Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 01, 2019

On the Antisemitic Cartoon(s) and on Israel, @BretStephensNYT is a Part of the Problem. (Judean Rose)

We were sorry when Bret Stephens left the helm of the Jerusalem Post. We liked him. He was young and intelligent, and not (yet) poisoned by the left.

He gave class and weight to our small town paper, with his Wall Street Journal editorial creds. It gave us pride to think we’d snagged him for ourselves.

But then he left. It was 2004, the Second Intifada, when bus bombings were a near daily event. One of those bombs exploded near the Stephens’ family residence, in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia. From the Sydney Herald:

Bret Stephens, editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post, said he heard the boom and ran to the scene.

"There was glass everywhere, human remains everywhere, shoes, feet, pieces of guts. There were pieces of body everywhere," he said.

We well understood the fear, why he left. But it seemed, nonetheless, a betrayal. We needed Stephens and his reasoned editorials. We needed him in Jerusalem.

With regret and a longing for what might have been, we kept our eyes on Bret as he returned to the Wall Street Journal, taking his talent and insight with him. He usually got it right on Israel, and for that at least, we were grateful.

Then he went to the New York Times. As did Bari Weiss, after having served at Tablet, a respected Jewish interest publication, and like Stephens, a subsequent stint at the Wall Street Journal.

When these two went to the New York Times, Jews collectively wondered what in the actual hell was going on. Both Stephens and Weiss were known to be pro-Israel centrists, which is almost like being conservative. Why would they go to the New York Times, which has long been seen by many Jews as anti-Israel? It felt like they’d gone to the dark side. And it was fishy.

We had no idea what was behind the move. All we could do is hope they’d bring reason to the pages of a newspaper that had never liked the Jews or Israel.

A review of their columns since the move offers mixed messages. Stephens, for instance, told us in one editorial, written on the occasion of Israel’s 70^th birthday, that some Diaspora complaints, especially with respect to religion and refugees, are valid and should be heeded by Jerusalem. That didn’t sit well with those of us who feel that having left, he has no valid business telling Israel what to either heed or disregard.

Regarding Lara Alqasem, who was expelled from Israel (and ultimately allowed back by a turncoat Israeli High Court), Stephens wrote,

“The case for such liberalism today is both pragmatic and principled. In practice, expelling visitors who favor the B.D.S. movement does little if anything to make Israel more secure. But it powerfully reinforces the prejudice of those visitors (along with their supporters) that Israel is a discriminatory police state. If the Israeli government takes umbrage — and rightly so — when Israeli academics or institutions are boycotted by foreign universities, the least it could do is not replicate their illiberal behavior.

“Detaining people like Ms. Alqasem also does little to stem a worrying trend among young American Jews, who are increasingly alienated from Israel because of its hard-line policies. . .

“. . . Societies that shun or expel their critics aren’t protecting themselves. They are advertising their weakness. Does the Jewish state, which prides itself on ingenuity, innovation and adaptability, really have so much to fear from a 22-year-old graduate student from Florida?”

This too, did not sit right with those of us who remained in Israel. The attempt to expel Alqasem was popular in Israel, as her intention in coming here was to punish and hurt the Jewish State, and to poison the minds of young Israelis. For far too long, we’d been a doormat and let people like her in the front door to do their damage. At last we’d grown a pair and told someone capable of doing harm that she was not welcome. In criticizing Israel’s attempt to bar her entry, we definitely felt that Stephens was playing for the wrong team.

Then there was his response to U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a town that had hosted Stephens and his family. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem was another move popular with Israel, but apparently not with Stephens, who wrote:

“There’s the view that recognition is like giving your college freshman a graduation gift: a premature reward for an Israeli government that hasn’t yet done what’s needed to make a Palestinian state possible.”

It is difficult to believe that Stephens is unaware of just how much Israel has done to advance the cause of peace, and conversely, how little the other side has done with its continuous famous no’s; its refusal to accept normalization with Israel on any level. Stephens, having heard and witnessed the aftermath of a bus bombing, having lived in the heart of the city that Trump recognized, would seem to be the last person to tell Israel that it has not done “what is needed” to satisfy the other side. In suggesting that Israel had omitted some act that would somehow change the Arab refusal to accept anything less than all the territory Judenrein, Stephens most definitely drew a line in the sand between him and us, meaning between Bret Stephens and Israel.

While we might wonder what the New York Times offered to get Stephens (and Weiss) on board, both physically and metaphorically, it’s important to note that their views have not been confined to the Grey Lady. In the pages of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Stephens came out of the closet on settlements:

“Israel is not a nation of saints and has made its mistakes. The most serious of those is proliferation of West Bank settlements beyond those in historically recognized blocs.”

Really? Settlements are the problem, a mistake? This is what prevents peace? Jews building homes in indigenous territory? Or is it that intransigent non-peace partner who refuses a Jewish State within any borders one might name? The “partner” who blew up the bus that made Stephens and his family, pick up and leave?

As for Bari Weiss, she also gets it wrong on settlements.

“So the big criticism, right, is that they're occupying another people and that is corrosive to the State of Israel, sort of morally like to occupy another people. On the other hand what happens if they pull out of the West Bank tomorrow, right?

"I'm for a two-state solution ultimately ending the occupation but if I'm real I have to be honest about what that would look like. Well, what it looks like in Gaza is that now you have a terrorist State right at the border which is ruled by Hamas.”

Why is this position on settlements wrong? Because Jews have a right to build homes in Judea and Samaria. They have the legal right and the moral right. It is their indigenous territory. Building homes hurts no one. Building homes does not prevent peace or coexistence. Also, Israel occupies no one. Arabs either live as Israeli citizens, or under Arab leadership in towns and villages in Judea and Samaria, or in Gaza.

The Arabs could have had a state, and rejected every offer. And in fact, they received 78% of the British Mandate to build their own national home. This is Jordan, where 80% of the population is “Palestinian.” Israel furthermore gave the Arabs a second territory to rule, expelling thousands of Jews to do so, in the Disengagement from Gaza.

There is so much more I would say to Bari if only we could sit down for a heart-to-heart. I feel I know her. Both of us are from Squirrel Hill. Her grandmother was my beloved English teacher.

Andy Weiss was not only a beloved English teacher, but served as my student adviser, inviting me to her beautiful home for Sunday brunch just so we could chat at length. I could tell her anything. And did.

Her late aunt, Ellen Weiss Kander, was my dear bunk mate at summer camp, a woman who was kind and sweet as sugar. Her untimely death from liver cancer was a loss to all of Pittsburgh and certainly to the Jewish community.

