Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 03, 2021

06/03 Links Pt2: 'If you don't think antisemitism is real, wear a yarmulke for a week'; Jews Always Speak Up for Everyone Else. Now's the Time to Stand Up for Ourselves

From Ian:

'If you don't think antisemitism is real, wear a yarmulke for a week'

With antisemitism on the rise in US and worldwide, and given the overwhelming amount of hate and misinformation, particularly on social media, JewBelong has inaugurated a campaign titled "JewBelong or Jew BeGone."

The group has taken out 750 somewhat tongue-in-cheek digital ads running across Manhattan that read, "Here's an idea: Let's ask everyone who's wondering if antisemitism is real to wear a yarmulke for a week and then report back."

The campaign is slated to run through at least July, beginning with LINK digital ads, and then adding billboards and print posters in high traffic locations such as PATH Trains and Times Square. The campaign will also run in Chicago, Philadelphia, LA and other cities with other messages. The objective of JewBelong or JewBeGone is to elevate awareness about the rampant recent antisemitism and to encourage dialogue, support, and community awareness.

As part of the battle against antisemitism, JewBelong also announced the Jewish Partisan Prize to recognize influencers who are standing up against antisemitism on Instagram and other social media platforms.

Julie Burchill: The problem with Palestine’s showbiz supporters

Recent events in the Middle East – basically Hamas wanting to kill most of the Jews in Israel, and most of the Jews in Israel stubbornly refusing to hold still and be killed – have got the chorus line hopping over here too, causing Dame Maureen Lipman to resign from the actors union Equity after it backed a pro-Palestine demo at which anti-Semitic banners were displayed. Tracy-Ann Oberman revealed that she had received messages from young actors telling her that they didn’t want people to know they were Jewish, such is the current climate of hostility in the profession. It’s like being back in the 1930s, with anti-Semitism on the rise all through Europe and Hollywood having to christen (literally) the actress Betty Weinstein Perske as Lauren Bacall.

Show-business types are notorious for their desire to get drunk, sleep around and be homosexual. I’m not knocking it – it’s what makes them so much fun to hang out with. But why then are they throwing their weight behind a movement wherein music is haram and ‘break a leg’ isn’t a blessing but something Hamas might do to gays? No matter what contortions a performer might have learned at circus school, you cannot support both gay rights and a Palestinian state; the only place in the entire region where people are free to be gay is Israel. As for women’s rights, the Morality Police in the Palestinian Territories have arrested women for laughing. Admittedly that’s not going to be a problem for the terminally po-faced Hadid chicks. But as we’ve seen from the fate of Iranian women and Afghan schoolgirls, your average Islamic state is so lacking in diversity and inclusivity that it makes Rhodesia look like Narnia.

I daresay that Gigi, Bella and Dua want only the best for the residents of the strife-torn region. But if Palestine ever is free ‘from the river to the sea’ it won’t be ringing with the sound of Dua Lipa songs and adorned by ad campaigns featuring the Hadid sisters. It will be a place where gay men must live a lie or face execution and where women are treated like a cross between children and chattel. But that won’t bother the showbiz supporters of Palestine – they’ll already be looking around for the next conflict where they can step in and screw things up even more with their #BeKind hashtags – and their hearts full of illogical loathing for a people, the Israelis, to whom bravery consists of a bit more than doing two performances on a Saturday.

Matti Friedman: Theodor Herzl Is Alive and Well and Living in New York (Los Angeles, Paris, and London, too)

Unlike most of his learned Jewish contemporaries, Herzl understood that antisemitism can’t be pled or reasoned away

The prosperous Jews of Vienna, who assumed that this problem was on its way to being solved, are surprised to find themselves the focus for the anxieties of the age. They’re caught off guard in their colleges, law firms, and factories, midstep on their journeys toward assimilation. “Jews were baffled and shocked by this obsession,” Elon writes. “Should they react to the attacks or ignore them? Was it something they had done? Many sensitive young Jews were tormented by these questions. Rich Jews tended to blame poor Jews, and vice versa.”

The correct attitude among Jewish intellectuals, Herzl’s social circles, was to cringe at both rich and poor, affecting a very Viennese attitude of wry fatigue with the foibles of humanity. The writer works for the Neue Freie Press, the New York Times of the empire, a newspaper of careful Jews who are celebrated for their brilliance, hampered by their social aspirations, and wrong, in retrospect, about everything. We don’t know that yet. Herzl’s plays are produced in Berlin and at the best theater in the city. Progress might not be smooth, but it is inevitable.

And yet society becomes increasingly preoccupied with the “bad manners” of the Jews. There are many people with bad manners, but the Jews stand out, “because of the obsessive interest in their lives and the general belief in the existence of a ‘problem,’ which even Jews paranoically began to share themselves.”

Books appear seeking to analyze the Jews’ warped character and physiognomy. This isn’t primitive hatred of Jews like in the days of the Church and the ghetto. This is science. As a young man Herzl reads one such book—Eugene Duhring’s The Jewish Question as a Racial, Ethical, and Cultural Question—and allows it briefly to penetrate his consciousness, mentioning his troubled emotions in his diary before relegating it to the back of his mind. One of the most toxic tracts would eventually be written by a Jew by the name of Otto Weininger. Like all Jews willing to attack other Jews, Weininger was borne upward on a strange, grateful tide of popularity, before taking his critique to its logical conclusion and killing himself. “When a number of frightened Jewish scholars publicly endorsed the new ‘scientific’ antisemitism and admitted the ‘biological’ inferiority of their race,” Elon writes, “other Jewish wits replied that ‘antisemitism did not really succeed until the Jews began to sponsor it.’”

Viennese politicians begin understanding how effective this hatred can be as a mobilizing tool. The dark word “they” comes into use—everyone knows who “they” are.

The most adept of this breed is Karl Lueger, who rides Jew-hatred into power but has Jewish friends. “I decide,” he famously declares, “who is a Jew.” It’s a type becoming familiar in our own time. Jews like Herzl believe that the genteel people in the palaces and grand townhouses of Vienna are in control of events, and that culture will thus prevail. But power is shifting to the gutter.

My 'As A Jew' Beats Your 'My Rabbi Said' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

My 'As A Jew' Beats Your 'My Rabbi Said'

by Ariel Elyse Gold, National Co-Director, Code Pink

Ariel Gold New York, June 3 - In the rhetorical contest surrounding who gets to represent "authentic" Judaism to the world, and to invoke "what Judaism says" about any issue, we must remember the comparative strengths of different sources of authority. I seek to draw the reader's attention in particular to an important point in this regard: the lived experience and insight that one implies merely by asserting one's status as a member of the tribe holds more weight than the statements of some Rabbinical scholar who spends all his time examining "sources" and whatever.

