Thousands of people took part in a mass demonstration Wednesday outside the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza and elsewhere.
It seems likely that these demonstrations were organized by UNRWA officials themselves.
The demonstrators chanted slogans emphasizing the need for UNRWA to continue its work until the "right of return" is realized.
In plain English, that means that the UN agency should continue being funded until millions of Arabs of whose ancestors lived in Palestine in 1947 can flood Israel and destroy the Jewish state.
They aren't demanding the world recognize a Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state. They are demanding the "right" to move to an enemy state in order to destroy it from within.
UNRWA, of course, is on board with that plan. They have taught generations of Palestinians that they will "return" one day and are complicit in keeping them stateless for over 70 years.
Ironically, large numbers of schoolchildren took off from their UNRWA schools and participated in the demonstrations. This was probably with UNRWA's blessing. They are being taught that protests are more important than education.
Schoolchildren in the West Bank were off school yesterday as well for the "Day of Rage" declared by the PLO.
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This is a video from the far-right Christian site TruNews, edited by Right Wing Watch:
That’s the way the Jews work, they are deceivers, they plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda.This ‘impeach Trump’ effort is a Jew coup and the American people better wake up to it really fast because this thing is moving now toward a vote in the House and then a trial in the Senate. We could have a trial before Christmas. This country could be in civil war at Christmastime. Members of the U.S. military are going to have to take a stand just like they did in the 1860s with the Civil War. They are going to have to decide: are you fighting for the North or the South?
People are going to be forced, possibly by this Christmas, to take a stand because of this Jew coup in the United States. This is a coup led by Jews to overthrow the constitutionally elected president of the United States and it’s beyond removing Donald Trump, it’s removing you and me. That’s what’s at the heart of it.
You have been taken over by a Jewish cabal. The church of Jesus Christ, you’re next. Get it through your head! They’re coming for you. There will be a purge. That’s the next thing that happens when Jews take over a country, they kill millions of Christians.
Rick Wiles, who runs TruNews, is a known nutcase who has accused Queen Elizabeth of being a satanist lizard. Donald Trump Jr. was interviewed on this show but he says it was not planned and he had no idea of their positions when a correspondent from the site asked him some questions.
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President Mahmoud Abbas gave instructions to send medical staff and food to Albania following an earthquake that hit the country earlier today.
President Abbas ordered immediate medical help to the areas and people affected by the earthquake to ease their calamity.
There is no news yet on exactly how much aid and how many people are being sent. If any.
UPDATE: I can find no news story n Arabic showing any actual aid being sent by Palestinians to Albania. Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of 25 countries sending aid, including Israel. "Palestine" is not one of them.
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Mirvis described the last four years of having Labour repeatedly minimize and deny the rampant anti-Semitism in the party and the attacks, and even death threats, Jewish party members faced for speaking out about it, with many hounded out of the party.
Illustrative: People hold up placards and Union flags as they gather for a demonstration organized by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism outside the head office of the British opposition Labour Party in central London on April 8, 2018. (AFP/Tolga Akmen)
He noted Labour’s “quibbling and prevarication” over whether to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance‘s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, finally only doing so after adding an amendment that emphasized the right to “free speech” on Israel.
And he highlighted the party being formally investigated by the UK’s anti-racism watchdog.
“And all of this while in opposition. What should we expect of them in government?” Mirvis asked. “Therefore, with the heaviest of hearts, I call upon the citizens of our great country to study what has been unfolding before our very eyes.”
Mirvis dismissed Labour’s claims that it was doing everything possible to root out anti-Semitism as a “mendacious fiction.”
“According to the Jewish Labour Movement, there are at least 130 outstanding cases before the party, some dating back years, and thousands more have been reported but remain unresolved.
“The party leadership have never understood that their failure is not just one of procedure, which can be remedied with additional staff or new processes. It is a failure to see this as a human problem rather than a political one. It is a failure of culture. It is a failure of leadership. A new poison – sanctioned from the top – has taken root in the Labour Party,” he wrote.
