On December 10, an Egyptian writer and translator named Fatima Naoot wrote an op-ed in Al Masry Al Youm, after attending an official Chanukah party in Cairo, about how much Jews contributed to Egyptian culture, how loyal they were to Egypt and how much of a shame it is that they were forcibly expelled from that country under Nasser.
The furious reaction to her article has not abated for over a week. People are insulting her by calling her Fatima Yehudah. They are calling her Zionist even though she isn't. They are making fun of her for saying that she received an award from the UN (apparently from a UN Arts initiative.)
I see dozens of articles denouncing Fatima Naoot.
The critics are saying either that the Jews left voluntarily from Egypt - or that they were spies for Israel. But they all insist that they are not antisemitic, oh no.
The more honest ones tacitly recognize that what she said is true - but they are angry that she said it out loud. Because if Egyptians admit that it ethnically cleansed essentially all of its Jews, then it has to pay reparations.
I do know that the accusation of forced displacement is very dangerous for your country. Germany, for example, paid Israel 83 billion German marks for such allegations. Israel itself did not dare to accuse Egypt of this accusation, why did you volunteer it?
Another writer for the same paper, after comparing Naoot to the Muslim Brotherhood, writes:
We do not know whether Professor Fatima Naoot knows that because of her article, the fire of hell opens up on Egypt, and it harms its national security. The Jewish lobby is active and influential in the world and is empowered by its power, influence and money. The United States Congress, the European Parliament, and the British Parliament can now demand huge compensation and the return of their stolen property in Egypt .. !!
That writer goes off the deep end right afterwards:
Did they know that Egypt on the front of the Knesset is depicted Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates...?
Essam El-Erian (Muslim Brotherhood leader who said he would welcome Egypt's Jews to return) and Fatima Naout's statement both came in December, Al-Arian's statement at the end of December 2012 and Naout's article at the end of December 2018, and this brings up the question: Why December?
The answer is that Jews celebrate at the end of November each year the anniversary of their departure from Egypt, what they claim to be persecution and political harassment, the seizure of their property, the prayers, the tragedies, the sorrow and the expulsion of them from Egypt, Under the slogans of freedom, nobility, moral values, and ask Fatima Naout and her followers: If politics recognizes moral values and nobility, and what about the crimes of the Jews in Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria ?!
Nah, nothing antisemitic about this.
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Submission by Colonel Richard Kemp on behalf of the High Level Military Group to The UN Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 violence at the Gaza border. December 2018 Full Report PDF
The Arab nations must prove that the Palestinians are a priority by supporting Trump’s peace plan when it is unveiled, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley told the United Nations Security Council on Monday.
She spoke at the UN’s monthly meeting on the Middle East, which often focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Throughout her two years as ambassador, Haley attempted to divert the conversation onto other regional issues such as Syria and Iran.
Tuesday’s monthly meeting was her last, before she leaves office at the end of December. Haley took the opportunity to speak about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Trump Peace plan and the UN’s “biased obsession” with Israel.
Israel has always wanted peace with its neighbors and demonstrated that it wants peace, “but it does not want to make peace at any price and it shouldn’t.”
The Palestinians also do not need to accept a peace deal at any price, she said.
“Both sides would benefit greatly from a peace agreement, but the Palestinians would benefit more and the Israelis would risk more.”
It is with this backdrop in mind, that the Trump Administration has crafted its plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, she said.
Haley explained that she had read the peace plan, which brings new elements to the discussion. It takes advantage of new technology and recognizes that realities on the ground have changed, she said.
It has been axiomatic for the Palestinian narrative that as a result of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, the Palestinian Arab refugees were forcibly expelled by Israeli forces from their towns and villages.
Despite the fact that the 1948 war was caused by the invasion by five Arab armies into the nascent State of Israel, the emerging Palestinian narrative put the blame squarely upon the Israeli side.
That is why the recent words of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, at the PLO Consultative Council on December 9, 2018, are so significant.
Looking back historically, Abbas declared: "Everyone started to speak in our name, in our absence. Therefore we could do nothing. And you recall, if you remember, that in 1948, when the 'Nakba,' or catastrophe, took place, we weren't a party to it. We were taken out, and we were told, 'after a week we will return you.'"
