From Pharaoh to space lasers: Blaming Jews is the original conspiracy theory

Yesterday, social media (including myself) had a field day with the revelation that in 2018, Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had come up with a theory that California wildfires might have been started by public utility  PG&E, which worked with the Rothschild family, using a satellite that redirects the sun's rays to Earth, in order to clear room for a high-speed rail project that the governor wanted.

Invoking the Rothschilds is of course one of the favorite memes of antisemites, using that banking family as a proxy for supposed Jewish control of the world. 

This is not the only antisemitic conspiracy theory that Taylor Greene has espoused. Also in 2018, she shared a video that claimed the "Great Replacement" theory, quoting a Holocaust denier that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation” to replace white Europeans with Muslim immigrants.  

She has also claimed that no plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. While she did not blame Jews for this theory, many 9/11 conspiracy theories end up pointing back to Jews as the perpetrators. There are at least six antisemitic 9/11 conspiracy theories, from the Mossad to "Israeli art students" to "4000 Jews told to stay home on 9/11." 

Conspiracy theorists and antisemitism go hand in hand. Not every conspiracy theory invokes Jews, but Jews pop up very often in these theories. 

It didn't start with the grand theory of the Elders of Zion secretly pulling the strings of the world. It didn't start with the blood libel or the accusation that Jews poison the wells causing the Black Death in the 14th century.

Jews have been blamed for conspiracy theories from the very first moment of becoming a people.

After all, look at Exodus 1:8-11:

 A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.”

Jews saved Egypt from famine. They were model citizens. But Pharaoh created a conspiracy theory that they were a fifth column to destroy Egypt. 

This is literally the first thing that scripture says about the Jewish people.

It is not the only conspiracy theory in the Hebrew Scripture involving Jews: Esther 3:8:

Haman then said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws; and it is not in Your Majesty’s interest to tolerate them."

Sad to say, no amount of education is going to eradicate this sort of antisemitism. All we can do is expose it and expose the people who are behind it. 

Like Pharaoh and Haman, the haters won't change. 

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Palestinians quietly request 1000 vaccines. Israel quietly delivers. World keeps screaming at Israel.

Once again, the Palestinian Authority made a formal request for a batch of 1000 COVID-19 vaccines for health care workers.

Once again, Israel is providing them.

According to Ma'an quoting Walla, the delivery of the vaccines came after Palestinian officials requested from COGAT, the IDF liaison with the territories, an urgent transfer of the vaccines.

This is at least the third such transfer of vaccines. The first was earlier this month to the PA and the second was last week to Gaza.

Israel has also been coordinating with the Palestinians on importing larger quantities of vaccine from Russia.

Literally every time Palestinians ask for medical help from Israel, including COVID-19 vaccines, Israel has responded positively.

Yet 99% of the media coverage of the topic implies, or outright claims, that Israel is refusing to cooperate with them and withholding vaccines.

Perhaps this is why there is so little trust in the media nowadays.

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01/28 Links Pt2: Understanding B’tselem’s “Apartheid” Libel; Tu B’Shvat: The Festival that Proves the Jewish People’s Connection to the Land of Israel; California Is Cleansing Jews From History

From Ian:

Understanding B’tselem’s “Apartheid” Libel

If you’re looking for examples of spin in B’tselem’s latest anti-Israel document, in which the organization slings around the inflammatory terms “apartheid” and “Jewish supremacy,” there are plenty.

Consider, as one small example, the report’s charge that Israel has built “hundreds of communities for Jewish citizens – yet not a single one for Palestinian citizens.” The sentence was written to sound as damning as possible, which increases its shock value, but also left the authors in the uncomfortable position of having to immediately rebut their own falsehood. “The exception,” B’tselem admits in the very next sentence, “is a handful of towns and villages built to concentrate the Bedouin population.” Image of Bedouin town

The town of Ararat an-Naqab, which Israel built for the Bedouin community.

Which is to say, Israel built “not a single” community for Palestinians, except for all the ones it did build: Rahat, Kuseife, Shaqib al-Salam, Ar’arat an-Naqab, Lakiya, Tel as-Sabi, Hura, Tirabin al-Sana, Mulada, Abu Krinat, Bir Hadaj, Qasr al-Sir, Makhul, Umm Batin. It’s Orwellian newspeak: None, but many. A lie, but with the truth appended as a throwaway-line.

This is far from the worst distortion in the document. The big lie is conveyed in the report’s title, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.” But the semantic gamesmanship here is revealing. What should be straightforward, B’tselem makes a point of muddling. And so it goes throughout the report, with the result being a mess of factoids, fibs, and fraudulence meant to inflame and misinform, and which tells us more about the organization than about Israel.

The other side of the ledger – B’tselem’s comment about communities for Jews —is hardly better. It’s true that Israel has established hundreds of Jewish communities. But the reason for that isn’t nefarious, as B’tselem suggests. These towns and cities were needed to house immigrants numbering in the millions — Holocaust survivors, Middle Eastern Jews escaping persecution in Arab countries, Jews who wanted to live near their holy sites — absorbed by a country serving as a haven for Jews everywhere. It isn’t supremacy. It’s sanctuary.

Tu B’Shvat: The Festival that Proves the Jewish People’s Connection to the Land of Israel

The Jewish calendar has many holidays. Some celebrate the survival of the Jewish people over various enemies, some are solemnly spiritual in nature, but others exist, too. One such festival, Tu B’Shvat (sometimes written Tu BiShvat), is perhaps the greatest proof of the Jewish people’s deep connection with the Holy Land.