Ellen Weiss Kander, A"H, is second from right, top row. She was sweet as sugar. The author, Varda Meyers Epstein, is second from left, bottom row

But aside from the settlement issue, Bari gets it wrong on Israel. Especially here, where she says, “Zionists love Israel because of the way in which it brings together the values of individual freedom and Jewish civilization, not because of some blood and soil nationalism.”

That is exactly wrong. I love Israel because of exactly neither of those values, but in particular because of blood and soil nationalism. I would eat Israel’s dirt with a spoon. I love it that much. (I kissed the tarmac at Ben Gurion. And that was not tasty. But I digress.)

Having reviewed the evolution of views regarding Israel since the move by Stephens and Weiss to the New York Times, we come to Stephens' latest op-ed on the now infamous antisemitic cartoon of a blind, be-yarmulked Trump led by the dachshund Netanyahu.

Stephens begins:

“As prejudices go, anti-Semitism can sometimes be hard to pin down, but on Thursday the opinion pages of The New York Times international edition provided a textbook illustration of it.”

. . . and then did so again on Saturday:

The second antisemitic cartoon appeared a day after the publication of Stephens’ op-ed, and the same day an antisemite 1) killed Lori Kaye; 2) peppered little kids with shrapnel; and 3) blew off a rabbi’s finger(s). Here we will give Stephens credit: he could not have prophesied, as his deadline approached, that the second cartoon would be published. But the second cartoon blows away Stephens’ premise for his piece: that the (first) cartoon was an oversight, not policy.

Stephens says what Jews long known about the New York Times: that it buried news of the Holocaust during World War II and ever since, has been rabidly anti-Israel. “For these readers,” says Stephens, “the cartoon would have come like the slip of the tongue that reveals the deeper institutional prejudice. What was long suspected is, at last, revealed.”

Stephens fails to mention the Congress Jew tracker that appeared, then quietly disappeared, in 2015. He also neglected to bring up the “Jesus is a Palestinian” piece that had been published in the pages of the NY Times just one week prior to either antisemitic cartoon.

But with his brief mention of selected historical facts, Stephens now thinks he has us in the palm of his hand—that we’ll now buy anything he has to say. At this point, the op-ed becomes an apologia. “The real story is a bit different, though not in ways that acquit The Times. The cartoon appeared in the print version of the international edition, which has a limited overseas circulation, a much smaller staff, and far less oversight than the regular edition. Incredibly, the cartoon itself was selected and seen by just one midlevel editor right before the paper went to press.”

This does not pass the smell test. This is the New York Times. Oversight is its middle name. But even if we were to be persuaded it was a mere editorial oversight, what happened in the wake of publication proves otherwise. There was the non-apology that stood only until we wouldn’t stand for it, at which point, a “real” apology was issued. There was the second cartoon, which, like nothing else before it, reveals the endemic antisemitic policy at the New York Times. Finally, there is the lack of action: no one was fired.

And there is definitely a feeling that someone must be fired. A head needs to roll, and if, as is suggested by Stephens, it was “just one midlevel editor” than that is the elected head.

What happened, this situation, cannot be left as is, allowed to fester and stink. This is an ugly bloom that must be nipped in the bud.

So first Stephens tells us it was an oversight. Then he tells us that the publication of the (first) cartoon was not a willful expression of antisemitism, only ignorance. (Which is it? Ignorance or an oversight?) He writes:

“The problem with the cartoon isn’t that its publication was a willful act of anti-Semitism. It wasn’t. The problem is that its publication was an astonishing act of ignorance of anti-Semitism — and that, at a publication that is otherwise hyper-alert to nearly every conceivable expression of prejudice, from mansplaining to racial microaggressions to transphobia.”

This too, does not wash. Of the two actors who let that cartoon go to press, the cartoonist and the editor, neither of them were ignorant. The grudging non-apology, as well, was a purposeful expression of the newspaper not being sorry for hating Jews. All of what happened sprang, indeed, from willful antisemitism.

But this is what Jews do when they are a part of the problem: they make excuses for the bad behavior of others toward them and their people. This is wrong. The New York Times, precisely now, must remain in the hot seat, and do much, much more to rectify this sickness, this evil.

Almost as an afterthought, Stephens finishes his defense of the Times, by committing an act of fealty to the anti-Trump overlords at his place of work: treason by omission. Stephens refers to a need to apologize to the Israeli prime minister, “The paper owes the Israeli prime minister an apology,” but then goes on to say nothing about the insult to his own president.

Here was POTUS depicted as the big blind hulking Jew led by Israel, but Stephens deems this unworthy of even a pat New York Times apology. Because in Stephens’ world, it is apparently a mitzvah to kick Trump in the teeth, to overlook any insults to him, and to never apologize for any of it.

I’m not sure what happened to Bret Stephens. Was this always how he felt—what he believed? It is difficult to understand, and it is not very pretty. All I know is, I used to admire the man, and now I find I cannot.

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Hamas Fires Rockets Into Mediterranean To Train For When Jews Already Driven Into Sea (Preoccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Gaza City, May 1 - Military planners of the Islamist movement that governs this territory conducted a missile test today that involved shooting a salvo of the weapons into the waters off the coast, in preparation for the eventual defeat of the Zionist Entity and the consequent forcing of all its Jews into those waters.

Hamas fired the rockets in coordination with several other factions with a presence in Gaza, both as a warning to Israel and as part of a strategic effort to maintain readiness if and when the hoped-for victory over the Jews occurs and the faithful can finally achieve the vision that Palestinian leaders of the 1940's first promulgated: driving the Jews into the sea. Once that occurs, a spokesman for the movement explained, its fighters must continue to fight the Jews driven into the sea, by whatever means, and the group's continued development of missile technology aims partly toward that stage of the conflict.

"We must be prepared for victory," stated Fawzi Barhoum. "What good is defeating the Zionist usurpers if we are unready to exploit that defeat? To that end we have continued to hone our rocket capabilities along two fronts: the current stage of the war, targeting the soldiers and settlements where the rapist scum Jews ravage our native soil, and the next stage, when we have driven them all into the Mediterranean and must target them there."

