Thursday, January 17, 2019

By Daled Amos

Controversy is the bread and butter of radical left-wing anti-Israel groups. The key is to grab the headlines, whether it is by preventing pro-Israel speakers from speaking, attacking groups like Hillel and Birthright for an alleged lack of balance, or saying Kaddish for terrorists.

So it is really not all that surprising that often facts they claim to give are full of sloppiness and outright fabrications.

Take for instance Jewish Voice for Peace and their Jews From The Middle East Fact Sheet, which adopts both anti-Israel and pro-Arab narratives.





Trifecta


In the second paragraph of this sheet, JVP claims:
Middle Eastern Jews were generally indifferent or opposed to secular Zionism coming from Europe (Zvi Ben Dror, Invisible Exile: Iraqi Jews in Exile: 149).
That's 3 errors in just one sentence.

Just look online at a copy of the actual article and you will find:
  • Instead of "Zvi Ben Dror" -- the actual name of the author is Zvi A Ben-Dor Benite
  • Instead of "Invisible Exile: Iraqi Jews in Exile" -- the actual name of the article is "Invisible Exile: Iraqi Jews in Israel"
  • Instead of saying "Middle Eastern Jews were generally indifferent or opposed to secular Zionism coming from Europe" -- the article's claim is actually much more limited: "However, what seemed very logical in Palestine did not make much sense in Iraq, where Jews remained by and large indifferent to Zionism."

Other questionable claims by JVP in this "fact sheet" are not as blatant, but do offer an opportunity for setting the record straight:

Apologetics

According to the fact sheet, life for dhimmis under Islam wasn't so bad:
Prior to World War I, much of the Middle East was under Ottoman control, and Jews lived as Ottoman subjects with dhimmi status (people of the book). Under the Ottoman system, ethnic and religious groups had their own leadership and some autonomy over community affairs; they were protected through jizya, a poll tax. Depending on where in the region, violence against Jews was not a usual occurrence.
To claim that Jews were "protected through jizya" is the equivalent of euphemistically saying that store owners pay "protection money" to guard against theft -- without mentioning the 'protection' is from the very gangsters who are coercing the payments. The word 'dhimmi' itself is translated as 'protected' -- not "people of the book," but according to the Quran, the Jizya tax is not about protection, but humiliation:
“Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.” [9:29]
How much was the Jizya? Estimates vary.

The 2014 Wikipedia article on Jizya quotes scholars saying that the rate of jizya (head tax) and Kharaj tax (land tax) was more than 20% for all non-Muslim dhimmis. In the western Islamic states of Egypt and Morocco, these taxes had a minimum rate of 20% of all estimated assets and sales, while the highest rates averaged between 33% to 80% of all annual farm produce.

But according to the current Wikipedia article on Jizya, though the rate paid was not uniform, the jiyza tax was one dinar per year during the time of Mohammed, while the maximum was twelve dirhams. Muhammad Hamidullah is quoted as saying that the rate of ten dirhams per year was equivalent to the expenses of an average family for ten days. Old habits die hard, and 5 years ago, a Muslim cleric in Egypt claimed that US aid to Egypt was Jizya and that Egypt must "impose on America to pay aid as jizya, before we allow it to realize its own interests, the ones which we agree to."

What both versions do agree there are Muslim sources that advise humiliation, whether it means walking instead of riding a horse on the way to make payment or grabbing the beard of the dhimmi and hitting him in the face.

As for the claim "violence against Jews was not a usual occurrence," there is a long history of Muslim violence against Jews in then-Palestine, as there was in the rest of the Middle East.

Ethnic Cleansing?


JVP mirrors the Arab claim about "the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the making of over 700,000 Palestinians refugees," but the role of the Arab world in encouraging Palestinian Arabs to flee is documented by the Jewish Virtual Library:
The Economist, a frequent critic of the Zionists, reported on October 2, 1948: “Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit..It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.”

o  Time's report of the battle for Haifa (May 3, 1948) was similar: “The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city...By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.”

o  The Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, wrote in his book, The Arabs: “This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re­enter and retake possession of their country.”

o  In his memoirs, Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 1948­-49, also admitted the Arab role in persuading the refugees to leave:
Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return.
o  “The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade,” said Habib Issa in the New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951). “He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean....Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.”
Jewish Virtual Library also notes the flip side, that in select strategic cases -- as described by Palmach Commander Yigal Allon -- Israel did encourage Arabs to leave from the Galilee, and from Ramle-Lod to relieve pressure on besieged Jerusalem.