What Is Tu B’Shvat?
Tu B’Shvat is a Jewish holiday heralding the blossoming of trees and the beginning of the coming cycle of fruit. The name actually derives directly from the Hebrew date of the holiday, which occurs on the fifteenth day of Sh’vat. “Tu” stands for the Hebrew letters Tet and Vav, which have numerical values of 9 and 6 respectively, which add up to 15. Hence Tu B’Shvat literally means the “fifteenth [day of the month] of Sh’vat.”

Where Does Tu B’Shvat Come From?
Tu B’Shvat’s roots can be traced all the way back to the Jewish Talmud. While Rosh Hashanah, the main Jewish new year festival, is familiar to many people, there are actually a number of new year dates in the Jewish tradition. The Talmud records a debate with various opinions, leading to the establishment of four new years:
- The first of Nisan as the “new year for kings and festivals”;
- The first of Elul as the “new year for the tithe of cattle”;
- The first of Tishrei as the “new year for years,” including the calculation of the calendar and sabbatical years;
- The fifteenth of Sh’vat as the “new year for trees”.

Many centuries ago, a variety of different taxation methods were employed. One of the most common was called tithing. Tithing required separating percentages of produce, and handing them over to the local authorities. And for farmed in ancient Israel, Tu B’Shvat marked the date when calculations of the forthcoming fruit crop would begin.

The Talmud records this date as being the point in time when trees in the Land of Israel are said to awaken from their winter hibernation and start the process of renewal, blooming and bearing new fruit. While the date can naturally only be approximate, the month of Sh’vat was selected because “most of the yearly rainfall has passed” (Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashana, 14a), causing the trees to renew and their fruit ripen.

So before it was ever considered a festival, Tu B’Shvat was actually a formal date which was primarily significant for its function in governance. Over the centuries, however, the day has been transformed into an opportunity to connect with the Land of Israel.

California Is Cleansing Jews From History

As a result of the outpouring of criticism of the first ESMC draft, in August 2019, Superintendent Thurmond ordered a revision. A second draft was completed in August 2020 and was immediately criticized for simply moving objectionable material to the appendices and footnotes. In the current, third draft, released in December, some of the most offensive material was actually moved back in. For example, an historical resource was added with the following description of prewar Zionism: “the Jews have filled the air with their cries and lamentations in an effort to raise funds and American Jews, as is well known, are the richest in the world.”

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of AMCHA Initiative, which fights campus anti-Semitism, points out that all 13 founding members of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association (CESA) are BDS activists. CESA, the national home base for critical studies, passed a resolution to boycott all Israeli academic institutions in 2014, and the group’s past four biennial meetings included multiple sessions demonizing Israel. “There are a couple thousand academic boycotters of Israel in the country,” she said, “and the largest percentage of them come from ethnic studies. Anti-Zionism is built into the theory and the discipline of ethnic studies, which demonizes Israel as an apartheid settler-colonialist Nazi state.”

But of even greater concern to Jews, she believes, is the singling out of Jewish students as enjoying racial privilege. “I don’t see any way that Jewish students can sit in an ethnic studies class and not feel they have a double target on their backs,” she said, fearing hatred and violence will ensue. First, because they’re Jewish, and considered white and part of the 1%, the purported villains of the teaching, and then through an assumed association with Israel. “There’s a state requirement that you have to sit through a class that says to Jewish students they have extraordinary racial privilege and yet forbids them from speaking because ‘this course is not about you?’ If you don’t accept it, you’re publicly shamed and ostracized—you can’t even speak up and say, ‘I’m not sure if I think that all white people are racists.’”

To placate critics, the third version has added lessons about Korean Americans, Armenian Americans, and Sikhs. Two lessons have been offered about Jews. One, following crude CRT dogma, teaches that Mizrahi Jews coming to the United States from Arab lands were mistreated by “white” Ashkenazim. The other suggests that Jews of European descent have white privilege.

The Jewish Journal points out that Jews are the only group in the curriculum for whom the term “privilege” is used. And this privilege is not earned by way of talent, or educational and professional attainment, but rather trickery. The ESMC, echoing Nazi propaganda about Jews as impostors and appropriators hiding in plain sight, points out that American Jews often change their names (“this practice of name-changing continues to the present day”) to change their rank in the social hierarchy.

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Cartoon of the Day: Linkage

Continuing my series of recaptioning cartoons...

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God Fails To Get J Street's Approval Before Promising Land To Jacob (PreOccupied Territory)

ur weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Beth El, January 28 - A group of left-wing American lobbyists voiced dismay today following a divine commitment to an Israelite patriarch to grant the Holy Land to his descendants, objecting that the Almighty made that promise without consulting them.

J-Street Director Jeremy Ben-Ami convened a press conference Thursday to protest his organization's exclusion from the event, which took place overnight as Jacob fled to the land of Haran, northeast of the Holy Land, to seek both refuge from a vengeful older brother and to find a wife from among his mother's clan. Ben-Ami insisted that American Jewry in general, but especially his organization, must have a say in what happens from "the River of Egypt to the River Euphrates."

"It's not just a slap in the face to the largest Diaspora community," charged Ben-Ami, "but an irresponsible move. We would have warned God that making such a dangerous promise is a one-sided measure that establishes facts on the ground prejudicing the outcome of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and weakens Palestinian moderates by undermining the assumption that non-violence and negotiations will achieve anything. It plays into the hands of the extremists on both sides. But the Lord chose not to seek our input, and that is regrettable."