Analysts note that Hamas's attention to a future without Israel marks an important shift in the movement's orientation, which until now has focused solely on ridding the world of the Zionist scourge, and not in any serious way on what to do after achieving that goal. "It's significant that there's now been some practical thought given to the post-Israel situation," remarked Phil Latio of the Brookings Institution. "Most revolutionary movements, which is what Hamas and its parent, the Muslim Brotherhood, are, need an enemy, the better to unify the masses and remove potential focus from the leadership's failings or crimes. That usually results in poor governance once the revolution succeeds, since the enemy has been vanquished, so now what? As with Iran, for example, Qaddafi's Libya, or Chavez's Venezuela, the leadership feels compelled to continue insisting the enemy remains. It's encouraging that Hamas appears to be looking beyond victory at what actual policy looks like in the absence of their lifelong enemy. It's a breath of fresh air."

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05/01 Links Pt1: Shapiro: The NYTs’ Anti-Semitism Is Shocking, but Not Surprising; Glick: NYTs, Central Clearinghouse of Antisemitism in America; Would Hamas Attack 2019 Eurovision Event in Israel?

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: The New York Times’ Anti-Semitism Is Shocking, but Not Surprising

The Times suggested that information about Palestinian payments to families of terrorists was “far-right conspiracy programming.” The Times simply ignored Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s calling U.S. ambassador David Friedman “son of a dog,” didn’t report Abbas’s comments about Jews “falsifying history,” and omitted coverage of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar telling Palestinians about to storm the Israeli border, “We will take down the border, and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies.”

Back in 2015, the New York Times printed a list of lawmakers who voted against the anti-Israel Iran deal — listing them by the percentage of Jews in their districts and noting which ones were Jewish themselves. Back in 2014, the publisher of the newspaper, Margaret Sullivan, had to remind her own reporters to cover the Palestinians as “more than just victims,” thanks to the paper’s insanely one-sided coverage.

The Times’ ugly record of anti-Semitism goes all the way back to 2000, when the newspaper printed a photo of a Jewish student beaten by Palestinian Arabs and defended by an Israeli soldier – but captioned the photo by labeling the beaten man an Arab.

In actuality, the Times cares about anti-Semitism only when it can be used as a political weapon. The Times admitted in November that it had neglected to cover anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City specifically because such anti-Semitism “refuses to conform to an easy narrative with a single ideological enemy,” explaining that “when a Hasidic man or woman is attacked by anyone in New York City, mainstream progressive advocacy groups do not typically send out emails calling for concern and fellowship and candlelight vigils in Union Square.”

The mainstream Left has engaged in self-flattering blindness when it comes to Jew-hatred. And all too often, that blindness veers into outright anti-Semitism.

Caroline Glick: New York Times, Central Clearinghouse of Antisemitism in America

The Times’ active propagation of anti-Jewish sentiment is not the only way the paper promotes Jew-hatred. It has co-opted of the discourse on antisemitism in a manner that sanitizes the paper and its followers from allegations of being part of the problem. It has led the charge in reducing the acceptable discourse on antisemitism to a discussion of right wing antisemitism. Led by reporter Jonathan Weisman, with able assists from Weiss and Stephens, the Times has pushed the view that the most dangerous antisemites in America are Trump supporters. The basis of this slander is the false claim that Trump referred to the neo-Nazis who protested in Charlottesville in August 2017 as “very fine people.” As Breitbart’s Joel Pollak noted, Trump specifically singled out the neo-Nazis for condemnation and said merely that the protesters at the scene who simply wanted the statue of Robert E. Lee preserved (and those who peacefully opposed them) were decent people.

The Times has used this falsehood as a means to project the view that hatred of Jews begins with Trump – arguably the most pro-Jewish president in U.S. history, goes through the Republican Party, which has actively defended Jews in the face of Democratic bigotry, and ends with his supporters.

By attributing an imaginary hostility against Jews to Trump, Republicans, and Trump supporters, the Times has effectively given carte blanche to itself, the Democrats, and its fellow Trump-hating antisemites to promote Jew-hatred.

John Earnest and Robert Bowers were not ordered to enter synagogues and massacre Jews by the editors of the New York Times. But their decisions to do so was made in an environment of hatred for Jews that the Times promotes every day.

Following the Bowers massacre of Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the New York Times and its Trump-hating columnists blamed Trump for Bowers’s action. Not only was this a slander. It was also pure projection.

NYT Suspends Publication of Syndicated Cartoons After Anti-Semitic Allegations

Brooke Goldstein on the Hannity Show, Fox News, discussing the latest anti-Semitic cartoons published by The New York Times...

Ruthie Blum: Jewish violence: What the Gray Lady knows it need not fear

It is too early to tell how many Times readers will cancel their subscriptions in the wake of the debacle. It is also unclear how long it will take for the storm to blow over.

But one thing is certain: The only worry that the left-wing daily has at the moment is about loss of revenue and damage to its already dubious reputation.

Nobody at the paper or elsewhere is bracing for an armed Jewish onslaught. You know, like the slaughter in 2015 of 12 cartoonists and editors at the left-wing satirical French weekly, Charlie Hebdo, when it went after Islam. That the Paris-based paper regularly mocked Judaism and Christianity did not factor into the Islamist terrorists’ rampage, which continued on to the district’s Hyper Cacher kosher market, where shoppers were taken hostage and four Jews were murdered.

The Charlie Hebdo office was also fire-bombed in 2011, after publishing a cartoon of Muhammad in an issue whose cover was titled “Sharia Weekly.” This was five years after the paper was sued for running a series of controversial Muhammad-based cartoons that had appeared months earlier in the Danish daily, Jyllands-Posten, and caused a global Islamic assault.

Indeed, when Jyllands-Posten published a series of Muhammad cartoons in September 2005, the angry reaction on the part of local Muslims was swift. Although the paper’s editors explained that the purpose of the cartoons had been to spur debate in Denmark about ethnicity and free speech, what the satirical illustrations sparked was a worldwide frenzy.

Indeed, as word of the cartoon controversy gradually spread—in the days before Twitter was a household name—Muslims began to riot in Europe, North America, Australia, Africa and the Middle East.

At least 200 people were killed during or as a result of these demonstrations, which were also used as an excuse for radical Muslim groups to vent their rage against Christians. Churches and Western embassies were attacked, and Jyllands-Posten cartoonists, who were receiving credible death threats, went into hiding.

The ADL Opposes Racism, But Meets With a Racist (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

On Sunday, The ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt joined in the furor over The New York Times' antisemitic cartoon -- and Greenblatt didn't hold back.