The Jews in Iraq


JVP tendency to adopt the pro-Arab narrative is also apparent in their description of Iraq's treatments of its Jews:
The Iraqi Denaturalization Law was enacted in March of 1950 when Iraqi Jews were allowed to immigrate legally to Israel if they gave up their Iraqi citizenship. In 1951, when the government realized that Iraqi Jewish registration increased after violent incidents, the government also froze Jewish assets, keeping Jewish resources in Iraq.
But according to Edwin Black, author of "IBM and the Holocaust," Iraq was not quite so generous to its Jews. He gives the missing context JVP fails to provide that already in October 1948, over a year before that law was passed, approximately 1,500 Jews were fired from their government positions, followed by the boycott and systematic expulsion of Jews from positions in commerce:
Now Jews began fleeing, mainly to neighboring Iran. They smuggled out whatever valuables they could to rebuild their lives. On March 3, 1950, to halt the uncontrolled flight of assets and people, Iraq passed a one-year amendment to Law 1, the Denaturalization Act. This statute revoked the citizenship of any Jew who willingly left the country. Upon exit, their assets were frozen but were still available to the emigrants for use within Iraq.

Thousands of Jews seized the opportunity to leave, believing at least that their assets, while frozen, would still be viable within Iraq until a better day. But when the one-year law expired, a successor anti-Jewish statute was enacted secretly on March 10, 1951. Law 5, known as the Law for the Control and Administration of Property of Jews Who Have Forfeited Nationality, permanently seized all the assets of Jews who had been denaturalized by the previous law and any others that would be pressured to leave the country.
Black addes that when the law was passed, the phones in Baghdad went down to keep Jews from transferring their assets to safety and the banks themselves were closed for three days.

Mizrachi Jews


The fact sheet emphasizes the treatment of Mizrahi Jews by Israel -- a controversial issue that has a painful history. Some of the points raised have a factual basis: the disappearance of Yeminite children - many of whom were adopted by Ashkenazi Jews and the thousands of eastern Jews who were given dangerous doses of radiation for ringworm, resulting in death or permanent medical problems. There is nothing to be gained in splitting hairs over the degree of the tragedy or over whom to assign blame.

But there are still false claims made by JVP:
Despite being the majority Jewish population in Israel, Mizrahim are represented in small numbers in the Israeli Parliament and in elite positions such as professorships.
While it is undeniable that Mizrahi Jews have battled for equal recognition and representation, the JVP claim again is incorrect.

A 2015 article in Haaretz reported that Mizrahi Jews already gained equality in representation in 1999:
"Various studies have also shown a significant reduction in the gap between the political representation of ethnic groups,” added Dahan. “The first Knesset had a negligible percentage of Mizrahi Knesset members. But this proportion grew until the 15th Knesset, elected in 1999, in which the proportion of Mizrahim was about the same as their representation in the population. The gap also decreased in the representation of Mizrahim in senior army ranks,” Dahan added."
As for other positions, Wikipedia has an article on Mizrahim with lists of prominent Mizrahi Jews in business, science, politics, the military and writing/academia.

Who's Indigenous?


Jewish Voice for Peace also tries to manipulate the issue of Mizrahi Jews to counter the indigenous ties of Jews to the land:
By defining Mizrahim as “indigenous” some political groups attempt to turn Mizrahim into a political tool to counter Palestinian claims to rights and redress from Israel. While there were Sephardi Jews living in Palestine for generations prior to modern Zionism, their relationships to the land, to their Arab and Ottoman neighbors, and to the surrounding cultures were entirely different than those of the European Zionists. The advent of Zionism rendered these longstanding relationships largely irrelevant, as power passed from the hands of European colonizers to those of European Jewish Zionists.
The meaning of the vague reference to the earlier relationships of Jews to the land and the Arabs is unclear -- and as already pointed out above, there is a long history of Arab discrimination and attacks against Jews in then-Palestine itself. The existence of Arabs on the land is a result of either being descended from the Muslims who invaded and conquered the land, having immigrated from other areas in search of better opportunities, or having converted from Judaism to Islam. In none of those scenarios do Arabs have cultural/historical ties to the land that come anywhere near the ties of Jews to the land. There is a reason why people with ties to Arabia are called Arabs and those with ties to Judea are called Jews.

Reverse Transfer

JVP wants us to take invitations to return to Arab countries seriously -- and reciprocate:
It is interesting to ask, given that some Arab countries have invited Jews to return and regain citizenship, would Israel make the same offer to Palestinians
More interesting is how one can compare inviting Arabs back to Israel where they may be a potential terrorist threat, with Jews returning to Arab countries where they would live in danger in response to an invitation that is likely less than sincere.

Bottom line, Jewish Voice for Peace consistently takes on narratives that are either anti-Israel or pro-Arab. Nothing wrong with that -- if in fact those narratives were based in fact.

The problem is that JVP's fact sheet, isn't.



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  • Thursday, January 17, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon


The Hamas Ministry of Prisoners and Detainees in Gaza held a lottery to award 26 units in a newly constructed apartment tower in Gaza.

Only former prisoners in Israeli prisons were eligible for the lottery, which was held publicly.

The Al Salhi Tower I was built with the support and funding of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Iran is funding the building of more apartment houses specifically for Gaza terrorists.

The Islamic Republic of Iran thanked the heads of Hamas and Gaza for their support of the "liberated prisoners." praising the terrorists who "sacrificed their most precious possessions in order to live in the homeland."