Ben-Ami expressed hope that despite the divine misstep, the Biden administration and international organizations will work to put things right. "We'll always have the UN to support a more balanced - which is to say, anti-Zionist - approach," he acknowledged. "We, of course, have to dress up our uncanny agreement with anti-Zionist positions as 'pro-Israel, pro-peace,' but they don't have to resort to such mental and rhetorical gymnastics. Right now we're conducting consultations on the feasibility of bringing a case against God to the International Criminal Court for violating I'm not sure what yet. Probably something about the Geneva Conventions or that ever-shifting phenomenon called 'International Law.' We'll see."

Ben-Ami dismissed the notion that the vast majority of American Jews, and the mainstream organizations that represent them, endorse the divine promise. "If they knew better, as we do, they would think otherwise," he insisted. "We and our allies represent the true face of American Jewry; ignore all those other organizations representing only 95%. We represent right-thinking American Jews, which is to say, American Jews who think as we do, and agree with rabid antisemites on a striking number of issues."

He also suggested J-Street will not oppose efforts to boycott God over the move.

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01/28 Links Pt1: David Singer: Biden declares Trump peace plan dead and buried; Vaccine found 92% effective in Israel, in first controlled result outside trials

From Ian:

David Singer: Biden declares Trump peace plan dead and buried

A Washington Post article in August 2020 summed up Biden and the Democrats position on Trump’s version of a two-state solution:

“The Democrats, led by presidential candidate Joe Biden, are determined to change course should they come to power. There are open discussions within the caucus about conditioning the billions in aid given to Israel on the basis of its actions. Biden and virtually every Democrat in Congress were vocal in their opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s now-stalled plans to start annexing parts of the West Bank.”

Any attempt by Israel to extend its sovereignty unilaterally into any part of Judea and Samaria (aka 'West Bank') – incorrectly termed “annexation” – will assuredly be opposed by President Biden.

Trump’s Vision acknowledged the historic and biblical right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in the 'West Bank' – recognized and legally authorized by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine - and preserved under article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

A jointly-appointed US-Israel Mapping Committee - headed by Friedman – had failed – after 11 months - to produce a detailed subdivision of the 'West Bank' embracing the concept of a two-state solution proposed by Trump - before Friedman’s retirement as Ambassador.

Closing the Embassy’s second Twitter page signals such a map will never be released under President Biden’s administration.

Biden has effectively declared Trump’s peace plan dead and buried.

Ambassador Dan Shapiro Comes Home to Joe Biden’s Washington

Shapiro’s party often appeared highly factionalized during much of his post-administration life in Israel, especially on the Middle East. Jake Sullivan and Ben Rhodes might have co-founded National Security Action, an anti-Trump foreign policy-focused political organization packed with former Obama administration officials, in which Shapiro sat on the advisory council. But they represent different poles of Democratic Party opinion on the region, and perhaps on the exercise of American power in general. Whether the party would embrace Shapiro’s brand of left-leaning pragmatism, or the more ideological stance embodied in Sen. Bernie Sanders, would depend on the outcome of the Democratic presidential primary, in which Shapiro was once again an early backer of the eventual winner.

By the time Biden was elected president, Shapiro had been discussing the Middle East with Tony Blinken and the former vice president’s foreign policy team for well over a year. Blinken and Shapiro are reportedly close and have known each other for over two decades, ever since they served together on the NSC at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Blinken was later deputy national security adviser when Shapiro was on the NSC during Obama’s first term. Their career paths mirror one another’s—Blinken is not a professional diplomat but a former NSC hand who advised Biden while serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s staff in the early 2000s; similarly, Shapiro was a deputy chief of staff for a Democratic senator who went straight to a senior NSC position after being on the right side of a closely contested presidential primary.

During the 2020 race Shapiro “participated in strategy calls about policy, and about the Jewish and pro-Israel community,” according to Marc Stanley, a Dallas-based Democratic Party activist and fundraiser. Shapiro phone-banked and appeared in multiple Zoom events a week during the decisive phase of the race—in terms of Jewish outreach, the only figure within the campaign who seemed to outrank Shapiro was Doug Emhoff, the husband of vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris. At one virtual event during the stretch run of the race, Matt Nosanchuk, a former Obama liaison to the Jewish community, marveled that Shapiro was “available 24/6” for anything campaign-related, despite the time difference between the United States and Israel. At another event, attended by over 1,000 Jewish communal leaders, Shapiro was the speaker who handed things off to Biden himself, who then repeatedly stated that he would be leaning on Shapiro for help once he won the presidency.

“I don’t represent the Biden campaign,” Shapiro cautioned during a June 2020 conference call for Americans for Peace Now. Yet he spoke to Jewish audiences with a unique credibility about what his candidate was likely to do once elected. Biden, Shapiro said during that event, has a “deep, I would say very personal and emotional connection to Israel ... He calls himself a Zionist. There are not very many non-Jewish politicians who openly embrace that word.”

Whether the capital that Shapiro has amassed with both Israeli and American Jewish audiences and decision-makers will be put toward a historic peace breakthrough with the Palestinians, or will simply cushion a series of conflicts and disappointments that will push Democrats further from Israel and Israel further from the United States, could end up depending on a single issue alone, one which Shapiro successfully insulated himself from during his ambassadorship: Iran.