This observation holds true regardless of, and I might even argue, because of, any paltry level of Jewish education on the part of the person invoking the "As a Jew" rhetorical device. For example, it's one thing to cite ancient, medieval, or even modern sources demonstrating that in the Torah's view, abortion equals murder; but I win the debate if I declare, "As a Jew, I firmly support a woman's right to choose, and not to let the repressive patriarchal structures of society dictate what I do with my body." Those are the rules.

I have exercised this philosophical principal in discussions about Israel-Palestine, as well. I'll see your "The Bible and overwhelming archaeological evidence prove Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people," and raise it "As a Jew, I feel that the genocidal Apartheid regime of far-right nationalist Benjamin Netanyahu is the chief source of antisemitism in the world today."

The latter example shows that the "As a Jew" device doesn't even have to cite anything factual to back it up - that's how powerful it is. Your so-called "evidence" effectively melts away when I pronounce my authoritative position on anything regardless of its - or my - relationship to Jewish tradition and lore. When I engage the "As a Jew" protocol, I am Jewish tradition and lore. You cannot argue with me. If you do, you're a misogynist and and antisemite. Further attempts to adduce evidence, or even logic, will constitute mansplaining, and only further cement my position's superiority over yours.

Employing this device can get fuzzy when the person invoking "As a Jew" is already a Rabbi, especially the correct kind of Rabbi, namely a progressive activist whose de facto religion is twenty-first-century American progressive ideology but who shoehorns what token traditional Jewish knowledge she has into the progressive framework and pronounces it canonical. But as a Jew, that doesn't bother me.

06/03 Links Pt1: Amb Alan Baker: Hamas' War Crimes and Israel's Right to Self-Defense; The UN Human Rights Council isn’t human or right; A Personal History of Sheikh Jarrah and Arab Violence Against Jews

From Ian:

Amb Alan Baker: Hamas' War Crimes and Israel's Right to Self-Defense

The success of Israel's "Iron Dome" anti-missile defense system in reducing the threat of over 4,000 rockets fired by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in May 2021 cannot in any way reduce the extent of the Palestinians' criminal liability for severe war crimes in willfully and deliberately directing massive barrages of missiles toward civilian centers in Israel.

The deliberate and cynical use by Hamas and Islamic Jihad of their own civilians as human shields, as well as their use of mosques, hospitals, schools, and private houses as weapons storage facilities and firing platforms, are no less severe war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law. The construction of tactical tunnels beneath urban civilian areas, hospitals, public facilities, and urban roads are also war crimes and grave violations of international humanitarian law.

The indiscriminate targeting of Israeli cities and civilians practiced by Hamas violates the rule of distinction in international law, which requires combatants to limit attacks to legitimate military targets. Moreover, advocating a religious holy war aimed at creating a regional Islamic entity encompassing the whole of the territory of Israel appears to contravene the provisions of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide. For all such crimes, Hamas and PIJ leaders and commanders are accountable and prosecutable under international law.

?? Were Israel's actions 'proportionate'?
?? What is a 'military target'?
?? Which war crimes did Hamas commit?

Proud to launch this @The_ILF Report, covering the most common FAQs about Int’l Law & #Israel's operation against Hamas in #Gaza.

Full report: https://t.co/5iyVioov97 pic.twitter.com/VRHYmNLle5
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) June 2, 2021

Israel Has Set a New Standard for the Ethics of War

In the recent fighting in Gaza, Israel delivered the greatest moral miracle in the history of warfare. The conduct of the Israel Defense Forces vis-a-vis the protection of civilians on both sides has no equal or precedent. Indeed, Israel has set a new standard for the ethics of war.

Urban warfare is hell. Since the 1990s, civilian deaths have accounted for 90% of all casualties of urban warfare. Coalition airstrikes against ISIS in Mosul inadvertently killed 3,200 civilians. American bombing of ISIS' last stronghold in Raqqa killed 1,200 ISIS fighters and 1,600 civilians.

In 11 days of fighting, Israel eliminated most of Hamas' significant military infrastructure. But the high number of civilian deaths Hamas counted on did not happen. Many Gazans were killed by the 600 Hamas rockets that fell short and landed inside Gaza. Whatever the precise civilian casualty count turns out to be, it is by far the smallest in the history of modern warfare.

Israel saved thousands of Israeli lives, as well as those of many thousands of Gazan "human shields." Those who are rallying to have the U.S. Congress cut military funding to Israel are missing the point. It's because of military aid, technology and shared moral values that thousands of Palestinians and Israelis are alive today.

Israel Military Says U.S. Should Copy Gaza Strategy, Not Criticize

IDF officials who spoke with Newsweek defended Israel's extensive recent airstrikes on Gaza, with one official saying Western countries should learn from what he called a "phenomenal" military success. "Not only should the IDF not be criticized for its choice of targets, and procedures and techniques, the IDF should actually be commended by these people."

"Tell me another conflict where a Western military achieved a 1:1 ratio [of combatant to civilian deaths] in a populated urban area using an air force; it hasn't been achieved." While they were "not belittling even one single civilian non-combatant casualty...to achieve a ratio of almost one to one, I think is unprecedented....They should be sending their militaries to us to see and learn and adapt what we did and how we managed to strike so many militants."

Regarding the destruction of the al-Jala Tower in Gaza City - home to the Gaza offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera - the IDF said the building was also home to multiple significant Hamas targets, including teams responsible for electronic warfare. IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi told Israel's Channel 12 that "the building was destroyed justly" and he did not have a "gram of regret."

The IDF official said the strikes on high-rises were also designed to be a deterrent against other hostile Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Iranian groups in the region. "They all need to understand very clearly two things: Yes, we are committed to the law of [armed] conflict and we do our best not to strike non-combatants. But two, there is no safe place to hide for any terrorist."

The Joshua and Caleb Network: Who’s to Blame for the Children Killed in Gaza: Israel or Hamas?

The New York Times released a heart wrenching article about the children that were killed in the recent war with Gaza. When you look behind the headlines however, you might just find that the NYT doesn’t actually care about these children who were killed, and they don’t care who is responsible. Find out on today’s episode.

We go behind the scenes of the war with Gaza, and find out just who is responsible for all of the violence and killing.

Palestinian terrorists naturally want to learn from the best.

That's why they have spoken to military leaders from Latin America, Vietnam and Algeria in search of advice on the kinds of tactics that will accomplish their goal of destroying the State of Israel and sending the Jews packing.

Last month, Hamas deputy political chief Musa Abu Marzouk gave an interview to Russia Today comparing the Hamas war against Israel with the Vietnamese War with the US:

“It’s not like it was in Vietnam and elsewhere, where things ended up with negotiations. This is just one of a [series] of wars, and a war will come when we negotiate with them [i.e., the Jews] about the end of their occupation and their leaving of Palestine.”

