By Shir Dimensha, Professor of Comparative Literature
New York, April 17 - The quantity of self-identifying progressives in our society has grown steadily in recent decades, in volume if not absolute numbers, but the best way to demonstrate one's seriousness in the progressive realm remains to take an ancient Jewish text about individual and national liberation, and reinterpret it to divorce it from its original meaning and replace the Jews of the original with the marginalized group of your choice.
You may have attended all the right BDS rallies and signed all the cool petitions calling for the impeachment of that racist in the White House; you may have submitted a paper exploring the various ways in which beloved children's books actually convey sinister, fascist messages; you may fall to your knees every time you encounter a person of color, and ask how you can atone for the atrocities your ancestors most certainly perpetrated against theirs. None of those, however, reach the same rarefied stratum of progressive credentials as the de-Judaification of the Passover Haggadah.
The specific choice of marginalized population with which to replace Jews in your Haggadah matters less than the very fact of replacement. By removing Jews from the Haggadah, you declare you have arrived at the sine qua non of progressivism: subordinating Jewish concerns, rights, and culture to those of other groups.
Understandably, many observers of this practice elect to replace Jews with groups among whom they count themselves, but many progressives, through no fault of their own, have at least one Jewish parent, and thus, as determined by the high priests of the progressive movement, can never attain pure membership in any such group. The only choice these unfortunate Jews, far removed as they might be from their heritage and traditions, have, remains abject surrender to a culture infused with hate for the Jew. We therefore are witness to the blessed phenomenon of progressive Jews replacing their ancestral people with Palestinians, or Muslims in general, in the Haggadah narrative, the better to prove they belong in the movement.
But whether one composes a Muslim Haggadah, a trans Haggadah, an undocumented immigrant Haggadah, or the anti-Trump Resistance Haggadah, that step provides its creator with impeccable woke credentials: it represents a real-life manifestation of the demonstrator who punched the Nazi who smirked at an indigenous activist who shouted down a right-wing speaker who committed microaggressions against people of color that your ancestors bought as slaves for two zuzim.
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In 2007, Barghouti founded, and runs to this day, a Ramallah-based umbrella group called the BDS National Committee that serves as the leading group organizing and promoting BDS outside the United States. The reason Barghouti was barred from entering the U.S. is not because he advocates BDS or Israel’s destruction. There is no speech issue here at all.
The reason he was barred is because the group Barghouti runs includes five U.S.-designated terrorist organizations in its membership: Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, and the Popular Front – General Command.
Not only does Barghouti run a group whose membership includes U.S.-designated terrorists, he himself promotes terrorism. You wouldn’t know this reading Goldberg, who claims in her piece that “The BDS movement doesn’t engage in or promote violence.”
Here is a video of Barghouti in 2011 stating, “The media only focuses on one form of resistance, which we’re proud of, we’re not ashamed to have armed resistance [terrorism] as well as peaceful resistance.” This wasn’t a one-off. Barghouti has stated his support for terrorism dozens of times, plainly, openly, publicly, proudly, without euphemism. Click the link and read his quotes endorsing terrorism.
The only good part of the BDS movement is how it is exposing so many progressives as wishful, gullible, or dishonest in their need to paint the anti-Israel cause as respectable.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions founder Omar Barghouti has expressed dismay and confusion over his entry into the United States being refused.
In an op-ed to the UK newspaper The Guardian, Barghouti claimed that "Israel appears to have once again enlisted the Trump administration to do its bidding."
He claimed in the piece that with his "denial of entry, Israel appears to have once again enlisted the Trump administration to do its bidding, this time to repress Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders," he wrote. "They wish to deny lawmakers, journalists and ordinary Americans their right to listen first-hand to a Palestinian human rights advocate calling for ending US complicity in Israel’s crimes against our people."
As a co-founder of the BDS movement "for Palestinian rights," Barghouti said he has "been smeared by the Israeli government and banned from travel repeatedly, including in 2018 when I was prevented from going to Jordan to accompany my late mother during cancer surgery."
"Israel’s intelligence minister threatened me with 'targeted civil elimination,' drawing condemnation from Amnesty International," he wrote. "Their de facto and 'arbitrary travel ban' against me was recently lifted for three months after Amnesty International’s pressure."
The Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday upheld a deportation order against Human Rights Watch’s local director and gave him two weeks to leave the country.
The court rejected an appeal by Omar Shakir to remain in the country. The New York-based watchdog has cast his case as a bid to suppress global criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Israel enacted a law in 2017 barring entry to any foreigner who “knowingly issues a public call for boycotting Israel.” Tuesday’s ruling was the first time the law was applied to someone already residing in the country.
Shakir, a U.S. citizen, has worked as the New York-based group’s Israel and Palestine director since October 2016.
Israel’s interior minister ordered Shakir’s deportation in May 2018, calling him a “boycott activist.”
The court said that Shakir “continues his actions publicly to advance a boycott against Israel, but it’s not on the stages at conferences or in university panels, rather through disseminating his calls to advance boycott primarily through his Twitter account and by other means.”
“The appellant continues to call publicly for a boycott of Israel, or parts of it, while at the same time asking [Israel] to open its doors to him,” said the ruling distributed by the Justice Ministry.
In a closed-door meeting with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee King Abdullah of Jordan reportedly said the White House had given him “zero visibility into the most fraught part of their peace plan: how it proposes to divide Israeli and Palestinian territory.”
His Majesty – in complete denial – could not bring himself to call that territory “Judea Samaria and Gaza”
Abdullah has seen Trump ditch the Palestine Liberation Organisation financially and diplomatically over its continuing refusal to negotiate with Israel on any Trump proposal to divide sovereignty in Judea and Samaria between Jews and Arabs.
Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan laid out Jordan’s pivotal role in negotiating any such division in 1980: “Israel and Jordan are the two Palestinian states envisioned and authorized by the United Nations. Jordan is now recognized in some 80% of the old territory of Palestine. Israel and Jordan are the parties primarily authorized to settle the future of the unallocated territories in accordance with the principles of the mandate and the provisions of Resolutions 242 and 338”
In 1982 duly-elected President Reagan made it clear that peace could not be achieved by the formation of an independent Palestinian state and the United States would not support the establishment of such a state.