Moreover, in March 1976, Abbas told Falastin El-Thawra, published in Beirut, that the Arab armies forced the Palestinians to emigrate and to leave their homeland.
Of course there were cases in which Palestinians left as a by-product of the war. But as Israel historian Benny Morris argued in Ha'aretz on July 29, 2017, Israel had no "expulsion policy" in 1948.
One of the last speakers to address the Jewish New Media Summit 2 weeks ago was Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He spoke on the topic of "Israel and the Media: Challenges and Opportunities."
Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesman for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs
Image cropped from video
The New Media
Nahshon noted that there are between 250 and 300 foreign journalists posted in Israel on a permanent basis, even while the nature of media in the 21st century is changing. "Classical" media is in a battle with social media, and losing its importance.
This change impacts on how the Foreign Ministry now does business. As Nahshon puts it:
“Talking to journalists is one thing, but conducting public diplomacy on social media is something totally different”
In this new environment, there is a change in the way that Israel is being perceived. Though we tend to think that the image of Israel in the world is not necessarily positive, Nahshon believes that actually, the reality is a little bit different -- it depends on where and how you look.
Israel's New Image
He noted that in major parts of the world, Israel is actually perceived in a positive way. The key is that there are people who look at Israel not only through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but in a larger way. This is especially true in areas such as Latin America, Africa, India, China, and Eastern Europe.
The Foreign Ministry conducts public opinion polls regularly, asking people in those areas what comes to mind when they hear the name Israel, and they usually give positive responses, such as:
o Water management o Desalinization o Agriculture o Security o High tech o Medicine o Literature and art
Nahshon's point, about changing the prism through which people see Israel, from one of conflict to one of Israel's achievements, was suggested 10 years ago.
Aharoni said the ministry has conducted market research over the past few years that showed “Israel is viewed solely through the narrow prism of the Arab-Israeli conflict… Israel’s personality is 90 per cent dominated by conflict-related images and some religious connotations,” he said. “Those of us who know the brand intimately are disturbed by the divergence of brand and the perception.”
...aspects of Israel are worthy of promotion, including its culture and arts; its accomplishments on environmental matters such as water desalination, solar energy and clean technology; its high-tech successes and achievements in higher education; and its involvement in international aid, he added. [emphasis added]
Apparently, the branding effort has been a success.
The Remaining Challenge
According to Nahshon, the biggest challenge facing Israel is in Western Europe and some of the media outlets in the North American continent. Just because Israel has a relatively positive image in Africa and Latin America does not mean it can ignore the negative media in those areas, where Israel is viewed mostly in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This view of Israel persists there, despite the best efforts to explain that Israel is more than just that conflict, and that conflict is not at the heart of the existence of Israel.
The reason some do see the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict as the heart of what Israel is about is because the foreign media assigned to Israel tends to report mostly on the issue of the conflict. They see the issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the ones the editor will want to publish and that the public will want to see.
There remains a lot of work to be done to change that perception. Changing this perception of the media is something that Matti Friedman addressed when he spoke at the Summit.
He said it couldn't be done.
Nahshon says he explains to foreign journalists that there is more to see in Israel - not in an effort to hide the conflict, but to show there is more to Israel.
But the journalists are not interested. There seems to be a very rigid mind-set among journalists that the context has to be the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that solving it will bring peace. As if the responsibility for tensions is on Israel’s shoulders, and if only Israel would do x or y, things would be wonderful.
On the contrary, solving the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis will do nothing more than solve the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.
Israel's Success in the Arab World
In parallel to its efforts in other parts of the world, the Foreign Ministry is working with social media in the Arab world and keeping track of the perceptions of Israel in the Arab world and in Iran.
In the last few years, this perception is becoming increasingly positive.
The Foreign Ministry does polls in the Arab world via international companies and there is a changing perception whose beginnings can be traced back to the Arab spring.
This change in perception can also be tied to the advent of smartphones, which Nahshon describes as a big instrument for change because they enable the free flow of information.
As he puts it: if you are a young Arab person “no one can tell you lies about Israel anymore because you can check it personally."
(This may be a bit too optimistic, seeing how there is nothing to stop the free flow of lies -- as we regularly see on Facebook and Twitter.)