But despite the contrast with the results in Vietnam, Palestinian leaders apparently see similarities.

So much so that Palestinian terrorist leaders made a point of traveling there for pointers from General Vo Nguyen Giap:

Giap was one of the great strategic minds of the twentieth century, a former schoolteacher who played a central role in developing the strategic thinking and organizational capabilities that transformed ragtag rural provincials into a military force that would rout the most powerful nations in the world, from the Japanese occupation to the French and the Americans over three long decades of conflict culminating in the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

In the mid-1990s, two IDF major generals were coming to the end of their military careers. Meir Dagan had led commando squads, armored brigades and the Mossad. Yossi Ben Hanan served as one of Israel’s most successful tank commanders during the 1973 war and later led the armored corps and was in charge of the IDF’s R&D. Both of them were students of military history in general and that included the Vietnam War.

The two men applied for visas and specifically requested to meet with Giap.
The request was unexpectedly approved and the 2 Israelis had a long meeting with him.

When the Israelis rose to leave, Giap suddenly turned to the Palestinian issue. “Listen,” he said, “the Palestinians are always coming here and saying to me, ‘You expelled the French and the Americans. How do we expel the Jews?’”

The generals were intrigued. “And what do you tell them?”

“I tell them,” Giap replied, “that the French went back to France and the Americans to America. But the Jews have nowhere to go. You will not expel them.” [emphasis added]

This, of course, is reminiscent of the famous quote of Golda Meir about Israel's secret weapon:

"We have a secret weapon in our conflict with the Arabs: You see, we have no place else to go.”

Same idea.
But with a difference.

Golda was right. In 1973, there were about 3.3 million Jews in Israel.
Where would they go?

But there is an implication in the way Giap phrases it.

For France and America, regardless of their reason for being in Vietnam, they had their own countries to return to -- and even under the best of circumstances they had no intent to set up Vietnam as an extension of their own country for their own people to live.

France can always go back to France and America can always go back to America

Where do Jews have to go back to?

Europe?

Even if Giap was not trying to imply that Jews have ties to Israel, he clearly saw that Jews were not about to leave as France and the US did -- not only because they can't, but because they won't.

They won't because Israel is home.
Our indigenous home.

The French went home to France.
The Americans went home to the US.
And Jews who are home in Israel are there to stay.

It is a predictable pattern: any time anything happens in the news, a group of anti-Israel Jews issue a "letter" from "Jewish leaders" that try to gaslight the world and pretend to represent Jews as a whole.

The Israel-hating Left is very frightened by the wave of antisemitic attacks that have gotten publicity worldwide - attacks that clearly aren't initiated by the far Right that they blame for all antisemitism. So, they wrote a letter to fool people into thinking that the attacks are an anomaly, and roundly condemned by pro-Palestinian activists.

As usual, they are lying.

This one has the absurd title "Jewish Leaders Say: We Won't Be Distracted, We Won't Be Divided." The gaslighting begins in the title: they represent only a tiny fringe of Jews (only some 3% of Jews are actively anti-Zionist.) The writers of this letter are the ones who are actively trying to divide the Jewish community, not the mainstream Zionists.

We are Jewish leaders who have a range of opinions, perspectives, and approaches to Israel-Palestine.

Yes, some of them (IfNotNow, JVP) want the Jewish state destroyed today, and some (J-Street) are willing to wait until tomorrow.

We are deeply concerned by recent reports and outcries from certain corners of our community which suggest a direct confluence between the growing movement for Palestinian freedom and violent incidents against Jews in our cities.

Their "concern" is that the attacks delegitimize their movement as being based on liberal principles. The letter is an attempt to deflect from that.

We unequivocally condemn attacks on members of our Jewish community. Jewish people deserve to walk safely in the streets of our cities without fear of attack or harassment — just like anyone else. Blaming all Jewish people for the actions of the Israeli government is antisemitic. We are shocked and disgusted by individuals who would use this moment of heightened support for Palestinian rights to advance antisemitic hatred and violence.

It does not take political courage to condemn random attacks on Jews. But after they do, then they go on to minimize and justify them.

We reject efforts to stoke fear and division. Supporters of the Israeli government — including some in the American Jewish establishment — are misrepresenting fringe and widely-condemned acts of individual antisemitism as characteristic of the broader Palestinian human rights movement.

The only people stoking division are these fringe Jews. The entire purpose of this letter is to give the impression that a significant number of Jews consider Israel to be beneath contempt.

Palestinian liberation and dismantling antisemitism are intertwined. For decades, the organizations and activists leading the Palestinian freedom movement have been resoundingly clear that antisemitism has no place in the movement, which is guided by principles of human rights and antiracism. When fringe antisemitic events occur, they are swiftly and roundly condemned by movement leadership.

Ooooh, look at all those hyperlinks! Most of them point to tweets, in English, from people no one heard of, that deny Palestinian antisemitism.

But if you spend time looking at Palestinian Arabic media, the story is very different.

MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch expose blatant antisemitism in Arabic media all the time, as do I, but that's not the entire story. I have not once seen Palestinian backlash against explicit antisemitism in their media. If one is going to represent antisemitism as a fringe opinion in Palestinian circles, then one would expect that Palestinians would condemn other Palestinians who spout Jew-hatred - and that never happens.

I have never seen a single Palestinian media outlet criticize their first political leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem who collaborated with the Nazis in the Final Solution, as antisemitic. I have never seen a Palestinian respond to the mainstream Palestinian belief, popularized by Yasir Arafat, that Jerusalem is not really holy to Jews and there was never a Temple there. The antisemitic theory that most Israeli Jews are really Khazars and not Jews at all is never even debated. When Hanan Ashrawi's Miftah organization published the blood libel in Arabic, after defending it, it issued an apology, but only in English. Mahmoud Abbas claimed that rabbis want to poison the water of Palestinians. He has blamed Jews for the Holocaust which he claims was vastly exaggerated. The official PLO position is that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.

This is not "fringe antisemitism." This is as mainstream as it gets.

I think that these examples outweigh a few tweets from nobodies. But that's how one does propaganda - highlight the few counterexamples and ignore the overwhelming evidence disproving the thesis. But the "leaders" deny the reality:

Linking the movement at large to antisemitism is baseless and harmful. Especially in this moment, we must condemn this thinly veiled attempt to delegitimize Palestinian leadership and distract from Palestinians experiencing state violence by Israel.

The Leftist Jews don't only deny the undeniable antisemitism that is at the very core of Palestinianism. They then say that it is the Jews who are really the racists!

We commit to standing up against anti-Palestinian racism, so often unreported and unacknowledged in our communities.