On May 25, 2016, a discussion at the University of Westminster featured Gideon Levy from Haaretz, Illan Pappe from the University of Exeter and Ruba Salih from SOAS (London University School of Oriental and African Studies). At one point, on the topic of the leadership -- or lack thereof -- of the Arabs, Pappe made an unexpected admission:
Ruba Salih: “Well, the Palestinians launched the BDS”
Illan Pappe: “Yes, not really but yes. For historical record, yes”
Ruba Salih: “It’s important”
Illan Pappe: “It’s not true but it’s important”
The issue is who started the BDS movement: the Palestinian Arabs or someone else?
In an article in 2010 for The Guardian's Comment is Free, Barghouti claims the BDS movement is 5 years old, tracing its start to the "Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS" on July 9, 2005 -- a declaration that Barghouti was a part of.
Not so fast.
While Omar Barghouti is the face of BDS, the idea of boycotting and isolating Israel actually originated 4 years earlier. On September 2001 in Durban, South Africa, the UN Anti-Racism Conference was held. An NGO human rights forum ran parallel to the conference and ended with a declaration. CNN reported at the time:
The forum's document branded "Israel as a racist apartheid state," and called for the establishment of a U.N. committee to prosecute Israeli war crimes and the complete isolation of Israel as an apartheid state.
In April the following year, Steven and Hilary Rose called for an academic boycott of Israel in an open letter to The Guardian. It called for a moratorium on all cultural and research links with Israel.
In June, one of those signers, Mona Baker, a professor of translation studies at the University of Manchester, removed 2 Israeli professors from the editorial boards of 2 journals she owned: Translator and Translation Studies Abstracts. She went on to say that Translator would no longer publish any research by Israeli scholars and would refuse to sell books and journals to Israeli libraries.
Jon Haber of Divest This! notes similarly, "divestment campaigns at US colleges and universities, Mainline Protestant churches, cities and unions dotting the landscape starting in 2002."
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was launched in Ramallah in April 2004 by a group of Palestinian academics and intellectuals to join the growing international boycott movement.
Only then, on July 9, 2005, was there a Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS, accompanied by 170 Palestinian political parties, unions, mass movements and NGOs that signed on.
Among PNIF’s members are five different groups designated by the US as terrorist organizations, including Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Front – General Command (PFLP-GC), the Palestine Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
Jon Haber, of Divest This, already noted the PNIF's terrorist ties back in 2010, suggesting that "it must be much easier for this Islamic Forces Council to get the Palestinian Dentist’s Association to agree to its agenda than vice versa." Actually, it is no more surprising to see Hamas involved in the BDS movement than it is to see them behind the Gaza riots attempting to break through into Israel.
David Collier explains the implications of the BDS movement actually predating Palestinian involvement in it by 4 years:
With a single exchange, Illan Pappe, a master of illusion and deception, basically admits that BDS was created by external forces. Forces that were intent on destroying Israel. The Palestinians did not call for a boycott. BDS is therefore not a response to a non existent call. And therefore all the humanitarian left wing groups that have rallied behind the flag, followed Jew haters, communists and Islamists down a road that doesn’t actually care about the Arab civilians at all.
It is time to tear the entire movement down. The single ethical pillar that could have been used to support a boycott, despite all its other ethical failings, has turned out to be false.
Myth #2: BDS is non-violent
Speaking of deceptions, another is the very idea that the BDS movement is a non-violent humanitarian group.
The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information notes that Omar Barghouti supports armed terrorist attacks against Israel. It quotes from an interview he did in the November-December 2010 issue of Al-Adab, a Palestinian literary magazine. When asked if he supported ending the "Palestinian armed resistance," Barghouti responded:
"No, we most definitely have a moral and legal right to an armed resistance against the military occupation of our land, even according to international law, as long as we attack legitimate targets, that is, the occupation, settlers [i.e., Israeli civilians] and people who are armed. We don't attack anyone who doesn't fight indiscriminately...the resistance is not an ideology or dogma. We cannot be neutral, but have to think about ways to resist that are suitable for our situation and goals, at every stage [of the struggle against Israel]..."
If Barghouti says that unarmed Israeli civilians are legitimate targets, it is no wonder how violent BDS supporters are on college campuses.
If the face of BDS is going around endorsing violence, no one should be fooled by those who claim that the BDS movement is non-violent or surprised when BDS confrontations turn violent.
Not surprisingly, Barghouti endorses Antisemitic metaphors -- like another Omar we know:
Myth #3: Barghouti as BDS role model
One of Barghouti's more well-known deceptions, actually an evasion, is the fact that as the face of the BDS movement, Barghouti has a degree from Tel Aviv University.
In 2009, PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) of whom Barghouti is a founding member, stated that Palestinian citizens of Israel or Palestinians carrying Israeli ID cards have no other possibility than to study in Israeli institutions and as such cannot be asked to join the academic boycott.
Oppressed people don’t have a choice of where they go to school.
The problem, of course, is that the issue is with Barghouti himself, not other Palestinian Arabs. He earned a masters in electrical engineering from Columbia University while living in the US for 11 years - where he travels on his speaking tours. Barghouti does have choices.
Even if he cannot afford to go back to Columbia or elsewhere outside of Israel, there are a number of universities in both the West Bank and Gaza.
o An-Najah National University o Arab American University o Bethlehem Bible College o Bethlehem University o Birzeit University o Dar Al-Kalima University College of Arts & Culture o Edward Said National Conservatory of Music o Hebron University o Ibrahimieh College o Khodori Institute, Tulkarm o Palestine Ahliya University o Palestine Polytechnic University o Al-Quds University o International Academy of Art, Palestine o Other education and research institutions o Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem o Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute o Palestinian Academic Network o Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs o Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education
In Gaza:
o Al-Aqsa University o Al-Azhar University - Gaza o Al-Quds Open University o Gaza University o Islamic University of Gaza o Israa University o Palestine Technical College o University College of Applied Sciences o University of Palestine
Nur and Mohammed are two of the thousands of Israelis Arabs who are getting their higher education in the West Bank. At a time when the number of students attending universities in Israel is dropping, in general (students are also flocking to private colleges instead), a report from the Palestinian Education Ministry, which Haaretz has obtained, shows that the number of Israelis at the university in Jenin has climbed from 36 to 5,294 in a decade.
An organized transportation system takes students from their homes in the Galilee and Little Triangle area of Arab cities in central Israel to the West Bank. In fact, Israeli Arabs now make up a majority of the student body at AAUJ, the first private Palestinian university. Founded in 2000, the institution is located southeast of Jenin in Area A of the West Bank – i.e., under the Palestinian Authority’s full civil and security control.
Barghouti's claim of no options outside of Israel is false.
If you cannot trust Omar Barghouti -- the face of BDS -- to give you an honest answer, what can you expect of other representatives of BDS?