Mirvis said given Labour’s record, it “can no longer claim to be the party of equality and anti-racism.”
UK Chief Rabbi Slams 'Poisonous' Labour Party
Less than two weeks before the contentious upcoming election, Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis slammed the head of the Labour party, saying “Jeremy Corbyn [is] not fit for high office.” In an opinion piece written for British daily The Times, Rabbi Mirvis wrote that “the overwhelming majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety” at the possibility of a Labour victory on December 12.
The Church of England on Tuesday expressed support for the Jewish community amid worries of rising anti-Semitism, after the country’s chief rabbi took a stand against the Labour party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn ahead of next month’s general election.
A statement by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby on Tuesday warned of a “deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews.”
The statement was released hours after Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis accused Labour party chief Jeremy Corbyn of allowing the “poison” of anti-Semitism to take root in his party.
“None of us can afford to be complacent. Voicing words that commit to a stand against antisemitism requires a corresponding effort in visible action,” Welby’s statement said.
He did not mention Corbyn by name.
Welby’s statement came less than a week after the Church of England admitted in a major report that centuries of Christian anti-Semitism helped lead to the Holocaust.
Today’s front pages of British 📰, with unprecedented intervention by @chiefrabbi, over grave concerns about future of British Jewry from the ‘poison’ of #Antisemitism engulfing @UKLabour & @jeremycorbyn’s leadership.
Peter Boghossian at the Wall Street Journal writes ‘Idea Laundering’ in Academia about how academia pretty much makes things up while pretending that they are following some sort of scientific method.
I hate to publish the entire article which is behind a paywall, but it all hangs together:
You’ve almost certainly heard some of the following terms: cisgender, fat shaming, heteronormativity, intersectionality, patriarchy, rape culture and whiteness.
The reason you’ve heard them is that politically engaged academicians have been developing concepts like these for more than 30 years, and all that time they’ve been percolating. Only recently have they begun to emerge in mainstream culture. These academicians accomplish this by passing off their ideas as knowledge; that is, as if these terms describe facts about the world and social reality. And while some of these ideas may contain bits of truth, they aren’t scientific. By and large, they’re the musings of ideologues.
How did this happen? How have those working in what’s come to be called “grievance studies” managed to extend their ideas far beyond the academy, while convincing people that their jargon adds something meaningful to public discourse? Biologist Bret Weinstein, who was run out of Evergreen State College by a leftist mob in 2017, calls the process “idea laundering.”
It’s analogous to money laundering. Here’s how it works: First, various academics have strong moral impulses about something. For example, they perceive negative attitudes about obesity in society, and they want to stop people from making the obese feel bad about their condition. In other words, they convince themselves that the clinical concept of obesity (a medical term) is merely a story we tell ourselves about fat (a descriptive term); it’s not true or false—in this particular case, it’s a story that exists within a social power dynamic that unjustly ascribes authority to medical knowledge.
Second, academics who share these sentiments start a peer-reviewed periodical such as Fat Studies—an actual academic journal. They organize Fat Studies like every other academic journal, with a board of directors, a codified submission process, special editions with guest editors, a pool of credentialed “experts” to vet submissions, and so on. The journal’s founders, allies and collaborators then publish articles in Fat Studies and “grow” their journal. Soon, other academics with similar beliefs submit papers, which are accepted or rejected. Ideas and moral impulses go in, knowledge comes out. Voilà!
Eventually, after activist scholars petition university libraries to carry the journal, making it financially viable for a large publisher like Taylor & Francis, Fat Studies becomes established. Before long, there’s an extensive canon of academic work—ideas, prejudice, opinion and moral impulses—that has been laundered into “knowledge.”
They then have an answer when one asks the obvious question: “How could fat be just a narrative? There’s overwhelming medical evidence—A1Cs, the surge of type-2 diabetes, demonstrable risk factors—reliably indicating that excess fat is a health hazard. This has nothing to do with ‘stories we tell ourselves’ or ‘societal power structures,’ and instead directly corresponds to facts about the human body.”