Greenblatt warned against normalizing vile antisemitism

Greenblatt went further, calling out The New York Times for "a moral failing of major proportions" -- and the need for accountability and action

He concluded with recommendations, including that a review of policy is necessary:

The fact that Greenblatt and the ADL stepped in is important. It shows that at a time when accusations are flying back and forth accusing either the left or the right of being the main cause of the rise of antisemitism in the US, the ADL takes a balanced approach and rises above the fray, addressing the incitement of hate wherever it sees it.

If only Greenblatt could spot racism when he encounters it face to face.

Hat tip: Mark Jacobs

On the one hand, who better to go to for pointers on hate crimes than Al Sharpton - After all, Sharpton has a history of inciting hatred.

Putting aside Sharpton's central role in the Tawana Brawley hoax, Sharpton's history of deliberately inciting hatred against Jews is well established.

In 1991, after a Hasidic Jewish driver in Crown Heights accidentally killed Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, antisemitic riots erupted. At the funeral, Sharpton made a point of inflaming the crowd, blaming the "diamond merchants" (Jews) with "the blood of innocent babies" on their hands. Going further, Sharpton then mobilized hundreds of demonstrators on a march through the Jewish neighborhood, chanting, "No justice, no peace." There, Yankel Rosenbaum, a rabbinical student, was surrounded by a mob shouting "Kill the Jews!" and was stabbed to death.

The Forward quotes comments by Sharpton at the time that could easily be mistaken for the racism spewed by Farrakhan:

The world will tell us [Cato] was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident...It’s an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights...Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid...All we want to say is what Jesus said: if you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffe klatsch, no skinnin’ and grinnin’. Pay for your deeds...It’s no accident that we know we should not be run over. We are the royal family on the planet. We’re the original man. We gazed into the stars and wrote astrology. We had a conversation and that became philosophy. We are the ones who created mathematics. We’re not anybody to be left to die waiting on an ambulance. We are the alpha and omega of creation itself. [emphasis added]

A few years later, in 1995, Sharpton got involved in the protests against Freddy's Fashion Mart and again raised tempers, warning "we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." Sharpton's organization, National Action Network, set up picket lines. Customers who entered the store were spat on, cursed and accused of being "traitors" and "Uncle Toms." Some protesters starting shouting, "Burn down the Jew store!" while simulating striking a match and Sharpton's colleague Morris Powell saying "We're going to see that this cracker suffers". On December 8, one of the protestors entered Freddy's, shot 4 of the employees and set the store on fire, killing 7 employees.

And it's not as if Sharpton has lost his touch. More recently, Sharpton involved himself in the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin. Without verifying the facts, Sharpton publicly made a statement "that racial language was used" -- a claim that an investigation proved false. Sharpton also exacerbated tensions by deliberately referring to Zimmerman as "white," despite the fact that his mother is Peruvian.

But during their chummy get-together, Greenblatt doesn't say a word about Sharpton's background. These are just two activists fighting the good fight for human rights.

So despite Greenblatt's lecture to The New York Times on Twitter -

o Here we have the ADL normalizing the vile antisemitism of Al Sharpton
o It is the ADL, under Greenblatt's leadership, that demonstrates "a moral failing of major proportions"
o It is Greenblatt who should "commit to reviewing policies"

The question is how Sharpton gets away with this and has not only reinvented himself but is a figure that politicians come to in order to get his blessing.

Whatever the reason, the impunity Sharpton enjoys has spread to a new generation that includes Sarsour, Mallory (a disciple of Sharpton), Omar and Tlaib. Their immunity to criticism and ability to claim they are instead victims of smears and incitement are all part of a growing trend in the incitement of racism and antisemitism in the US.

And the ADL is no longer the champion it used to be in this fight.

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How can you satirize the absurdity of a leader of the Women's March, a huge rock star, a documentary maker who used to be a commentator on CNN and a sportswriter for a national publication complaining that they are being "silenced" at a public event at a major university?

“Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights” is the topic of an upcoming event at the University of Massachusetts Amherst that is already drawing its own controversy, including opposition from Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, whose mission is to fight anti-Semitism. The panel, titled “Not Backing Down,” is being put on by the Media Education Foundation and will feature prominent figures who have spoken out against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza. Some of the speakers have been labeled as “anti-Semites.”

Among the speakers: Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights who supports a cultural boycott of Israel as part of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, or BDS; Palestinian-American political activist Linda Sarsour, the co-chair of the Women’s March who also supports BDS; Marc Lamont Hill, a professor and political commentator who CNN fired last year for remarks he gave at the United Nations in support of Palestinian rights and a boycott of Israel; and Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation magazine who has been a vocal critic of the Israeli government.

Sut Jhally, a UMass Amherst communications professor and executive director of the Media Education Foundation, is the organizer of the event. Jhally himself has faced backlash over his film “The Occupation of the American Mind,” which “explores how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel’s favor,” according to the film’s website.

“We’re not really intimidated anymore by this selective outrage,” said Ananya Bhasin, who is part of the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. “This event really is about silencing, so, the more silencing we get, the more it solidifies why this event needs to take place.”

Zirin, who is Jewish, also takes issue with those who have said Sarsour and the other panelists traffic in anti-Semitism. That rhetoric, Zirin said, is an “old tactic that’s meant to silence debate and chill discussion.”

I'm sorry, but have any of these people been "silenced?" Have they been intimidated into not speaking their minds?

These "silenced" critics of Israel - who often traffic in antisemitism as well - somehow manage to get on the front pages of major media. Their tweets get retweeted thousands of times by their fans.

It is absurd.

If anything, when people point out any antisemitism they traffic in, like Marc Lamont Hill's accusation that Israeli Jews are poisoning Palestinians' water, that doesn't get mentioned in the major media in stories about Hill. He's regarded as being merely a "pro-Palestinian activist."

That is what silencing looks like.

I also tweeted about the hypocrisy going on here:

Upcoming UMass conference with @lsarsour, @marclamonthill and @rogerwaters:: "We hate when those racist, colonialist, baby-killing, water poisoning, America controlling 'Zionists' try to silence us by calling us antisemitic." pic.twitter.com/b7MCu6E957
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) May 1, 2019

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Tehran International Book Fair includes, of course, antisemitiic books

On Monday, Iran's "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Khamenei visited Tehran’s 32nd International Book Fair.

One of the books on sale at the fair is the Farsi-language "The Secret Role of Jews in Islam" by Yusuf Rashad.

The book says that Jews have gained the ability to consolidate their dominance through Zionist lobbies that govern all the affairs of major Western countries, and this is only possible after the destruction of the religion of these countries, which is Christianity. They have replaced Christianity with philosophy, which is a Jewish idea, according to the book.

