Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

05/25 Links Pt2: How Jewish support for ‘anti-racism’ empowered anti-Semitism; Caroline Glick: Radicals at war against Judeo-Christian roots of Western society

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: How Jewish support for ‘anti-racism’ empowered anti-Semitism

While the idea that black lives matter was never up for debate, it was in that atmosphere that so much of the organized Jewish world felt impelled to sign on to support for the movement itself. That seemed like a cost-free gesture that allowed Jewish groups to virtue signal their opposition to racism. What they didn’t count on was the way this effort helped intersectional ideology, which falsely analogizes the Palestinian war on Israel to the struggle for civil rights in the United States, to become the guiding force behind an increasingly powerful left wing of the Democratic Party.

In this way, the catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) became not just pervasive on college campuses but the official policy endorsed by President Joe Biden on his first day in the White House in January 2021. Biden’s equity agenda, which is now being implemented in every government department, isn’t about promoting equality. In this context, equity means the opposite. It mandates racial discrimination while promoting the “white privilege” narrative in which Jews are transformed from a minority that is under attack from anti-Semites on both the left and right into part of an oppressor class. It allows an anti-Semitic BDS movement to similarly play the victim while the objects of its discriminatory campaign are treated as villainous opponents of “people of color,” despite the fact that the majority of Jewish Israelis trace their origins to the Middle East and North Africa.

Those voices raised against Jews—whether in academic settings where DEI has become inextricably linked to increased anti-Semitism, on the floor of Congress where the left-wing “Squad’s” embrace of lies about Israel has led to violence on American streets or in the mainstream media where anti-Zionism acts as a cover for anti-Semitism—have grown louder and more accepted in the last two years.

Legitimizing such a movement may not have been the intention of the Jewish leaders who signed declarations supporting BLM. Racism is terrible and opposing it is laudable. But by going along with the mob mentality that embraced the “1619” lies and legitimized a heretofore radical BLM movement, that’s exactly what they helped foster. That many of them also attacked and sought to treat those Jews who spoke up against it, such as the Zionist Organization of America, as beyond the pale is even more disgraceful.

The organized Jewish world needs to take a hard look at its mistakes and admit that its desire to play the fashionable “anti-racist” card strengthened forces that are inimical to Jewish interests, as well as to the cause of equality and racial harmony for American society. If the Jewish community is to successfully confront the rising tide of anti-Semitism on the left that the BLM moment empowered, there must first be a reckoning about why these groups failed to stand their ground against this dangerous trend in 2020.

Gil Troy: Zionist behavioral therapy can end antisemitism

Psychology of bigotry
Psychologists have long shown how perverse perceptions imprison people in misanthropic misconceptions. CBT – cognitive behavioral therapy – helps patients reframe their understandings of reality. Beware mental filters, therapists warn, brain fritzes blocking or shrinking the good, the generous, the comforting, while locking in and overinflating the bad, the negative, the unnerving. Such reframing, such brain fixes, reprogram what people see to be more accurate and constructive.

Instead, regarding Israel, many prefer de-framing – reframing reality to defame. Popular anti-Zionist perversions include:
Stretching: Anti-Zionists love “kitchen-sinking,” throwing everything at Israel, including the kitchen sink. As bogeymen rise and fall, fanatics try hogtying Israel to the big crime of the moment or the latest, trendiest ideological sin, like the Great Replacement theory, just as Israel is forever accused of racist, imperialist, colonialist crimes other powers committed, not Israel.

Indicting: Any mistake any Israeli makes, or any crime any Israeli commits, supposedly justifies Israel’s permanent place in the dockets of the UN, the International Criminal Court, and much of the human rights community. Somehow, mini-Israel looms super-large in the craziest worst-case scenarios of the far Left and the far Right.

Catastrophizing: It’s all black-and-white, totally bleak, regarding Israel. Too many conversations about Israel become no-nuance and complexity-free zones. Anything Israel does ends up integrated into some systematic conspiracy against the always blameless Palestinians. A journalist can die accidentally in a firefight, yet anti-Israel congresswomen declare that Israeli snipers targeted her, as though these 20-year-old soldiers fighting for their lives knew who she was – or cared.

Calcifying: For anti-Zionists making up twistory, time stands still, nothing ever changes, progress must be ignored. It’s too much fun to keep shrieking about “Deir Yasin” and the supposed “Nakba,” as though it’s still 1948. And it’s too tempting to ignore Israel’s many attempts to make peace with Palestinians, its breakthroughs with Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Morocco, and the Sudan, let alone countries like Saudi Arabia, which informally cooperate with the “Zionists.”

The 'Nakba' - catastrophe or success? - comment

In the intervening 70+ years the Nakba, or catastrophe, which Zurayk emphatically defined as the failure of ineffectual Arab states, who sought “the abolition of partition and the eradication of Zionism” only to “leave the battle having lost a not inconsiderable portion of the soil of Palestine” has been disingenuously redefined as the expulsion of Palestinians from part of the proposed State of Palestine.

In fact, in his book Zurayk made no mention of the Palestinians as a people or the formation of the State of Israel. The Nakba was the self-inflicted wound of the Arabs, not of Israel.

The politicized hijacking of a term the Nakba which bemoaned the absence of pan-Arab unity and castigated Arabs for their failings, into a term of abuse against Israel is a calculated and continuous act of deception, designed to absolve Arab states of blame and condemn Israel for successfully defending itself against attack.

Zurayk’s dismal conclusion on the outlook for Arab youth was as prescient as it was depressing. He accurately predicted that the absence of Arab unity would cause future generations to “fall prey to some destructive movement and find their consolation in uproar and disturbance for its own sake, regardless of the result”. Seventy years later, the pointless brutality of Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLO shows just how devastating the Nakba, or Arab failure, has been for Arab hope and Arab lives.

Unwilling to establish lasting peace
The recent treaty known as the Abraham Accords, which saw the four Arab Gulf states, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, formally establish diplomatic relations with Israel, left the Palestinians looking isolated in the Middle East. Sadly, their isolation is self-inflicted. The Sunni Arab world is moving on and refusing to accept a veto from the West Bank or Gaza in the face of a growing threat from Iran.