In response, grievance scholars point to articles in the peer-reviewed journal Fat Studies: “Toward a Fat Pedagogy: A Study of Pedagogical Approaches Aimed at Challenging Obesity Discourse in Post-Secondary Education.” Not knowing any better, and seeing a veneer of scholarly rigor and scientific peer review, people reasonably assume that such articles are trustworthy sources of knowledge. (They assume this because it’s how the peer-reviewed process has traditionally worked: Academics try to disconfirm or falsify claims, as opposed to seeking support for them.) These articles tell us that obesity is but a narrative and there are other narratives, such as being healthy at every size, and there’s no reason to “privilege” one narrative over another.
It doesn’t stop there. Grievance scholars then use articles like those published in Fat Studies to credential themselves and receive promotion and tenure. They proceed—from the safety of professorships they’ll hold for life—to design courses around this literature. They test students on the material, marking answers right or wrong according to how closely they replicate the laundered ideas.
Within their academic ecosystems, grievance scholars hire new faculty members with similar moral commitments who’ve written for the same journals. Eventually, they institutionalize their ideas in the larger academic system. This process, which has been propagating laundered ideas for at least three decades, now has enough “scholarship” behind it to have a significant cultural impact.
Students leave the academy believing they know things they do not know. They bring this “knowledge” to their places of employment where, over time, laundered ideas and the terminology that accompanies them become normative—giving them even more unearned legitimacy. And this is why you’ve heard some of the terms we began with: cisgender, fat shaming, heteronormativity, intersectionality, patriarchy, rape culture, and whiteness. They’ve been laundered through the peer-reviewed literature by activist scholars, then widely taught for years, before being brought into the world.
Now, at least, you won’t mistake them for knowledge.
This is exactly the pattern done by anti-Israel academics. Someone makes up a concept like "settler colonialism" and within years it is a recognized field of study, where opinion is presented as fact and previous papers are treated as legitimate no matter how sloppy they are, as long as they agree with what the current author "feels" must be true. Ideas like "Israel is an apartheid state" or "Zionism is racism" or "violent resistance is legitimate" or "Israel engages in pinkwashing" are accepted as not only true, but proven, because of previous papers by Israel haters.Then the more adventurous academics try to extend this house of cards into new areas - if Zionism is racism, then maybe it is sexism, too! Can I define "Israeli apartheid" as a form of genocide?
Over time, just as the article notes, absurd concepts become accepted in academia, and then when the time is ripe, it starts spilling into the real world, where people who think they know something because they read some papers are free to spout their opinions in op-eds - which are eager to publish writings of "experts" as they present themselves.
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Huffington Post UK has an article critical of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis' editorial about the Labour Party's antisemitism. While the author, Em Hilton, acknowledges that this antisemitism exists, she asserts that the Tory party is worse
Hilton engages in one of those progressive tropes that sound reasonable but in fact is not true at all:
If we truly want to root out ant-Semitism [sic], we must fight Islamophobia, xenophobia and all other forms of racism along with it. ...The best way to fight anti-Semitism is through building solidarity with those who are also on the frontline of fighting racism...
It sounds like it should be true, right? Bigotry is bad no matter whether the victims are Jewish, black, Muslim or women, and it stands to reason that they should be fought the same way.
It isn't true.
People who identify as people of color generally don't look at Jews as their fellow victims. They look at Jews as their oppressors. The only coin of the realm of identity politics and grievance studies is perceived victimhood, and all victims have oppressors. In the US at least, Jews do not have the obstacles that people of color or women have.
Unlike every other victim of bigotry, Jews are hated in modern times because they are perceived to have too much power.
Fighting racism and sexism is a struggle for gaining a fair share of power; fighting antisemitism is not. It is a fight against pure, illogical, unbridled hate often disguised as a fight for fairness and equality. The two types of bigotries are not only different - they can be perceived as contradictory.