First they bend over backwards to deny the existence of Palestinian antisemitism, no matter how explicit and blatant. But you know who the real bigots are? Jews!

....We support our Palestinian siblings’ right to describe their lived experiences without being accused of antisemitism. {W]e refuse to be more outraged by the words Palestinians use than the actual violence they endure.

4300 rockets, decades of terror attacks, Palestinian leaders inciting violence against Jews - they all go unmentioned. No, these As-A-Jews pretend that the only problem with Palestinians is that they sometimes say some bad stuff - which are all completely justified, by the way, because of Israel - and Jews are racists for calling those out. And when Palestinians say that Jews are Nazis, well, that is their "lived experience" and cannot be considered antisemitic.

Similarly, we refuse to allow progressive leaders of color who speak out in support of Palestinian rights to be smeared for their principled stand.

Claiming that Jews are racist is antisemitic itself. Mainstream Jews refute the antisemitism and terror-support from Roger Waters and Betty McCollum as energetically as they refute the lies from Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. To claim that somehow Marc Lamont Hill should not be called out for his antisemitic conspiracy theories because he is Black is the actual racism.

Beyond that, was Kareem Abdul Jabbar being racist when he called out the antisemitism from among Black Lives Matter supporters last year? There is a serious problem with Black antisemitism, whether it is from celebrities or from people attacking random religious Jews in Brooklyn. These "Jewish leaders" deny it, meaning that they condone it.

We know safety comes through solidarity. Antisemitism — like anti-Asian, anti-Black, anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic attacks and rhetoric — exists in every community, but it is fostered and exploited by rightwing movements in the US and around the world, which gain power by keeping us divided.

Yes, a letter that is supposedly against antisemitism ends up blaming only the Right, and dismisses all other Jew-hatred as "fringe." Which means that this letter ends up tacitly defending all antisemitism that is not rightwing - antisemitism from Arabs, from the Left, from people of color, from Louis Farrakhan - as justified or anomalous, and not something that needs to be specifically called out or fought.

On Wednesday, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar met with the UNRWA Deputy Commissioner-Generalafter his boss Matthias Schmale was essentially kicked out of Gaza, and out of UNRWA.

Schmale had told Israeli TV that Israel's bombing campaign didn't aim at civilian targets and since then UNRWA employees, Hamas and other Gazans have been calling for his scalp.

Schmale apologized profusely but UNRWA asked him to leave Gaza for "consultations." He later announced that he was taking an extended leave of absence.

Not wasting any time, Hamas leader Sinwar met with Schmale's Gaza deputy and apparent replacement Lenny Stenseth. CLearly he wanted to get a strong message across:

Nobody in Gaza says anything to the media that Hamas does not approve.

Hamas has vetoed UNRWA curricula before - when UNRWA gingerly announced that it would start teaching students about the Holocaust, Hamas made it clear that they would do no such thing.

The UNRWA teachers union, and I believe its other workers' union, is run by Hamas in Gaza. They make the decisions of what can be taught and said. UNRWA allows itself to be bullied by them.

In short, UNRWA is effectively controlled by a terror group.

Almost a Government (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal

Tonight (Wednesday) at midnight is the deadline for Yair Lapid to tell Israel’s president that he has formed a government. Negotiations between the eight parties – including Ra’am, an Arab Islamist party – that will be part of the almost wall-to-wall coalition are still taking place as I write this, so everything I say is subject to change. The coalition, if it comes to be, will be led by Naftali Bennett and Lapid, who will each be Prime Minister for two years, starting with Bennett.

So who will not be in the coalition? The single largest party, Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud, of course, two Haredi parties that have cast their lot with him, and Betzalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party. If this coalition comes about as planned, it will be the first time in the history of Israel that there hasn’t been at least one explicitly religious (Jewish) party in the government, and one of the few times without a Haredi party. There will, however, be a fundamentalist Muslim party! And Mansour Abbas’ Ra’am party has already demanded that the government make no commitment in its platform to reforms favoring the LGBT community.

At first the idea was that Ra’am would not be a member of the coalition, but would vote for it from outside, so that it would have the 61 mandates necessary to come into existence. But at some point it was decided that it would be part of the coalition, although without any ministerial portfolios. This too would be a first in Israel’s history.

The idea of an Arab party as part of the government is not in itself a radical one. Arabs are 20% of Israel’s population, and have legitimate concerns, in particular about the allocation of resources to Arab towns and cities. But until now no coalition has included them – and no Arab party has wanted to be included – because of a fundamental disagreement between all the Arab parties and most of the Jewish ones over the question of whether Israel should be in some sense a “Jewish state.” Positions of the Arab parties range from the view that Israel should be a “state of all its citizens” to explicit Palestinian or pan-Arab nationalism. Yes, you read that right.

Indeed, if the conditions in Israel’s Basic Law for the Knesset were strictly applied, no Arab party could sit in the Knesset. The law excludes any party or person whose “goals or actions … expressly or by implication, include … negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.” But Israel’s Supreme Court has always interpreted the requirement very liberally, at least when applied to the Arab members of the Knesset. On several occasions the Court has overruled the decision of the Central Elections Committee of the Knesset to bar an Arab candidate from running, as occurred in 2013 and 2015 to the Balad Party’s candidate, Haneen Zoabi.

Ra’am is ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, (!) the parent organization of Hamas, but Mansour Abbas insists that his goals as a member of the government are only to influence practical issues affecting the Arab community, like the out-of-control crime rate in Arab towns and investment in infrastructure.

Coming immediately after a short but painful war with Hamas, and more importantly, after anti-Jewish riots by Arab citizens of Israel in which synagogues and Jewish homes were burned, the decision to include an Arab party in the government was met by many with shock and anger. Indeed, after the news of the riots broke, I concluded that even the idea of forming a government with outside support from an Arab party was dead.

But apparently the driving forces of the unity coalition, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, believe that the need to form a government and avoid a fifth election in a bit more than two years is paramount.

Despite the large number of parties that run in Israeli elections and the fact that no party has ever gotten a majority by itself, there is usually a clear-cut contest between right-wing and left-wing blocs. Whichever bloc wins the most mandates then forms a coalition with other bloc members. But in the last few elections the split has been between pro- and anti-Netanyahu parties. The pro-Netanyahu parties could not obtain the required 61 mandates; but the anti-Netanyahu forces encompass such a wide ideological range that it has been impossible for them to form a coalition of 61 either. And that is why we have had four elections in two years.