In the absence of any movement on peace talks or willingness by Palestinians to negotiate, standing by the Palestinians is no longer a priority for the Gulf States, as protecting themselves from Iranian aggression is.

While most Palestinians are weary of their corrupt, ineffectual leaders and would welcome the chance of elections and a fresh start, neither seems to be on the agenda. 87 year old Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas probably isn’t the solution to constant factional infighting and endemic corruption, so in all likelihood, the Palestinian politics of grudge and grievance will continue.

Today, Palestinians and their apologists worldwide should stop to consider these realities and face up to the fact that the Nakba describes their failure, not Israel’s success.

George Eliot may not have been Jewish, but she understood the Jewish hunger for the return to Zion. Mary Anne Evans, as she was christened, cared about Jewish nationalism enough to make it the theme of her final novel. Written a full 20 years before Theodore Herzl penned his utopian novel Altneuland, and 40 years before the Balfour Declaration, Daniel Deronda ends with a Zionist bang: the eponymous hero is packed and ready to take off for the East, where he is set on founding a homeland for his people in Palestine.

Through most of the story, Daniel knows nothing of his Jewish parentage. The ward of Sir Hugo Mallinger, an English gentleman, Deronda is raised with every advantage and as such, feels uncomfortable to ask about his origins. Mallinger has been so kind, and Deronda anyway assumes he is Sir Hugo’s illegitimate offspring from an early fling—something that would be better off left unsaid between them.

The 700-page book that is Daniel Deronda is not light reading and in actual fact is really two stories. One story is a typical British romance, with a self-centered British heroine, Gwendolen Harleth. The other is the story of a Jewish awakening, in which a romance also takes place, in this case, featuring fictional Jewish heroine, Mirah Lapidoth. The book is ponderous, even boring. The two stories do not mesh well and only a dedicated reader would push through to the end.

Portrait of George Eliot by Samuel Laurence

Many critics have written of the “Jewish half” and the “English half” of Daniel Deronda. F.R. Leavis split the novel into two in his The Great Tradition, and refers to the “good half” (the English half), and the “bad half,” (the Jewish half.) This is understandable, because the characters in the Gwendolen Harleth story are well-rounded and human, while the Jewish characters are wooden, and speak as if they stepped out of the Book of Isaiah. The reader imagines a kind of weird light in their eyes, as if they were immortal Jewish zombies who never really died when Solomon’s Temple was destroyed.

Gwendolen at the roulette table

Is it any wonder then, that Leavis suggests we cut away the Jewish half and rename the remaining half Gwendolen Harleth? Yet Gwendolen is a narcissist. During the course of the story, her character undergoes a sea change thanks to her acquaintance with Deronda. This (Jewish) reader, however, found Gwendolen to be an unsympathetic character, and did not like reading about her at all. All I wanted to do was get to the Jewish stuff.

In spite of these shortcomings, the two stories provide the reader with a deeper understanding of the two societies—English and Jewish—by contrasting their attitudes and behaviors. The patronizing bigotry of the English is palpable and there are many examples of this scattered throughout the book. After pawning her necklace to recover money lost at the gambling table, for example, “Gwendolen’s dominant regret was that after all she had only nine louis to add to the four in her purse: these Jew dealers were so unscrupulous in taking advantage of Christians unfortunate at play!”

Deronda’s Jewish heroine, Mirah Lapidoth, has been deeply marked by treatment with such condescension, to the point that she seems ashamed to admit or own her heritage. Mirah, in fact, appears to agree that Jews are a malign presence in the world. She fears for Daniel to know of her Jewish identity during their first meeting:

“You want to know if I am English?” she said at last, while Deronda was reddening nervously under a gaze which he felt more fully than he saw.

“I want to know nothing except what you like to tell me,” he said, still uneasy at the fear that her mind was wandering. “Perhaps it is not good for you to talk.”

“Yes, I will tell you. I am English-born. But I am a Jewess.”

Deronda was silent, inwardly wondering that he had not said this to himself before, though any one who had seen delicate-faced Spanish girls might simply have guessed her to be Spanish.

“Do you despise me for it?” she said presently in low tones, which had a sadness that pierced like a cry from a small dumb creature in fear.

“Why should I?” said Deronda. “I am not so foolish.”

“I know many Jews are bad.”

When Deronda meets Mirah, she is in bad straits. Looking for a way to help her, Daniel brings the penniless, homeless Jewish girl to his friends the (non-Jewish) Meyrick family, and on being introduced to them, Mirah’s first words are, “I am a stranger. I am a Jewess. You might have thought I was wicked.”

Daniel determines to help Mirah find her long lost mother and brother, but the thought of spending time among Jews for this purpose, makes him nervous. He knows his prejudices are just that, but finds them difficult to ignore:

Deronda’s thinking went on in rapid images of what might be: he saw himself guided by some official account into a dingy street; he entered through a dim doorway, and saw a hawk-eyed woman, rough-headed, and unwashed, cheapening a hungry girl’s last bit of finery; or in some quarter only the more hideous for being smarter, he found himself under the breath of a young Jew talkative and familiar, willing to show his acquaintance with gentlemen’s tastes and not fastidious in any transactions with which they would favor him—and so on through the brief chapter of his experience in this kind.

There is a perception by Victorian society as portrayed in Deronda, of the Jews as unsavory. At the same time, when the English encounter an example of Jewish refinement, as embodied by our Jewish heroine Mirah, the response is to wish that the Jewish part of her would somehow disappear:

“She says herself she is a very bad Jewess, and does not half know her people’s religion,” said Amy, when Mirah was gone to bed. “Perhaps it would gradually melt away from her, and she would pass into Christianity like the rest of the world, if she got to love us very much, and never found her mother. It is so strange to be of the Jews’ religion now.”