In the first chapter, it explains how the Jews found the ability to succeed, by following the steps of the devil, his army and his party, and by working hard, with precise planning, they excel, control, dominate, and ruin the Christian religion.

Here are some chapter titles:

Hostility of the Jews and their betrayal of Islam and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
Violation of the covenant of the Jews against the Muslims
Treason and betrayal of the people of Qa'a
Ka'bbn Ashraf and his betrayal of Muslims
The story of the killing of Ashraf
Betrayal, disobedience, and violation of the holy Jewish tradition
Great betrayal and partisanship of the Benghazi Jews
The betrayal of the kings of the Jews
Israelis; the role of secret Jews in the Islamic heritage
The Hidden Jewish Hand in Islamic Interpretation Books
Hidden Jews in the Territory of the Ottoman Caliphate
The relationship between the Jews and the Freemasonry movement
The influence of the two Jews on the Turkish regime
The Turkish leader, Mustafa Atatürk and the Jews of Dhummeh
The role and influence of the two Jews in the Turkish media

Just from the chapter titles we see that the book is nothing but incitement - it tells stories (whether true or not) of individual Jews as a proxy for all Jews.

Remember, Iran claims to not be antisemitic at all.

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04/30 Links Pt2: Ending the Myth of the Poor Terrorist; From Zion to San Remo and Beyond; What Does it Mean to be Pro-Israel in 2019?

From Ian:

Ending the Myth of the Poor Terrorist

However, the latest research raises some new questions about the comprehensiveness of Bueno de Mesquita’s model. In 2015, a new Palestinian terrorist campaign erupted. The attacks were substantially different than previous waves of Palestinian violence as the assailants typically worked alone instead of within a greater terrorist group. Because of this individualistic terrorist threat, the campaign is often referred to as the “Lone Wolf” intifada. The violence subsided in 2017, and an ongoing study by Berrebi and Weissbrod is working to analyze the characteristics of the individuals involved. So far, the study has found that while there are many high school dropouts in this new kind of self-selected terrorism, there are also many who are highly educated and from affluent backgrounds. Overall, both the number of highly educated professionals and university graduates among the terrorists, and the number coming from wealthier backgrounds, are well above average. What the research suggests is that although terrorist organizations may eliminate the lowest quality terrorist candidates, as claimed by Bueno de Mesquita and others, separate factors beyond the screening process must play a part in forming the connection between higher education, wealth, and terrorism.

What is clear by now is that nearly all current research shows that terrorists tend to be wealthier and more educated but we still need to test new theories to find out why. If Bueno de Mesquita’s screening model isn’t the entire story, one alternative theory could be that the educational content could itself be radicalizing, thus the more schooling someone receives in a given society the more likely it becomes that they could engage in terrorist acts. Another possible theory is that terrorism is a modern, deadlier form of political protests and revolts that have, throughout history, often been started by the intellectual communities. A third alternative may be that individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds do not have the luxury of participating in revolt as they must worry about feeding their families and the struggles of everyday life.

There are many more unexplored theories that may help to further explain the roots of terrorism, yet one thing is certain: The conventional view is far too simple. Politicians like Jeremy Corbyn need to stop treating terrorist threat as though it is a unidimensional problem which is solvable by raising individual wealth and education. Corbyn’s paeans to the noble suffering of hopeless Hamas terrorists rests on a myth. The massacre against Christians in Sri Lanka was not committed by desperate volunteers drawn from the wretched of the earth. The terrorists who carried out that mass murder were well-educated members of their society’s upper middle class, a background that is not exceptional in the broader context of terrorism and, if anything, suggests that the perpetrators were representative of a common socio-economic class of terrorist.

As terrorism evolves further, we must treat this issue as one impacted not just by poverty, education or terrorist organizations, but other factors as well. This step will allow for greater research in order to fully understand the mechanisms of terrorism and begin to find real solutions that reach beyond political expediency.

From Zion to San Remo and Beyond

Almost a century ago, the international San Remo Conference was held in Italy in April 1920. During this conference, the international community, led by the victorious allies of World War I, recognized the Jewish people’s national and historical rights in its ancestral homeland Israel. The importance of this largely forgotten conference cannot be overstated. Israel’s enemies frequently distort history by falsely presenting Israel as a “foreign imperialist implant” and a “compensation for the Holocaust.” In reality, the recognition of the Jewish people’s historical and national rights in Israel was part of a wider anti-imperialist new world order led by US President Woodrow Wilson after World War I.

This new world order recognized the national and political rights of nations worldwide. The same Arab world, which has frequently been depicted as a “victim of imperialism”, ironically gained far more from the San Remo Conference than the Jewish people did. The same international community that recognized the Jewish people’s rights to its tiny historical homeland recognized Arab political independence over much of the Middle East, including Syria and Iraq. At the time, international and Arab leaders saw no conflict between the reestablishment of a tiny Jewish state in the land of Israel and the establishment of neighboring vast Arab states. Emir Faisal, the head of the Arab kingdom Hejaz, welcomed the Jewish people’s return to its ancestral homeland Israel:

“We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement…. We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home…. We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East, and our two movements complement one another. The movement is national and not imperialistic. There is room in Syria for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a success without the other.”

Merely a century ago, the international community understood a fundamental truth that has largely been lost today: “Palestine” is the Roman imposed term for the Jewish people’s historical homeland Judea. At the time, there were no calls for establishing a “Palestinian” Arab state because neither Arabs nor anyone else was aware of such a “nation”. Local Arabs identified either as Syrians or as part of the wider Arab world.

Document showing America’s official recognition of Israel in May 1948 up for sale

The original exhibition copy of the United States’ recognition of Israel in 1948, signed by U.S. President Harry S. Truman, is up for sale for the first time.

The document, valued at $300,000, is the only known signed copy of the final recognition of the Jewish state to exist.
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The Raab Collection, the nation’s leading dealer in important historical documents, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired the historical artifact ahead of Israel’s Independence Day in May.

Previously, the document was exhibited by the American and Israeli governments.

It reads: “This government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested the provisional government thereof. The United States recognizes the provision government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel.”

“This document speaks to the power of the Jewish hope of a homeland and its realization after World War II,” said Raab Collection president Nathan Raab. “It was signed by Truman for the New York World’s Fair and since then has been used by both the American and Israeli governments as the symbol of the great recognition of Israel by the United States.”

What Does it Mean to be Pro-Israel in 2019?