Israel's Foreign Ministry invests a lot of time, effort and energy on developing contacts with the Arab world via social media and has millions of followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The idea is to reach young people, without telling them what to think or what to do.
According to Nahshon:
“We have abandoned any concept of propaganda...a long time ago”
Instead, the goal is to present the Israeli reality in all of its complexity, but also all of its beauty. He says the results are extremely convincing and extremely positive and that people are happy to receive Israeli videos and posts on Facebook. They understand that Israel is not only not the problem in the Middle East, but Israel is part of the solution.
This change in perception is the basis of the recent major diplomatic developments:
o Netanyahu visiting Oman o Gradual normalization with the Gulf states o Possible changes we may see with Saudi Arabia
When the president of Chad visited Israel, he did not visit because he suddenly became a Zionist. Rather, he understands that Israel is able to provide the means to help his own country, with expertise in the area of agriculture, water management, and security.
That is why Arab countries want closer ties with Israel.
But also, the Arab Street is no longer brainwashed against Israel -- because, going back to his earlier point, the Arab leaders understand that brainwashing is no longer a viable option: they can no longer tell their people lies, because they can see the truth for themselves.
According to Nahshon, we are just at the beginning of a revolution, a major change.
Nahshon certainly paints an optimistic picture, even while admitting the problems that remain. Judging by developments in the relationship between Israel and the Gulf states, it is hard to deny that there is something to what he says.
Yet it is hard not to see social media as a two-edged sword. If it can be used as a tool to enhance Israel's image in the world, it can be -- and has been -- used as a weapon to damage that image as well.
The New Media still presents challenges as well as opportunities.
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Two notable videos were released by MEMRI recently.
In this one, a NYC "mufti" says, in English, that Muslims shouldn't be politically correct: violent Jihad is the main message of the Quran, Jews have earned Allah's wrath, and "Trying to take Jihad from the Quran and the Sunnah is [like] trying to take sweetness out of honey."
This one tells Palestinians to attack Jews, because being killed by a Jew is worth double being killed by other infidels.
The mujahideen have two advantages. The first advantage is that they are [operating] in a blessed land of ribat, and the second advantage is that they are waging Jihad against Jews. The Prophet Muhammad informed us that a martyr killed by the People of the Book is equal to two martyrs. In other words, his reward is equal to that of two martyrs. This does not apply to martyrs killed fighting other infidels. "The People of the Book" are the Jews. In addition, Allah tells us that He cursed [the Jews], and that He was angry with them and turned them into apes and pigs. Allah hates and curses [such] people, and He loves people who confront the falsehood of those He hates just as much.
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Walid Joumblatt, president of the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon, tweeted this image that came from a Haaretz article showing an Israeli artist's depiction of Palestinians superimposed over a "map of Palestine." Joumblatt added a caption, "Palestine will remain."
If you look closer at the artwork, though, you see that it shows a decidedly Jewish perspective on the Land of Israel. Judea and Samaria are noted; Shechem is on the map without using the name Nablus as it is currently referred to, current "settlements" of Bet El (Bethel) and Shiloh are listed, there is no "east Jerusalem."
This "pro-Palestinian" tweet proves that Jews are the indigenous people of the region, having been in the area far longer than any Muslims.
Joumblatt's caption was incomplete - it should have said "Palestine will remain the Jewish homeland forever."
(h/t Yoel)
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There are conflicting reports about what happened in Birzeit University on Monday, but apparently the Palestinian police tried to arrest two (presumably Hamas) students, who escaped. This was followed by clashes between students who support Fatah and those that support Hamas.
The entire university will be closed on Tuesday.
I still haven't seen this story in English, many hours after it broke. Because why would anyone be interested in a Palestinian university being closed when Israel cannot be blamed, and the UN cannot issue a condemnation?
Here's some of the fun:
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The first time I see Mosab Hassan Yousef, I’m looking around for the bodyguards.