Some 30% of blacks and Hispanics in America are antisemitic. How, exactly, can racism and antisemitism be tackled together when the victims of each consider the other to be the oppressors?
"Progressive" spaces like the women's movement have their own problems with antisemitism, disguised as solidarity with Palestinians under the rubric of intersectionality, which consciously excludes Jews from its list of victims of bigotry. When a "progressive" group like Women's March excludes liberal Zionists but includes bigots from the Nation of Islam, it loses any claim to care about antisemitism.
Whether we like it or not, the tools and methods to fight antisemitism are completely different than those to fight other bigotries. And when the fight against other types of bigotry helps enable antisemitism, then the methodology being used is immoral.
When the methodology is victimhood, the implication is that every victim of bigotry has an oppressor who is immoral for doing that to them. When you look at the world through that lens, Jews - especially Zionist Jews - are always perceived to be the oppressors. As such, within the context of a grievance culture, Jews are deserving of punishment, and cannot ever be considered victims in their own right. The grievance and victimhood mentality subtly encourages antisemitism.
What is needed is an overhaul of how bigotry is fought. The yardstick cannot be victimhood, but equality. Everyone should treat everyone else with respect and judge them to the same standards as everyone else. There can no divide between victims and oppressors because the victims in one context can be oppressors in another. People need to concentrate on what they can do, not how they were wronged.
This would require a complete overhaul on how bigotry is fought. Then, and only then, can antisemitism be fought at the same time as racism, xenophobia, ageism, sexism and other bigotries.
Since the current cult of victimhood is not going away any time soon, antisemitism must be fought on a different playing field than other bigotries. No one is immune from the disease of Jew-hatred, including Jews themselves.
Claiming that antisemitism is just another bigotry ends up too often not only making Jews into the victims, but justifying it.
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Following US State Secretary Pompeo’s announcement that the US no longer views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as “inconsistent with international law,” Palestinian leaders called on their people to participate in a “Day of Rage” today and to continue Day of Rage activities to protest against the alleged “Zionist-American plots”: “The [PLO] factions… called on their activists and our people to take part in these [Day of Rage] activities, which will begin during the week in order to express our people’s opposition to all of the Zionist-American plots against the Palestinian cause.” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 25, 2019]
Fatah official Jamal Muhaisen announced that the Day of Rage activities are part of “a comprehensive program of struggle,” and promised that it will end in terror – “a comprehensive intifada”: “Fatah Movement Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen said that the day of rage is the start of a comprehensive program of struggle to deal with the American-Israeli steps, even to the point of a comprehensive intifada against the occupation’s crimes.”
To enable children to participate in the Day of Rage activities, the PA Ministry of Education closed all its schools for one hour in the middle of the day: “The [PA] Ministry of Education emphasized… that it is necessary to participate in the activities, and that studies at the schools will be stopped from 11:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. so that there will be active participation in the mass marches and the activities that will be organized against these unfair decisions.” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 26, 2019]
Fatah official Muhaisen recently expressed his concurrence that violence and terror are effective Palestinian tools and instructed Palestinians to “benefit from” the previous terror waves, as Palestinian Media Watch reported last week.
The Palestinian 'Day of Rage' in the West Bank
Palestinian rioters hurled rocks at Israeli security forces on Tuesday, in part of the “Day of Rage” protest organized by Fatah party throughout cities in the West Bank, Hebrew-language outlet Walla News reported. Protests are being held in Tulkarem, Ramallah, Hebron and Nablus, among others. No casualties were reported thus far. The protests are aimed against “unjust US resolutions, which have violated international conventions and law. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's remarks on Israeli settlements are contrary to international law,” a Fatah statement read.
The third way we know that accusing Israel of targeting Palestinian children crosses the line into antisemitism is the way in which, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it paints Israel as an evil entity that either specifically targets children, or doesn’t care if children get targeted.
Bernie Sanders’ surrogate Linda Sarsour tweeted as much recently when she said Israel has “stripped the Palestinians of their humanity to justify the indiscriminate killings including of children. Half of the population of Gaza ARE CHILDREN.”
