Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 11, 2021

Hamas blames Abbas and his men for assassinating Arafat

Felesteen, a Hamas news site, has three articles that blame the current Palestinian leadership, in one way or another, as helping Israel (and the US) assassinate Yasir Arafat.

One article notes that Mahmoud Abbas and Mohammed Dahlan were fighting to become Arafat's successor and therefore one of them must have been involved. It also says that Abbas has the results of an investigation that determined the killers but refuses to release it.

A second article quotes former director of the PA's General Intelligence Service, Fahmi Shabana, as saying that Abbas was involved in the assassination.

A third says that Arafat advisor Bassam Abu Sharif claims that one of the members of the Arafat assassination team escaped with the help of the PA and now lives in the Ukraine in luxury.

It is nearly impossible to find any Palestinian who does not think Arafat was assassinated, despite a Russian study and French report that found no evidence he was poisoned by polonium and numerous debunkings of the Swiss study that suggested it as a possibility.

Conspiracy theories are more fun.

Today is the anniversary of Yasir Arafat's death.

The official Palestinian Wafa news agency published an article about how much Arafat supported Palestinian culture. But what it really about is that Arafat knew that he had to create a Palestinian culture, since no distinct culture existed before Zionism - Palestinian Arabs were just part of the larger Levantine or Syrian Arab society (with some Egyptian influences.)

Titled "Abu Ammar, friend of intellectuals," the article says:

The intellectuals whom Wafa met unanimously agreed on the interest of Martyr President Arafat in culture and intellectuals, as culture is an integral part of the revolution, and that the poem and the pen go hand in hand with the rebel’s gun in the course of the Palestinian revolution .

The article goes on to show that Arafat prioritized funding Palestinian Arab writers, and was keenly interested in using music for propaganda:

Khaled Habbash, 62, one of the founders of the "Palestine Lovers Songs" band, believes that President Yasser Arafat was interested in strengthening the Palestinian cultural identity, especially popular and patriotic songs .

Abu Ammar used to meet from time to time with the band, especially after their return from tours in different continents of the world, encouraging them and repeating to them that the band is an ambassador for Palestine in the world, and he took care of the costs of producing revolutionary songs.

" He always emphasized to us the importance of the Palestinian identity, which is reinforced by traditional and patriotic songs, and reiterated that our musical instruments and our revolutionary and heritage songs that go hand in hand with the gun are indispensable," said Habbash, who now works as the culture officer at the Palestinian Consulate in Dubai.

If there was such a rich Palestinian cultural identity, why would it have had to be strengthened?

Another interviewee noted that Arafat supported disseminating posters with slogans like "Do you belong to the revolution? " and "Join the sons of Palestine!." He said, "Abu Ammar was of the opinion that our conflict is a cultural conflict no less fierce than other fields."

Arafat didn't support an existing culture - he helped create a culture where none existed before, because he needed to conjure a front for the world of an ancient Palestinian people with long standing ties to the land, even though nearly every prominent Palestinian family proudly trace their origins to the Arabia Gulf.

Further proof that Arafat's interest in culture was only in the context of conflict was that while he was creating a Palestinian culture, he was denying any Jewish history or culture in Israel. He famously told Bill Clinton that if Solomon built a Temple, it was in Nablus, not Jerusalem, and there was no trace of any Jewish presence on the Temple Mount. Since then, Temple denial has been a major feature of Palestinian discourse, with the Palestinian Authority demanding an apology from UN Secretary General for noting that the Jewish Temples existed in Jerusalem.

If Arafat really cared about culture, he wouldn't need to deny other peoples' cultures.

This article, meant to celebrate Arafat's love of Palestinian culture, actually proves the opposite: he considered culture to be a weapon like any other and his interest in the topic never went beyond how he can use culture as a means to ethnically cleanse Jews from the region.

On Wednesday, Fatah youth at Birzeit University started fighting each other, causing the university to close for a couple of days.

It was reportedly an internal quarrel within Fatah's Youth Bloc during activities commemorating the death of Yasser Arafat.

Dozens of students attacked each other with beatings, screaming and insults during the ceremony.

The university announced it will close and apologized that exams will be delayed.

Mainstream Palestinians can't even live with members of their own party, let alone different groups with each other.

But they want the world to think that they would treat Jews as equals and with full respect under an Arab-majority Palestine. And malicious Israel haters like Peter Beinart actually push this big lie to help destroy the Jewish state.