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This week saw a relatively minor story from Israel's perspective, and one that was heavily reported in Palestinian Arab media.
Arab prisoners went on a hunger strike last week because Israel put cell phone jamming devices in prisons, making illegal cell phones impossible to use. Palestinian Arabs freaked out, claiming that the devices would cause cancer or other illnesses.
The reason cell phones are banned is obvious. Terrorists can plan new attacks from prison. They can recruit new members of terror groups. They can speak via teleconference at terrorist gatherings and incite more hate and violence. Indeed, Israel has evidence of 14 recent attacks planned via illegal prison cell phones.
Instead of telling the prisoners to drop dead from their hunger strike, Israeli prison officials negotiated with them. And they came up with a solution that seems to address all the issues: Israel agreed to install public telephones in the prison wards where the Arab terrorists are kept, and to allow prisoners to make regular calls to first degree relatives that Israeli officials can listen in on.
Israel no longer has a security issue and Arab prisoners are happy they can speak to their families, which makes prisons a safer place for guards as well. This is a win-win situation.
But that is not how Palestinian media is looking at this.
Today is Palestinian Prisoners Day and Palestinian media is saying that the compromise was a "qualitative victory" for them. (Suddenly the fears of the supposed radiation from the cell phone jammers, which presumably will remain in place, have dissipated.)
Palestinian Arabs simply cannot think in terms of cooperation and compromise with Israel. They can only frame this incident as a victory for them - and a loss for Israel.
This is only a minor example of how the entire conflict has gone. For the Palestinian Arabs, perception is more important than reality (a corollary of the honor/shame culture they inhabit) and therefore they cannot accept anything but what can be framed as total victory - and, just as importantly, a total loss for the Jews.
From Israel's perspective, making a concession is evidence of how strong and secure it feels. From the Arab perspective, Israeli concessions is evidence of their weakness in the face of Arab power and resolve. The two attitudes are not compatible except in minor situations like this one where the actual facts can be papered over.
This difference in attitudes is one important reason peace is so difficult. Every time Israel compromises, the Palestinian Arabs assume that this is evidence of weakness, and it invites further demands and concessions. Only Israeli strength minimizes that attitude.
Western insistence on Israeli concessions ignores this dynamic and how they don't make Israel more secure - as they would with a like-minded negotiating partner - but they endanger Israel by making her appear weak to her enemies.
The EU and UN demand Israel act like a modern Western state when negotiating with people who have not evolved psychologically from the days of Mohammed. Israel's strength allows it to make concessions at times - but it has to balance them with the long term effects on how it is perceived by its enemies, not just the immediate easing of tensions.
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The EU Parliament Plenary session on US recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory and the possible annexation of the West Bank settlements.
Some right wing MEPs supported Israeli control over the Golan, although most did not. You can watch the debate here:
The statement from High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini was predictably against Israel - and wrong on facts. She referred to the 1949 armistice lines between Israel and Transjordan as "pre-1967 borders," saying, "The EU will recognize changes to the pre-1967 borders only if and when agreed by the parties, including with regard to Jerusalem."
But they were never borders and Palestinians were never officially presumed to own the land on the other side. The entire premise of the Oslo process was that all the land east of the line was disputed, which is why it was subject to negotiation to begin with. It wasn't a border dispute where cartographers could determine where an earlier boundary was, it was a negotiation over who gets what land to create border between the State of Israel and a Palestinian Arab entity, which may or may not have ended up as a state.
Mogherini then redoubles on international law as it applies to borders - borders that are fictional.
"The idea that you can change borders with the use of military force is a dangerous one in Europe, in the Middle East, elsewhere," she said. Yet the 1949 armistice lines were created by war that was started by the Arab side to begin with, and they were never meant to be permanent. UNGC 242 says that Israel has the"right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force," a phrase inserted specifically because the 1949 lines were not secure nor recognized. The Arabs certainly didn't recognize them as borders, and the armistice agreements made that explicit.
There is something wrong where a top EU diplomat can publicly lie about the Green Line and international law and no one even notices.
(h/t Irene)
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The issue on which they are prepared to discard the ties between Israel and American Jews is one that is hardly worth such a split. Netanyahu made it clear that he’s not talking about annexation of the West Bank, but applying Israeli law to settlements where, it must be pointed out, Israeli law already is applied as a general practice. Doing so wouldn’t prevent a two-state solution were the Palestinians ever inclined to accept one, which Jacobs and his friends know very well they have repeatedly rejected.
What is really at stake here is nothing more than the anger of American Jews who are still shocked that Israelis don’t value their advice. The clear majority of Israelis, including many who voted for Blue and White because of disgust with Netanyahu’s legal problems and because Gantz offered no substantive disagreements with the prime minister on security issues, have rejected the blind belief of Jacobs and his friends in withdrawal from the West Bank as an end in and of itself.
We know Jacobs and ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt oppose Netanyahu and Trump. But it’s time to acknowledge that their real beef is with the Israeli people, who have repeatedly rejected their opinions by margins of landslide proportions. Most Israelis believe that endangering their security by creating a hostile sovereign power in Judea and Samaria—the way Ariel Sharon did in Gaza with his 2005 withdrawal—would be madness.
Writers like former Forward editor Jane Eisner and Peter Beinart, who are open about rejecting the political will of Israeli’s people and in abandoning the notion of Israel’s centrality (Eisner) or working to subjugate Israel to the will of foreign powers who wish to impose a solution on it (Beinart), are more honest than Jacobs and Greenblatt about their goals.
Regardless of their own opinions about Netanyahu or the conflict, it’s likely that many Reform and Conservative Jews, as well as donors to ADL, aren’t comfortable with having these organizations express such contempt for the people of Israel or for them to attempt to sabotage the U.S.-Israel relationship. Nor should they be. These unelected leaders of American Jewry who have the nerve to lecture the people of Israel about Jewish values and morals deserve to be ignored.
Nikki Haley interviewed by Hillel Neuer, King David Gala, Montreal, April 10, 2019.
Tomi’s story informs that every German family has a skeleton in their cupboard from that period. This is not to suggest that most Germans have not exorcised old ghosts and recognise uncomfortable truths. They have, as the film shows. Rather, for some it is taboo. Nazis are still admired, and anti-Semitism has not gone away.
In one clip, Tomi is in the room the Wannsee conference took place. This is where Hitler and his henchmen conceived the final solution. In typical German efficiency, everything was catalogued.