Few people are in a position to know whether and in what fashion President Biden will try to reenter the Iran Nuclear Deal, the centerpiece of Obama’s second-term foreign policy, as he has repeatedly and publicly pledged to do. Until the new administration’s policy clarifies, no one knows whether President Biden will unilaterally lift sanctions and allow the Iranians to expand their fast-accelerating nuclear weapons program, or instead attempt to utilize the leverage the Trump administration has established over the Islamic Republic to create a breakthrough of a kind that both Iranians and Israelis might applaud. Shapiro is the only figure in the Biden Middle East policy world whom Israelis have known and lived beside for nearly a decade—when the time comes for attempting the near-impossible diplomatic balancing act of moving toward a new understanding with Tehran, Israelis and Americans might get to find out what Shapiro’s years in the Middle East have truly amounted to.

The Tikvah Podcast: Emmanuel Navon on Jewish Diplomacy from Abraham to Abba Eban

For much of its history, the Jewish people hasn’t had a state. The Israel described in the Hebrew Bible had emissaries and military power, and the modern state of Israel has a foreign ministry and an advanced military, yet there’s nearly 2,000 years of stateless history in between. Throughout that time, however, Jewish diplomacy has been constant. Even without a state, the Jewish people has integrated, separated, argued, and made amends with the other nations of the world. And, as a new book shows, there’s much to be learned from that long experience today, in the state of Israel and out.

On this week’s podcast, Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver speaks with Emmanuel Navon, the author of The Star and the Scepter: A Diplomatic History of Israel. Navon puts Israel’s diplomatic history in the context of the entire history of the Jews, beginning with the Hebrew Bible. In doing so, he and Silver try to dig up some eternal truths about the nature of the Jewish people.

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Salon justifies comparing Israel to Nazi Germany

Salon has an article attacking the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, written by Doug Neiss, a Jewish retired business writer and editor.

The entire article is off the wall, but let's concentrate on the part where he claims that comparing Israel to Nazis is not antisemitic - in fact, it is justified.

It is clear to pretty much anyone why such a comparison is not just odious but antisemitic. The people who equate Israel to Nazi Germany are not trying to illuminate the conflict - they are delighting in the lie that Jews are acting like their murderers. They would never compare Syrians or the Taliban to Nazis: only Israel, and that is only because Israel is the Jewish state. It is a deliberate assault on the Jewish psyche. It is meant only to cause pain to Jews. It is by definition antisemitic. 

It is bad enough that Neiss is oblivious to the obvious. Yet Neiss is worse - he is so proudly ignorant of both Israel and Nazi Germany that he actually believes that such a comparison is justified.

Because Jews were the principal victims of Hitler's regime — although not the only ones — Israel seeks, in our name, exemption from any and all criticism that likens Israeli actions or policies to those of the Nazis, regardless of any actual similarities. 

Excuse my French, but what the fuck are the similarities? Is Israel gassing millions of Palestinians to death? Is it herding them into slave labor camps? Is it putting them in cattle cars? Is it calling for the Final Solution to the Palestinians? Because when you compare Israel to Nazi Germany, you are saying that Israel is guilty of planned, industrialized genocide. 

This is like saying there can only ever be one genocide, the Holocaust, and that no other mass murder inflicted by one group of people on another can claim that distinction. Yet if the Holocaust has had value as a cautionary example, it is because it has helped sensitize the world to genocide and ethnic cleansing. 

This is thoroughly offensive on two levels.

One is that even Holocaust scholars will make careful comparisons between the Holocaust and other genocides. The Armenian genocide, the genocide in Rwanda, the ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs in China today - they all have echoes from Nazi Germany. No one calls such comparisons antisemitic.

The other issue is that Neiss is indeed saying that Israel is guilty of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Otherwise his argument makes no sense.  Good to know that Salon publishes writings from people who are ignorant of both current events and basic history. 

In essence, Israel claims a right to persecute the Palestinian people free from any censure or criticism, based on the historical identity of Jews as a persecuted people, whose persecution culminated in the enormous historical crime of the Holocaust. Jews are the eternal victims, the Persecuted, and no other people can claim a share in the title, especially not in terms of a claim made against the Jewish state itself. 

Neiss is now, literally, echoing neo-Nazis in his zeal to compare Israel to Nazis.

Here is  an article is from the neo-Nazi Vanguard News. See if you can find any rhetorical daylight between Neiss and neo-Nazis.

Both Neiss and Vanguard say that Jews regard themselves as "eternal victims" who use that status to shield themselves from the consequences of their heinous crimes. 

Salon found a Jew to call Jews Nazis by using Nazi rhetoric. 

You can't make this stuff up.

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Palestinian Authority tries to incite Muslims, claiming Israel demolished a mosque THAT NEVER EXISTED

From the official Palestinian Authority Wafa news agency:

Acting Secretary of Endowments and Religious Affairs Husam Abu al-Rub condemned that the Israeli occupation forces demolished the Umm Qisa mosque at dawn [Wednesday] in the Badawi al-Zuwaidin and Basitah community of al-Ka'abneh Village Council and Umm al-Daraj in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron .

Abu al-Rub stated that the demolition of mosques clearly indicates the barbarism that the racist Israeli incitement machine has exhibited towards Islamic and Christian holy sites in Palestine, adding that this crime is a blatant attack on Muslims and their feelings .

Abu al-Rub stressed that there are no longer safe places of worship in light of the attacks and crimes that the Israeli occupation and the herds of settlers perform, saying that this racist assault is added to the list of Israeli crimes against holy sites .

Abu al-Rub called on international Islamic institutions such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Islamic Conference, and the Arab and Islamic countries to intervene and work to stop and end these attacks.