And that is also why we have a situation in which, despite the fact that a solid majority of Israelis vote for right-wing parties – some 70 or 80 mandates worth – we can’t get a right-wing government. And why it appears that we are going to get a coalition that includes on the one hand the far-left Meretz party, the Arab Islamist Ra’am, the Labor Party, what’s left of Benny Gantz’ Kahol-Lavan, and Yair Lapid’s center-left Yesh Atid; and on the other, Avigdor Lieberman’s anti-Arab Israel Beiteinu party, as well as Gideon Sa’ar’s Tikvah Hadasha and Naftali Bennett’s Yamina, both solidly on the right of Netanyahu.

There is a great deal of anger at Naftali Bennett from right-wingers, both those that voted for Netanyahu and blame Bennett for Netanyahu’s failure to get 61 mandates, and those who voted for Bennett but think he is at best a fraud and at worst a traitor for choosing to give his seven mandates to the anti-Netanyahu side. The Shabak (internal security service) thinks that the threats against Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, also on the Yamina list, are serious enough to merit a 24-7 bodyguard.

Bennett has justified breaking his earlier commitments to not sit in a government with Lapid or to even depend on support from an Islamist party by insisting that there was no way that a government led by Netanyahu could get the needed 61. The alternative, he said, is a fifth election, which would be a disaster for the country. Netanyahu has said that if Bennett had fully committed to joining him rather than remaining on the fence, there could have been a right-wing government. I personally believe that Bennett is right: he did explore every possibility to squeeze out a few more mandates for a right-wing coalition before going to Lapid.

I also think Bennett is right about the consequences of a fifth election, which would entail several months of a paralyzed caretaker government, followed by yet another period of chaos as the parties try again to form a coalition. And there is no guarantee that the results would be more decisive than it was the last four times. The country is facing some very serious security issues today – the unrest among Israeli Arabs (which was incited by Hamas), the unfinished business with Hamas itself, the Iranian nuclear program, and – affecting all of the above – the pro-Iranian and pro-Palestinian polices of the Biden Administration. There is also a major unknown, which is the policy of China in a Middle East where American influence is waning. And of course there is the economic fallout of the Covid epidemic, and the continued need for vigilance against mutations of the virus. I could go on, and on.

We need a government and we need one now. It will definitely not be the one anyone hoped for, either on the Right or the Left, but the present instability is unacceptable. There is a good chance that the differences between the partners in the coalition are too great, and it will splinter, resulting in another election anyway. But if it does work, even for a year or two, it could be a path back to political stability.

06/02 Links Pt2: We cannot ignore Muslim anti-Semitism any longer; Google Diversity Head Said Jews Have ‘Insatiable Appetite for War’; UNRWA Gaza chief recalled after saying IDF strikes are precise

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The strange reluctance to defend liberal principles

Last weekend, there was a particularly shocking antisemitic incident at a demonstration near the Israel embassy in London.

A masked youth was filmed telling a Muslim crowd: “We’ll find some Jews here ... We want the Zionists, we want their blood!” Minutes earlier, a YouTuber called Mohammed Hijab had whipped up the mob against the “terrorist apartheid state of Israel” by declaring: “We love death.”

The Times reported:
Hijab, a former trainee history teacher, told the group through a megaphone: “The truth of the matter is that we are with the brothers and sisters of Palestine and we will get our vengeance in this dunya [world] or the akhirah [hereafter] ... we will get our justice.”

Surrounded by chants of allahu akbar, Hijab continued: “The difference between us [Muslims] and them [Jews] is this ... We believe that life begins with death. We don’t care about death. We love death, and if you think that our people in Palestine or across the Arab and Muslim world will let go of the struggle and our sacred places, like Al Aqsa [mosque in Jerusalem], you are grossly mistaken.”

The Metropolitan Police are now said to be hunting the masked youth who called for Jewish blood. But police officers who had been within earshot of his ranting had stood by and done absolutely nothing while he incited the murder of Jews.

Why was this? Probably for the same reason that the police did nothing over many years when several thousand young white girls in northern British towns were raped, pimped and serially sexually abused by gangs of Pakistani-heritage Muslim men.

The police are quick to feel the collars of Christians publicly preaching Biblical passages against homosexuality. But they are not moved to similar action, apparently, when Muslim men scream for the blood of Jews on a London street.

The reason is that the police are terrified of being thought racist or Islamophobic. So Muslim Jew-baiting and incitement to murder Jews get a free pass.

Ruthie Blum: Antisemitism at Rutgers University isn't all academic

In a sardonic twist, SJP assailed Molloy and Conway for "lumping" together the murder of George Floyd with attacks against Asians, Indigenous persons, Hindus and Muslims "for the purpose of making a blanket statement decreeing that 'racism is bad.'" Of course, SJP doesn't consider virulent anti-Zionism and antisemitism to be "racist," but rather deserved.

The group concluded its tirade by demanding that the Rutgers administration not only apologize, but "call out and expose any and all ties to Israeli apartheid and commit to action that reflects a global call to uplift the humanity of Palestinians, to recognize their violent displacement by the state of Israel, and acknowledge the gross mass murders occurring at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces."

Without skipping a beat, Molloy and Conway obeyed.

"In hindsight," they groveled in a statement on May 27, "it is clear to us that the message failed to communicate support for our Palestinian community members. We sincerely apologize for the hurt that this message has caused."

Rutgers, they wrote, "is a community that is enriched by our vibrant diversity. However, our diversity must be supported by equity, inclusion, anti-racism and the condemnation of all forms of bigotry and hatred, including antisemitism and Islamophobia. As we grow in our personal and institutional understanding, we will take the lesson learned here to heart, and pledge our commitment to doing better. We will work to regain your trust, and make sure that our communications going forward are much more sensitive and balanced."

The ridicule and outrage on the part of pro-Israel organizations and victims of antisemitism this nauseating piece of breast-beating elicited caused Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway to take charge of the controversy. In a statement on May 29 – titled "On Hatred and Bigotry" – he announced, "We have not, nor would we ever, apologize for standing against antisemitism."

Perhaps not. But Holloway – whose attempt at a tough response replaced the previous two statements on the school's website – was no more specific about antisemitism than Molloy and Conway had been.

"Neither hatred nor bigotry has a place at Rutgers, nor should they have a place anywhere in the world," he said. "At Rutgers we believe that antisemitism, anti-Hinduism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism, intolerance and xenophobia are unacceptable wherever and whenever they occur."

Erasing the particularity of antisemitism is one goal of SJP and like-minded radical organizations. Another is denying its existence on the grounds that Jews are privileged and Israel is evil. Such aims themselves stem from and perpetuate antisemitism.

It's bad enough that Rutgers administrators and their counterparts at colleges around America act as though they're oblivious to this fact. Far worse is their active collusion, based on cowardice.