Now a museum, on the wall a list itemising the number of Jews across Europe to be exterminated, one of them being Tomi. The plan included 4,000 Jews in Ireland.
Factor in, others deemed unfit to be citizens by nationalist extremists and categorised with different coloured stars other than yellow, and the number was certain to rise.
I raised the Irish aspect with Tomi and Gerry. In Northern Ireland, unionist understanding of the Republic’s neutral role in World War II is routinely coloured. Constantly cited is De Valera offering condolences to Germany on Hitler’s death.
It may not have been Dev’s greatest moment but nor is it representative of a nation that interned IRA suspects throughout the war and executed those who collaborated with the Nazis.
My point here is this. Had Hitler had his way, the people to administer the Zyklon B in Ireland were the IRA, a sinister organisation based on whispers. Kids like Tomi Reichental would have been rounded up by men like Sean Russell, the IRA chief of staff who died on a Nazi submarine.
For the Sinn Fein family, Russell is an Irish patriot or victim, but never a perpetrator. No, never that. Each year they pay homage to his statue in Dublin. If Russell was still alive, Tomi would ask him, are you sorry for what you did?
Ten years ago I decided to make The Elder of Ziyon Haggadah, one of the very few English-language purely Zionist Haggadot with a selection of commentaries from a variety of religious Zionist sources on the themes of redemption and the relevance of the Haggadah to Zionism, today.
I can look at it more objectively today and say, it is still pretty good. It is very usable - print it out in color and get it bound with plastic ring binding so it can lay flat and you can use it during your seder. (Don't you hate haggadot that close on you when you need to make Kiddush or drink one of the four cups?)
I would need to rewrite it if i was to market it because I copied and pasted different ideas from all over the Internet. (The artwork came from a Chabad haggadah.)
While I have to give it away for free, you can still give me a donation for it!
You can download it here, and you can view it below.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Egypt's El Watan News has an article about the poor state of historic Jewish cemeteries in Cairo.
It describes how tombstones and markers in a 120 dunum area have deteriorated due to neglect, being disintegrated by mold.
Hills of rubbish mixed with sewage, accumulate, wearing away the stones and erasing history. Grave robbers steal marble and stone from the sites. There are no fences or walls protecting the areas and area children and youths hang out among the graves and the stray dogs. Witnesses in the area say they see kids go to the graveyard to party, drink and take drugs.
Zeinab Abd al-Halhi, a resident of the area, says she saw Jews visit only three times in the last 15 years, under police protection.
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The failed Palestinian Arab attempt to destroy the State of Israel at birth, and the attendant flight of some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs, has come to be known internationally as the "Nakba," the catastrophe, with its accompanying false implication of hapless victimhood.
Ironically, this was the opposite of the original meaning of the term when it was first used by Syrian historian Constantin Zureiq in his 1948 pamphlet The Meaning of the Disaster (Ma'na al-Nakba).
Zureiq wrote: "When the battle broke out, our public diplomacy began to speak of our imaginary victories, to put the Arab public to sleep and talk of the ability to overcome and win easily - until the Nakba happened.... We must admit our mistakes...and recognize the extent of our responsibility for the disaster that is our lot."
In his 1956 book Facts on the Question of Palestine, Hajj Amin Husseini, the leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the early 1920s to 1948, avoided the term "Nakba," which was widely associated at the time with a self-inflicted Palestinian Arab disaster - either through land sales to Zionists, failure to put up a fight, or the issuing of instructions to the people to leave.
"Nakba" is not a fact. It is a manipulative term designed to service the Palestinian propaganda campaign against Israel by imposing a false sense of guilt or culpability for the creation of the refugee problem. The flight of the Palestinian Arabs was the direct result of a failed "war of extermination" (in the words of the Arab League's secretary-general).
As Israeli Ambassador to the UN Abba Eban said on Nov. 17, 1958: "The Arab refugee problem was caused by a war of aggression, launched by the Arab States against Israel in 1947 and 1948. Let there be no mistake. If there had been no war against Israel...there would be no problem of Arab refugees today. Once you determine the responsibility for that war, you have determined the responsibility for the refugee problem."
As Israel, the PA and the international community await the publication of the American peace plan, it is clear, based on PA leader Mahmoud Abbas' behavior in previous peace talks, that nothing the United States can offer will be enough for the PA leader.
PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat who was present at the negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas in 2008, recently told PA TV how generous Olmert's offer was on all final status issues. In fact, Olmert literally accepted all of the PA's publicly expressed demands, and even offered Abbas more than the full area of the West Bank and Gaza, and yet Abbas still rejected the offer.
Erekat explained that the area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip before they came under Israeli control in 1967was 6,235 sq. km. Olmert offered Abbas even more land than that, a total of 6,260 sq. km. At the negotiations, Erekat encouraged Abbas to accept the offer, saying that he could tell Palestinians: "I got more than the 1967 territories." And still Abbas rejected the offer.
Regarding Israel's capital Jerusalem, Olmert was likewise very generous. According to Erekat, Olmert offered: "What's Arab is Arab, and what's Jewish is Jewish." This would have kept the Temple Mount - Judaism's holiest site - under Palestinian rule with far-reaching implications for Jews and Judaism. The PA has said many times they would never allow Jews access to the Temple Mount since they consider Jews' presence on any area of the Temple Mount a desecration of the nearby Al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet Olmert still offered to give this to the Palestinians for peace - and even this wasn't enough for Abbas.
On the topic of refugees, Olmert was also forthcoming. He offered to have 150,000 refugees absorbed into the state of Israel over a period of 10 years. And still Abbas rejected it.
In the months leading up to Israel’s recent elections, the country’s attorney general announced that he would seek indictments against Benjamin Netanyahu on multiple charges of corruption. Nonetheless, Netanyahu’s Likud party gained seats in the Knesset, ensuring that he will retain the premiership. Evelyn Gordon points to a survey, conducted in February, that may explain why the corruption charges haven’t damaged Netanyahu at the ballot box:
Fully 65 percent of Likud voters and 75 percent of ḥaredi voters think law-enforcement agencies are simply trying to oust Netanyahu. On one level, this is shocking. But on another, it’s not shocking at all because the Israeli left has spent decades successfully subverting the concept of “the rule of law” for its own political benefit.
For instance, Israel’s Supreme Court repeatedly overturns government policies not because they violate any law but because the justices deem them “unreasonable.” . . . Moreover, in almost every Western democracy, the executive and legislative branches choose Supreme Court justices; only in Israel do sitting justices have veto power over the choice of their successors. Yet the left has branded every attempt to align Israel’s judicial appointments system with this Western norm as “contrary to the rule of law,” and has thereby successfully staved off change. . . .