This is being reported widely in Arabic media.

Only one problem: There was never a mosque.

Israel demolished an illegal structure  in Area C that was under construction, which the Palestinians claim was going to be a mosque. A notice warning of the demolition was given ten days ago. 

There is no photo of this "mosque." The photos of the area after the demolition show an amount of rubble that is not close to what a building would have. 

Even if you consider the area occupied, Israel has the obligation under international law to uphold zoning laws and not allow anyone (including Jews) to throw up a building wherever they want.

Palestinians know very well the propaganda value of saying that Israel is demolishing schools and mosques, so they build or claim to build these structures in strategic locations to claim land in Area C. 

So this minister gets headlines falsely claiming Israel is demolishing mosques, and he is even trying to instigate a religious war by appealing to the larger Muslim world to "intervene." 

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Idiots at Jewish Voice for Peace think Zionists want Facebook to ban the word "Zionist"

I am honestly not sure if this is pure stupidity or a bizarre effort to gain media attention.

Jewish Voice for Peace has launched a campaign and website to pressure Facebook not to implement a policy that there is very little evidence it was contemplating.

Supposedly, in November, a Facebook official reached out to...someone...asking for a conversation to see if the word "Zionist" is sometimes used as a pejorative term for Jews.

 I'm reaching out to you about a topic which I was hoping to have a conversation with you on. As you know, in the context of our hate speech  policy, we do not allow content that attacks people based on a protected characteristic (e.g., race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation). Under the same policy, we also remove violating attacks where proxies or codewords are used by way of substitute for a protected characteristic. 

In that context, we are looking at the question of how we should interpret attacks on "Zionists" to determine whether the term is used as a proxy for attacking Jewish or Israeli people. The term brings with it much history and various meanings, and we are looking to increase our understanding of how it is used by people on our platform. 

We wanted to ask whether you would be willing to have a conversation with us about "Zionist" in the context of our policies. We are happy to provide you with more information when we speak. 

Any Zionist knows that the word Zionist is sometimes used as an insult. It all depends on context. Calling someone a "F*ing Zionist" is just as offensive as calling someone a "F*ing queer," but it doesn't mean that the words "Zionist" or "queer" are offensive. 

Facebook merely wanted to clarify in what ways it might be able to tell when the word is used as a codeword for Jews, something that we have seen happen countless times. 

I have no idea whether Facebook can tell the difference between when the word is used as a pejorative and when it is a compliment. I frankly don't trust Facebook to understand anything at all about offensive speech. 

But JVP is hallucinating.

JVP is pretending that this letter is part of an Israeli government campaign to silence Palestinians.

What’s happening at Facebook?

Right now, Facebook is reaching out to stakeholders to ask if critical conversations that use the term “Zionist” fall within the rubric of hate speech as per Facebook’s Community Standards. Basically, Facebook is assessing if “Zionist” is being used as a proxy for “Jewish people or Israelis” in attacks on its platform. 

This move is part of a concerning pattern of the Israeli government and its supporters pressuring Facebook and other social media platforms to expand their hate speech policies to include speech critical of Israel and Zionism.

Facebook says it will make a decision as soon as the end of February 2021.

Why is this happening?

The Israeli government and its supporters falsely claim that equating “Zionist” with “Jew” or “Jewish” will help fight antisemitism. In reality, they hope that that by mischaracterizing critical use of the term “Zionists” as anti-Jewish, they can avoid accountability for its policies and actions that violate Palestinian human rights.

Attempts to stifle conversations about Zionist political ideology and Zionist policies carried out by state actors — both of which have real implications for Palestinian and Israeli people, as well as Jewish and Palestinian people around the world — are part of an emerging pattern of political censorship by the Israeli government and some of its supporters.

I'm a Zionist. Israelis are, by and large, Zionists. The Israeli government is Zionist. The idea that we want to ban the word "Zionist" from social media is perhaps the dumbest thing I've heard this week. Does that mean that the Zionist Organization of America would be banned from Facebook? 

(The link that they chose to pretend that Zionists are trying to ban the word "Zionist" points to a truly bizarre Salon article that claims that calling Israelis Nazis is not antisemitic - but that Zionists are the real antisemites. Yet even that crazed article doesn't claim that Israel is trying to ban the word "Zionist.")

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How Israel Could Get a Stable Government (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

The challenges facing the state today are enormous. Although the vaccination project has been a success, the more-contagious mutations are spreading among groups that haven’t been vaccinated, and there are worries that new strains for which the vaccines aren’t as effective may develop. The health-care system is past peak capacity now. The economic impact on some segments of the population has been exceedingly painful already, and the costs for the vaccines and lost productivity will ultimately be felt throughout the economy.

At the same time, the IDF is asking for more money, in part to prepare for the possibility that it will be necessary to neutralize the Iranian nuclear capability by military means. That also would involve conflict with Hezbollah and Iranian militias in Syria and possibly Iraq, as well as involvement from Hamas. There still is no 2021 budget, and since the Knesset has been dissolved in preparation for the fourth election in two years, there is no possibility of passing one until there is a new government. The election is scheduled for 23 March, and then there is the interminable process of forming a coalition after that – assuming that a coalition can be formed.

The “unity” government that has just fallen apart was very expensive, since it was put together by bribing various politicians to join it with ministerial portfolios; since there weren’t enough to go around, a bunch of new ministries were created, for a total of 35. In addition, it was ineffectual: since the main partners were PM Binyamin Netanyahu’s bloc and a bloc made up of anti-Netanyahu politicians (with no other ideology besides a desire to depose him), they were permanently at each other’s throats.