Only terrorists who have been imprisoned for over 10 years and who were released since 1998 are eligible for these apartments, which are each 145 square meters (1560 square feet.) 165 people entered the lottery.

All of them will eventually receive a free apartment, thanks to Iran. Gazans are being taught every day that terror pays.



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  • Thursday, January 17, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
Even without talking about the antisemitism of the Women's March leaders, the entire movement is hypocritical.




It is a good thing that its sponsors are bailing as fast as they could.



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Wednesday, January 16, 2019

  • Wednesday, January 16, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
From The New York Post:
The Forward is stopping — its print editions.

The storied Jewish-American publication is suspending its print operations and plans to lay off about 40 percent of its editorial staff — including Editor-in-Chief Jane Eisner — while moving to digital-only.

A print publication for 121 years, The Forward will continue to produce an English-language and a Yiddish-language edition online.

The Forward is eyeing growth among its under-35 readers who prefer to read news online. Currently that segments amounts to a third of total readers.

“The revenue is not really there,” said a source. “They’ve been losing money for years but lately the losses have been more than $5 million a year.”

The publication is owned by The Forward Association, a not-for-profit whose endowment swelled to more than $100 million when the association sold its former headquarters on the Lower East Side as well as the radio station WEVD.
Back in November, Forward writer Jonathan Nathan-Kazis asked people to help him find dirt on Jewish charities - but his own non-profit employer has been throwing away far more money than most of the supposed scandals he has been reporting on in the Jewish world.

That $100 million that the Forward Association used to have? That was in 2001, when it sold WEVD to Disney for $78 million.

As of 2016, its total assets dipped below $40 million, and at the rate of losing over $5 million a year, that means it is now down to probably less than $30 million. (They have not yet filed their 2017 forms, let alone 2018.)

Eisner's compensation of some $250,000 a year will hardly make a dent in the amount The Forward is hemorrhaging.

My back of the envelope estimate is that the annual losses at the Forward will now be trimmed to "only" $3.2 million or so (possibly more if their print subscriptions were a majority of the subscription revenue.)

As far as trying to appeal to more people under 35, I guess we can expect more "journalism" like the literally antisemitic article about the 15 Women You Meet When You Date Jews In New York.



The Forward has already slid into irrelevance. Young Jews who care about Judaism and Israel won't read it, so the new webzine will amp up its articles targeted at its audience of young Jews who hate Israel and Judaism. And why should they want to read an ostensibly Jewish newspaper?

I predict that The Jewish Daily Forward will drop the "Jewish" part within five years.



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From Ian:

Victor Davis Hanson: The New, New Anti-Semitism
Out on the barricades, some Democrats, feminists, and Muslim activists, such as the co-founders of the “Women’s March,” Tamika Mallory and the now familiar Sarsour, have been staunch supporters of Louis Farrakhan (Mallory, for example, called him “the greatest of all time”). The New York Times recently ran a story of rivalries within the Women’s March, reporting that Mallory and Carmen Perez, a Latina activist, lectured another would-be co-leader, Vanessa Wruble, about her Jewish burdens. Wruble later noted: “What I remember — and what I was taken aback by — was the idea that Jews were specifically involved, and predominantly involved, in the slave trade, and that Jews make a lot of money off of black and brown bodies.”

Progressive icon Alice Walker was recently asked by the New York Times to cite her favorite bedtime reading. She enjoyed And the Truth Will Set You Free, by anti-Semite crackpot David Icke, she said, because the book was “brave enough to ask the questions others fear to ask” and was “a curious person’s dream come true.” One wonders which “questions” needed asking, and what exactly was Walker’s “dream” that had come “true.” When called out on Walker’s preference for Icke (who in the past has relied on the 19th-century Russian forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in part to construct an unhinged conspiracy about ruling “lizard people”), the Times demurred, with a shrug: It did not censor its respondents’ comments, it said, or editorialize about them.

These examples from contemporary popular culture, sports, politics, music, and progressive activism could be easily multiplied. The new, new anti-Semites do not see themselves as giving new life to an ancient pathological hatred; they’re only voicing claims of the victims themselves against their supposed oppressors. The new, new anti-Semites’ venom is contextualized as an “intersectional” defense from the hip, the young, and the woke against a Jewish component of privileged white establishmentarians — which explains why the bigoted are so surprised that anyone would be offended by their slurs.

In our illiterate and historically ignorant era, the new, new hip anti-Semitism becomes a more challenging menace than that posed by prior buffoons in bedsheets or the clownish demagogues of the 1980s such as the once-rotund Al Sharpton in sweatpants. And how weird that a growing trademark of the new path-breaking identity politics is the old stereotypical dislike of Jews and hatred of Israel.