Deronda attempts to find Mirah work as a singer for ladies’ gatherings, and as a result, we are party to some behind-the-scenes gossip. Gwendolen several times refers to Mirah as the “little Jewess,” and Jews are characterized by Lady Mallinger as “bigoted.” The very fact of Mirah’s Jewishness is understood by her as an illogical bias and a rejection of accepted facts:

“She has very good manners. I’m sorry she is a bigoted Jewess; I should not like it for anything else, but it doesn’t matter in singing.”

The fact that Eliot would tackle such a sticky subject shows that she was an original thinker. Raised in a strict Evangelical Anglican home, Eliot read the bible every day, and was religiously fervent. Over time, however, through her reading and various acquaintances, she became a skeptic, while retaining a keen interest in the history of religion. It was while working on her English translation of a German book on early Christianity, published as The Life of Jesus Christ Critically Examined (1846), that Eliot first became fascinated with Judaism and the Jewish people. This was quite a change in outlook for someone who had previously written of the Jews:

Extermination up to a certain point seems to be the law for the inferior races—for the rest, fusion both for physical and moral ends.

Eliot’s Daniel Deronda was a clear attempt to educate the public, as she had educated herself regarding the Jewish people and their religion. Eliot had grown up surrounded by anti-Jewish prejudice. In 1830, when Eliot was ten years old, the House of Commons debated a bill for the Removal of Jewish Disabilities (which failed to pass). During the debate, historian Thomas Babington Macaulay remarked that it is not just that the Jews had no legal rights to participation in normative English society, but that “three hundred years ago they had no legal right to the teeth in their heads.”

George Eliot's grave in Highgate Cemetery

Deronda was a means of fighting back against the English view of the Jews as something repugnant and uncivilized. Eliot, as England’s most celebrated writer, meant to humanize and dignify the Jewish people before English society—to rid Victorian England of its ingrained antisemitic prejudices—to show the English the worth and value of what came before Christianity, informs it today, and continues to persist in spite of the pervasiveness of Christian belief in the West.

The Jews of her time gave Eliot’s efforts a kind reception. Britain’s chief rabbi at that time, Hermann Adler, expressed his “warm appreciation of the fidelity with which some of the best traits of Jewish character have been depicted.” When prominent London Jew Haim Guedalla sent Eliot a laudatory note, the novelist responded, “No response to my writing is more desired by me than such a feeling on the art of your great people, as that which you have expressed to me,” a far cry from her former call for extinction of the entire Jewish “race.”

David Kauffman, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Budapest, wrote an article about Daniel Deronda, stressing Eliot’s philosemitism. Eliot responded by writing to Kauffman as follows:

Excuse me that I write but imperfectly, and perhaps dimly, what I have felt in reading your article. It has affected me deeply, and though the prejudiced and ignorant obtuseness which has met my effort to contribute something to the ennobling of Judaism in the conception of the Christian community and in the consciousness of the Jewish community, has never for a moment made me repent my choice, but rather has been added proof to me that the effort was needed—yet I confess that I have a un-satisfied hunger for certain signs of sympathetic discernment, which you only have given.

Jews have always prayed for the return to Zion. Eliot was well aware of this fact as she prepared to write Deronda. Eliot and her partner John Lewes visited the Judengasse in Frankfurt, attended a Sabbath service in a synagogue in Mainz, and visited both the Altneuschul and the ancient Jewish cemetery in Prague. The two purchased books about Jewish law and theology, and Eliot published an essay that stood as a plea for Jewish national and social rights, The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!

The title of Eliot's essay The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep! is a reference to the 1819 Hep Hep riots in Würzburg, image here from a contemporary engraving by Johann Michael Voltz. On the left, two peasant women are assaulting a Jew with pitchfork and broom. On the right, a man wearing tails and a six-button waistcoat, "perhaps a pharmacist or a schoolteacher," holds a Jew by the throat and is about to club him with a truncheon. The houses are being looted.

Eliot’s protozionistic concept of Zionism before Zionism ever was, is well expressed in Deronda by Mirah’s long lost brother Mordecai, also known as Ezra*:

“In the multitudes of the ignorant on three continents who observe our rites and make the confession of the divine Unity,† the soul of Judaism is not dead. Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality. Looking toward a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West—which will plant the wisdom and the skill of our race so that it may be, as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories.”

When the reader meets Mordecai, he is already ill with tuberculosis and hasn’t much time left. He is desperate to impart his ideas to a Jew of the next generation who will carry the flame. Daniel Deronda happens into the bookstore where he works, and Mordecai becomes excited, sure he is the one.‡ When questioned however, Daniel denies he is a Jew. Mordecai, disappointed, believes Deronda cannot then be his disciple.

As time goes on, however, it becomes clear that Deronda must be the right person for the job of carrying on Mordecai’s life’s work, and when Daniel at last discovers his heritage, there is joy all around. At the same time, he has the sad duty of explaining things to Gwendolen, who has fallen in love with him and hoped to marry him. After breaking the news that he is Jewish and is about to embark on a great journey, Gwendolen struggles for understanding:

“What are you going to do?” she asked, at last, very timidly. “Can I understand the ideas, or am I too ignorant?”

“I am going to the East to become better acquainted with the condition of my race in various countries there,” said Deronda, gently—anxious to be as explanatory as he could on what was the impersonal part of their separateness from each other. “The idea that I am possessed with is that of restoring a political existence to my people, making them a nation again, giving them a national centre, such as the English have, though they too are scattered over the face of the globe. That is a task which presents itself to me as a duty: I am resolved to begin it, however feebly. I am resolved to devote my life to it. At the least, I may awaken a movement in other minds, such as has been awakened in my own."

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda at his desk, Jerusalem, c. 1912

Daniel Deronda may not have pleased Eliot’s non-Jewish readers and critics, and the Jewish characters may not have seemed quite human, but Eliot’s vision of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine was persuasive and inspiring for at least two Jews. Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the father of Modern Hebrew said Daniel Deronda was the reason he traveled to Palestine. In his memoirs, he wrote:

“After I read the novel, Daniel Deronda, in a Russian Translation, several times, I decided to leave the University of Dynaburg for Paris, where I would learn all that was necessary for my work in Eretz Yisrael.”