Interview with Kasim Hafeez part 3: A discussion of the Arab world and Israel

Here is part 3 of my interview with extremist-turned-Zionist Kasim Hafeez in Tel Aviv last month. In this part we discuss the Arab world's attitudes towards Israel and the Palestinians.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

"Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846" by James Richardson, includes an anecdote that explains a lot of the hate from the Arab world towards Israel today.

My turjeman is surprised we Christians receive the books of the Jews as sacred and inspired, and so are many other people. They are quite astonished when I tell them that Christians esteem the Scriptures of the Jews equally divine with their own. They have a confused notion that the whole of the Jewish Scriptures consist of the five books of Moses, which they call the Torat, and the Psalms of David. Some of them say Abraham was not a Jew. I explain to them, that the Christians give a different interpretation to the Jewish Scriptures from the Jews themselves, and believe “the Son of Mary” to be the Messiah of the Jews and all the world. They hardly believe me; and say, “The Jews are corrupt and their books corrupt.” When I told them one day before the Rais that we had had Jews in India, they flatly replied it was a lie, for said they, “It is impossible for such a miserable being as a Jew to be a soldier.”

I have long assumed that the hate that Arabs and Muslims have for Israel comes from the honor/shame dynamic - weak Jews defeating Arabs who consider themselves experts in war was a huge psychological blow, far worse than the physical defeat. This is why only the 1948 war, among all the many wars that Muslims and Arabs have lost to the West and others, is called a "nakba," a catastrophe.

Here is the first time I have seen this thinking written specifically. To the Arabs of north Africa, the idea of a Jew being a soldier altogether was not believable. Jews were "miserable beings" and "corrupt" and therefore cannot possibly learn to fight, as honorable Arabs do.

When these "miserable beings" showed that not only can they fight, but they can defeat the combined armies of the Arab world outnumbering the Jews, the psychic damage to the Arab world cannot be overstated.

The only thing that can cure this is a combination of Israeli military strength continuing to dominate the region, and time for the Arabs to get used to the fact that Jews are not what they have been taught for many centuries. Arabs measure time in centuries, not months, so it takes a few generations for changes to occur.

They are occurring, though.

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04/30 Links Pt1: Rabbi Goldstein: A Terrorist Tried to Kill Me Because I Am a Jew. I Will Never Back Down; Caricaturing Jews, Hating Jews, Killing Jews

From Ian:

Rabbi Goldstein: A Terrorist Tried to Kill Me Because I Am a Jew. I Will Never Back Down.

I do not know why God spared my life in my Poway synagogue. All I can do is make this borrowed time matter.

From here on in I am going to be more brazen. I am going to be even more proud about walking down the street wearing my tzitzit and kippah, acknowledging God’s presence. And I’m going to use my voice until I am hoarse to urge my fellow Jews to do Jewish. To light candles before Shabbat. To put up mezuzas on their doorposts. To do acts of kindness. And to show up in synagogue — especially this coming Shabbat.

I am a proud emissary of Chabad-Lubavitch, a movement of Hasidic Judaism. Our leader, the great Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, famously taught that a little light expels a lot of darkness. That is why Chabad rabbis travel all over the world to set up Jewish communities: I have colleagues in Kathmandu, in Ghana, as well as in Paris and Sydney. We believe that helping any human being tap into their divine spark is a step toward fixing this broken world and bringing closer the redemption of humanity. It is why 33 years ago my wife and I came to this corner of California to build a house of light.

Because we are obviously Jewish, identifiable by our black hats and beards, it has also meant that some of us have been targets before. Eleven years ago, my colleagues Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, who ran the Chabad of Mumbai, India, were murdered with four of their guests. They were targeted by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba because they were Jewish. And over the years people I know have been harassed and assaulted by thugs in the neighborhood where I grew up, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in incidents that typically go unreported by the press.

In his vile manifesto, the terrorist who shot up my synagogue called my people, the Jewish people, a “squalid and parasitic race.” No. We are a people divinely commanded to bring God’s light into the world.

Technology has made our lives easier. But it also means that your data is no longer your own. We'll examine who is hoarding your information — and give you a guide for what you can do about it.

So it is with this country. America is unique in world history. Never before was a country founded on the ideals that all people are created in God’s image and that all people deserve freedom and liberty. We fought a war to make that promise real.

And I believe we can make it real again. That is what I pledge to do with my borrowed time.

John Podhoretz: Caricaturing Jews, Hating Jews, Killing Jews

Last Thursday, the international edition of the New York Times published a cartoon depicting Benjamin Netanyahu, in the form of a dachshund wearing a Star-of-David necklace, leading a blind and be-yarmulked Donald Trump. Two days later, a white supremacist—who shares the cartoonist’s belief that the U.S. president is a “Jew-lover” subject to “Zionist” control—entered a Chabad house in Poway, California and opened fire, killing one and wounding three others. John Podhoretz comments:

It likely did not occur to the editor [who approved the cartoon for publication] that he was acting as the unwitting reincarnation of Julius Streicher. It is, rather, likely that this editor has not had a conversation in years with anyone who did not think Benjamin Netanyahu was a monster and therefore fair game. The idea that exactly such imagery was part and parcel of the conscious effort to gas and to incinerate the Jewish people was unknown to him. Indeed, the very idea that the Jewish people are only a few generations removed from near-destruction and that a certain degree of sensitivity is required in depicting them may not ever have occurred to him. Indeed, perhaps something close to the opposite is at work in his understanding of the world.

We know about the selective expectations involved in the unique criticism of Israel for behaving in ways that dozens of other countries behave when it comes to contested territories. The constantly harping critics of the world’s only Jewish state say disingenuously that they are doing it for Israel’s own good or to hold Israel to the standards of its own prophets when they tend to hold no other state in the world to any standards. We are told we are not to consider this anti-Semitic because criticizing a country isn’t the same as criticizing a people. Well, . . . while it is true that criticizing a country can be different from criticizing a people, it is also true that it can be, and often is, exactly the same.

Yisroel Goldstein, the rabbi of Chabad of Poway, emerged from surgery, [having been shot in the hand], and issued a statement—a beautiful, defiant, eloquent, and life-affirming declaration at the end of Passover—that while, as we say in the Haggadah, “in every generation they rise up to destroy us,” we will not be destroyed.

A Hatred Of Israel Is The One Thing All Anti-Semites Have In Common

The only anti-Semitism still widely used in public discourse is the kind masquerading as “anti-Zionism.” That is why there was warranted outrage when The New York Times’s international edition publishes a Der Sturmer-style cartoon and when members of Congress protect a woman who has persistently smeared Americans Jews as money-grubbing interlopers and when progressive activists march behind those who embrace the most noxious anti-Semitic notions imaginable.