David Collier: Nazis in disguise. How anti-Israel messaging is extreme-right rhetoric
We are witnessing a legitimisation of Nazi messaging against Jewish people in Israel. Some of it is our own fault. We have become so desensitised that we no longer differentiate between ‘a simple lie’ and full on extreme-right rhetoric. We see the messages everyday. They have entered the mainstream and celebrities, newsreaders and lecturers all use it. ‘The left’ as Nazi. We should display zero tolerance of this. Instead of pointing out the blatant swastika hidden behind the image, we enter ‘rabbit holes’ of discussion about historical accuracy. When we respond, at best, we just call it ‘propaganda’.

There is a difference between anti-Israel propaganda and Nazi messages. Arguments over cease-fires, settlements and proportional response are ‘narrative’ or ‘propaganda’ discussions. There is also clasic Soviet style anti-Zionist antisemitism on the circuit. But what I put forward here has nothing to do with legitimate discussion or hard-left antisemitism. It isn’t about whether the other side has created a myth or not. What I deal with here is Nazi messaging and when you see it, reject it as swiftly as you would if it was in the shape of a swastika. Here are just a few examples.

From Hebron to Jerusalem and Baghdad to Tulkarm 1929-1949
The next example is a simple one. The Jewish community of Hebron was ethnically cleansed following a massacre of Jews that took place in 1929. That ancient community had a virtually unbroken presence in Hebron, aside temporary expulsions (Crusaders) and an exodus following a pogrom in 1517.

Throughout most of the mid 1800s, Jerusalem had a Jewish majority. For several thousand years, temporary denials of access aside, the Jewish people were a sizeable part of the city’s population. Much of Jerusalem’s Jewish community were ethnically cleansed in 1948. The commander of the Jordanian forces is reported to have said: ‘For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter‘.

Descendants of all of these Jewish families, live in Israel today. They are counted as ‘invaders’ ‘colonial settlers’ and ‘usurpers’. Why? Because they are Jewish.

There is no doubt that an influx of Arab migrants entered the Mandate of Palestine throughout the 1900s. That flow of human traffic had started decades before. Egyptians fleeing military conscription in the late 1800s for example. European interest (Britain/France) alongside a Jewish Zionist influx also brought investment, and people gravitated towards economic growth. There are many such clues. Bushnak for example is the surname of Arabs who came from Bosnia. Many other surnames, such as Al-Baghdadi, Tamimi, and Al-Tachriti are clan-based and clearly not local. Martin Gilbert estimates 50,000 Arab immigrants arrived under British rule, others suggest double that.

Many of the descendants of these non-Jewish families live in Israel, or the 67 lands today. They are considered indigenous people, whose rights to the land override all other claims. Why? Because they are not Jewish.

When UNWRA created the definition of a Palestinian refugee they based it around residency of only two years. This means that a 1946 immigrant from Iraq is counted as an indigenous person whose rights in places such as Hebron override those of a Jewish person whose family had lived there forever. That is nothing to do with settlements or checkpoints. It is another Nazi narrative.




I can never understand right-wing people who vote for Naftali Bennett. I mean, even if I could forgive him for joining forces with Yair Lapid that time, how can someone with a plan for ceding land at all be considered right wing? And how can a vote for Bennett be anything but a betrayal of my deepest beliefs about the land?


I totally understand right-wing people who vote for Naftali Bennett. He’s got Ayelet Shaked on his list, and she’s done amazing things to reform Israel’s justice system. He’s got fiery right-wing columnist Caroline Glick onboard. Would Glick throw her lot in with Bennett if she thought he were going to give away my grandchildren’s land?


I can never understand right-wing people who vote for Moshe Feiglin. He says all the right things, but he doesn’t have the personality to get the votes. He lacks leadership charisma—he’s not a statesman. These things will never change and Feiglin will never have the power to do anything he talks about. A vote for Feiglin is a throwaway vote.


I totally understand right-wing people who vote for Moshe Feiglin. He’s uncompromising in his right-wing views. He doesn’t say one thing and do another. He says and does all the right things.

I can never understand right-wing people who vote for Bibi. Bibi talked reciprocity then gave away Hebron. He left the government over Disengagement, then voted in favor of it, four times. 


Bibi denounced Oslo then gave a speech touting the failed two-state solution.


He’s the head of the Likud, the “Greater Israel” party, but caved to pressure from Obama and froze building in Judea and Samaria. Bibi wrote a book about not caving in to terror, then released thousands of terrorists. He set up a commission to examine the legal status of Judea and Samaria, then failed to act on the recommendations of that committee. He apologized to Erdogan for the Mavi Marmara incident, a breach of Israel’s legal maritime blockade by Turks that left IDF soldiers with serious injuries. Bibi, from my purview, masquerades as the leader of the right, while effecting left-wing policy.


I totally understand people who vote for Bibi. He’s the only Israeli leader alive with true leadership skills. He’s a great orator and a genius. He’s the grand master of the chess board that is Israel. Were anyone else to take over, Israel would descend into chaos.

I can never understand right-wing people who don’t vote. If you don’t vote, how will you ever change things or be a force for good in Israeli society?
I totally understand right-wing people who don’t vote. They’ve given up. They figure that anyone they vote for either can’t get enough votes to rise to power, or if they do, they won’t really be right-wing once they get into office.
Voting in Israel is a lot like watching cable TV: 1000 television channels but there’s nothing to watch.