In recent years Netanyahu has become obsessed with protecting himself from the corruption indictments against him. As a result, he has been unable to stand up to the Haredi parties that hold up his coalition. Their constituents seem to believe that they are Rabbi Akiva and the government which is trying to enforce the rules to contain the epidemic is the Roman Empire. Their acting as an autonomous group within the state has always been a problem, but with the advent of Covid it has become much more serious. Recently they have engaged in violent riots against the police.

Bibi has always insisted on managing everything himself. Ministers often find that their authority is very limited, limited to precisely what Bibi wants them to do. Their individual initiatives are stymied, something very frustrating to people like Naftali Bennett, who have ideas and energy but are kept on a tight leash. Bibi is tremendously competent and able to do many things at once, but this sometimes results in particular areas being neglected. And lately this problem, too, has become more serious.

Everything the government has done to control the epidemic except for the vaccination program has been poorly planned, poorly timed, and poorly executed. I judge that this is because the PM wants to control everything, but lacks the power – and perhaps also the focus – to exert that control.

Finally, the temporary vacation from American pressure that Israel enjoyed under the Trump Administration has come to an end. Biden’s promise to return to the Iran deal means that sanctions on Iran will be removed and (almost certainly) limitations will be placed on Israel’s freedom to act against Iranian bases in Syria and the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah. Israeli officials believe this makes conflict with Iran much more likely.

In the Palestinian arena, too, Biden and his Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, have reiterated their belief in the necessity of a sovereign Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. They have said that they will restart payments to UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency that exists to nurture the growth of a population of stateless refugee descendants – now more than 5 million – that is a hothouse of terrorism, and which the Palestinians and their supporters demand be allowed to live in Israel. Biden also intends to reopen the PLO mission in Washington.

The administration hasn’t done much that affects Israel yet, and I would like to be optimistic about the future. But some of his appointments are troubling. For example, his new Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the NSC, is former Obama Administration staffer Maher Bitar, a Palestinian activist who worked for UNRWA and supports BDS. Bitar will “coordinate intelligence between the White House and the intelligence community, receiving material from intelligence agencies, informing the intelligence community of White House policy, and deciding who gets access to secret information.”

All this requires a government that can pay attention to multiple issues at the same time, a coalition that can work together, and a PM that is not on trial for corruption.
How can we get one? The last three elections have been almost deadlocked. Twice no governing coalition could be formed, and the last election produced the Frankensteinian “unity” government that was almost worse than no government at all (I have discussed the technical issues in our electoral system here).

Based on recent polls, if we leave out the non-Zionist Arab parties, who will neither be invited into a coalition nor wish to be, and the Haredi parties, then neither the right- nor the left-wing blocs will be able to form a government. The Right, which has a majority of the Jewish vote, is split between pro- and anti-Netanyahu factions. With the Haredi parties, Netanyahu is very close to 61 seats – precisely the situation we were in the last time. But if he succeeds, the government will be weak, dependent on the Haredim, and will continue to be a one-man show. The Left has no chance, even with the support of the Arab parties from outside the coalition. Of course there are all kinds of imaginative solutions involving partners that would normally not be together that I haven’t mentioned. But they are unlikely.

I would like to see a fundamental restructuring of our system, but that is not going to happen under a caretaker government in the next two months. But there is one thing that could radically change the picture, and it is something that should happen in any event:

Binyamin Netanyahu should voluntarily step down as head of the Likud. This could unify the Right, and enable a solid majority right-wing coalition – without the Haredi parties, whose ability to bring down the government at will has made it possible for the Haredim to act like a state within a state.

This does not solve all of our problems. It doesn’t fix the imbalance of power between the legal establishment and the elected Knesset, for example. But it does at least make it possible to have a reasonably lean government with a unified ideological perspective that will be able to act on the problems at hand.

Since I’m dreaming, there is one other thing I would like: as part of the deal, all charges against Netanyahu – some of which are legitimate, and some fraudulent – should be dropped, in view of his service to the state.

There are only a few weeks to go before the election. Can our politicians, starting with Bibi, put aside their plans for personal glory and their thoughts of revenge, and agree to do the right thing for the Jewish state? I’m hoping they can.

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01/27 Links Pt2: Benjamin Netanyahu: ‘Never Again’ Is More Than a Slogan; The Courage of William Cooper; How people deny the Holocaust without denying it

From Ian:

Benjamin Netanyahu: Benjamin Netanyahu: ‘Never Again’ Is More Than a Slogan

Some thought that after the horrors of Auschwitz and Treblinka, humanity would learn its lesson once and for all, disavow antisemitism, and throw the destructive hatred onto the ash heap of history where it belonged. However, they were sorely mistaken. The gangrene of antisemitism continues to spread in the 21st century. We see expressions of it at respected universities in North America, in Islamic madrasas in south Asia, and among the European elite.

Antisemitism is present in the developed Western world as well as the developing East. It is the official policy of Iran, which day after day declares arrogantly: Our goal is to kill another six million Jews and destroy Israel. Indeed, no vaccine has been found for the virus of antisemitism. Some would say that it will never go away, because things don’t change.

But I can tell you what has changed: we, the Jewish people, have changed. During the Holocaust we had no home, no state, and no salvation, and were forced to beg others to defend us; but that is no longer the case.