In reality, Israel’s military goes to unprecedented levels to reduce casualties. The Israel Defense Forces emphasizes “purity of arms” and consistently works to avoid harm by distributing flyers and sending text messages to Gazans alerting them of impending airstrikes, even using non-explosive “roof-knocking” projectiles to warn residents who may not have vacated the area.
Col. Richard Kemp, national security expert and former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, has spoken at great length to this very point. So has former U.S. chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, who praised Israel’s measures to reduce civilian casualties. In the latest round of violence, these measures explain why adult males (considered by Israel to be combatants) constituted the vast majority of casualties.
So if accusations made by Patel, McCollum, Tlaib and others are so far from the truth, one has to wonder why they continue pushing this narrative. The simple answer is that such claims are modern incarnations of centuries-old blood libels, antisemitic slander that falsely accused Jews of killing Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals. Circulating throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, this formed the basis for countless anti-Jewish pogroms.
Proportionately critiquing Israel’s military actions in the interest of reducing civilian casualties and the detention of Palestinian children is completely legitimate, if not encouraged.
Israel should — and I expect will — continue to take great measures to minimize collateral damage. However, to suggest that Israel purposefully and maliciously targets innocent children is plainly antisemitic. When espoused by elected officials no less, it impedes any genuine debate about how to reduce child suffering during conflict.
I've been watching Palestinian news sources for dramatic video of today's "Day of Rage" and so far haven't seen much beyond some city marches, tire fires, slingshots and tear gas.
Here is some of what is being broadcast.
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His Palestinian Authority’s Prisoners Affairs Commission accused Israel of a "policy of deliberate and systematic clinical killings by the (Israel) Prison Services.”
No one even blinks at these absurd lies from a wannabe nation.
Since he was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2015, Abu Diak he underwent surgery to remove 83 cm of his large intestine. Afterwards he had four more surgeries, paid by Israel, to remove tumors from his intestine.
Five expensive surgeries in hospitals superior to any Abu Diak would have access to at home isn't exactly the most efficient way to kill someone with fast growing cancer.
Mahmoud Abbas and his government might be dysfunctional but they have raised the art of lying to levels rarely seen.
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Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis wrote an article in the Times UK about how bad a Jeremy Corbyn government would be for Jews.
Mirvis has never ventured into politics before. It is clear that he didn't want to write this but felt he had to.
He is now getting mercilessly attacked on Twitter by the very antisemites he is warning against.
The Times UK is paywalled. Here is the full text of his article from his Facebook account.
-------------------
Elections should be a celebration of democracy. However, just a few weeks before we go to the polls, the overwhelming majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety.
During the past few years, on my travels through the length and breadth of the UK and further afield, one concern has been expressed to me more than any other. Of course, the threats of the far right and violent jihadism never go away, but the question I am now most frequently asked is: What will become of Jews and Judaism in Britain if the Labour Party forms the next government?
This anxiety is understandable and justified.
Raising concerns about anti-Jewish racism in the context of a general election ranks amongst the most painful moments I have experienced since taking office. Convention dictates that the Chief Rabbi stays well away from party politics – and rightly so. However, challenging racism in all its forms is not a matter of politics, it goes well beyond that. Wherever there is evidence of it, including in any of our political parties, it must be swiftly rooted out. Hateful prejudice is always wrong, whoever the perpetrator, whoever the victim.
The Jewish community has endured the deep discomfort of being at the centre of national political attention for nearly four years. We have been treated by many as an irritant, as opposed to a minority community with genuine concerns. Some politicians have shown courage but too many have sat silent. We have learned the hard way that speaking out means that we will be demonised by faceless social media trolls and accused of being partisan or acting in bad faith by those who still think of this as an orchestrated political smear.
Yet, I ask myself: should the victims of racism be silenced by the fear of yet further vilification?
Therefore, with the heaviest of hearts, I call upon the citizens of our great country to study what has been unfolding before our very eyes.