This is the eldest son of one of the co-founders of the Hamas terror group; his father has been in and out of Israeli jails for decades. And Mosab “betrayed” him and the Islamist, Israel-loathing cause: While his father’s Hamas did and does its best to kill all of us land-stealing infidels and occupiers, Mosab spent about a decade working as a Shin Bet agent to keep us alive, notably at the height of the Second Intifada suicide-bomber onslaught — as his father’s right-hand man, security chief and most trusted confidant, passing on any scrap of information and intuition to help Israel in the battle against terror.
So, yes, we might be thousands of miles away, in other-worldly, mellow south Florida, but I’m assuming Hamas hasn’t forgotten the score it has to settle, and that Mosab is protected accordingly.
Instead, I see a man in a baseball cap, wearing sunglasses and heavily bearded, walking toward me from the hotel elevators, conspicuously alone. “You don’t have security?” I ask him in surprise.
“Who’s going to pay for it?” he fires back.
Later, he’ll give me a fuller answer. He’ll point out that Hamas doesn’t have worldwide tentacles. He’ll explain that Hamas has no great interest in bringing his name back into the headlines by trying to kill him and thus reminding the world of the humiliation it suffered when it turned out that its West Bank chief’s eldest son was working for the Zionist enemy. He’ll muse that we can all die anytime, anyway; that death is nothing to be scared of; that nobody knows what death is about; that, sure, he’ll jump like anybody else if he’s startled by a loud noise or something, but that he’s certainly not living in fear.
He’ll tell me lots of things over the next five days during a surreal series of public talks and non-public conversations, against the distant background of Hamas’s latest wave of terror attacks back home, that I’d never have expected to hear from the “Son of Hamas,” as he called his autobiography.
But he starts by taking me to Whole Foods Market.
“The staggering short speech Mosab Hassan Yousef delivered to the UN Human Rights Council last year, on behalf of the NGO UN Watch, as fellow delegates spun in horror at the sound of a Palestinian voice defying the Israel-bashing consensus.” https://t.co/QDYeiUXifh@davidhorovitzhttps://t.co/qldr5BKMmL
The Left’s identity politics are becoming curiouser and curiouser for Jews.
On the one hand, prominent leftists like Marc Lamont Hill, Tamika Mallory, and Linda Sarsour have no problem blowing on anti-Jewish dog whistles. On the other hand, some of their hard left comrades, like Representative-elect Alexandra Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) and New York state Senator-elect Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn) are going out of their way to embrace their Jewish roots — whether real or imagined.
How can we explain these seemingly opposed phenomena? After all, these activists share the belief at the core of identity politics that people are defined by what they are, as opposed to what they do. And all of them oppose the Jewish state because the identity politics commissars have determined that Israel is irredeemably deplorable, and the vast majority of Jews are also deplorable because they support Israel.
So how can they embrace hatred of Zionist Jews and Israel, and publicize their Jewishness at the same time? What gives?
The answer is that their embrace of their Jewishness and their rejection of Jews and Israel are two sides of the same anti-Jewish coin.
The antisemitism of the likes of Mallory and Sarsour and Hill and their colleagues isn’t hard to discern, even when they deny it.
Consider Hill. On November 29, Hill gave a speech at the UN where he effectively endorsed Palestinian terrorism against Israel and called for Israel to be annihilated.
To this end, Hill used two well understood euphemisms. He called for Israel’s annihilation by ending his speech by stating the Palestine Liberation Organization’s slogan for Israel’s destruction, “Free Palestine from the river to the sea.” That is, the establishment of Palestine on all the land Israel is located on – from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Hill endorsed Palestinian terrorism against Israelis when he said, “We must promote non-violence at every opportunity, but cannot endorse narrow politics that shames Palestinians for resisting.”
Israel’s tourism minister reportedly says vacation rental website Airbnb has decided not to enact rules which would have removed listings from the settlements.
The statement, carried by several Hebrew media outlets, comes after Tourism Minister Yariv Levin held talks with Airbnb management in Jerusalem earlier Monday.
“Airbnb has informed us that its decision not to list homes in the West Bank will not be enacted,” Levin says in a statement.
He calls it an “important step in the right direction.”
Carly Pildis, a political organizer and advocacy professional who writes for Tablet, tweeted this last week:
Here is my hot take on American Jews and assimilation. My generation is broke. We are struggling to make it month to month. This is a big part of what’s driving lack of engagement. We are exhausted from working multiple jobs. Create affordable informal spaces that recognize this.