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jesus-facepalmBethlehem, January 16 - The Prince of Peace, King of the Jews, Son of God, Jesus Christ filed a lawsuit today against an evangelical institution for invoking his name and likeness without permission for commercial purposes, depicting Him as opposed to Israel's security measures to protect its citizens, as part of the institution's efforts to raise funds, court documents indicate.

Jesus filed the lawsuit in the State of Texas against Bethlehem Bible College, which operates in the Holy Land but maintains fundraising offices in the Lone Star State. In the lawsuit, the Redeemer charges that the college misappropriates his name, works, and reputation for its "Christ at the Checkpoint" conferences and events, falsely implying that He endorses their activity, an endorsement that BBC and CATC use to attract donors. The Savior seeks a cease and desist order against the college and an unspecified amount in monetary damages.

A spokesman for the divine incarnate told reporters that the Christ has in fact visited numerous Israeli checkpoints and found them to be an unfortunate necessity, the most efficient way to promote safety for Israelis while allowing Palestinian workers, students, and patients to meet the needs they cannot under Palestinian self-rule.

"It's disingenuous for this so-called 'Christ at the Checkpoint' operation to assert that the Son of God would oppose such checkpoints," stated St. Thomas the Apostle. "It also, by the way, violates the very Scriptures they purport to revere, most notably the parts that proscribe theft, falsehood, and taking the Lord's name in vain. But of course the leaders of the so-called Bethlehem 'Bible' College prefer not to give too much attention to that section of the Bible that enshrines God's commitment to the descendants of Jacob, His granting of the Holy Land to them in perpetuity, and the special relationship manifest in that arrangement."

St. Thomas identified what he called a tragic irony in the episode. "Where the defendant's institution operates, followers of Jesus have been dwindling for many years," he observed. "The phenomenon began many decades ago, but accelerated once Palestinian self-rule began a quarter-century ago. The one place in the entire Middle East with a growing, thriving Christian population is the one country these people oppose because it's a Jewish state, and the idea that God has not rejected the Jews forever really grates on them. Also, Jesus is Jewish, an obvious fact of which they appear to be entirely ignorant. One wonders at this irrational opposition to control of Jesus's homeland by His own people."



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From Ian:

Matti Friedman: There Is No ‘Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’
To someone here in Israel, there isn't an Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the way that many outsiders seem to think. In the Israeli view, no peacemaker can bring the two sides together because there aren't just two sides. There are many, many sides.

Most of Israel's wars haven't been fought against Palestinians. Since the invasion of five Arab armies at the declaration of the State of Israel in May 1948, the Palestinians have made up a small number of the combatants facing the country.

Today Israel's most potent enemy is the Shiite theocracy in Iran, which is more than 1,000 miles away and isn't Palestinian or Arab. The gravest threat to Israel at close range is Hizbullah on our northern border, an army of Lebanese Shiites founded and funded by the Iranians.

A threat of a lesser order is posed by Hamas, which is Palestinian - but was founded as the local incarnation of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and is kept afloat with Qatari cash and backed by Iran. There are also Islamic State-affiliated insurgents on our border with Egypt's Sinai.

By framing it as only an "Israeli-Palestinian" conflict, Israelis seem stronger, more prosperous and more numerous.

But many in Israel believe that an agreement signed by a Western-backed Palestinian leader in the West Bank won't end the conflict, because it will wind up creating a power vacuum destined to be filled by intra-Muslim chaos or Iranian proxies. That's exactly what has happened around us in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

Reining in Saudi's prince of the blood
The United States has close security partnerships with many leaders who abuse and mistreat people like Samar Badawi. Yet the responsibility of global power requires striking a balance between our interests and ideals and those of our partners, while at the same time not ignoring flagrant human rights abuses.

This is a balance that the Trump administration appears to have little ability to strike. Whether it is the crown prince in Riyadh, the Sisi regime in Egypt that has detained thousands of political prisoners, or U.S. partners such as Bahrain, where a tweet or blog post leads to extended jail time, the United States has remained purposefully silent. The president’s pandering to the Saudis and the broader Arab world, despite the corrosive actions of many of these partners, appears to be a mixture of ideology and practicality.

The Trump administration believes the national interest is served by disengaging from the Middle East and relying on local proxies to advance U.S. interests. The Saudi crown prince was key to the administration’s efforts to further a desired peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, as well as reducing the American footprint in the Middle East. When Trump announced he was withdrawing troops from Syria, he argued his election came, in part, as a result of promising to get out of “endless & costly foreign wars.”

The administration’s national security policy documents embrace a framework of great-power conflict focused on Russia and China, while deprioritizing American engagement in the Middle East. In a late 2017 trip to Israel, the officials and experts I met with spoke openly of an emerging “post-American Middle East.” Obama started the trend, and the Trump administration was accelerating it. Israel has experienced the consequences acutely, with Russia and Iran now on their northern border preparing to fill the void.