[In addition], there’s the unequal application of laws, as epitomized by a pre-election [Supreme Court] ruling that disqualified a Jewish Knesset candidate but nixed the disqualification of an Arab party, Balad. . . .
So here’s how your average rightist voter understands the rule of law today: [as] a trick for ensuring that the left can continue imposing its views no matter how many elections it loses. That trick has successfully thwarted all legislative efforts at reform. But the price is that many rightists now distrust and despise “the rule of law” to such an extent that they dismiss pending indictments against a prime minister as just another attempt by the legal establishment to subvert democracy.
Assaf Voll in Israel published a Biblical-style description of Netanyahu's political career that has gone viral, and it is quite funny. (Haaretz called it "irritating.")
Here it is in Hebrew and an English translation from EoZ friend Yoel:
דברי ימי נתניהו --- איש היה בישראל ושמו בנימין בן בן-ציון נתניהו איש ימיני; ויך בנימין את שמעון הפרסי ויושע את ישראל מיד פרס; וימלוך על ישראל ימים רבים ושם אשתו שרה ושם בניו יאיר ואבנר; ויקומו אנשים מישראל ויקהלו על בנימין ויאמרו להפילו ויתמודדו עליו זה ארבע פעמים ולא יכלו לו; ויהי ה' את בנימין נתניהו והאיש הולך וגדל בכל אשר יפנה יצליח; ויפתח נתניהו את השמיים ואת השווקים, את האבטלה נתץ ואת האינפלציה שרף באש; ואת התמ"ג העלה מעלה ויעש אקזיטים ככוכבי שמים לרוב וילך בצוללות גרמניא; וכל מלכי הארץ מבקשים את פני בנימין לראותו ולשמוע דברו כי גדול האיש בעיניהם מכל אשר התהלך לפניו על פני האדמה;
ויאספו אנשי מדון אל בלפור ויזעקו אל בן בן ציון השכם והערב ויאמרו: צא צא איש הדמים המושחת המפלג ובן הבליעל; וישנאו אותו בלבם לאמור, המלוך תמלוך עלינו אם משול תמשול בנו; וישטמהו עוד על דבר סיגריו ושמפניותיו ולא יכלו דברו לשלום ויהיו לו לשטן ולמוקש כל הימים;
ויאיר בן יוסף איש לפידות מתנשא לאמור אני אמלוך; ויקשור על בנימין בן בן-ציון בירושלים; וישלח אל שר הצבא רב אלוף כנען בנימין הגנצי לאמור, לכה והיית לנו לראש ולקצין ונלחמה בבנימין בן בן-ציון; ויען בנימין הגנצי לאמור, אם ייתן ה' את בן בן-ציון לפני והייתי לכם לשר ולראש וחצי המלכות תתנו לפני; וישב יאיר איש לפידות דבר את גנץ ויאמר טוב הדבר בעיני; ויכרתו ברית ויאכלו וישתו ויחרפו את נתניהו לאמור, מי הוא זה ואיזה הוא בן-ציון כי נעבדנו; ויהי כי גבה ליבם ויוסיפו עוד דבר: מי ייתן את העם הזה בידינו והסרנו את את ראש נתניהו מעליו ונתנהו לחיית הארץ, לעוף השמיים ולבהמת האופוזיציה;
אז יחלק העם ישראל לחצי; חצי העם היה אחרי בנימין הגנצי להמליכו והחצי את בנימין בן בן-ציון נתניהו; ויאסף כל איש שמאל כל איש מצוק ומר נפש על בן בן-ציון להלחם בו. וייצעק איש ישראל אל בנימין הגנצי מרמת אביב, מבוגרשוב ומארסוף; ויתקבצו אתם משה אלוף יעלון וגבי אלוף אשכנז וניסנקורן זקן הועדים ויתקעו בשופר ותרעש הארץ ותהום עד למאוד;
ויפקוד ביום ההוא בנימין הגנצי עשתי-עשר מאות אלפים מאיש ישראל למערכה; וימלאו אנשיו את המדיה, וירבו כתביהם כחול אשר על שפת הים ולאסטרטגיהם ולדולריהם אין מספר; וישאל בנימין הגנצי בחוזים, בנביאים ובסוקרים לאמור – האעלה למלחמה בנתניהו אם אחדל. ויענוהו הסוקרים: עלה ונתן ה' בידך; והוא לא ידע כי רוח שקר נתן עם ישראל ביד סוקריו, כי מאת ה' היה הדבר למען הפילם ביד נתניהו לחזק את ליבם להלחם עמו למען החרימם לבלתי היות להם תקומה וקואליציה;
ויתראו גנץ ונתניהו פנים בירושלים אשר ליהודה ותעל המערכה ביום ההוא; וייצעק איש נפתלי לעלות לבדו למלחמה ולא שמע בקול נביאי ה' וירם יד בקהל ה' לפרוץ פרץ ויפול בשדה הוא וכל עמו אתו; ויהי לעת ערב ותעבור הרינה במחנה לאמור: היכה לפיד באלפיו וגנץ ברבבותיו; אז עשה גנץ את הבמה לעלות בה ויעמוד ויקרא קבל עם בקול גדול, אני מלכתי וישם נזר המלוכה בראשו וחמישים מאבטחים רצים לפני מרכבתו; ויריעו העם תרועה גדולה ויתקעו בחצוצרות ויעמדו לאלפיהם ולדגליהם וישמחו שמחה גדולה ויעשו עולות ושלמים ויקומו לצחק;
ויהי באשמורת הבוקר והנה רץ איש מן הקלפי ויבא אל שער היכל האולפן השקוף ודפיו קרועים ואפר על ראשו והוא אבל וחפוי ראש; ויקרב המבשר וישא קולו לאמור: נס גנץ לפני נתניהו וגם מגפה גדולה היתה בשמאל וגם אורלי אשת לוי ומשה הפייגליני אבדו וגם הקואליציה והתקציבים נלקחו; ויהי כהזכירו את הקואליציה ואת התקציבים ותזעק התקשורת זעקה מרה ותעל שוועת השמאל השמימה;
ויושע ה' את בנימין בן בן-ציון נתניהו ביום ההוא וילכוד את המלוכה על ישראל בחמישית ותינשא מלכותו מעל כל המלכים אשר היו לפניו; וכל דברי נתניהו וגדולתו אשר עשה, אשר העלה את דירוג האשראי ואשר הביא את הגז מן הים אל היבשה - הלא הם .כתובים על ספר דברי הימין למלכי ישראל; וימלוך בנימין בן בן-ציון על ישראל עד היום הזה ותשקוט הארץ 40 דקה;
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The chronicles of Netanyahu
There was a man in Israel named Benjamin son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu, a Jaminite (also: a rightist). And Benjamin smote Simon the Peresite (also: the Persian) and saved Israel from Peres (i.e. the 1996 elections). And he ruled over Israel for many years and his wife's name was Sarah and his sons' names were Jair and Abner. And men from Israel rose and gathered against Benjamin and wanted to topple him and they contested against him four times and failed. And the Lord was with Benjamin Netanyahu and the man grew greater and greater and succeeded in everything he did. And Netanyahu opened the heavens (i.e. the open skies policy) and the markets (i.e. the free market policy) and smashed the unemployment and burned the inflation with fire and raised the GDP higher and higher and made exits as many as the stars in the heavens and bought submarines from Germania. And all the kings of the world wanted to meet Benjamin, to see him and hear his word because great was the man in their eyes, greater then all the men who walked the earth before him.