Now, a Jew-baiting cartoon or an ugly tweet isn’t going to shoot you. But anti-Israel rhetoric doesn’t just hurt feelings, it leads to policy that puts people in danger. It is why, whatever the intentions were behind the Iran deal, many Jews were rightly disturbed when the antagonist Obama administration made a sweetheart agreement and sent pallets of cash to a Holocaust-denying terror state that openly threatens to throw six million Jews into an “inferno.” It’s a bit on-the-nose.

Since Israel is increasingly detested by the American left—often for the very same reasons the United States is detested—progressives have also been increasingly comfortable attacking Jews or defending those who do. And no, these people aren’t merely being “critical of Israel.” The New York Times cartoon depicting Trump as a blind man being led by the Star of David-bedecked Benjamin Netanyahu was a pictorial interpretation of a paranoid grievance that many anti-Israel progressives and paleocons have been peddling for years: that Jews control the U.S. government.

Claiming that Americans are dying to protect Jewish interests isn’t only a lie, it’s a fresh iteration of an old slur. Whereas once there were “bankers” and “money lenders,” today there are “Zionists.” I see this smear every day, and not merely from randos on Twitter.

Some progressives, in fact, argue that the concept of “Zionism” is itself a form of white supremacy. Liberal editors of major publications now contend that the democratically elected prime minister of this Jewish state is one of “global anti-semitism’s greatest allies.” Writers for major magazines breezily blame Jews who support Israel for their own massacres. Among them are a small number of progressives, who defraud the public by falsely using their abandoned Jewish heritage to promote their leftist ideology.

Mahmoud Abbas has property in Jordan, including a huge villa. (He's also a citizen.)

Al Resalah reports that Mahmoud Abbas is bracing for the "Deal of the Century" and how to combat it. It says that he is preparing for the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.

It also says that Abbas is planning to spend more time outside Ramallah and at his huge house near Amman so he can coordinate better with Jordan's King Abdullah.

Abbas has a huge house in Jordan? Yes, he does. He has as many as four properties in Jordan, including a home he paid more than 2 million Jordanian dinars, about $3 million dollars, in 2011. The home is in the Abdoun district of Amman.

The PA president, and his sons, hold Jordanian passports and citizenship allowing them to purchase real estate in Jordan without any red tape that foreigners usually have to go through. as far as I know, he is still a Jordanian citizen.

Abbas held meetings with John Kerry in his Jordanian villa during the Obama administration.

His Jordanian national number (as of 2011) is 93-3000-254.

Mahmoud Abbas likes to style himself as the President of the State of Palestine. How many world leaders are citizens of other countries?

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Abdul Hamid al-Hakim, the director of the Middle East Center for Strategic Studies in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has put out a series of tweets that are - for the Arab world - startlingly philo-semitic.

A video about two Jewish brothers from Iraq who were major songwriters there prompted him to say:

Iraqi-Israeli pop star Dudu Tassa, whose grandfather & great-uncle were the George & Ira Gershwin of Baghdad, has won fans across the Arab world. This clip from @JIMENA_Voice highlight's Dudu's dream: to perform in the land of his ancestors. https://t.co/WY9RsacOPO @robsatloff
— Joseph Braude (@josephbraude) April 24, 2019

The Jews are an integral part of our societies where they have risen at all levels, and the history of the Jews confirms that they are the leaders of civilization in any communities they live in.

I am certain that the dream of our friend Dudu Tassa will be realized, but we will welcome him in Riyadh as they welcome us in Jerusalem.

He visited Israel last year and tweeted this for Yom Haatzmaut:

I congratulate the Israeli society on their Independence Day and address the Arab societies on this occasion. The State of Israel is a historic right for Jews which is confirmed by heavenly books and the history of the region. In 70 years, Israel became a state of the first world and you did not escape your denial of their right to weakness and sectarian wars.

It gets better:

If we want to achieve peace and create a new Middle East that fulfills the aspirations of the peoples of the region, we must address our societies courageously to recognize the historical right of Jews to their state of Israel.
Jerusalem was not the capital of any nation in history except for the Jews. Jerusalem is the door to peace for the region.

Hamid al-Hakim also supports the Trump peace plan and says that Arab societies are getting nothing by supporting Hamas and the PLO.

Needless to say, there are plenty of Arabs who are not fans of al-Hakim's philosemitism. But the fact that there is even a debate in Saudi Arabia about Israel, and about Jewish rights to Israel and Jerusalem, is something astonishing.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

From Students Supporting Israel, Columbia:

A few weeks ago, SSI Columbia reached out to SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) and JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace) with great hope and expectations of finally doing something productive about the long-debated issue of holding civil and constructive discussion on campus regarding the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. We asked nothing more than a phlegmatic setting to discuss different views and narratives, hopefully, provided by newly elected CCSC. Today, in a public statement, SJP has not only rejected our open offer but also virulently used made up claims and half-truths to justify their insistence on marginalizing and boycotting pro-Israel voices on this campus.

SSI’s invitation to host a joint event came as a result of SJP claiming that they want to promote dialogue on this issue on campus.

SSI took up SJP on their claim of wanting dialogue - and they called their bluff beautifully.

SJP not only rejected the call for dialogue - they admitted that they would never have spoken to SSI anyway:

Normally, an invitation such as this would be rejected due to SJP’s anti-normalization policy, which means that we don’t participate in collaborative events with Zionist groups on the grounds that such events do more to obscure, rather than expose, the fundamental power imbalance at the heart of the settler-colonial situation in Palestine.

But then they said that SSI was "racist" with examples that are not at all racist by any definition. For example, "Most recently, SSI hosted a 'social activism' workshop with a representative of Act.Il, an Israeli propaganda app closely linked to the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and other clandestine intelligence organizations." All of their examples are equally bizarre.

SJP doesn't stop there. They not only say that SSI is "racist," but "We believe organizations like SSI, given their racist rhetoric and their recorded history of harassment, must be effectively deplatformed."

They don't stop there. They say that every pro-Israel organization must be boycotted: "We call on our peers and allied organizations to boycott all pro-Israel advocacy groups and clubs..."

SJP's own words show how intolerant they are towards anyone who disagrees with them. SSI is obviously the only party here that is acting like adults.