Jewish American poet Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus, the Jewish American poet who penned “The New Collosus,” inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty, was also inspired by Deronda. It was reading Deronda that encouraged Lazarus to become a Jewish poet and passionate exponent of, and activist for the building of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

* This is confusing, as there is another Jewish character of the same name.

† The Shema prayer

‡ Think Neo in The Matrix.

***

Thanks to Yerushalimey, who urged me to read and write about Daniel Deronda, after reading my review of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, in which I detailed Hardy’s friendship with Israel Zangwill. It was an impossible task to write all there is to know about Deronda and Eliot’s protozionism, but I tried to give the reader a taste.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Al Quds quotes Israel Hayom, after running it through their antisemitic phrase filter:

Today, Wednesday, Hebrew media reported that about 40,000 Jewish settlers have stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque since last May 2021.

A report by the Hebrew newspaper, Israel Hayom, indicated that "this is a new annual record in the number of Jewish intrusion into Al-Aqsa," according to its claim.

I don't think Israel Hayom used the terms in bold.

The Temple Mount is open to Jews approximately 200 days of the year. That means that only 200 Jews visit every day on the average.

By point of comparison, 40,000 Muslims visit the Temple Mount every single Friday (maybe a little less when it rains.)

So while the Palestinian Arabs are trying to incite anger and hatred by throwing around numbers like 40,000, it is really a small number. The numbers are slowly increasing, but it is hardly the hordes of Jews it is portrayed as in Arab media.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

05/25 Links Pt1: Iran nuclear files Mossad seized in 2018 included stolen IAEA records; Saudi journalist: 'Nobody is waiting' for Palestinians; CNN claims Israel killed Abu Akleh in deliberate attack; IDF rejects report

From Ian:

Iran nuclear files Mossad seized in 2018 included stolen IAEA records - WSJ

Iranian nuclear documents seized by the Mossad in 2018 included secret records from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran had accessed and used to create cover stories to hide parts of its nuclear program, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Middle East intelligence officials told the WSJ that the IAEA documents, marked confidential, and accompanying Iranian records were circulated between 2004 to 2006 among senior Iranian military, government and nuclear officials, as the IAEA was investigating the country's nuclear program.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former UN weapons inspector, told the WSJ that Iran's acquisition of the IAEA documents "represents a serious breach of IAEA internal security.

“Iran could design answers that admit to what the IAEA already knows, give away information that it will likely discover on its own, and at the same time better hide what the IAEA does not yet know that Iran wants to keep that way.” Screenshot of video presenting PM Benjamin Netanyahu's presentation on the Iranian nuclear program, during which he speaks about nuclear scientist Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh (credit: GPO)Screenshot of video presenting PM Benjamin Netanyahu's presentation on the Iranian nuclear program, during which he speaks about nuclear scientist Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh (credit: GPO)

Among the documents were handwritten notes in Persian and attachments with Iranian commentary on the IAEA documents. Documents reviewed by the WSJ stated that Iranian officials credited unspecified "intelligence methods" for obtaining the confidential records.

In one note on an Iranian corporate record, a top Iranian official pressed Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the father of Iran's nuclear weapons program who was assassinated in 2021, to create a "scenario" to explain to the IAEA why corporate-registration records had been changed for a civilian company Iran had claimed was working on a uranium mine.

While the company was recorded in Iranian documents as having ceased to exist in December 2001, one of the documents seen by the WSJ ordered Iranian officials to change that date to May 2003. This change allowed Iran to tell the IAEA that the work on the uranium mine was done by the civilian company for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, which supported Iran's claim that the mine was civilian and unrelated to any military nuclear work.

Middle Eastern intelligence officials and former IAEA officials told the WSJ that the mine was built to be able to produce material for a potential nuclear weapons program.

Seth Frantzman: US, India, Australia and Japan are future of American power in multi-polar world

As the US tries to confront potential aggression by China in Asia and seeks to roll back the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it must increasingly lean on partners and allies. This is what was lacking in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The United States’ “go it alone” approach in Iraq in 2003, despite the supposed “coalition of the willing,” led to resentment against the Americans. Now, the EU has stepped up in Europe to help Ukraine. With appeasers such as Angela Merkel out of power, European countries are able to stand up to Russia.

In Asia, different factors are at work. US President Joe Biden’s meeting with the “Quad” countries of India, Australia and Japan in Tokyo on Tuesday is now the symbol of US relationships and power in a multi-polar world. This matters for Israel because Jerusalem can also work closely with the Quad countries as part of its close relationships with important nations in Asia. What does this mean?

Multipolar means that the world has moved on from US global hegemony and the new world order of the 1990s. It means that the US can’t do humanitarian intervention and preemption anymore. It means that the rules-based international liberal world order is fading and weakening because countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Turkey are undermining it.

To stop the underminers, the US must work with major democracies. That means NATO countries, except for Turkey, as well as the EU and nations that are part of the Five Eyes network.

In Asia, it means Japan, South Korea and Australia, as well as the powerhouse India. India has been problematic from the US lens recently because it has not taken a tough stance on Ukraine. That means India has played both sides with the Russian camp. Why is India flirting with Russia?

First of all, India was part of the nonaligned movement and was historically closer to Russia for many reasons, including the legacy of imperialism and colonialism India had to deal with.

Today, India is closer to the West, but it also has a right-leaning government that has been more critical of some of the liberal tendencies of Western democracies.

India is close to the UAE and Israel these days. The UAE, like other Gulf countries, has also wondered about what the new US stance will bring globally. This is because the US keeps shifting its stance on Iran and also on how to deal with the international community.

By Daled Amos

Jerusalem in general, and The Temple Mount in particular, continue as lightning rods of controversy that threaten to break out into violence.

Just this month, following Biden's meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan, The White House issued a statement that read, in part:

The President affirmed his strong support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and cited the need to preserve the historic status quo at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. [emphasis added]

Not so fast.

In Protecting the Status of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem an article he wrote for The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Nadav Shragai writes about the original "status quo" designed in 1967 by then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.