And people of strife gathered at Balfour (i.e. the anti-Bibi demos) and shouted at the son of Ben-Zion day and night saying "Come out, come out, you man of blood, you corrupt and divisive and wicked man". And they hated him in their hearts saying "Who are you to rule over us? Who are you to lord us?". And they despised him even more because of his cigars and champagnes. And they were not able to say any positive thing about him and they were an adversary and rival to him all the time.
And Jair son of Joseph, a man from Lapidot (i.e. Yair Lapid), was arrogant saying "I will be king". And he conspired against Benjamin son of Ben-Zion in Jerusalem. And he sent an epistle to the lord of the military, arch chief of Canaan, Benjamin the Gantzite saying "Go forth and be our leader and general so we can fight Benjamin son of Ben-Zion". And Benjamin the Ganzite answered saying "If the Lord will deliver the son of Ben-Zion to me I will be your ruler and leader and you will give me half of the kingdom". And Jair, the man from Lapidot, answered Gantz saying "Good is the thing in my eyes". And they formed an alliance and ate and drank and cursed Netanyahu saying "Who is he and who is this son of Ben-Zion that we should be his servants?" And because they were arrogant they also said "May the people be in our hands so we can remove the head of Netanyahu from them and give him to the animal of the land, the bird of the heavens and the beast of the opposition.
Then the people were divided: half of the people wanted Benjamin the Gantzite to be king while the other half wanted Benjamin son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu. And every leftist, distressed, bitter person gathered against the son of Ben-Zion in order to fight him. And the elites of Israel cried out to Benjamin the Gantzite from Ramat Aviv (a wealthy neighborhood in northern Tel-Aviv), Bugrashov (a street in central Tel-Aviv) and Arsuf (a wealthy village north of Tel-Aviv). And gathered with them were Moses the chieftain of Yaalon and Gabby the chieftain of Ashkenaz and Nissenkorn the elder of the workers union (i.e. Histadrut). And they blew the trumpet and the land rumbled and shook very much.
And on that day Benjamin the Gantzite enlisted eleven thousand people from Israel for the battle. And his people filled the media, and their reporters were as many as the sand that is on the beach, and their strategists and dollars were countless. And Benjamin the Gantzite asked the seers and prophets and pollstets saying "Should I go up to fight Netanyahu or should I not?". And the pollsters answered him "Go up, for the Lord is with you". And he did not know that a spirit of falsehood was given to the pollsters by the people of Israel, because this was from the Lord, for to bring them down at the hand of Netanyahu and strengthen their heart so they will fight him in order that they will be destroyed and will have no revival and coalition.
And Gantz and Netanyahu faced off in Jerusalem which is in Judah and the battle started on that day. And a man from Naftali (i.e. Naftali Bennett) went up to the battle alone for he did not listen to the prophets of the Lord and struck the congregation of the Lord (i.e. the orthodox) and broke through them (i.e. left the Jewish Home) so he and all the people that were with him fell in battle. And it was evening when joy spread through the camp saying "Lapid struck with his thousands and Gantz with his tens of thousands". Then Gantz erected the stage (also: alter) and went up on it, stood and - in the presence of a great crowed - cried out with a loud voice "I am king!". And he put the crown of kingship on his head and fifty bodyguards were running in front of his chariot. And the people cheered a great cheer and blew the trumpets and stood in their thousands with their flags and were very happy and sacrificed burnt and peace offerings and they rose up and mocked their rivals.
And it was on the morning watch when - behold! - a man ran from the ballot to the gates of the temple of the transparent studio with his scrolls torn and soil on his head and he is in mourning and his head is hanging low. And the messenger was near the studio when he raised his voice and said "Gantz fled from before Netanyahu and a great plague has hit the Left and also Orly the Levite woman and Moses the Feiglinite have perished and also the coalition and the budgets have been taken". And it was when he mentioned the coalition and the budgets that the media cried out a bitter cry and the Left's shout went up to the heavens.
And the Lord saved Benjamin son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu on that day and he seized the kingship over Israel for the fifth time and his kingship lasted longer than the kings who were before him. And all the words of Netanyahu and the great things he did - like raising the credit rate and the gas he brought from the sea to the land - are written in the Book of Chronicles of the Rightist Kings of Israel. And Benjamin son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu reigned until this day and the land was quiet for forty minutes.
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Charles Kurzman, at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, has been tracking domestic incidences of Muslim extremism since 9/11.
Although he is biased to minimize the threat, his research is well done. In his latest report, Muslim-American Involvement with Violent Extremism, 2001-2018, he documents that "Fourteen Muslim-Americans were arrested for alleged involvement with violent extremism in 2018, the lowest total in a decade. The wave of Muslim-Americans associating themselves with the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” appears to have dwindled (see Figure 1)."
Figure 1 shows a dramatic drop in Muslim Americans arrested for terror or extremism:
He asks a number of experts why they believe that these numbers have been going down so sharply since 2015. The responses are generally thoughtful and seem on target - and also help explain why the numbers from 2012 to 2015 increased so dramatically as well.
The most common theme in the researchers’ responses involved the Islamic State’s loss of territory. Peter Bergen, a journalist and director of the national security studies program at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., suggested: “While correlation is not causation, it’s striking how these figures correlate with the rise and fall of the physical ISIS caliphate. That supposedly perfect Islamist society was a powerful pull factor in attracting idealistic young Muslim men and women from around the globe, including to a relatively small degree in the United States, to either join ISIS or attempt to join ISIS or to try and carry out attacks in ISIS’s name.”