How a ‘Wokestorm’ Is Misleading a Generation About Israel

The Israeli-Arab conflict is a decades-long, complex conflict, but woke culture sees no nuance, only supremacist and victim. Many of the leading lights of the Democratic party amplify this mess. If only Bernie could listen to Bernie from 2014 telling protestors that Hamas uses Gazan children as shields. Common sense isn’t what it used to be.

And of course, Judaism advocates for a certain kind of “wokeness.” Judaism instructs us to pursue justice constantly. But the prophets of the Hebrew Bible were not only the most adamant in calling for a righteous society but in creating a generous one too. “Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God,” the prophet Micah charged. It seems that today’s generation has forgotten Micah’s last sentiment. Woke culture is in desperate need of humility, admitting that truth does not dwell in Twitter nor the messiah in a meme.

If the “woke community” really sought to awaken, it would realize that Jew hatred is the oldest of hatreds. Of all the countries in the world with egregious human rights records, how is it that the State of Israel, which has Arab members of Knesset and a LGBTQ parade in Jerusalem, is so often singled out by the United Nations for reprimand? Which other country on the planet would tolerate a daily barrage of missiles aimed at its civilian populations? How can one justify the assault on non-Israelis in cities worldwide elsewhere in the name of ending the “occupation”?

It is time for the world to “wake up” and recognize when defense of Palestinian rights becomes a one-sided, distorted, often violent assault against Jews, plain and simple. People of conscience and especially Jews ought to know better. (h/t Cliff)

Lapid informs president he can form government removing Netanyahu from power

Thirty-five minutes before a midnight deadline, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid on Wednesday night informed President Reuven Rivlin he is able to form a government in which he and Yamina chief Naftali Bennett will switch off as prime minister, positioning themselves to replace Israel’s longest-serving leader Benjamin Netanyahu as premier.

Under the terms of the new coalition, Bennett is to serve as prime minister until September 2023, when Lapid will take over from him until the end of the Knesset term in November 2025. The agreement came together after Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas threw his support behind the would-be government late on Wednesday night, setting up his Islamist party to be the first majority Arab party to be part of a ruling coalition in Israel’s history.

Despite Lapid’s declaration, it remained unclear that the prospective “change government” will make it past the finish line. It is set to include 61 of the 120 MKs — the narrowest possible majority. And an MK from Bennett’s Yamina, Nir Orbach, earlier on Wednesday night announced he could vote against the new coalition, a move that could potentially doom the prospective razor-thin government of right-wing, centrist, left-wing parties and the Islamist Ra’am.

“I am honored to inform you that I have succeeded in forming a government,” Lapid told Rivlin according to a Yesh Atid statement. “The government will be an alternate government in accordance with Clause 13(a) of the Basic Law: The Government, and MK Naftali Bennett will serve as prime minister first.”

(2) What were Akiva's beginnings? It is said: Up to the age of forty, he had not yet studied a thing. One time, while standing by the mouth of a well in Lydda, he inquired, "Who hollowed out this stone?" and was told, "Akiva, haven't you read that 'water wears away stone' (Job 14:19)? - it was water falling upon it constantly, day after day." At that, Rabbi Akiva asked himself: Is my mind harder than this stone? I will go and study at least one section of Torah. (Avot D'Rabbi Natan 6:2)

It was only a matter of time. Living on a steady diet of anti-Israel propaganda was bound to have an effect on American Jewry, wearing down their critical thinking skills and turning them against their brothers in Israel. The propaganda is not stealthy, but is completely out there: served straight up not just on social media, but in the ivy halls of academia, from the pulpit, and in the pages of the New York Times.

This is crucial, because it’s one thing if you hear it at a party or see it on Twitter, but if your college professor and/or your rabbi tell you that Israel is occupying Arab land, and the New York Times publishes only articles critical of Israel, then that’s all there is. The average or even very educated American Jew isn’t going to dig deeper. Why should a Jew question what the rabbi says in her sermon in temple? Why would the New York Times, an august newspaper—perhaps the newspaper of all newspapers—hide the truth? Why would your professor tell you straight up lies within the hallowed halls of the college classroom?

These are the sources we were taught to respect: our clergy, our teachers, the Gray Lady. Over time, even the most educated of Jews—perhaps especially the most educated of Jews—cannot help but absorb the barrage of disinformation and conclude that Israel is engaged in war crimes against the “Palestinian” people. This salvo of anti-Israel propaganda is the “water falling upon it constantly, day after day.”

This painful reality was brought home to me during a recent phone conversation with my cousin. We had become close over the past year and a half, as both our mothers went into decline and then passed away within six months of each other. It began when my mother told me that my aunt had been diagnosed with lung cancer and didn’t have long to live. I reached out with regular phone calls to my cousin, who lived with my aunt and was her sole caregiver. If nothing else, I thought, I can listen and lend emotional support.

After my aunt died, my mother began her own decline that ended in her death. At that point, my cousin became my emotional support and listening ear, and the relationship deepened. This was very good for both of us. I think we both looked forward to our long, regular phone calls.

During our most recent call, my cousin asked if all my children and grandchildren had returned to their homes after taking refuge with us during the rocket fire—if my home had returned to normal. I confirmed that this was the case, though I lamented that this was likely to be temporary, until such time as Hamas restocks its rocket supply. “How I wish the world could see my granddaughter melt down on hearing a passing ambulance, thinking it was a rocket siren,” I said. “Maybe then they’d finally understand and stop pointing a finger at Israel.”

“Children on both sides feel the same way,” my cousin said, shocking me to the core. I’d had no idea that was coming. “Both sides are suffering."

What??? Was my own cousin "both-siding" me???

"They shot 4,360 rockets at us, 4,360 rockets! Did you want us not to respond??" I sputtered. "Is it on Israel when Hamas places rocket launchers in residential buildings, hospitals, and schools to hide behind human shields to create photo opps to make the world blame and hate Israel?

“Our response was surgical. We called every resident of every building and warned them, giving them an hour to vacate before every attack. We used the knock on the roof tactic. But they gave us no such warnings.

"We targeted terrorists. They targeted civilians," I said, trembling, the heat rising to my face.

“And the timeline matters," I continued, pounding the desk where I sat. "They shot the rockets first, unprovoked, into heavily populated cities. Thousands and thousands of them.”

“Uh uh,” she said, “You don’t know . . . we don’t believe the same . . . you shouldn’t be there.”

“What???” I said.

“You stole the land. You stole the land from the Palestinians,” she said.

“What are you saying??? What are you even talking about? There has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel. Your great great grandparents are buried on the Mount of Olives,” I said.

“That’s what YOU feel,” she said. “They also feel . . . “

“It’s not about feelings!” I said, “There are facts, there's documentation . . . ”

“We should stop,” she said. “We should get off the phone. NOW. Before this . . . we should get off the phone right now.”