Today we are free, established in our homeland, and the superior power in our independent country. As prime minister of the proud, strong State of Israel, a state that was reborn after the Holocaust, a state that was built on the ashes of destruction, a state that gave survivors a home, a state in which the Jewish people is living the fulfilment of a dream, I swear that we will never forget the tragic past, and will never again be helpless against those who seek to kill us.

“Never again” is not merely a slogan. It is our policy, our mission, and our task. We will execute it, and with God’s help ensure that the Jewish people live forever.

WATCH: Prime Minister @BorisJohnson reflects on his conversations with Holocaust survivor Rene Salt & British serviceman Ian Forsyth, who liberated Bergen-Belsen.

"Their courage to share their testimonies must inspire us all never to forget the Holocaust"#HolocaustMemorialDay pic.twitter.com/vd5TdnKYOe

— CFoI (@CFoI) January 27, 2021

Jpost Editorial: Holocaust Remembrance Day: We remember

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said Monday that because the pandemic had led to rising antisemitism, “The world must remain vigilant against this persistent form of racism and religious persecution.”

Speaking at an online event, Guterres said although antisemitism found its most horrific expression in the Holocaust, it did not end there and continues to blight the world today.

“It is sad, but not surprising, that the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered yet another eruption of this poisonous ideology. We can never let down our guard,” he said. “In Europe, the United States and elsewhere, white supremacists are organizing and recruiting across borders, flaunting the symbols and tropes of the Nazis and their murderous ambitions.”

The rise in hatred and antisemitism, Guterres said, must be seen in the context of a global attack on truth, and as the number of Holocaust survivors diminishes every year. Guterres concluded, “We must make ever greater efforts to elevate the truth and ensure that it lives on.” We applaud the secretary-general for his remarks, and support his call for coordinated global action to counter the growth and spread of neo-Nazism, white supremacy and antisemitism, and to fight propaganda and disinformation.

“History shows that those who undermine truth ultimately undermine themselves,” the UN chief noted. “The only way out of the COVID-19 pandemic is through science and fact-based analysis. The production of vaccines in record time is testimony to the effectiveness of this approach. There is no vaccine for antisemitism and xenophobia, but our best weapon remains the truth.”

The truth is that six million Jews – about two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population – perished during the Holocaust, 1.1 million of them at Auschwitz. Today, an estimated 400,000 survivors are still living, almost half of them in Israel. As we stand alone but together today, let us declare in unison, “We remember!”

The Courage of William Cooper

In the early 2000s, Abe Schwarz was working and living in Echuca, a small town 115 miles north of Melbourne, Australia, where he was tasked with organizing a conference to discuss the prevention of youth suicide in the area. After this conference, an Aboriginal elder from the Yorta Yorta clan approached Schwarz to ask if he was “from the Hebrew mob.” When Schwarz confirmed that he was Jewish, the elder told him that he had “always wanted to meet someone of the mob that my mob tried to save.”

The elder then described the details of an incident that was well known among members of the Yorta Yorta Aboriginal clan, but mostly unknown to members of the Australian Jewish community.

On Dec. 6, 1938—one month after Kristallnacht—a 77-year-old Yorta Yorta Aboriginal man named William Cooper had led a delegation, along with members of the Australian Aborigines League, to the German Consulate in Melbourne to deliver a letter protesting the violence against Jewish people in Germany. The letter was refused, and Cooper and his delegation were turned away from the consulate.

This protest on behalf of European Jews was extraordinary—not just because Cooper was protesting an injustice that many countries had failed to properly address, but because Cooper himself was an oppressed Australian Aboriginal man trying to fight for his own rights, yet nonetheless felt compelled to take the time to call out the injustice against European Jews thousands of miles away.

Schwarz was intrigued. As he told Tablet recently: “The next day I called the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne and asked them for more information.”

“It took the centre some time to pull together the facts,” he said, “but they were able to verify the story through newspaper clippings in their archives which had been published on Dec. 7, 1938, the day after Cooper’s delegation was turned away from the consulate, and some prior research undertaken by members of the Jewish and Aboriginal communities.”

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All the Kings Men: The Jews in Biden’s Court (Judean Rose)

Jews are everywhere in the Biden administration. If you are Jewish, you may see this as a source of pride or shame, depending upon whether you are a Democrat or a Republican. Non-Jews, in particular antisemites, may, on the other hand, see the preponderance of Jews surrounding Biden as demonstrating his supposed affinity for Israel/Zionists, perhaps even proof that the Jews are well on their way in their quest for world domination as per the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A Turkish social media site, for example, referred to Jews as being “overrepresented in [the] Biden cabinet.” This, according to the Jerusalem Post, is “part of a rising crescendo of antisemitism and anti-Biden media coverage in Turkey.”

The Suspicious Jew

Then there are the suspicious Jews like this author, who think about what impression we are meant to form on seeing so many Jews appointed to positions of power at once. No doubt we are supposed to look at all those Jews and think: “Joe Biden cannot possibly be an antisemite. Look how many Jews are in his cabinet! Look how many Jews he has appointed to positions of power!”

This is important, because of Jewish concern over antisemitism by such malevolent far-left forces that Biden must appease, for instance The Squad. Being surrounded by so many Jews, we are meant to understand that far from being an antisemite, Biden is actually a philosemite. Furthermore, with so many Jews surrounding him, Biden must be good for the Jews and for Israel—or those Jews would not be onboard with his administration. The Jewish appointees, are themselves, proof of Joe Biden’s goodwill to the Jewish people and to Israel at large.