When Israelis talk about assimilation they often fail to understand the high cost of entry to living the Jewish life of our dreams. Access to Judaism is not free in the Diaspora. It is expensive, inconvenient and not always available to us.
We must talk about the economic realities American Jewish families are facing when we talk assimilation and identity. Otherwise we will not be successful in creating a vibrant Jewish future.
This is probably too important a topic to tackle on Twitter, but here was my response:
Maybe I'm not in on the pulse of the larger young US Jewish community, but this does sound more like lack of commitment rather than lack of money, @CarlyPildis.
My mother in law a"h just passed away. She didn't have a good Jewish education growing up in Missouri but she happily, without complaint, drove 100 miles a day to bring her kids to Hebrew school before selling their dream house to be walking distance to the school.
Of course money is an issue, but that can be addressed - if someone actually cares about the issue.
Chabad is all over, and they offer free Shabbat meals to anyone who asks.
Online, you can join any Jewish community of any level of observance you want.
Meetups are easy to organize and can be free.
"Partners in Torah" let you find someone to study Jewish topics for free.
How hard it is to look at the website of a local synagogue and see what programs they offer that you can attend?
How hard is it nowadays to start your own Facebook group and find like-minded Jews to discuss anything under the sun? If people are serious, online would become IRL.
Not to generalize, but if seeing the latest movie or play is a higher priority for American Jews than study or teaching their kids about the religion, then we are in sad shape.
I'm not only talking Orthodoxy, either. Plenty of Reform Jews are committed to Judaism - I might disagree with their practice but I admire their commitment.
Back in college I used to study Talmud with a woman preparing to become a Reform rabbi!
Americans now spend 11 hours a day on screen time. Please don't tell me that all your Jewish friends don't have any time to prioritize Judaism over Twitter and TV - or that most cannot afford HBO and Netflix.
Are you telling me your friends can't figure out how to do that?
If Judaism is less important than Game of Thrones, time and exhaustion isn't the problem.
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I had an interesting experience recently that gave me direct
exposure to many of the dynamics you’ve read about on this site regarding the
behavior of anti-Israel activists on college campuses and the reaction they
generate.
Without naming names or places, I was asked to present “the
other side” at a college-level class in response to a student’s previous two-day
class-time harangue directed against the Jewish state.
Apparently, students in this psych class were given the opportunity
to lead class discussion on one of the themes of the course, which gave one
person the opportunity to present on “discrimination” with you-know-who
presented as the Apartheid-level discriminator (with intersectionality-laden
accusations against the US thrown in for good measure). Since the teacher was out at a conference for
the period this student presented, as well as the following class, this gave
our local advocate the chance to spend two days inveighing against Israel.
The experience was disconcerting enough for one student that
she reached out for help and advice and, long-and-short, this led to me coming
to class to present an alternative point of view.
Presenting “the other side” implies that responding to
someone else’s allegations was what was expected, although an alternative would
have been to spend the class period telling the truth about Israel’s enemies as
aggressively as the original presenter shared her lies. But taking into account the audience (in this
case, older undergrads and graduate students at a prestigious university), I
thought it better to actually provide them a lesson in social psychology with
the war against Israel used as an example of toxic behavior that can infect
entire societies (including Israel’s enemies).
Now I did include a number of important truths in the
discussion, including humanizing both sides in the conflict while also pointing
out facts that confound “the narrative,” such as the Palestinian alliance with
Hitler in World War II, the support the British Empire provided Israel’s foes –
including splitting Jordan off from “Palestine” and leading Jordanian troops in
1948 – and the expulsion of Jews from the Arab world. Each one of these facts was unknown to the
students in the room, which allowed me to challenge the credibility of the
original presenter without attacking anyone directly.
Such behavior was not a two-way street, however. For almost from the start the student who had
been given the floor previously began to insert more of her accusations into the
discussion, in the form of “innocent” questions. But when I responded sternly, but politely,
that such questions could wait until the end of my talk (the same rules she
insisted on when she had the floor) and did not let her dominate Q&A at the
expense of her classmates, she resorted to the old fallback of getting upset
and breaking into tears over the fact that any side other than hers was allowed
in her presence.