As usual with anti-Israel and antisemitic organizations, they don't want to talk or debate - because they know that they will lose on facts. Instead, they do everything they can to silence any pro-Israel voices.

Logic would dictate that the organization that wants to disenfranchise their opponents is the one that should be disenfranchised.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

04/29 Links Pt2: Bret Stephens: A Despicable Cartoon in The Times; Israeli UN envoy urges NY Times to punish those behind anti-Semitic cartoon; Rashida Tlaib’s brother praises terrorists

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: A Despicable Cartoon in The Times

The paper of record needs to reflect deeply on how it came to publish anti-Semitic propaganda.

On Thursday the opinion pages of the New York Times international edition provided a textbook illustration of anti-Semitism. Except that the Times wasn't explaining anti-Semitism.

It was purveying it in the form of a cartoon in which a guide dog with the face of Benjamin Netanyahu leads a blind, fat Donald Trump wearing dark glasses and a black yarmulke. The dog-man wears a collar from which hangs a Star of David.

Here was an image that, in another age, might have been published in the pages of Der Sturmer. The Jew in the form of a dog. The small but wily Jew leading the dumb and trusting American. The hated Trump being Judaized with a skullcap. What was this cartoon doing in the Times?

For some Times readers - or former readers - the Times has a longstanding Jewish problem, dating back to World War II, when it mostly buried news about the Holocaust, and continuing into the present day in the form of intensely adversarial coverage of Israel. On the editorial pages, its overall approach toward the Jewish state tends to range from tut-tutting disappointment to thunderous condemnation.

The real story is a bit different. The international edition has a much smaller staff, and far less oversight than the regular edition. Incredibly, the cartoon was selected and seen by just one midlevel editor right before the paper went to press.

The cartoon's publication wasn't a willful act of anti-Semitism but was an astonishing act of ignorance of anti-Semitism at a publication that is otherwise hyper-alert to nearly every conceivable expression of prejudice. Imagine if the dog on a leash had been a prominent woman such as Nancy Pelosi, a person of color such as John Lewis, or a Muslim such as Ilhan Omar?

David Collier: Dominique (Dom), British terrorists and the Mike’s Place bombing

The 29th April is always a sombre day for me. Sixteen years ago today (29th April 2003), I was talking to a friend of mine ‘Dom’, about a new business adventure she was starting. I was eating a cake, a sample that she had brought me to taste. Dom came to pay for a flight I had sorted out for her. She had been to France to see her family and when she wanted to return from Paris, she’d call, I’d book the flight, and we’d settle once she had arrived. We chatted, I told her the cake was delicious and then we said our goodbyes. It must have been about 11am. ‘See you later’ I think I said to her. I wouldn’t though, in fact I never saw her alive again.

I had known Dominique (Dom) for about six years. Like many from Western Europe trying to find their way in Tel Aviv, Dom was part of the tourist crowd. A few hostels and pubs littered the Ben Yehuda, Allenby area and were full of working travellers. Thousands of young Europeans gravitated towards Tel Aviv’s Mediterranean shore. The hostels supplied the work, the pubs the recreation. Dom had been part of the scenery for a long time. I had first met her in the late 1990’s and if I remember rightly, at the time she worked in a launderette that doubled as a billiard/pool hall. We had been in touch ever since. Dominique was extremely popular and since I had my own tourism related business, Dominque was always sending me new customers.

Dom, the Buzz Stop and Mike’s Place
Dom worked for a while at a beachfront pub called the ‘Buzz Stop’. Originally sited near the ‘dolphinarium’ on the Southern beaches of Tel Aviv, the owner Eli, eventually moved it to the centre of town, near what was then the American Embassy. In 2001 another pub opened next door -a live blues music bar called Mike’s Place. Dominique switched from working at the Buzz Stop to Mike’s Place. She worked at Mike’s Place from the day that it opened. I frequented both. They were my local hang-outs and I knew most of the regulars.

The 29th April 2003 arrived and the second Intifada was still going strong. In January there had been a massacre in Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station – a double suicide bombing. March saw a suicide bomb massacre in Haifa and another bombing in Netanya. In April Kfar Saba was the target of a suicide bombing. There were going to be four additional suicide bombings in May.

But Mike’s place was a pub on a beach front and full of tourists. It was a world away from the conflict. The evening of the 29th had been busy. It was Tuesday night- ‘Jam night’ for the Blues bar and everyone inside was having fun. Yet just a few hundred yards away in Hayarkon Street, two men were busy getting ready to kill.

Dzanc Drops Novel Criticized for Islamophobic Themes

After a week of controversy over Siege of Tel Aviv by Israeli-American author Hesh Kestin, which was released on April 16, publisher Dzanc Books has reverted the rights to Kestin and will not be printing any more copies of the novel. There are currently 2,000 copies of Siege of Tel Aviv in print.

The release, which was marketed by Dzanc as a “bizarrely funny” satire about Iran leading five Arab armies into Israel, destroying it, and restricting Jews to Tel Aviv with the plan of killing them all, was condemned on social media for what critics called its Islamophobic themes and content. Dzanc is accepting returns of the book, and intends to donate any profits to a Muslim relief organization.

"The author is welcome to publish the novel elsewhere," Dzanc publisher/editor-in-chief Michelle Dotter told PW in a telephone interview on Tuesday afternoon. Dotter disclosed that the decision had been made a few hours earlier after the publisher and author failed to reach a consensus on how to respond to the criticism being leveled at Siege of Tel Aviv.

While the book was endorsed by Stephen King, who called it “scarier than anything Stephen King ever wrote,” other readers have not been so benevolent. Siege of Tel Aviv has been condemned by many on social media—including Dzanc authors—as Islamophobic propaganda. One forthcoming Dzanc author, John Englehardt, tweeted that he was “very disappointed by the publication of Siege of Tel Aviv. I spent some time reading the novel online and believe calling it 'absurdism with satire with social commentary’ is beyond generous.” An Amazon reviewer complained that the novel “is a thinly veiled piece of IDF propaganda, to make Israel's horrifying apartheid practices toward Palestine seem justified. Disappointing that Dzanc Books would publish this bile.”

While explaining the rationale behind the decision to revert the rights, Dotter said that “the important thing about any book that we publish is, does it present a vision and give ideas to the world? Does it do more harm than good?” She added: “When we acquired this book [before the 2016 election] we were reading it from a different point-of-view. We intended to present it as satire. As publisher and editor-in-chief"—a position Dotter has held since August 2017—"my responsibility was to read it with a critical eye. I failed to do that.”