Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 20, 2018

A Twitter conversation with Americans for Peace Now @PeaceNowUS

From last Friday:

Seriously? Does Hamas shoot rockets to Ashkelon because of settlers? Were bus bombs in Tel Aviv because of settlers?

Are you really effing blaming the pregnant woman for being shot because she chooses to live in Judea?

You are despicable with your excusing terror.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 14, 2018

So, as promised, here's the exchange. Americans for Peace Now claim that I'm the one who is ignoring everything the other says and that I "got mad."

Needless to say, APN didn't post their withering takedown of this supposed "right wing extremist" on their blog. (I have little problem with a two state solution - if Israel had an actual peace partner that would allow Jews to live there, to buy land and to freely visit their holy places without fear. The fact that the idea of such a solution is so absurd is the real problem, not Israeli intransigence.)

The post I linked to from 2010 is an important one. Peace Now's main argument is that "We advocate a negotiated Isr-Pal peace agreement, w/ 1-to-1 land swaps, that would leave most Israelis where they live now in the West Bank. Israel would then have complete moral high ground and full int'l support when responding to terrorism."

But does Israel really have full international support for Gaza operations after its full withdrawal? Does it really have full international support to respond to Hezbollah after its full withdrawal from Lebanon? It is an absurd fallacy, and Peace Now's entire existence is based on this fallacy of "IF Israel does what we want, THEN things will be peachy keen."

No one can argue that the "if/then" formulation is anything but wishful thinking. But it is the entire basis for Peace Now's existence!

It never worked before, but groups like Peace Now insist, without any evidence, that it will work - next time. And if it doesn't, well, it is because Israel didn't do enough.

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 IMEMC News:

Palestinian teacher Rana Ziada, from al-Zahra School, in Gaza, has been chosen among the 50 shortlisted for the world’s best teacher prize.

Ziada is competing for the best teacher, in the US $1 million Global Teacher Prize, which is carried out by Varkey Foundation.

Here are pictures from her Facebook page that romanticize violence:

She also recently featured this picture of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar:

I didn't know that teachers who teach their kids violence were praiseworthy.

UPDATE: On her nomination page, it says, "In 2004 Rana started work as a teacher in the East Gaza area of Palestine, an area near the dividing line with the occupied territories."

Meaning that the Global Teacher Prize considers all of Israel to be "occupied territories." (And, interestingly, since this text was clearly submitted by the teacher herself, she doesn't consider Gaza to be occupied!)

(h/t Mat2580)

__________________________

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.

12/19 Links Pt2: Ben Shapiro: The Left Lends Cover to Anti-Semitism; Everyone is Misreporting the Texas BDS Lawsuit; How Historians Will See Canary Mission Years From Now

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: The Left Lends Cover to Anti-Semitism

And Walker isn’t alone. In fact, anti-Semitism is often accepted by prominent black intellectuals on the left. Marc Lamont Hill trafficked in anti-Semitism for years before losing his CNN contributorship over preaching a Hamas slogan before the United Nations. Cornel West suggested that Israel was born because “Jews jumped out of the burning buildings of Europe in a Jew-hating Europe led by a gangster named Hitler, right? They landed on the backs of some Arabs in the 1940s.” Toni Morrison explained that “a lot of black people . . . believe that Jews in this country, by and large, have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people.” James Baldwin suggested the same thing, explaining, “The Jew profits from his status in America, and he must expect Negroes to distrust him for it. The Jew does not realize that the credential he offers, the fact that he has been despised and slaughtered, does not increase the Negro’s understanding. It increases the Negro’s rage.”

And these are the intellectuals. A bevy of black “community leaders” have been similarly anti-Semitic, and survived and thrived. Rabid anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan was still welcome at Aretha Franklin’s funeral, where he hobnobbed with Bill Clinton. Al Sharpton, whose anti-Semitic record includes helping to incite a riot against Jews in Crown Heights in 1991 and an arson in 1995, has a show on MSNBC, and Democratic presidential candidates come to pay him homage. And while we tend to downplay it now, it’s rather telling that Barack Obama sat in the pews of anti-Semitic pastor Jeremiah Wright for two decades.

It’s a mark of the Left’s intersectional priorities that anti-Semitism from minority groups has been so widely ignored. It is a simple fact that anti-Semitism in the United States does not break down evenly by race. An Anti-Defamation League survey in 2016 found that 23 percent of black Americans had “anti-Semitic propensities,” as measured by an eleven-factor survey, compared with 10 percent of white Americans. That disproportion has been the norm since the ADL began the survey in 2007. Similar disproportionate anti-Semitism exists in the Hispanic community as well. But none of that draws any media coverage. As the New York Times admitted in its survey of anti-Semitic violence in New York City, “bias stemming from longstanding ethnic tensions in the city presents complexities that many liberals have chosen simply to ignore.”