Her meaning was clear: we should end this phone conversation before we ruin our beautiful, warm relationship. Shocked and struggling for composure, I choked back the words, said “Bye,” and hung up the phone.

I sat back stunned, pondering what, if anything I could or should do about this. How could a close relative of mine be so under the spell of these anti-Israel lies? My cousin is highly educated, highly intelligent. Meantime, it has for years been my daily business to try to be an advocate for Israel, to disseminate information, and fight back against the lies with facts.

I wanted to show her she was wrong, with facts and documentation, but she was telling me that she did not want to hear it. She had her strongly held beliefs and I had mine, and never the twain shall meet.

It felt like we were no longer the same religion.

I knew she was sorry/not sorry she’d outed these feelings to me, and at the same time was putting up a wall: she was not willing to hear what I had to say on this subject. As far as she was concerned, the subject was closed.

I now understood why, during the rocket fire, she had written me and begged me to "return"—she would purchase a ticket for me if I wanted to “come home.” It was ridiculous. I have a husband, children, and grandchildren in Israel. Israel was, by now, truly home in every sense. I have deep ties, family ties. To tell me to leave defied logic, but it had all become clear: in her mind, I shouldn’t be here, here in Israel. I should never have been here. There was no reason for me to steal land. I had family in Pittsburgh, a place to call home. Why would I come halfway around the world to live in land that already had other people living there?

It reminded me of when my late mother questioned my aliyah. “But you have always supported Israel,” I said to her.

“Yes. But Israel is for Moroccans. For Russians. For Jews who have no place to go.”

What was always missing, and impossible for me to convey to my mother was my deep love for Israel. But my mother did know that Israel was the Jewish homeland. With my cousin, it was different. She believed the lies. Believed that the land belonged to other people and that we stole it from them, and she was unwilling to hear the truth, read a population census, or bone up on the religious imperatives that make it crucial for believing Jews to live in the land and only in the land.

My wallet was full, I had a wealth of information at my fingertips to dispense to her, but the register was closed. She was not willing to listen. Still, I wrote a long email, filled with source material and video clips. I had to. I couldn’t bear it that I knew the truth and she did not and would not even listen. I didn’t send the email, and then I did.

From her point of view, it was a “political disagreement,” a no man’s land where we should never venture. But it wasn’t. She’d been filled to the brim with lies. She likely subscribed to the New York Times, thought it credible. But she wouldn’t, on the other hand, have read Gilead Ini, who chronicled the obscenely anti-Israel bias of the coverage during the most recent conflagration:

Between May 10, the day Hamas first opened fire on Israel, and May 27, when a Florida Holocaust museum was defaced with the phrase “Jews are guilty,” the newspaper published nine anti-Israel Guest Essays about the alleged misbehavior of Israeli Jews; three evenhanded Guest Essays that criticized and empathized with both Israeli Jews and Arabs; and not even a single Guest Essay that was primarily critical of Hamas or Palestinian behavior in the conflict.

No. She wouldn’t have read Gilead Ini, nor would she have been willing to read Gilead Ini, or any of the other myriad voices that speak out against the bias in the media, and everywhere else. And she wasn't going to read my email. Because she’d been programmed to discount our voices and the facts. And there would be nothing I could say that would change her mind. Her mind was a closed door: closed to me, closed to the facts, closed to the rightness of Israel and the wrongness of Hamas and the PA and Arab terror against its own population and ours.

I now have a personal problem to solve: how to move forward with my cousin now that I know she feels I’m engaged in war crimes and stealing the land of poor brown people. But my conundrum is only one small symptom of a much wider, fatal disease. Large sectors of the Jewish people are breaking away, and we are no longer one. It is no longer a given that Jews and Israel go together like a horse and carriage. Now, we are told, Jews have no business being in Israel, the bible, history, and the facts be damned.

I think of my cousin, and her deep connection to her congregation, named after King David, and the irony couldn’t be more stark. It was David who established the first Jewish kingdom in Israel, in Jerusalem. It was David the psalmist, who wrote, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy." (137, 5-7).

This is what we are now witnessing. American Jews have forgotten their connection to Jerusalem, to Israel. As a result, their Judaism has withered. They no longer remember why they are supposed to love and fight for Israel. Their ties to their people continue to weaken as they marry out and accuse Israeli Jews of war crimes. Their tongues cleave to their palates when it comes time to speak out for their sisters and brothers in Israel, people like my five-year-old granddaughter who melts down at the sound of a passing ambulance. They forgot they are supposed to fight for us and against the anti-Israel, antisemitic lies, even when they are printed in the New York Times, or preached from a pulpit or a lectern.

I respect your first cousin for stating out loud the genocidal consequences of the NY Times editorials. Most of their editors believe they are serving Social Justice.
— Judea Pearl (@yudapearl) May 31, 2021

I may yet manage to preserve the relationship with my cousin. Love and blood ties are strong and deep. But without the tie-in to Israel, American Jewry is doomed, and will not survive.

I give it a decade. After that, all that will be left of the Golden Age of American Jewry is lox and bagels and a footnote—or if they’re very lucky—an entire chapter in the very large and dusty, many-volumed, two-thousand-year history of the Jewish people.

Over the weekend Paris hosted the first MENART Fair, a modern and contemporary art show dedicated to artists from the Middle East and North Africa, presented by major galleries.

It is essentially the successor to the Beirut Art Fair which could not be held this year - but with one difference - Israeli artists were invited as well.

Hamas evidently has a Department of Artistic Production of the Islamic Resistance Movement, which condemned the participation of Arab artists at MENART because of the participation of Israeli artists.

Hamas called it "a normalizing activity with the occupation that killed Palestinian children in the last war."

However, not only didn't Arab countries boycott the exhibition - but Iran participated as well!

06/02 Links Pt1: Israel Has Set a New Standard for the Ethics of War; From "Defund the Police" to "Defund Israel"; Iran’s Biggest Navy Ship Sinks After Fire in Gulf of Oman

From Ian:

Israel Has Set a New Standard for the Ethics of War

Despite everything you may have been reading or hearing these last few weeks, Israel has delivered the greatest moral miracle in the history of warfare. The conduct of the Israel Defense Forces vis-à-vis the protection of civilians on both sides has no equal or precedent. Indeed, Israel has set a new standard for the ethics of war.

This may sound shocking, given the cacophony of accusations leveled against Israel on social media. However, the vast majority of those shrill voices are long-term critics of Israel for whom it can do no right. The reality lies in a casualty count so low as to have no precedent in modern history.

Warfare is brutal. Urban warfare is hell. Since the 1990s, civilian deaths have accounted for some 90 percent of all casualties of urban warfare.