Yet it was just such a void that led the Saudis to enter into the Yemeni civil war in the first place. The Obama administration withdrew from Iraq, “led from behind” in Libya, and watched while hundreds of thousands of Syrians were slaughtered in a civil war that destabilized the region and eventually threatened Europe and the United States. Despite differing approaches toward Iran, the assumption by both the Obama and Trump administrations was that Arab partners would bear most of the burden in dealing with the consequences of U.S. policy toward Tehran. On the surface, drawing back from the Middle East and handing off to local proxies appeals to Americans tired of fighting a war for over 17 years with no end in sight. But the Obama experiment in “leading from behind” in favor of “nation-building at home” has repeatedly shown that U.S. partners are wholly incapable of addressing the region’s core challenges.

Latest in the series...

Nearly six years ago I gave a lecture at Yeshiva University on how to answer anti-Israel arguments. Since the lecture was over an hour and twenty minutes, I decided to break it up into 20 sections, one each to answer one popular anti-Israel argument.

Here is part 16.






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  • Wednesday, January 16, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon



Because the Tunisian Tourism Minister Rene Trabelsi is Jewish, many Tunisians are out to get him.

One recent example I reported on was when a radio show tried to get him on the air to dispel a rumor about him trying to normalize relations with Israel - and he refused because it was Saturday, causing an uproar about his putting Judaism above his duties.

The newest controversy is that he was seen in an interview with i24News, where he said that he is committed to support the Palestinian cause and establish peace in the Middle East.

This caused another uproar.

One reason is because he was on an Israeli TV network. It doesn't look like he spoke to i24News directly, but through a partner channel, but the Tunisians are saying that clearly that was a ruse and he wanted to talk to an Israeli channel.

The other reason is that he said that he wanted peace. What business does he have to speak for Tunisia's foreign affairs ministry? By saying he wants peace, he is implicitly agreeing that Israel should exist!

The Popular Party called for his dismissal from the government, saying that he is clearly a Zionist and is acting like a foreign minister, and knowingly speaking with Israeli media.





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  • Wednesday, January 16, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon


In 2007, a battle between Palestinian militants and the Lebanese Army destroyed the Palestinian "refugee" camp of Nahr al-Baled where 20,000 lived.

A conference in Vienna in 2008 saw the international community pledge to rebuild the camp. UNRWA requested $450 million, but only $120 million was pledged.

This week, the head of the Refugee Affairs Department, Dr. Ahmed Abu Houli, called on the donor countries that participated in that conference to honor their financial pledges to complete the reconstruction of the camp. So even the lower amount was never paid.

In cases like this, it is usually the Arab world that pledges big and never pays. And the Lebanese are still trying to get the pledged funds - 11 years later.

At this time only about half of the camp's residents have returned.

And no one talks about this.

Because - no Jews, no news.




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  • Wednesday, January 16, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon


From the New York Post:

Families from around the globe have filed suit in Brooklyn federal court against several banks they say funded terrorism that killed their loved ones.

Three separate lawsuits filed Tuesday and Wednesday claim Lebanon’s Blom Bank, the Palestine Investment Bank and the Bank of Palestine maintained accounts for various branches of Hamas and other terrorist organizations, and that those funds were then used to murder innocents.

Among more than 100 plaintiffs are Eugene Goldstein, whose son Howard Goldstein was killed by Hamas gunmen while driving through Israel to attend his own son’s wedding in June 2003.

Another plaintiff, New Jersey native Moses Strauss, was riding on a bus in Jerusalem in 2003 when a Hamas suicide bomber on board the bus set off his vest. Twenty-three people were killed.

The lawsuits, which accuse the banks of aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, are suing for unspecified damages.
The Palestinian Money Authority has just issued this statement:
The Governor of Palestine Monetary Authority has been aware of recently filed civil litigation in the United States against 3 banks operating in Palestine which are Cairo Amman Bank, Bank of Palestine and Palestine Investment Bank. The Governor expressed his confidence that the lawsuits do not have any factual or legal basis. The Governor noted that all banks operating in Palestine are safe and sound institutions that are cornerstones of the Palestinian economy. Further, the banks will continue to be committed to compliance with laws and international best practices to counter money laundering and terror financing.

The Cairo Amman Bank annual report in 2015 discussed its efforts to fight money laundering and terrorist financing, but that department seems to have only been created after 2007 in response to the threat of lawsuits. The terror attacks that precipitated the lawsuits in the US all occurred beforehand.

The US General Accounting Office seems to have concluded in 2013 that the Cairo Amman Bank and Bank of Palestine both adhere to anti-money laundering rules, clearing the way for the US to provide funds to specific programs in the West Bank. Again, this was many years after the events mentioned in the lawsuit.

In 2004, Israeli forces seized over $6 million from terror-linked accounts in several banks in Ramallah, representing hundreds of accounts. Many of these were payments not for "martyrs" or prisoners but direct payments to terrorists who planned deadly attacks.