Ignoring anti-Semitism depending on the perpetrator’s ethnicity or background is simply lending cover to anti-Semitism. Alice Walker should be just as toxic for her anti-Semitism as David Duke is for his. After all, they push the same message when it comes to Jews. Failing to acknowledge as much lends credence to the anti-Semitic idea that Jews have somehow earned their hatred from certain groups.

Media Once Again Wakes From Coma, Discovers Liberal Icon Is Anti-Semite

And yet just in the past few months, Walker has been interviewed by NPR, MSNBC (twice), BBC Radio, and now the Times with scarce a mention of her unconventional views. In the rare moments Walker's kooky beliefs have received media coverage, they are inevitably downplayed. Take the Associated Press article on the latest fiasco, obtusely headlined "Author Alice Walker criticized for support of writer's book."

Or take this April interview with the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, in which Walker said the following:
"David is actually brilliant, and I think people should listen more to what he has to say," she said. Reptilians? "What about it? My parents always said that the white people around us were like snakes, because of the way they treated us."

AJC‘s headline, amazingly, was "Author Alice Walker on women, men, and the fate of the planet."

It'd be easy to chalk this all up as a blind spot for Walker, an iconic African-American author. But it mirrors the recent muted reaction to an exhaustively-researched Tablet piece about the Women's March. The magazine confirmed that the feminist organization has been teeming with anti-Semitism from the outset, with national leaders berating their Jewish peers, repeating conspiracy theories about Jews, and outsourcing security to the militant wing of the Nation of Islam.

However, a Lexis Nexis search finds the Tablet piece got minimal coverage in the national media outside of Jewish and conservative outlets. The Washington Post mentioned the controversy in an aside in a piece about the Women's March rolling out a new platform. It received a short blurb in The Guardian‘s live-blog. Only New York Magazine asked "What the Hell Is Going on With the Women’s March?", and even that piece was more about a PR firm's inept attempt to deflect from the controversy.

Aaaaand, that's it. Three mentions.

Time and time again, the media fails at due diligence and ignores the warning signs of anti-semitism in those they agree with. Often they end up with egg on their face, as when CNN ignored complaints about contributor Marc Lamont Hill taking smiling photos with Louis Farrakhan, only to have to fire him a month later for a second anti-Semitism controversy.

The New York Times learned the same lesson yesterday. Ignore hate all you like, but don't act surprised when you end up publishing it.

Everyone is Misreporting the Texas BDS Lawsuit

Speech pathologist Bahia Amawi, who works as a contractor for the Pflugerville Independent School District in Texas, has filed a lawsuit claiming that an anti-boycott-of-Israel pledge she was asked to sign violates her First Amendment right to freedom of speech. This was reported first by Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept, who set the tone for the media coverage by claiming, in his typical exaggerated and dishonest fashion, that the lawsuit arose after Amawi "refused to sign an oath vowing that she 'does not' and 'will not' engage in a boycott of Israel or 'otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict economic harm' on that foreign nation." (Greenwald's headline is even more misleading, and demagogic in a way that undoubtedly appeals to anti-Semites, claiming that Ms. Amawi was required to sign a "pro-Israel oath.")

There are a lot of things I could say about the law and the lawsuit, but I have some time constraints, so I will just explain why Greenwald's take, repeated ingenuously by reporters apparently too lazy to look up the actual text of the underlying law and what Ms. Amawi was asked to sign, is wrong.

Texas has a law banning state entities from contracting with businesses, including sole proprietorships, that boycott Israel. As a result, just like local governments require contractors to certify that they adhere to many other state laws, such as anti-discrimination laws and financial propriety laws, they also must certify, in compliance with state law, that their business does not boycott Israel.

Note that, consistent with the language and obvious intent of the law (see the text here, it's even titled "PROHIBITION ON CONTRACTS WITH COMPANIES BOYCOTTING ISRAEL"), the school district certification applies to the business, "it," not the individual "she." Contrary to what I've been reading all over the internet, Ms. Amawi is not being asked to pledge that she, in her personal capacity, will not privately boycott Israel, much less that, e.g., she will not advocate for boycotting Israel or otherwise refrain from criticizing Israel.

No, a Texas woman did NOT lose her job for refusing to sign “pro-Israel pledge”

Here’s the headline of a Dec. 18th article at The Independent:

The claim that a Texas woman was forced to sign a “pro-Israel pledge” is repeated in the opening paragraph of the article.

A speech pathologist at a Texas elementary school has sued after allegedly being forced out of her contract job at an elementary school for refusing to sign a mandatory pro-Israel pledge.

First, it’s telling that the article is based on a report at the Intercept by Glenn Greenwald, a far-left activist who never misses an opportunity to smear Israel and its supporters, often by using antisemitic tropes and dog whistles. In fact, the Indy’s characterization of the requirement as a “pro-Israel pledge” was clearly inspired by language used by Greenwald in his report.