This tactic is called “Argumentation from
Outrage” and is an old staple of BDS “dialog,” although in this age
of “coddling,” it has been used to increasing effect to shut down debate
through what has been termed “crybullying.”
One thing that became apparently pretty quickly is how
discombobulated Israel’s accusers become when they don’t have complete control
of the microphone. It may just be that
this particular person was not an effective partisan, at least with regard to
challenging someone who knew what they were talking about and was ready to
stand his ground. But it may also
represent the sort of atrophying of argumentation skill among those who insist
that no dialog can take place with anyone not ready to agree with everything
they say in advance.
Did my presentation sway anyone? Hard to tell.
While I was surprised how little these older college students knew about
the Middle East beyond what they were told in this class, I remembered someone
once pointing out how little many pro-Israel advocates know about other hotspots
(how much do you really know about the situation in Burma, for example?), which
suggested we should approach educating others on topics of importance to us
with humility.
I’d like to think that exposure to truth presented
respectfully, coupled with watching the rude behavior of a classmate who fell
apart when she could not dominate the discussion to spread her false narratives
got them thinking that maybe the world was not as black and white as they’d
been told.
Time will tell…
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PLO Negotiator Saeb Erekat denounced Australia's recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel's capital, stating that "East Jerusalem, under international law, is an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territory."
Since we had worked together on the 1995 Oslo Interim Agreement, I responded on Twitter: Saeb - you're not a lawyer. There's no violation of international law in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. You seem to confuse international law with UN resolutions which are not international law.
Permit me to remind you and your colleagues of some basic facts and truths: A Palestinian state does not exist because it cannot fulfill the accepted international law criteria for statehood.
The fact that the PLO is committed by the Oslo Accords to negotiate with Israel on the issue of the permanent status of the territories is indicative of the fact that permanent status has not yet been agreed upon, and thus there can be no Palestinian state.
Basing their claim to statehood on a 2012 non-binding General Assembly resolution is totally flawed, manipulative, and misleading. The General Assembly is not empowered to establish states.
Since the PLO is not a state, it therefore cannot be party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is specifically open only to states. The fact that the Palestinians politically manipulated the UN and ICCÂ into viewing them as a state is legally flawed and has yet to be reviewed juridically.
Rather than going to such great efforts to manipulate and abuse the international community, and trying to bypass the negotiating process, the Palestinians need to restore their credibility as a viable negotiating partner and return to that process immediately.
Consider, for example, what PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat, who describes himself as the "chief Palestinian negotiator," had to say about the Israeli authorities' pursuit of the terrorists. Erekat, in a bizarre statement, claimed that the Israeli "intrusion into Ramallah was carried out with the backing of US President Donald Trump." Erekat, too, called on the international community to hold Israel accountable for its "crimes" and to provide international protection for the Palestinians.
What is strange about Erekat's statement is that he is suggesting that Israel needed permission from Trump to send its troops into Ramallah to catch the terrorists who murdered three people. What is also strange is that Erekat believes that the Israeli attempt to capture terrorists is a "crime" for which Israel should be held accountable in the global arena.
Yet, the bizarre PA statements continue. Take the remark made by Osama Qawassmeh, a senior Fatah official and spokesmen, who claimed that the Israeli military operation in Ramallah was actually aimed against Abbas himself. For Qawassmeh, the Israeli army "stormed" Ramallah because of Abbas's rejection of Trump's yet-to-be-announced plan for peace in the Middle East. As if that were not enough, the Fatah official went on to argue that the Israeli army's attempt to catch the terrorists was also linked to Abbas's opposition to a recent US resolution at the UN General Assembly that condemns Hamas for repeatedly firing rockets at Israel and inciting violence.
This absurd charge reflects the twisted logic of Abbas and his representatives in Ramallah. For them, the real problem is not the shooting of a pregnant woman or the killing of two soldiers. Instead, the Palestinian leaders, including Abbas, are pointing an accusatory finger at Israel for having the audacity to send its soldiers to capture Palestinian terrorists and prevent additional attacks against Israeli citizens. Needless to say, the Israeli soldiers who entered Ramallah never went close to Abbas's office or home and certainly had no intention of targeting him or any of his officials. In fact, not a single Palestinian Authority or Fatah official was arrested or harmed by the Israeli troops.