David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University, noted that “the incidence of violence by extremist Muslim-Americans rises when foreign insurgent movements are successful – that is, they are gaining territory, they are making claims to be an authentic alternative Islamist society, and they are pushing this message aggressively through
social media. When they are ascendant in this way, their call for like-minded diaspora Muslims to 'do something’ can be compelling to at least a small cohort of Muslim Americans. When these movements don’t seem to be doing much themselves, their use of guilt or shame to compel violence by diaspora Muslims loses its bite, as has been the case as ISIS has gradually lost its so-called caliphate over the past 4 years.”
Along with the Islamic State’s loss of territory, several researchers commented on its loss of online recruitment capabilities. Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, commented: “The death of key online recruiters such as Junaid Hussain and Abu Saad al-Sudani, who were killed by airstrikes, played a role in numbers going down. It is hard to facilitate travel if there are no easily accessible online facilitators.” ... J.M. Berger, a research fellow with VOX-Pol, a European academic research network, suggested that online recruitment was particularly important for militants in the United States: “We’ve seen a major crackdown on jihadist social media and Internet presence. While I don’t want to be too aggressive in attributing causality there, it is pretty likely that this has helped depress both recruitment and the virtual/remote direction of attacks, especially relative to Europe, where there are more robust offline extremist social networks."
Seth Jones, director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, argued that “terrorism is an inherently non-linear threat. Surprise and shock are the terrorists’ age-old stock and trade. If it were predictable, terrorism would lose the power that makes it the preferred tactic of America’s most intractable enemies. So one should not assume that the levels of Islamist extremism violence will continue to decline.”
ISIS' losses of land, combined with vigorous monitoring and removal of pro-terrorist social media sites, seem to be the major factors in fighting Muslim American terrorism, because the cause itself is no longer seen as a "winner." That can change quickly, as some of the experts note.
Also notable is that many of the people who were arrested were discovered before they managed to even get close to performing the terror acts they intended.
This means that the FBI has been remarkably effective at monitoring and disrupting Muslim-American terror attacks, something I have noted before.
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The following is an excerpt from the article in the official PA daily:
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized that hostility towards the Palestinian people is Antisemitism, and that the ugly, recurring, and deliberate Antisemitism that [US President] Trump's administration is committing against Semitic Palestine is also Antisemitism. In addition, the American administration has no right to ignore the fact that Semitism is not exclusive to the original Jews, but also includes the Arab Palestinians, and therefore any manifestation of hostility towards Palestinians is an explicit manifestation of Antisemitism. Moreover, since Zionism is hostile to Palestine, its people, and the establishment of a national homeland for the Palestinian people on the land of its homeland, this makes Zionism itself antisemitic.
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 29, 2019]
At first, this seems to be a variant of the old Arab argument that "we can't be antisemitic because we are semites ourselves," ignoring the fact that antisemitism, no matter what its etymology, exclusively means hatred of and discrimination against Jews.
But the official Palestinian Authority media is going beyond that absurd argument in two important - and ultimately, dangerous - ways.
It is trying to hijack the word "antisemitism" to apply to Palestinians more than it applies to Jews. If there is a category of victimhood, Palestinians must be considered members of that group or allied to members of that group, and the accusation of antisemitism is still emotionally charged, enough so that Palestinians want to make sure that they are much bigger victims of antisemitism than Jews themselves are. This is a deliberate attempt to water down the definition of the term so that hatred of Jews is not a unique hatred, but a generalized hatred of all people who can claim to be Semitic - and Palestinians "look" more Semitic than Jews do.
When antisemitism no longer refers to Jews exclusively, it means that there is no longer a commonly accepted term for Jew-hatred. By denying Jews their history of victimhood, the PA/PLO is paving the way for the next round of Jew-hatred.
The second, and crucial, point made by the PLO here is not only that Palestinians are the major victims of antisemitism - but that Jews themselves are not!
The are saying that most Jews are not Semites. Notice their use of the phrase "original Jews." Palestinians have long appropriated the discredited argument that Ashkenazic Jews are not Jews at all, but descended from Khazars, and have no Semitic blood.
The Palestinian leadership is saying not only that they are the major victims of antisemitism, but that they are virtually the only victims of antisemitism. They are saying that the Holocaust and the Khmelnytsky massacre and scores of pogroms, blood libels and expulsions of Jews throughout the ages were not antisemitic - since the victims were not Mizrahi Jews!
In other contexts they falsely say that Jews in the Arab world were never persecuted and they lived in harmony with Arab Muslims and Christians. Therefore, Jews have hardly been the victims of antisemitism at all - and only Arabs have!
The only reason to want to strip victimhood from Jews is to pave the way for the next chapter of massacres of Jews, since according to the Palestinians Jews are not a people nor legitimate victim group to begin with.
This is a systematic attempt to deny Jewish suffering and the very existence of historic antisemitism.
Like Holocaust denial, denial of antisemitism is itself antisemitic. The "State of Palestine" is now explicitly antisemitic.
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Part of the Haram ash-Sharif, the huge Jerusalem mosque built where a pivotal event in the prophet Muhammad's life is believed to have occurred, caught fire, damaging a part of the structure dating to Judean King Herod the Great's reign.
The fire broke out in the guard room outside the al-Marwani Prayer Room Monday evening, according to a statement by the mosque's Islamic Waqf (Endowments) Department. According to The New Arab, a guard reported a short gap in guard rotations between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m. local time.
The waqf department praised the responsiveness of staff firefighters, who quickly put out the blaze. The fire seems to have been started by children fooling around, and the waqf's statement urged worshipers "who live around the mosque and in the Old City to educate their children not to tamper with fire, especially inside al-Aqsa mosque."
Well, they play soccer every day there, why should they think it is a sacred area to begin with?
We don't know the extent of the damage. Tons of debris that contained priceless artifacts from the Second Temple period were removed when the Muslims illegally built the huge Marwani Mosque underground. This fire may have damaged even more irreplaceable relics.
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I've been spending more time on Twitter lately, as I've decided to go back to basics a lot more and publish posts that go to the fundamentals of the conflict, as well as to craft tweets that do the same. For example, this tweet did very well last week:
A reminder to all the people who say they they support a two state solution:
Israel offered it to Palestinians, not once but many times. It was rejected every time. Sometimes with terror.