While Israel's success in reuniting Jerusalem and taking control of the Temple Mount was an exciting moment that filled Jews with pride --

Dayan, however, was moved by other considerations that pushed such emotions to the side: On both sides of the Israeli-Arab conflict there were deep-seated religious components that were intermingled with nationalist foundations. On both the Israeli side and the Arab side, the two religions – Judaism and Islam – had nourished countless struggles between the two sides.

Dayan saw himself duty-bound to try and establish a barrier between religion and nationalism, and prevent situations where the conflict was liable to take on a religious hue. He believed that it was possible to allow Islam to express its religious sovereignty over the Mount – religious sovereignty, in contrast to national sovereignty. Dayan believed that, in this manner, it would be possible to confine the Israeli-Arab conflict to the national-territorial domain, eliminating the conflict’s potential to become a religious one.

In permitting Jews to visit the Temple Mount, Dayan sought to curb demands for Jewish worship and religious sovereignty on the Mount; by giving religious sovereignty to the Muslims on the Temple Mount, Dayan believed he was blunting the site’s importance as a hub of Palestinian nationalism.

This situation is a status quo that has gone through major changes. For example:

o Restrictions on Visits by Jews: The original status quo prevented Jews from praying on the Temple Mount, but allowed them to visit the site. Today, by contrast, Jews are often prevented from visiting the Mount (even without praying there) or such visits are substantially restricted

o Expansion of Muslim Prayer Areas: When the status quo was established, the Muslims prayed only in the al-Aqsa mosque. Over the years, their prayer areas on the Mount were greatly expanded – first to the Dome of the Rock, which originally was a memorial shrine, not a mosque...In 2000, the Muslims began using two additional prayer areas in the compound: Solomon’s Stables in a subterranean space in the southeastern part of the Mount, where the Waqf established what became known as the al-Marwani mosque, and a section of the al-Aqsa mosque from an earlier period, located under the existing al-Aqsa mosque. Likewise, a large section of the Temple Mount compound was paved and serves, in practice, as a prayer site for tens of thousands of worshipers, primarily on Muslim holidays.
o The Inclusion of Jordan in the Administration of the Temple Mount: The original status quo granted Jordan involvement in the administration of the Temple Mount through the auspices of the Waqf, which was an arm of the Jordanian Ministry of Sacred Properties. Jordan is, in practice, the official employer of Waqf workers on the Temple Mount and pays their salaries. Today, Jordan’s influence over the Temple Mount has expanded greatly...Today, Jordanian influence de facto extends even to the way the Israeli police conduct themselves on the Temple Mount.

Today, Muslims use the name “al-Aqsa” not only to designate the mosque that bears that name -- now, they also use the term to define the entire area of the Temple Mount, including the Western Wall.

As Shragai puts it:

From many standpoints, the status quo of 1967 formulated by then- Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan is dead. However, public debate continues to relate to the status quo as if it is still alive and binding

For all of Dayan's efforts, Muslim efforts to deny the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount continued and gathered steam. In 2016, UNESCO passed a resolution that did recognize that Jerusalem was holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. However, it also contained a special section on the Temple Mount claiming that it was sacred to Islam, while omitting that it was holy to Jews as well. The Muslim names Al-Aqsa Mosque and Haram al-Sharif were used, but the terms Har HaBayit and even Temple Mount were not.

The following year, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in an interview with Israel Radio that it was “completely clear that the Temple that the Romans destroyed in Jerusalem was a Jewish temple,” adding that “no one can deny the fact that Jerusalem is holy to three religions today,” including Judaism.

Palestinian Arabs responded by demanding an apology from Guterres for denying the UNESCO-approved Muslim monopoly on the Temple Mount.

Apparently, Israel should be grateful to Guterres for allowing that Judaism is one of 3 religions with a claim to Jerusalem.

Matti Friedman writes in The Treasure of the Jews that the underlying problem here is "one affecting many Western observers, with their narrative of a city 'sacred to three faiths'—namely, a failure to understand the unique centrality of Jerusalem in Judaism or to admit that the city is of interest to other religions only because it was sacred to Jews first."

It’s impossible to understand the city without grasping that Jerusalem has existed at the center of Jewish consciousness since Rome was a village on the Tiber and that it has that role in no other religion. Christianity cares about Jerusalem because Jesus and his followers were Jews who orbited the Jewish ritual center on the Temple Mount. Islam built the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount because that was the site of the Jewish temple. Both imperial religions have more important cities elsewhere but came here with architects and stonemasons to create a physical expression of a claim central to both—that they had supplanted the numerically insignificant but historically imposing natives of Judea.

When organizations in the UN like UNESCO are not busy being manipulated by its members to attack the legitimacy -- if not the outright existence -- of Israel, such organizations fall back on platitudes about the equality of the three monotheistic religions sharing a common, equal historical connection to Jerusalem.

But as Friedman notes:

This idea—that all thought systems and cultures are interchangeable and everyone’s ideas equal—is a religious idea in itself, the product of a specific moment in Western thought and one that could use some more rigorous introspection from its adherents.

This is the same kind of equality that is offered Palestinian Arabs who are described as indigenous. That is quite magnanimous, considering that their roots, history, language and culture are all derived from Arabia -- unlike the Jews who are a product of the land of Judea.

That is why the ties of the Jewish people to the land is more than just question of time.

According to Allen Z. Hertz, a former senior adviser to Canada’s Prime Minister on aboriginal issues, Jews are not merely indigenous to the land of Israel -- they are aboriginal:

Of all extant Peoples, Jews have the strongest claim to be the aboriginal People of Eretz Israel. There, the Hebrew language (biblical Hebrew: yehudit יהודית) and Judaism gradually emerged, leading to the birth around 2,600 years ago of a distinct People that self-identified as Yehudim (יהודים). Earlier, the Holy Land was home to their immediate ancestors, including famous personalities like Kings Saul, David, and Solomon. There were also other local Peoples—like the Philistines, Phoenicians, Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, and Samaritans. But with the exception of the few surviving Samaritans, all of those other ancient Peoples have long since vanished.