We sit powerless, watching with incredulity as supporters of the Labour leadership have hounded parliamentarians, party members and even staff out of the party for facing down anti-Jewish racism. Even as they received unspeakable threats against themselves and their families, the response of the Labour Leadership was utterly inadequate.
We have endured quibbling and prevarication over whether the party should adopt the most widely accepted definition of antisemitism in the world. When the breakthrough came it was not without amendments, suggesting Labour knows more about antisemitism than Jewish people do.
Now, astonishingly, we await the outcome of a formal investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into whether discrimination by the party against Jews has become an institutional problem. And all of this whilst in opposition. What should we expect of them in government?
The way in which the leadership of the Labour Party has dealt with anti-Jewish racism is incompatible with the British values of which we are so proud – of dignity and respect for all people. It has left many decent Labour members and parliamentarians, both Jewish and non-Jewish, ashamed of what has transpired.
The claims by leadership figures in the Labour Party that it is “doing everything” it reasonably can to tackle the scourge of anti-Jewish racism and that it has “investigated every single case”, are a mendacious fiction. According to the Jewish Labour Movement, there are at least 130 outstanding cases currently before the party – some dating back years and thousands more have been reported but remain unresolved.
The party leadership have never understood that their failure is not just one of procedure, which can be remedied with additional staff or new processes. It is a failure to see this as a human problem rather than a political one. It is a failure of culture. It is a failure of leadership. A new poison – sanctioned from the very top – has taken root in the Labour Party.
Many members of the Jewish community can hardly believe that this is the same party that they proudly called their political home for more than a century. It can no longer claim to be the party of diversity, equality and anti-racism. This is the Labour Party in name only.
How far is too far? How complicit in prejudice would a leader of Her Majesty’s opposition have to be in order to be considered unfit for high office?
Would associations with those who have openly incited hatred against Jews be enough? Would support for a racist mural, depicting powerful hook-nosed Jews supposedly getting rich at the expense of the weak and downtrodden be enough? Would describing as “friends” those who endorse and even perpetrate the murder of Jews be enough? It seems not. What we do know from history is that what starts with the Jews, never ends with the Jews.
It is not my place to tell any person how they should vote. I regret being in this situation at all. I simply pose the following question: What will the result of this election say about the moral compass of our country?
When December 12th arrives, I ask every person to vote with their conscience.
Be in no doubt – the very soul of our nation is at stake.
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Hamas condemns the Israeli occupation’s deportation of the director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Palestine Omar Shaker as an act against humanitarian work and human rights. Indeed, the Israeli occupation is unable to see its crimes and violations being documented by such organisations.
This Israeli demeanor aims to block reality and hide its daily violations, including killing and targeting Palestinians, in order to evade accountability.
The Israeli practices should prompt the international community to defend the rights of the Palestinian people and hold the Israeli occupation accountable for the crimes committed against Palestinians.
Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum
It's a two way street. Hamas supports HRW because HRW excuses Hamas war crimes.
It is worth reminding everyone that @HRW doesn't only have a bizarre obsession with demonizing Israel, but that its obsession spills over into excusing Hamas war crimes.
Here's one example.
The@ICRCdefinition of "human shields" is "the intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives."
ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/… Plainly speaking, it means that Hamas or Islamic Jihad placing rockets or bases or weapons caches in civilian neighborhoods makes them guilty of the war crime of human shielding.
During the 2014 war, @KenRoth consistently absolved Hamas of that crime. HRW and Ken Roth made their own, more restrictive definition for Hamas, saying that Hamas must FORCE civilians to stay in the area.
Although that definition is not consistent even within @HRW.
They've said that fighters joining a wedding march would violate that law. What's the difference between putting military targets in a civilian neighborhood or in a wedding procession? Yet HRW consistently DEFENDED Hamas for placing arms in civilian neighborhoods.
Then, the news came out that Hamas actually instructed civilians to ignore Israeli warnings to evacuate to safer places.