When will you start blaming the Palestinians the way you love to blame Israeli leaders?
I've also been getting more aggressive against the haters, bursting their bubbles among their fans by pointing out their lies.
We visited Israel in March and there will be more videos from the visit as soon as I find the time to edit and upload them!
I've continued to bring you scoops and perspectives that you cannot read anywhere else.
As usual, my columnists have been doing an excellent job, bringing different perspectives to the site.
I spend lots of time and money keeping this going. I'm one of the very few Internet sites that pays its columnists, even if it is only a small amount,I would love to give them more. Every once in a while, I ask you to help defray the costs of the blog and keep it running. Which also helps Israel!
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Donate today, and have a wonderful Pesach!
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Controversy broke out last week concerning remarks Congresswoman Ilhan Omar made at a gathering of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Last week also marked the fifth anniversary since CAIR—widely regarded by American journalists and politicians as a legitimate representative of U.S. Muslims—successfully pressured Brandeis University into canceling its plans to grant an honorary degree to the apostate Muslim and women’s-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. At the time, Andrew McCarthy responded with an updated version of a chapter from his 2010 book, in which he explained how Hamas operatives created CAIR.
When 25 [Hamas] members and supporters gathered at a Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia on October 27, 1993, they were unaware that the FBI was monitoring their deliberations. The confab was a brainstorming exercise: how best to back Hamas and derail the Oslo Accords while concealing these activities from the American government? . . . In the U.S., Hamas was [by this time] perceived as the principal enemy of the popular “peace process.” . . .
That was where [a] new organization would come in. . . . The new entity’s Islamism and Hamas promotion would have to be less “conspicuous.” It would need to couch its rhetoric in sweet nothings like “social justice,” “due process,” and “resistance.” If it did those things, though, it might be more attractive . . . and effective. A Muslim organization posing as a civil-rights activist while soft-pedaling its jihadist sympathies might be able to snow the American political class, the courts, the media, and the academy. It might make real inroads with the . . . progressives who dominated the Clinton administration. . . .
Despite its Hamas roots and terror ties, the most disturbing aspect of CAIR is its accomplishment of the Muslim Brotherhood’s precise aspiration for it. Thanks to its media savvy and the credulousness of government officials and press outlets, which have treated it as the “civil-rights” group it purports to be rather than the Islamist spearhead that it is, CAIR has been a constant thorn in the side of American national defense.
A few weeks ago, archaeologists announced the discovery in Jerusalem of clay seals from the 6th century BCE that appear to have belonged to one of the courtiers of King Josiah mentioned in the biblical book of Kings. The discoveries were the product of ongoing excavations of an area known as the City of David, thought to be the main part of Jerusalem in First Temple times. Persistently denying all of the facts of Jewish history in the land of Israel, pro-Palestinian activists have condemned the excavations as the work of “settlers” trying to undermine their claims to Jerusalem. Jonathan Tobin writes:
Critics of the City of David Foundation, [which oversees the excavations and the concomitant preservations efforts], are also against its activities because they believe that the area should be part of a future Palestinian state. They say that the development of the site and the digs are part of an effort to prevent a redivision of Jerusalem that would enable the Palestinian Authority to put its capital in the city. . .
[T]he effort to delegitimize the work at the City of David points to a basic problem: . . . if you’re going to deny Jewish rights to the place where King David and his descendants ruled their ancient kingdom, then you can deny them any place in the country. And that is what Palestinians have continued to do. Their effort to treat the City of David or even the Western Wall as linked to Jewish myths rather than to the beginning of Jewish civilization is inextricably linked to their refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders might be drawn.
Nor can it be argued that in a two-state solution, the Palestinians could be trusted to safeguard historical sites such as these. Just this week, evidence surfaced of ancient tombs in the Jericho area—territory that is governed by the Palestinian Authority—being looted by local Arabs. This is a commonplace occurrence throughout the [Palestinian-administered] territories; the region’s ancient Jewish heritage is being systematically destroyed by those out to make a profit or whose main goal is to eradicate the abundant evidence of the ancient Jewish ties to this land.
The only way to protect the heritage of the City of David is to ensure that it and the rest of Jerusalem remain under undivided Israeli authority with the right of Jews to live in their ancient capital undiminished. Any other solution isn’t a path to peace, but something that will only further encourage the history deniers of the Palestinian Authority to keep fighting their war on Jewish history.
Poland will be very much in the news over the coming month due to ongoing celebrations of the 100th anniversary of its independence, commemorations of the 76th anniversary Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a poster exhibition at the Vitrina Gallery, Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) featuring several of Poland’s leading graphic artists. The upcoming Polish Constitution Day reception will be hosted by Polish Ambassador Marek Magierowski and his wife, Anna, who will also mark the 15th anniversary of Poland’s accession to the European Union, and, of course, the much-lauded Tulia female quartet who will represent Poland at Eurovision.
IN POLAND and in Bund circles around the world, the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is commemorated on its Gregorian calendar date, which this year coincides with both Seder night and Shabbat. Although the Bund is neither Zionist nor religiously observant, in Israel and elsewhere this year, the commemoration was nonetheless brought forward.
In Warsaw, the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra, under the baton of Gabriel Chmura, will pay tribute to the musicians of the Warsaw Ghetto in general and the Warsaw Ghetto Orchestra in particular, at a special concert to be performed at the Polin Museum of the History of the Jews of Poland on Thursday, April 18. Reports from Warsaw indicate that the concert has been sold out.
Chmura, who was born in Wroclaw, in 1946, and migrated with his parents to Israel in 1957, has returned to Poland, where he is a popular figure in musical circles.
He studied piano, composition and conducting at the Tel Aviv University Music Academy, and later in France, Austria and Italy. He won a number of international competitions and has worked with orchestras around the world. In 2001, he was appointed artistic director of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, but continued to tour abroad. Another feather in his Polish cap came in 2012, when he was appointed artistic director of the Poznan Opera. He is also the leading guest conductor of the Krakow Philharmonic and in 2013, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Wroclaw Academy of Music, and in 2017, he was conferred with Poland’s highest artistic award, the Gloria Artis Gold.
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Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
New York, April 17 - The quantity of self-identifying progressives in our society has grown steadily in recent decades, in volume if not absolute numbers, but the best way to demonstrate one's seriousness in the progressive realm remains to take an ancient Jewish text about individual and national liberation, and reinterpret it to divorce it from its original meaning and replace the Jews of the original with the marginalized group of your choice.