According to the Israeli media, during his meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Brussels last Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked for the U.S. to impose an economic embargo on Lebanon.
Pompeo reportedly rejected Netanyahu’s request.
The meeting between the two men took place on the eve of Israel’s initiation of Operation Northern Shield last Tuesday. The operation is a military effort geared towards sealing Hezbollah’s offensive subterranean attack tunnels. It follows Israel’s stunning revelation that it had discovered the locations of Hezbollah’s attack tunnels, perhaps Hezbollah’s most secret undertaking.
According to Netanyahu, Hezbollah launched its offensive tunnel project in 2014. The existence of the tunnel program was known to almost no one in the organization.
Hezbollah’s tunnels traverse the border between Lebanon and Israel. Hezbollah reportedly intended to have the tunnels serve as a means to invade Israeli territory rapidly and undetected. It is the declared goal of Hezbollah to conquer northern Israel in its next war against the Jewish state.
The Trump administration’s rejection of Israel’s request to impose economic sanctions on Lebanon signals that it supports Israel’s efforts to neutralize the threat that Hezbollah poses, with its powerful army and massive arsenal of short and long range missiles. But — like the Bush and Obama administrations before it — it rejects Israel’s interpretation of the relations between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government and armed forces.
The disparity between the U.S. and Israeli positions on the nature of Hezbollah’s relationship with the Lebanese government and Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) emerged during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. At that time, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded that Israel not attack Lebanese government targets. This despite the government’s open support for Hezbollah and the LAF’s assistance to Hezbollah during the war, particularly through the provision of targeting data for Hezbollah missile crews.
According to the 1883 book Egypt, Palestine, and Phoenicia: A Visit to Sacred Lands, by Félix Bovet, throughout the 19th century Palestine was not really under the real authority of the Ottoman Empire, but with some exceptions the towns acted independently.
So how did the Palestinian Arabs act when they had a decent measure of autonomy?
Not at all like a people. In fact, they acted the opposite of how a people would act - they only fought each other and identified with their tribes and towns, not at all as Palestinians.
The Turkish Government is not absolutely without power in Palestine, but it is without authority. Its power extends as far as the range of a pistol-shot or the reach of a bayonet. It has not that sort of ascendency which, everywhere else, and even in other Ottoman provinces, adds to the real power of a government, and makes it respected or feared even in the absence of its agents. The pacha is obeyed when he is present; they send to him from Damascus, to stay with him during the Easter festivities, a reinforcement of 800 soldiers, to enable him to protect the pilgrims, and to save him from the recriminations of the French and Russian consuls. While he keeps his troops, order reigns in Jerusalem, and even, to a certain extent, in the immediate neighbourhood of the city; but when the 800 soldiers have returned to Damascus, the pacha can no longer answer for anything.
In a word, though the Turks are, it is true, one of the powers that rule in Palestine, there are many others by the side of it. Each tribe preserves a sort of independence, and carries on its affairs on its own account; there are whole villages which pay taxes, not to the pacha, but to some Bedouin emir, and there is many a district of Palestine in which the representative of the Porte could not adventure himself without as much certainty of being robbed as any chance comer. During my stay in Palestine, notwithstanding the presence at that time of the Turkish soldiers, the Arab tribes were fighting with each other at Hebron, and some caravans of pilgrims returning to Jaffa were robbed at a few hours' distance from Jerusalem.....