In recent decades, militias and terror groups have increasingly embedded themselves deep withing civilian populations. From Saddam Hussein’s infamous human shields to ISIS bunkers in civilian towns, the goal has been the same: a forced choice between destroying the enemy without regard to mass civilian casualties, or avoid the latter and fail to accomplish the former.

Perhaps no other group has mastered the horrific art of embedding itself among civilians like those hell-bent on destroying Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah consistently fire lethal rockets at Israel’s civilian centers from homes, offices, hospitals, schools and even UN buildings. Hamas has spent millions of dollars building a network of underground tunnels so vast it was nicknamed “the Metro,” and is designed to incur civilian casualties.

Who Started the Gaza War?

The point of Realignment is to create the opposite regional order of that imagined by the Abraham Accords. In this new order, the United States and Iran are partners, and Washington recognizes Iranian spheres of influence. Consequently, the Biden administration shares with Iran the goal of burying the Abraham Accords, and consigning its remnants to the dustbin as fast as possible. More specifically, the Biden administration wants to torpedo any prospect of an Israeli-Saudi agreement—the unfinished piece of the Abraham Accords framework. The administration’s shared goal with Iran of preventing an Israeli-Saudi agreement was therefore served by the Iranians’ war in Gaza.

The major actors in Middle East power politics are not ‘peoples’ or ‘streets’ but states.

What the conventional Israeli-Palestinian “cycle of violence” narratives fail to comprehend is the basic fact that the major actors in Middle East power politics are not “peoples” or “streets” but states—and the most powerful states determine the range of political possibilities. In this context, the key actors aren’t the Palestinians, who are a divided, subject polity, or Israel, which had no interest in a Gaza war. The actors that really count are Iran and the United States.

By reemphasizing the centrality of the Palestinian quest for statehood, the Biden administration advances its shared aim with Iran of boxing in Israel and its Gulf state allies. Elevating the Palestinian issue is a way to block any movement forward between the Israelis and the Saudis, keeping Israel off balance and preoccupied in a dead-end process, while legitimating the Iranian claim to regional primacy. It is no coincidence that the twin initiatives that cemented President Barack Obama’s legacy—and which he tried to lock in through United Nations Security Council resolutions on his way out of the White House—were the Iran nuclear deal (UNSCR 2231) and endorsing the rejectionist Arab position on Israel and the 1967 lines (UNSCR 2334).

The Biden administration’s determination to implement Obama’s Iran doctrine and bring the Palestinians back to the forefront of regional priorities is a return to a familiar script. Historically, using the Palestinians as a device to keep moderate Arab states from cooperating with Israel is a well-established template for rejectionist regimes like Assad’s Syria. Iran has taken over and mastered the leadership of this rejectionist camp. As for the Palestinian factions, they know the play by heart, as it encompasses nearly the entire history of the Palestinian national movement.

With the concomitant abandonment of the Abraham Accords and the revival of the Palestinian national sideshow, Realignment places the United States firmly on the side of its erstwhile foes and opposite the interests of its traditional friends. The U.S. regional policy shift to which Khamenei and Nasrallah alluded, and which Iran sought to assist with the Gaza war, requires not only recognizing Iranian spheres of influence, but also funding through the lifting of sanctions and providing “civilian” U.S. support to “rebuild” Iranian satrapies like Gaza and Yemen.

The most curious part of all this is watching the United States assume leading sponsorship of the rejectionist Arab camp—which, practically speaking, contains no Arabs.

Lessons of the Gaza War

More broadly, the threat Hamas posed through the rocket firepower it directed at Israeli cities should set off warning bells about a possible Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. A Palestinian state on the 1967 borders will not be demilitarized and will have the capacity to become a far greater threat than the Gaza Strip. The magnitude of the self-production of weapons under Hamas and Islamic Jihad reveals the hollowness of the demilitarization delusion. Most of that self- production was carried out with civilian machinery and raw materials. There is no way to prevent a state from possessing computerized lathe machines, iron pipes, or phosphates. The fact that, at present, there is no rocket production in the Palestinian cities and refugee camps of the West Bank stems entirely from the monitoring and prevention made possible by the IDF forces and the presence of Israeli civilian communities deep inside the territory.

Central Command’s success during this round in containing popular terror activity and violence in the West Bank areas under its aegis demonstrates that the demand for a continued Israeli presence in those areas is justified, both tactically and generally. When one compares the resources and efforts required to secure Israel’s coastal plain, which are built around IDF activity in the West Bank and the support of the Israeli communities there, to what the defense establishment has to invest in the Gaza Strip, it becomes clear that the existing situation in the West Bank is more effective, economical, and suitable.

Those calling for further withdrawals, entailing the uprooting of communities and a retreat to the separation-fence line, base themselves on two premises:
- A withdrawal to the 1967 lines with minor adjustments will bring an end to the “occupation” and afford Israel international legitimacy and support for a military operation if its security is undermined by the Palestinian state.
- The IDF, with its perpetual superiority, can remove any security threat in a short time and at a reasonable price.

The magnitude of the threat facing Israel from Gaza, alongside hostile public opinion in Western countries (recall that Israeli proponents of the 2005 unilateral disengagement from Gaza promised that the international community would back any Israeli military response to terror attacks from the Strip, a result that never materialized), casts great doubt on the validity of those premises.

For that matter, President Biden’s support for Israel’s right to defend itself could not be taken for granted, and it is likely that a price will have to be paid for the US backing PM Netanyahu received for 10 days of warfare. The US administration, which is committed to promoting the two-state solution, was well aware that failing to support Israel while it was under a terror onslaught from Gaza would make it difficult to demand Israel’s agreement to a future West Bank withdrawal. Still, Israel was prevented by the administration from sustaining its offensive so as to bring Hamas to its knees.

The events of the past weeks, which showed the limitations of the IDF’s power in the event of a multi-arena war (including the domestic one), a prospect for which the potential is growing, indicate that additional withdrawals would pose an existential danger to Israel. With all the IDF’s operational superiority, if it has to fight in the northern arena as well, it will be unable to defend the narrow coastal strip from the pre-1967 border.

Hamas held a gala to honor media outlets in Gaza that reported on what Hamas wanted reported - and that ignored what Hamas wanted silenced.

The Hamas media department sponsored the ceremony, saying it was "honoring media organizations for their role in covering field events in the Gaza Strip during the days of the aggression."

During the war, the Gaza media dutifully refused to report on Hamas rockets being shot from residential neighborhoods, or of Gazans killed by misfired rockets, or of how GAza human rights organizations identified terrorists killed by Israel as "civilian."

Scores of journalists attended the event, not at all embarrassed to be associated with Hamas, which does not allow freedom of the press in Gaza at all. Hamas logos were prominently displayed during the event.