The senior security official said interrogations of arrested militants showed that an attack might bring its Palestinian planners a minimum of 3,000 to 5,000 shekels, or $673 to $1,122. He also said Israeli intelligence indicated that much of the seized money had come from Iran, funneled through the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.

Al Arabiya says that banks in Iran, Bank Saderat and Bank Saderat Iran, were sued as well for supporting Hezbollah terror attacks. It links to the same New York Post article, which at this time does not mention the Iranian banks.



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Tuesday, January 15, 2019

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Churches’ sin
The WCC, which was established in 1948, the same year as Israel, once performed a similar role in its campaign against apartheid South Africa. And if that analogy is not appalling enough, its activists have gone as far as comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany.

South African EAPPI activist Itani Rasalanavho, for example, said during an “Apartheid Week” event in his home country that “the time has come to say that the victims of the Holocaust have now become the perpetrators,” while EAPPI national coordinator in South Africa Dudu Mahlangu-Masango called for “total sanctions” on Israel.

The organization, according to NGO Monitor, also combats Christian Zionism. At a 2015 WCC event, it notes, Zionism was called “heresy” under Christian theology, modern Israelis were said to have no connection to ancient Israelites, and Israeli society was described as being “full of racism and light-skin privilege.”

In response, the WCC told the Post that its unique focus on Israel was the result of “a specific call from WCC’s member churches in the region.” However, it stressed that it “does not countenance equating Israel to Nazi Germany, neither in the training of participants in the EAPPI nor otherwise,” and does not support economic measures against Israel.

Since its establishment, “the WCC has denounced antisemitism as a sin against God and humanity, and we strongly maintain that position,” declared WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs director Peter Prove.

So who do we believe? Perhaps the best response, Mr. Prove, is: Prove it! If the WCC is not anti-Israel, then why is it funding what seems like a nefarious program in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against the Jewish state?

Its aim is to harm Israel’s good name, and someone needed to blow the whistle. WCC needs to put its house in order.
World Council of Churches Trained 2,000 Anti-Israel Activists, Funded by UNICEF
The World Council of Churches (WCC) has sent nearly 2,000 participants to Israel, and Judea and Samaria, since 2002 to train them in anti-Israel narratives and assign them to communities worldwide, according to a report from NGO Monitor.

With no similar program in other conflict zones, the WCC’s Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) consists of activists being sent to “witness life under occupation.”

“EAPPI misuse tourist visas to enter Israel, where the group has no legal status,” according to NGO Monitor. “They are hosted in Jerusalem by a WCC affiliate, the Jerusalem Interchurch Center (JIC). Notably, the head of JIC, Yusuf Dahar, is one of the authors of the Kairos Palestine Document, which legitimizes terror, embraces anti-Jewish theology and rejects Jewish history. Similar views have been expressed by a number of WCC officials.”

The NGO Monitor report also stated that EAPPI has been funded by UNICEF and countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Canada and Japan.

Norway contributed nearly $2 million between 2017 to 2019, while Sweden gave $500,000 between 2017 and 2018.

“We are sharing our research with the public and decision-makers as part of an informed discussion on EAPPI’s agenda and funding. The research highlights EAPPI’s radical agenda, which, rather than advancing or defending human rights, is a platform for conflict and antisemitism,” said NGO Monitor Founder and President Gerald Steinberg. “We have received numerous inquiries from Christian and Jewish groups calling attention to the central role played by EAPPI alumni in leading BDS and other delegitimization campaigns.”

A cautionary tale of European antisemitism
And if a recent large survey of antisemitism in Europe conducted by CNN is any indication, then there is truly reason to fear for the future of Jews on the continent.

Published last November, the poll, which included more than 7,000 interviewees, found that, “antisemitic stereotypes are alive and well in Europe, while the memory of the Holocaust is starting to fade.” Over a quarter of all Europeans say Jews have too much influence in business and finance and nearly the same percentage link Jews with global conflict and wars. Incredibly, according to CNN, “a third of Europeans in the poll said they knew just a little or nothing at all about the Holocaust.” In France, 20% of people between the ages of 18 and 34 said they had never even heard of it.

I am neither an alarmist nor a pessimist by nature. But anyone with even a modicum of historical memory cannot help but be frightened by what is happening in places such as Paris, London and Stockholm.

Unfortunately, in recent years, warnings of mounting European antisemitism have begun to resemble various traffic signs on the highway: little-noticed and largely unheeded. We have come to assume that, like the weather, all we can do in the face of European hatred of Jews is to shrug and move on with our lives.

Perhaps that may be true. But we must nonetheless try to stem this dangerous tide, first and foremost by calling out European leaders and holding them to account for failing to stamp out the antisemitism and Holocaust-denial that is metastasizing in their midst. By neglecting to educate the next generation about the horrors of the past and persistently bashing Israel for defending itself, Europe’s leaders are fanning the flames still further.