So now there is an element of coercion, but STILL@HRWexcused Hamas saying that they still weren't guilty of the crime of human shields.
What kind of a human rights org goes out of their way to excuse war crimes?
But only when the criminals are fighting Israel.
Amazing, no?
During that war, Hamas kept civilians in an UNRWA shelter even after Israel warned them to leave. It warned Fatah members not to leave their homes under threat of being shot.
These are war crimes even according to HRW's more restrictive definition. But HRW never admitted it.
There is only one possible reason for this "human rights organization" to excuse and deny Hamas war crimes against civilians. Because HRW wants to paint Israel as the truly evil party, and mentioning Hamas war crimes dilutes that goal.
This is inexcusable.
This is HRW.Postscript:@HRWwrote its own factsheet on the Gaza war where their definition of shielding is accurate, yet@kenrothkept insisting that Hamas wasn't guilty.hrw.org/news/2014/08/0…
From my post at the time (Ken Roth tweets in italics:)
August 4 Do you want to know what "human shields" really are beyond ritualistic sloganeering? Read @HRW's Q&A on the law: http://trib.al/l8wdv4t Truth: This is sort of amazing. Here are Roth's previous tweets defining human shields:
Jul 19Much confusion about "human shields" which generally require coercion. Different from unnecessarily endangering civilians, tho both illegal. Jul 24 #Hamas is putting civilians at risk but "no evidence" it forces them to stay--definition of human shields: @NYTimes. http://trib.al/61iwSoM Jul 25Hamas must as feasible not fight in populated areas http://trib.al/CA94avT but no human shield unless coerced to stay http://trib.al/YQwIIau
Yet when you read the official HRW Q&A that Roth tweeted here, you see a completely different definition - one that is actually accurate!
Forces deployed in populated areas must avoid locating military objectives – including fighters, ammunition and weapons -- in or near densely populated areas, and endeavor to remove civilians from the vicinity of military objectives. Belligerents are prohibited from using civilians to shield military objectives or operations from attack. "Shielding" refers to purposefully using the presence of civilians to render military forces or areas immune from attack.
There is nothing here about coercion.
HRW's definition is completely at odds with the definition their own executive director gave three separate times! The HRW definition simply says that using civilians to shield military objectives is what makes one a human shield.
Roth's tweet, by invoking "ritualistic sloganeering," of his critics, gave the impression that HRW's definition was agreeing with his multiple tweets, but amazingly it proves him wrong.
Roth never corrected his earlier tweets, though, nor did he acknowledge that his critics were correct all along.
Of course Hamas is a supporter of Human Rights Watch. HRW actively tries to make Hamas look as good as a genocidal terror group can possibly look.
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Bernie Sanders’ curious little manifesto on anti-Semitism in Jewish Currents on Nov. 11 reminds me why I could not possibly support the man—and why I sometimes feel a stab of regret about it. There is an impulsively decent quality in him that erupts now and then in rebellious outbursts of unexpected political principle, typically in ways that might offend his ideologically more cartoonish followers, but that render him pleasing, in my own eyes. And the mini-manifesto in Jewish Currents—the piece that Yair Rosenberg discussed in Tablet some days ago—offers an example.
It comes halfway through when Bernie recalls that, back in 1963, he lived the kibbutznik life in Israel. He was able to see and experience what he describes as “many of the progressive values upon which Israel was founded.” And he says: “I think it is very important for everyone, but particularly for progressives, to acknowledge the enormous achievement of establishing a democratic homeland for the Jewish people after centuries of displacement and persecution.”
The striking phrase is, of course, “particularly for progressives.” Most Americans do acknowledge the enormous achievement. But, as everyone has noticed, a noisy percentage of the people who suppose themselves to be progressives believe, on the contrary, that Israel ought to be regarded as a white supremacist settler colonialist state, or an imperialist excrescence, or a center of world racism, and ought to be erased from the map—which are positions that sometimes award themselves the polite name of honest criticism.
