims that this carefully choreographed campaign has created an "uproar." He's trying to make it self-fulfilling prophecy.

As with the AirBnB campaign, the Harvard story is based on an inversion of reality. Boycotting only Jewish-owned businesses really is discrimination, and not allowing universities full latitude in hiring staff is itself a violation of academic freedom.

Ken Roth is not the victim of an all-powerful Zionist lobby. He is a vindictive, pathetic yet extraordinarily privileged antisemite who has carefully plotted his revenge at the rich Jews whom he thinks sabotaged the only job in the world he felt was worthy of him.

And his actions today prove that Harvard was quite right in rejecting him.

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!

Official, antisemitic Jordanian history of Jerusalem omits Temples, Kings David and Solomon

The website of the Jordanian Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs includes a brief English-language history of the city originally published in 2005.

It glosses over any historic Jewish connection to the city by framing Jews as one of many invaders:

3000 B.C. :
The Arab Canaanites established the city in the third millennium B.C., as archeologists state.

1879 B.C. :
in the Egyptian Tablets, called the Texts of the Curse, the name Ur Salim (the city of peace) was mentioned as the name for the city . The name reoccurred in the year 1300 B.C. in the Tal Al- Amarnah Tablets. At that time, the city was inhabited by the Arab Yabusites.

1300 – 63 B.C. :
The city suffered invasion, occupation and destruction. It witnessed important events during this period . It was occupied by the Egyptians, the Jews, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians and the Greeks.

63 B.C – 636 A.D. :
This was the era of the Roman rule, which lasted around 700 years. The most important events during this period were :

– The appearance of Jesus Christ (the Messiah) around the first year B.C.
– 70 The city was destroyed by the Roman Emperor Titus.

The Canaanites were not Arabs.

There is no mention of Jewish kingdoms, Kings David or Solomon, the Temples, or even the Bible. Even the Quran says far more about Jews in the land than this commission does.

Well, there is an indirect mention of the Temples when it discusses the different names of the city:

Bayt Al-Maqdis (Al-Quds; The Holy) : The name given to the city by Muslim Arabs.

That name, of course, is a corruption of the Hebrew "Beit HaMikdash" - the Holy Temple.

Practically every mention of Jews in this history is a lie. A couple of examples:

1882: The start of the waves of mass Jewish immigration from Russia to Jerusalem and Palestine.

Only from Russia? Plenty of Jews came from many countries, including Arab countries like Yemen, in the 19th century.

June 1967: Confiscation of 116 dunums within the old city and the demolition of the buildings therein for the purpose of building new ones to house the Jews.

That is the restoration of the Jewish Quarter that was destroyed by these Jordanians in 1948.

21 August 1969: The Jew, Michael Denis Rohan, set fire to the blessed Aqsa Mosque.

Rohan was a Christian.

Jerusalem : The Inhabitants

– In 1918, the number of Palestinians in Old and New Jerusalem was circa (ca.) 30,000 .
– In 1918, the number of Jews in Old and New Jerusalem was ca. 10,000.

I cannot find any record of a 1918 census of Jerusalem, but this is all clearly a lie. In 1922, there were 34,000 Jews in Jerusalem, outnumbering Christians (15,000) and Muslims (13,000) combined.

This official Jordanian document also says:

– In 2000, the number of Jews in the western part of Occupied Jerusalem was ca. 275,000 colonial Jews.

Here and elsewhere, it refers to all Jews in Israel as colonialist - not just the "settlers."

Finally, it falsely claims that the number of Christians in Jerusalem has gone down from over 18,000 in 1967 to 5,000 in 1998. In reality, the number plummeted under Jordanian rule from 29,000 to 12,000 in 1967, and it has modestly increased to about 16,000 today.

This is Jordanian, state-sanctioned antisemitism.

(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!

Artificial intelligence a danger to Israel advocacy, part 2

I recently wrote about the danger that automated chatbots could have for Israel advocacy, as they can generate lies that cannot be traced back - but people will believe them.

AI-generated photos are not yet good enough to fool most eople as being real, but it will only take a year or two before they are. While photo manipulation is as old as photography, and Photoshopping has been around for years, in the not-too-distant future anyone will be able to generate a photo that could be used as "proof" of "Israeli crimes" that no one has ever captured in a real photo.

I created a few using the AI art tools that are out there.

Jews don't raise wild boars in the West Bank to attack Palestinians? Well, now they do.