What of the Arab People? The great Arab People of history is aboriginal to Arabia, not the Holy Land. Judaism, the Hebrew language, and a self-identified “Jewish” People were already in Eretz Israel about a thousand years before the ethnogenesis in Arabia (circa 600 CE) of the Arab People, the birth of which was approximately coeval with the emergence of Islam and Classical Arabic.

Or as Friedman puts it:

if you dig past the city’s Islamic and Christian layers, what you’re going to find is Jewish.

Are Jews supposed to be thankful when a UN official will acknowledge that Jews have an equal share in Jerusalem when the very holiness of Jerusalem itself derives from Judaism?

A primary cause of the change in the status quo of The Temple Mount is the ease with which Arab violence has been incited and the confidence with which more violence is threatened. It is not enough that Israel has the history and the connection to Jerusalem and The Temple Mount.

Without the will and the ability to stand up for the special connection between the Jewish People and The Temple Mount, the status quo will continue to change against the Jews.

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Brian Schatz, a senator from Hawaii (D), tweeted a truly offensive statement:

It would be great, if not a huge accomplishment, for everyone in the American Jewish community to jointly condemn the right wing antisemitic conference held in Hungary, and if there are American Jewish organizations who decline to condemn the conference, they should explain why.

He's referring to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that was held in Hungary over the weekend.

The conference was not antisemitic. There is plenty to criticize about holding an American conservative conference in Hungary, and about the choice of speakers, but that doesn't mean that the conference itself or the attendees are antisemitic, and it is libelous to say so.

But that's not the truly offensive part of Schatz's tweet.

Schatz is demanding an ideological purity test for all Jews - we must condemn what he doesn't like, and if not, we must explain why. He is implicitly saying that Jews who do not condemn the conference of being disloyal; only Jews must condemn the conference, only Jews must prove themselves to be against what he considers to be antisemitism, not everyone else. (Schatz himself is Jewish.)

Beyond that, the idea that if you don't condemn something you condone it or support it is thoroughly offensive. By his standards, he must condone child pornography, wife beating and homophobia, because he has never condemned them, at least not on Twitter. He must explain why!

There is also a huge amount of hypocrisy here. Schatz pretends that he is showing his strong opposition to antisemitism, and he claims he has "condemned all antisemitism." But he hasn't. He considers left-wing antisemitism to be mere criticism of Israel, and he falsely accuses those who insist on everyone condemning it to be trying to silence legitimate criticism of Israel:

He is accusing some members of Congress of trying to use antisemitism as a cudgel to accomplish political goals - which is exactly what he is doing in his own tweet!

The idea that Zionists claim that all criticism of Israel is antisemitic is itself a slander. No one does. Criticism of Israel's policy on Ukrainian immigrants or funding Arab communities or allowing Palestinians in Area C to build is perfectly legitimate. No one is "killing debate."

When Americans publicly support Islamic Jihad and Hamas on the streets of New York, that is not "criticism of Israel" - it is a call to genocide and to ethnically cleanse Jews from the Middle East. Schatz has never condemned that. And that is exactly what Schatz's tweet is defending, consciously or not.

So not only is Schatz imposing a loyalty test to American Jews, he is defending those who want to destroy Israel as not being antisemitic.

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Sorry to say, I think it was an IDF bullet that accidentally killed Shireen Abu Akleh (UPDATE: Not any more!)

I was live-tweeting my analysis of the CNN report suggesting that Israel targeted Shireen Abu Akleh.

The targeting part is absurd. CNN based its analysis on "eyewitnesses" who are biased. It makes no sense that the IDF would target reporters under any circumstances, and certainly not during fighting - and there was fighting before Shireen was killed, although not immediately before.

But while much of CNN's analysis was biased and based on an "expert" who is known for his anti-Israel "research," the examination of the audio by a professor at Montana State University seems legit. He states that based on the time differential between the sound of the gun firing and the bullet hitting, he can calculate how far the gun was when it fired. CNN stated that the sound differential was 309 milliseconds, and stated which gunshots they believed killed Abu Akleh.

I examined the audio and found the gunshots CNN was referring to. But the other gunshots in that same video (the original one released that showed Abu Akleh on the ground) did not match the sound of the initial ones, so I thought perhaps those were the ones that hit her.

Here was my thread:

I found the gunshots that @CNN says were the ones that killed Shireen Abu Akleh on video, with the secondary sounds to identify the distance. It starts at :08 of this @DigFind video. There are 7 or 8 high pitched shots.

The secondary sound is indeed about 300 ms from the primary shot sound, and I'll trust the Montana State professor that says that indicates it is 190m away or so

According to CNN, these are the shots that killed her, based on witnesses that they are trusting to remember those kinds of details. But we don't know if she was killed before or shortly after.

This is important because you can hear yourself that nowhere else in this video can you hear such high pitched shots. And the same witnesses swear that they were pinned down, not able to aid Shireen, because the IDF kept firing.

I can find no other shots that have the same audio signature in that video.
At about 0:15 you her three clear lower register shots, not from the same gun and without the same "echo."

And automatic fire at :26 or so.

But no more of the shots that the witnesses swear was from the same shots that were in the beginning of that video.Clearly, they are wrong about at least one of volleys.

However, after writing that I then realized that some of the sounds of that video overlapped with audio from the other video released later that showed the reporters milling around and then reacting to gunfire.

I lined up the audio of the two videos:

Based on looking at the audio patterns, it was clear that the initial shots in the "reporters mulling" video had the same audio signature (slightly shorter time lag) as the "200 m" shots in the other video. (Here's the graphic showing the consistent time gaps between the two bangs in the initial volley.)

Assuming that the IDF was around 200 meters away as other sources indicate, my amateur and tentative conclusions are:

1) The initial shots that the reporters heard were from the IDF. There was no firefight at that immediate time.

2) The same kind of gunshot killed Shireen. There were no other weapons heard until we see her on the ground.

3) The IDF did not pin down the reporters with gunfire after she died as the reporters claim; after the initial volley there was other gunfire, presumably from militants towards the IDF after hearing the IDF fire, and the reporters assumed that it must be Israel.