But Bernie in Jewish Currents, with a knack for nuance, rightly says, “It is true that some criticism of Israel can cross the line into anti-Semitism, especially when it denies the right of self-determination to Jews, or when it plays into conspiracy theories about outsized Jewish power.” He declares: “I will always call out anti-Semitism when I see it. My ancestors would expect no less of me.” His statement is good, then. It is solid. It is non-Jeremy Corbyn-like.
But everything else in the mini-manifesto is a disaster. Oh, maybe not everything. It has been said that Bernie makes a mistake in calling for the United States to return to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, on the grounds that anti-Israel manias and sympathy for outrageous tyrants long ago rendered the council a lost cause. But wouldn’t it be better to debate than to sulk? Hillel Neuer’s independent committee, UN Watch, participates in the Human Rights Council events, and strikes many a blow for common sense, and there is reason to suppose that a sufficiently feisty United States delegate seated at the table would be able to do the same, except more virally.
On November 5, 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Human Rights Watch (HRW) “Israel and Palestine Country Director” Omar Shakir had 20 days to leave the country. Shakir and his employer had asked the court to overturn a decision of the Israeli Ministry of Interior, which had already been approved by the Jerusalem District Court, not to renew Shakir’s work visa due to his BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) activities.
In the ten days leading up to Shakir’s departure, HRW launched a social media campaign under the hashtag “#WhoIsNext.” The campaign attempted to make a slippery slope argument, that if Shakir is deported, many other activists would be at risk. In reality, Israel has a vibrant and diverse civil society made up of thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As the Supreme Court found, Shakir, specifically, met the criteria in the Israeli law.
NGO Monitor analyzed the limited reach of HRW’s #WhoIsNext campaign, noting that it was primarily used in a self-promotional manner. The vast majority of Twitter users employing the hashtag were, in fact, employees of HRW; 71 of 100 (71%) uses of the hashtag originated with HRW-linked accounts. Tellingly, most of the non-HRW uses came from pro-BDS activists and NGOs.
Margaret Corvid is a Labour Party Councillor in Plymouth. She is extremely active and appears to play an important part of Luke Pollard’s re-election campaign. Margaret’s Facebook and Twitter are full of pro-Corbyn material and she is always on the street canvassing. She made over 400 tweets / retweets in just the last few weeks:
Corvid is a solid Corbynite, joining the party after Corbyn took control in 2015. She describes herself as a Marxist and ‘proud entryist‘. Corvid does a lot of writing. Her name appears in the Guardian, Independent, Metro, Novara Media and New Statesman. Much of her writing is about the sex trade. Corvid makes her living as a dominatrix.
Oddly, Corvid’s Facebook friends list includes high profile players in the antisemitism row such as Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker. Interestingly Mick Napier, the head of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign is in there too. Why would a local councillor in Plymouth be associated with a vile antisemitic group in Scotland?
It is because Margaret Corvid has not been using that name for long.
I could find no active record for Margaret Corvid before 2013. She admits in an article it is her ‘professional name‘. What I did find was a political activist in Scotland named Esther Sassaman. Here is one of her tweets:
Sassaman first appears in early 2003 with a blog about an upcoming visit to ‘Palestine’. She is American, defines herself as ‘ethnically Jewish but drawn to the black Baptist Christians’. She joined their Gospel Choir. It seems as if she was an anti-Israel ‘fanatic’ before she ever stepped foot there (she described herself as a ‘fanatic’ – Rachel Corrie was her inspiration).
Upon her return she continued with political activism. She even meets and interviews George Galloway during his visit to the States in 2005. Coincidence or not, within 7 months, Sassaman would surface as an activist in Galloway’s home town of Dundee.
Sassaman appears to have platformed with former Guantanamo Bay resident Moazzim Begg in 2006. At that point she was described as an ‘American’ resident in Scotland.
This afternoon Labour Party will be launching its Arts for All policy with Ken Loach.
According to him antisemitism in the Labour Party is ‘mischief’ and the Holocaust is up for discussion.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