Suspicious Jews, however, see these intended takeaways and impressions as a smokescreen. Whenever Joe Biden does something that is bad for Israel, we will be told that on the contrary, it can’t be bad for Israel: look at all the Jews who are directly involved in helping the Biden administration form these policies. Why would Jews do something that harms their own? Ergo: any policy harmful to Israel, for instance reinstating the JCPOA, must instead be deemed as beneficial—a total inversion of the truth.

As a suspicious Jew, I also believe a closer look at the Jews populating Biden’s court is warranted. No doubt, the Jewish Biden appointees are largely progressive, as are most Jewish Americans, among them the Jews who overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden. Progressive Jews do not place Israeli security above such issues as, for instance, gun control, abortion, the LGBTQ community, climate control, and illegal immigration. Jewish progressives don’t put “Jewish” issues first. Instead they place all their most important issues—whether sanctioned by the Torah or not—under the rubric of “Tikkun Olam.” In this manner, progressive Jews make issues “Jewish.”

Jew "ish" Values

Being pro-choice or supporting illegal immigration is therefore “Jewish” because these are positions that are in synch with the sensibilities of the society that Jewish progressives inhabit. Supporting these issues makes them feel good. Supporting Israel, on the other hand, makes them feel uneasy. That’s because of the very loud voices telling them that Israel oppresses Arabs and occupies their land. They should know better, and they would if they would read beyond the news they are spoon-fed by CNN and MSNBC. Instead, however, they feel they have to work double-time to show they do not support Israeli “occupation.” They do this through initiating and supporting legislation that is harmful to Israel.

That means that while Biden is working hard to give the impression of a philosemitic, pro-Israel government, what he actually has is a cabinet and administration that will work extra hard to show they do not favor either Israel or the Jews.  They want to be seen as having the right sort of politics. This, they call “Jewish.”

One or Two Good Eggs?

I don’t know enough about the Jews in Biden’s court to tar them all with the same brush. There may be one or two good eggs in the bunch. If there are decent, honest Jews among the appointees, they may be a smokescreen for the others. 

I may not know all the Jews in Biden’s court. But I do know enough about Joe Biden, his appointees, and his intended actions, to know that so many members of the tribe in his administration is not a portent for good. This is in contradistinction to the Trump administration which had Jews aplenty, but enacted a great deal of philosemitic, pro-Israel policy. The differences are stark:

Trump starved the Iranian nuclear machine, Biden wants to feed it cash by reinstating the JCPOA.

Trump made warm peace with the Abraham Accords, Biden wants to revive the dead two-state solution and invigorate and empower the corrupt, terror-inciting Palestinian Authority.

Trump made the settlement- and sovereignty-supporting David Friedman, his ambassador to Israel. Biden renamed the ambassadorial position (though he later changed it back) from U.S. ambassador to Israel, to “U.S. Ambassador to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.” Biden did this to suggest he doesn’t accept Israel’s hegemony in the region. He did it to suggest he supports the creation of an Arab state on Jewish land.

BREAKING: Biden Admin Changes U.S. Ambassador to Israel into "U.S. Ambassador to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza" -- Day 1 policy shift signals new admin does not consider any parts of these areas as Israeli territory https://t.co/m3O6j2nO68 pic.twitter.com/lcfLqCtZuX

— Adam Kredo (@Kredo0) January 20, 2021

Trump pulled support to the corrupt UNRWA, which perpetuates the Arab refugee problem, and inculcates Arab children with violent Jew-hatred through UNRWA schools, so these children grow up with a lust for killing Jews. Biden appointed former UNRWA official and “Palestinian-American” Maher al-Bitar to be director of the NSC intelligence service.

Who exactly, are the Jews in Biden’s “court?” Here is a list of Biden appointees and nominees (in no particular order), with some yet to come (for instance, Jews are in the running for ambassador to Israel, and Robert Malley is shortlisted to be appointed special envoy to the Iran nuclear negotiations):

·         Tony Blinken, secretary of state

·         Ron Klain, chief of staff

·         Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of homeland security

·         Avrail Haines, director of national intelligence

·         Janet Yellen, treasury secretary

·         Merrick Garland, attorney general

·         David Cohen, CIA deputy director

·         Eric Lander, Office of Science and Technology policy director

·         Rachel Levine, deputy health secretary

·         Anne Neuberger, National Security Agency cybersecurity director

·         Wendy Sherman, deputy secretary of state

·         Stephanie Pollack, deputy administrator of the Federal Highway Administration

·         Jared Bernstein, Council of Economic Advisers

·         Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

·         Jeffrey Zients, COVID-19 response coordinator

·         Jennifer Klein, co-chair Council on Gender Policy

·         Jessica Rosenworcel, chair of the Federal Communications Commission

·         David Kessler, co-chair of the COVID-19 Advisory Board and head of Operation Warp Speed

·         Polly Trottenberg, deputy secretary of transportation

·         Isabel Guzman, administrator of the Small Business Administration (claims to be of Mexican, Jewish, German and possibly Chinese descent)

Special mention of those married to Jews:

·        Vice President Kamala Harris, married to Doug Emhoff

·        Samantha Power, director of United States Agency for International Development, married to Cass Sunstein

By way of offering balance, we end this column with one more special mention: that of non-Jewish Biden appointee Cecilia Rouse, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Rouse is married to Ford Morrison, son of Toni Morrison, who denounced Israel’s right to self-defense and claimed that Israel’s sole aim is the “liquidation of the Palestinian nation.” I don’t know anything at all about Rouse or her husband, but the latter’s genealogical “inheritance” does not bode well for Israel. 

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