The idea that it was an IDF sniper, as CNN claims, makes no sense. A sniper that would be good enough to hit Abu Akleh's forehead right below her helmet would not be at the same time so bad as to hit a tree three times separated by two feet. Plus IDF sniper rifles have a different sized bullet.

There is no possible way that the IDF would target reporters.

So the most reasonable explanation is the one the IDF floated, saying that there was another militant or group that was north of the IDF perhaps waiting in ambush. The IDF fired towards them and the gunshots reached/ricocheted to the reporters.

I am definitely an amateur at this. One part I don't quite understand is that the IDF gunfire, while not automatic, is much faster than I thought usual for single shots. But at this point in time, I believe that a forensics analysis of the bullet would show it was from an IDF gun. Which really sucks, because without bodycam footage or something showing another target, the liars will run with this as proof of "deliberate murder."

That is impossible. There is nothing to be gained by the IDF targeting journalists and lots to be lost. "Silencing" journalists makes no sense. The soldiers are a very visible target in the middle of an urban area, they are going to worry about who is targeting them, not about shooting Shireen Abu Akleh. Also, there was fighting in Jenin before this incident, so the troops were definitely concentrating on the enemy, not the reporters.

Since the incident, the IDF has been honest about the chances that it was responsible for Abu Akleh's tragic death. It is the only side that cares about the truth, no matter how the facts shake out.

I hope that I can also always be on the side of the truth tellers.

UPDATE: Jon C. at Israellycool wrote up a better theory on how Abu Akleh could have been killed by Palestinians that fits with the audio analysis I was relying on. I summarize my thoughts concurring with it here.

And since then I have amassed a large amount of evidence that this post, based on very incomplete information, is wrong.

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05/24 Links Pt2: Is the ADL ready to tackle left-wing antisemitism?; Can the Democrats Be Stopped from Abandoning Israel?; Eitan Pessin: We Are Many, We Are One

From Ian:

Einat Wilf: Who Does She Think She Is?

The new memoir by former Breaking the Silence director Yuli Novak is simplistic and solipsistic in equal measure.

The publication of the book Who Do You Think You Are? by Yuli Novak is evidence, once more, that the artistic bar for anti-Zionist creation is low. The book is badly written. The metaphors worn out. Descriptions of nature as stand-ins for emotional turmoil (comparing volcanic eruptions to her turmoil, geological changes to social ones, comparing getting lost and found while traveling to getting lost and found emotionally), present throughout, would barely cut it as a high school writing exercise. But because the book tells the story of how Zionism is so irredeemable that it must be scrapped altogether, the low literary value of the book is ignored. Given that the book peddles a recent incarnation of the ancient idea that no amount of reform could make the collective Jew palatable, there is a thriving and stable market for material that caters to it.

Who Do You Think You Are? is part biography, part political reflection, part coming-of-age story. Unfortunately, though, there is no coming of age. The protagonist begins and ends the story as the same petulant child whose so-called reflections lead her to realize that the world is to blame, and everyone but her is “blind, numb, fearful and angry.” A vein of irresponsibility runs through the book. The protagonist just happens to do things. By her own description, Novak became director of Breaking the Silence, an organization devoted to ending Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, on a lark. She was studying to be a lawyer but didn’t want to be one and hadn’t yet figured out what she wanted to do. She came across a job ad for director of Breaking the Silence and thought it was “something worth trying.” Why? Not clear.

Once at the job she doesn’t understand why people get angry. Israeli Jews who respond to Palestinian attacks with “hysteria” and are manipulated by politicians into “fear and hatred” are at fault. She and her colleagues merely want to highlight the “inherent immorality” of the Occupation. The fury against her is because she “stood up against the regime.” The forces that oppose her are nefarious and anti-democratic. They target Breaking the Silence to promote an “illiberal order” and “concentration of powers by the government.”

Her intentions have always been nothing but good. Oh, and the media is at fault.

Theoretically, bad writing and childish protagonists could still make smart arguments. Alas, not in this book. Even if judging only on substance, each of the author’s premises is wrong. The first is that Jewish citizens of Israel do not know what is involved in exercising military control over Palestinians in the West Bank, the Occupation. If they knew, they would end it. Therefore, there is a need to “break the silence” surrounding the Occupation. This is a tantalizing idea. It appeals to the human desire to uncover dark secrets lurking beneath the surface. It lures people with the promise that they will hear something they have not heard before. It also confers a halo of martyrdom on those willing to break the so-called silence.

A Passage to Israel

In the summer of 1965, nine Orthodox rabbis traveled to the former Soviet Union. They weren’t ordinary tourists. They had been sent by the Rabbinical Council of America with a mission: to investigate the murmurs that had begun reaching the West about Soviet mistreatment of Jews.

In those years, peering behind the Iron Curtain meant being escorted by a government guide who also worked for the KGB, and sleeping in a bugged hotel room. As one would imagine, only a small minority of intrepid tourists dared to make this trip. The rabbis’ journey proved such a novelty that The New York Times reported on it.

There were no lazy days wandering around Moscow, no independent explorations; to go off on one’s own was to risk expulsion, beating, or both. Yet one day, feigning illness, Rabbi Rafael Grossman—then the rabbi of a synagogue in Long Branch, New Jersey—left the group. He had his own private agenda: to locate a congregant’s long-lost brother. Lacking fluency in the Russian language or a sense of Moscow’s geography, and relying only on an address scrawled on the back of a 10-year-old envelope and the efficacy of his own prayers, he succeeded.

“My father had a lot of chutzpah,” recalled Grossman’s son Hillel, a New York psychiatrist. “My father also cared a great deal about the individual.”

At first, the congregant’s brother’s family wouldn’t open the door; they feared that the rabbi was a KGB dupe. Speaking in fluent Yiddish, which at that time was still Ashkenazi Jewry’s lingua franca, the rabbi eventually won their trust.