Indeed, if a lonesome loser such as Anton Drexler was able a century ago to kindle the spark that gave rise to Nazism, who knows what calamities today’s brand of open and brash European antisemitism, armed with popularity and the power of social media, may yet produce. The old cliché is that history repeats itself, but that is only partly true. In fact, it is people who enable it to happen and it is they who will bear the blame.

The series continues...

Nearly six years ago I gave a lecture at Yeshiva University on how to answer anti-Israel arguments. Since the lecture was over an hour and twenty minutes, I decided to break it up into 20 sections, one each to answer one popular anti-Israel argument.

Here is part 15.





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By Daled Amos

Malaysia is making news - at least in the Jewish media - for its refusal to allow Israeli participants into the Paralympic Swimming event it is hosting this year from July 29 to August 4. This has broader implications for Israel since this is a qualifying event for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.

This is not even the first time Malaysia has blocked Israel from participating in a sports event.

As Elder of Ziyon pointed out 3 years ago, Malaysia also blocked 2 Israeli teenagers from competing in the 45th Youth Sailing World Championships held there in 2016. Malaysia also refused visas to Israel that year to prevent them from participating in the World Team Table Tennis Championships. The International Table Tennis Federation threatened a ban, but in the end, Israel withdrew because of security concerns.

logo
Paralympics logo. Fair use


But Malaysia has no problem hosting Hamas terrorists, for whom it hosts their own special "events".

logo
Hamas Logo. Fair Use


Malaysia provides Hamas with a training ground where it conducts financial activities, trains terrorists, and develops rockets and missiles.

When Malaysia’s prime minister Najib Razak visited the Gaza in 2013, he became the first non-Arab leader to visit Hamas since it grabbed control from the PA in a bloody civil war in 2007. Razak pledged Hamas political and financial support -- all of which is mutually beneficial: improving Hamas’ image worldwide, while also strengthening Razak’s own standing in Malaysia’s Muslim community.

As for Malaysia's Jewish community, there isn't one. In Malaysia itself, there are virtually no Jews remaining, as a result of state-sponsored Antisemitism:
Few Malaysians have laid eyes on a Jew; the tiny Jewish community emigrated decades ago. Nevertheless, Malaysia has become an example of a phenomenon called “Anti-Semitism without Jews.” Last March, for instance, the Federal Territory Islamic Affairs Department sent out an official sermon to be read in all mosques, stating that “Muslims must understand Jews are the main enemy to Muslims as proven by their egotistical behaviour and murders performed by them.” About 60% of Malaysians are Muslim.

In Kuala Lumpur, it’s routine to blame the Jews for everything from economic failures to the bad press Malaysia gets in foreign (“Jewish-owned”) newspapers.
Ten years ago, Forbes ran an article on The Myth Of A Moderate Malaysia. Even without having to make any mention of either Jews (around 100 remain) or Israel in the article, the article had no trouble seeing that
Malaysia has rejected secularism in favor of a kind of ethnoreligious apartheid that belongs more in a medieval kingdom than in a modern democratic republic.

In Malaysia, Islam is the state religion. Higher education, the bureaucracy and vast swathes of the economy are operated as a kind of spoils system almost exclusively for Malays, whom the state defines as Muslim. Race and religion determine everything from your odds of getting into medical school to the amount you're expected to put down for an apartment.
Not surprisingly, Malaysia is also a big supporter of BDS. Last year there was a call to boycott Malaysia’s largest television service provider, Astro, because it allegedly made a business deal with the Israeli software and service provider Amdocs. Malaysia also put pressure on McDonalds and Tesco, for alleged business relations with Israel. To counter this, these companies downplay the political aspect of their connection and instead emphasize how they provide jobs and help Malaysia's economic growth.

Yet Malaysia avoids the consequences of its actions, as its leader Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad manages to walk a thin line condemning the US while also playing a supportive role in fighting terrorism.

photo
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
Public Domain

Back in 2002, The New York Times reported on how moderate Malaysia is:
Dr. Mahathir has cracked down hard on suspected terrorists and shared intelligence with the United States, the kind of support the Bush administration wishes it were getting from Indonesia.

Some American officials have said Malaysia was a launching pad for Sept. 11, that it is a base for Islamic terrorists. Although a few of the hijackers did pass time here, Western and Asian analysts say that this is a moderate Islamic country, where extremists are as unwelcome as they are in Europe or the United States. [emphasis added]
In 2016, even the State Department praised Malaysia in its Country Reports on Terrorism praised Malaysia for its combatting terrorism, although it also noted that the same laws were used to harass and intimidate critics and political opponents.

It was a just a few months after that 2002 Times article that Malaysia's opposition Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party invited terrorists from Hamas and Hezbollah to speak at their conference, they claimed they had no formal links. That may be when Malaysia and Hamas terrorists started to begin to get close. At the time, Current Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was prime minister then too -- and accused the opposition party of fomenting extremism.

So all things being equal, the question is not merely what is taking the International Federation for Paralympic Swimming so long to take real action.

The question is why are they holding their Olympics there to begin with?

Hat tip: This Ongoing War




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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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