We, with our customs, can scarcely imagine such a state of things. It seems to us as if a society could not exist in a condition of complete anarchy, and that the inhabitants of Palestine would, in a short time, have either destroyed each other, or else submitted themselves to some one tyrant more powerful than the rest. This conclusion would be logical, if we were speaking of a country as thickly inhabited as the European states, and in which the necessities of existence were of a nature less simple than they are in the East. But this condition of things, which, besides, differs but slightly from that which has prevailed over almost the whole of Europe during some part of the middle ages, is not new in Palestine. This country finds itself once more in very much the same condition as in the time of Abraham. We do not see there, in that distant age, any state of much extent, but only towns absolutely independent of each other, each with its king or scheikh, entering into alliances or carrying on war with each other, according to the circumstances of the moment. Then, as now, between the towns belonging to the different tribes, other nomad tribes pitched their tents on the plains and on the sides of the hills, wandering from north to south, with their huge flocks, and no other possessions under the sun, but a few wells dug by their fathers and some caves in which to bury their chiefs ;— possessions often attacked, occasions of contention, of mutual accommodation, and of wars. ....The East never grows old; institutions and empires come into existence and fall into ruins, but manners and customs are unchangeable. The race of Abraham is of a vigorous fibre; Israel, it is well known, never bent its stiff neck; || the iron sceptre of Rome broke, without subduing, it; dispersed among the nations, like a ball driven far by the wind, it mingled among them without ever losing its distinctness. As to Ishmael, I doubt whether those who have observed his race could define better than is already done in Genesis the indocile and defiant character which it has retained even to our own day, and to which indeed it owes the persistence of its nationality. "Ishmael will be a wild man, his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him."*
At least in 1883, there was clearly no "Palestinian people." It was just a bunch of towns and villages who would fight or ally as necessary, with no sense whatsoever of national unity or pride. And certainly none of these people self-identified as "Palestinian."
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At History News Network and the Stanford University Press blog, Michael R. Fischbach - professor of history at Randolph-Macon College, and author of Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color - says that CNN's firing of Marc Lamont Hill is part of a "long history" of Jews targeting uppity blacks:
When noted black intellectual Marc Lamont Hill spoke at the UN last month about justice for the Palestinian people, critics like those in the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) were quick to condemn him.
....Yet some of the most insightful criticisms of the way Hill was treated pointed out the controversy’s racial context: Hill’s was just the most recent case in a long history of blacks being publicly excoriated for “daring” to speak out on the great issues of the day in ways that defy white conventions. This was particularly true when discussing the Arab-Israeli conflict in a manner that challenges the carefully circumscribed discourse enforced by strongly pro-Israeli groups like the ADL.
This has happened before. Indeed, next year, 2019, marks the fortieth anniversary of a similar brouhaha that erupted when another black man very much in the public eye dared to challenge the rigidly pro-Israeli understanding of Americans’ approach to the Middle East: the Andrew Young Affair.
In August 1979, President Jimmy Carter forced the American ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, to resign following revelations that Young had secretly met once with an official from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in violation of an American pledge to Israel not to deal with the PLO in any way. Young, the highest-ranking black official in the Carter administration, had met the official to advance American policy aims but nonetheless was fired after facing a barrage of hostile public criticism, notably by American Jewish organizations.
When it was soon revealed that the American ambassador to Austria, a Jewish industrialist from Cleveland named Milton Wolf, also had met several times with PLO officials earlier that year but without similar repercussions, African-Americans exploded in fury and rallied behind Young.
So since Jewish groups have managed to get two blacks fired in 40 years, clearly there is a pattern of racism here.
Obviously.
Oh, Fischbach didn't directly call Jews racist. No, of course not. The headline just says that he's "raising this question."
So I'm not going to directly call him an antisemite. No, of course not. He just likes to single out Jewish organizations for using their inordinate power to destroy the careers of uppity black personalities that they don't like.
Just since I started this blog, we Elders have also managed to get rid of Octavia Nasr, Jim Clancy and Diana Magnay over their bias - all from CNN.
Well, none of them are black, but who cares? Fischbach is a history professor, and if he sees a pattern of two incidents over four decades, then he clearly sees things that no one else can.
Hold on - one other black CNN commentator, Roland Martin, was suspended and ultimately let go - for encouraging people to bash gays. Obviously GLAAD, which demanded his suspension, is racist, right?
No. In today's universe, saying that gays are racist is obviously wrong. But saying that Jews are racist on little more proof is perfectly acceptable.
Why History News Network allowed this bigotry to be published is another story. The story doesn't come anywhere close to proving Fischbach's theory that Jews are racist, but it sure indicates that Michael R. Fischbach is a different type of bigot.
Fischbach, by complete coincidence, has spoken at a pro-BDS conference and features a poster in his office that shares Marc Lamont Hill's desire for the destruction of the Jewish state, and no other state on the planet.
(h/t phil d.)
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Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