Inside their apartment, Grossman discovered another surprise: the man’s young son, whom the man and his wife had been raising inside the confines of the apartment, home-schooling him, never allowing him to play with his peers—all this to escape the sting of Soviet antisemitism. Initially, the rabbi was shocked—situations like this usually point to child abuse—but he quickly realized that these parents were acting out of love.

“This wasn’t a recommended child-rearing practice,” Hillel told me, “but it was undertaken under extraordinary circumstances for extolled purposes.”

The couple swore Grossman to secrecy; they were terrified that the communist authorities could take away their son and send them to Siberia. But the rabbi felt compelled to violate his oath. From his home in the U.S., he mounted a private lobbying campaign. With the help of several prominent members of Congress, he secured exit visas and the family moved to Israel. But he never shared their names publicly.

Eitan Pessin: We Are Many, We Are One

I’m currently wrapping up the second half of my sophomore year of high school studying in Israel on the Tichon Ramah Yerushalayim (TRY) program. The program is amazing in every way, and it was difficult to decide just one thing to write about for now, but I’ve settled on this particular experience—which despite being so different from the rest of the program in a way captured its essence.

We spent four days at Gadna, learning a little about what it’s like to train, and be, in the Israel Defense Force. ... I could see where this was going. As the Samal spoke, I looked over at the beautiful view in front of us, felt the warm air on my skin, and absorbed as much of the sun as possible.

“Sean and his fellow tzevet members were traveling in an armored vehicle. Soon, when Hamas was shooting at them, Sean, being the person he was, poked his head out first to return the fire. Sadly, the instant his head popped out of the vehicle, a bullet hit him square in the forehead killing him on the spot. Sean was the type of person to put himself first, not to let his tzevet go into a mission without him. He’s a model of the type of person you should all strive to be. And though Sean was a lone soldier, over ten thousand people showed up to his funeral, because Sean is a role model for everyone.”

There was a beat of silence, during which I focused solely on the endless expanse of aquamarine, and then the Samal silently turned and started running back the way we’d come. We all silently followed, and as I ran I was consumed with the story of Sean. Sean had been an average person, but had felt such commitment and love towards this country and its people he’d gone into Gaza with a twisted ankle- it hit me hard because I feel as if that could be me in ten years.

This Masa marked the end of our Gadna experience. We got back and had some basic cleaning and packing to do, but about two hours later we boarded the bus and headed back home. The bus ride back was silent; we were bruised, beaten, and tired and nearly everybody slept the entire drive. It felt as if we’d been through hell in some respects - but it was a hell that had created unbreakable bonds between us and left us irreversibly changed. Gadna marked a turning point in my TRY experience; it was the moment it became not only about touring Israel, or school, but truly about us. It etched into our souls an important lesson about being part of something bigger, a lesson that can apply to our group on TRY, each of our camps, our synagogues, the Diasporic Jewish community, and most importantly of all, Israel. At Gadna, each of us were individuals with our own histories and lives, yes, but we operated as one team, as one brigade, one base. We were unique parts of a whole, and in the end, that’s what Gadna, and Israel, is about.

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Last week, a group of 57 House Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and FBI Director Chris Wray.

The letter says, "We request the State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launch an investigation into Ms. Abu Akleh’s death."

Does the FBI do independent investigations of US citizens killed overseas?

In a word, no.

From the FBI (this is archived but I have no reason to believe that thing have changed since it was written in 2008):

The FBI’s jurisdiction in crimes or attacks against Americans abroad dates back to the mid-1980s, when Congress passed laws authorizing us to investigate hostage-taking and kidnappings of Americans and terrorist acts against U.S. nationals or interests overseas. Of course, we don’t go uninvited into another country—we get permission from the host government and always work with that nation’s law enforcement and security personnel, in concert with the U.S. Embassy and the Ambassador.

Our jurisdiction doesn’t extend to non-terrorism related homicides, robberies, rapes, and muggings of Americans—these are usually handled by local authorities. But we can—and sometimes do—offer investigative or forensics assistance in these cases if asked.

How it works. Let’s say the worst has occurred—a terrorist attack or kidnapping. What happens then? In general:

The victim or family (if able) contacts the U.S. Embassy closest to where the incident occurred.
The U.S. Ambassador there offers American assistance to the host government (in some cases that government asks for our nation’s help first).
Our Legal Attaché agent assigned to that country or region serves as a diplomatic liaison (we have more than 60 such agents around the world today) and works with the Ambassador and the entire embassy team to determine what resources are needed.
With the permission of the host government and in conjunction with the State Department, the FBI deploys its resources, supporting the investigative efforts of the foreign government. The size of our overseas deployments depends on the scope of the incident and what the host government requests.

The anti-Israel members of Congress aren't asking the FBI to offer help for Israel's investigation. They are asking for a fully independent investigation rto be launched to contradict anything that Israel finds that doesn't support their accusation of premeditated murder.

The representatives know this very well. They know they are asking the FBI to violate its own policies of cooperating with local authorities and countries.

As is virtually always the case with Israel, what is demanded isn't what the demand is really about. When they pretend to demand something that they know is against the FBI's own policies, what they are really doing is issuing a letter calling the government of Israel a bunch of liars who cannot be trusted to perform an investigation.

It is libel masquerading as concern about Abu Akleh, who is merely a pawn in this sordid exercise of demonizing Israel.

The letter asking for the impossible is meant to get headlines saying that members of Congress do not trust a close ally of the US, Israel. The goal is to separate Israel from the US and to position Israel as a rogue state.

Nearly every open letter, petition, boycott, and rally by the anti-Israel crowd has the exact same goal - the goal isn't what they pretend to want, but to change the conversation around Israel so people are less likely to support it.

The easiest way to prove this is to ask a simple question about every one of these initiatives:

How does it help the Palestinians?

Does it give them more independence? More autonomy? More money? Does it help their economy? Does it weaken Palestinian extremists? Does it bring peace closer?

When the answer is nearly invariably "no," that's when you know that these are not serious initiatives.

They aren't anguished cries for help. They are all cynical propaganda gimmicks meant to hurt Israel in world public opinion, and nothing more.

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