Giving Up Zionism (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal

Amichai Shikli, the dissident member of Naftali Bennett’s party and the only coalition member to vote against the budget, had an op-ed in today’s Israel Hayom newspaper that got my attention. I’ll translate the first few sentences:

At the end of a virtual tour of the back streets of the Old City, the Temple Mount appears, in all its glory; in the background, the skyline of Jerusalem with Augusta Victoria [monastery] and Mt. Scopus. Welcome to the Palestinian pavilion at Expo Dubai.

Now we enter the Israeli booth. The word “Israel” appears in all the colors of the rainbow, the headline “toward tomorrow.” Presenting the official video is Lucy Ayoub, the daughter of a Christian [Arab] father and a Jewish mother who, in an interview with Ha’aretz, boasted that “she does not surrender to occupation.”

He continues that the exhibit focuses on the great technological accomplishments of the “startup nation.” The Palestinians, on the other hand, emphasize the historical Muslim connection to Jerusalem and “Haram al-Sharif” (the Temple Mount), which is at the center of Palestinian identity. The Israeli exhibit, he notes, “concedes the national and historical aspect from the start.”

This doesn’t surprise me. Whoever designed our exhibition wants to present Israel as ultra-diverse (i.e., the rainbow and Lucy Ayoub) and hyper-modern; the part about the roots of the Jewish people in the land from Biblical times and their deep connection to it, especially to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, was played down. The designers seem to have presumed that this isn’t the Israel that works well for people in Dubai, or Europe for that matter. Only “religious” Jews care about that.

They are wrong. The Marxist and secular David Ben Gurion, made it clear in the very first paragraphs of Israel’s Declaration of Independence:

Eretz Yisrael was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

For Ben Gurion as well as his arch-enemy Menachem Begin, Zionism was not only about defending the Jewish people against antisemitism, it was (primarily) about the return of the Jewish people to their historic homeland, and, as Allen Hertz puts it, the realization of their aboriginal rights of entry and settlement. In this connection, I’m reminded of a story about Chaim Weizmann. When asked why the Zionists insisted on Palestine when there were many other places they could settle, he supposedly responded “That is like my asking you why you drove twenty miles to visit your mother last Sunday when there are so many old ladies living on your street.”

But many Israelis apparently don’t agree. What is important to them is physical security and economic success. They would have agreed with Moshe Dayan who, upon seeing the newly-conquered Old City, said, “what do we need all this Vatican for?” Perhaps they would even have agreed with Israel Zangwill, who in 1905 led a faction at the Seventh Zionist Congress favoring the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Uganda, Canada, or Australia. They don’t see a problem with the increasing number of non-Jews making “aliyah” to Israel, as long as they are loyal to the state. Certainly the idea of ceding Hevron, for example, or other parts of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians would not bother them if they were convinced that this could happen without compromising their security.

I have two objections to this point of view. One is legal, and the other is, for lack of a better word, spiritual. The legal point is this: there is a string of documents and treaties, beginning with the Balfour Declaration, continuing with the adoption of the British Mandate for Palestine at the San Remo Conference in 1920, the Anglo-American Convention on Palestine of 1924, and of course Israel’s Declaration of Independence, all of which rest their case for a Jewish homeland in Eretz Yisrael on the Jewish People’s historical connection to the land, which confers upon them the Aboriginal Rights mentioned above.

The Palestinians understand this quite well, which is why they attack every aspect of it. That is the reason they exist that we are not a “people,” but “just a religion.” One of things (in addition to our unique language, religion, and culture) that makes us a people, of course, is our long and exceedingly well-documented connection to Eretz Yisrael, so of course that is a problem for them. At the same time, they attempt to deny – and physically destroy the evidence for – the presence of the Jewish people here over the centuries. Sometimes this can be amusing, as when they insist that a place should be called by its “original” Arabic name, which then turns out to be a transliteration of an older Hebrew name.

Regarding the second objection, I used the word “spiritual” in a larger sense than just the religious one. Although the military challenge to Israel presented by the Palestinians is small, the cognitive and cultural war that is being waged against Israel from all around the world on their behalf has only become nastier, and is beginning to threaten both our relations with other nations and our own internal social health. In particular, we are beginning to give up on our self-definition as a Jewish, Zionist state.

The pogroms of May, in which Arab citizens viciously attacked Jewish residents of mixed cities, the recent attack on an Israeli police officer by private Arab security contractors, and the degree to which Bedouin criminals are running wild in the southern part of the country show that even Israel’s Arab citizens respond to perceived weakness.

There is a long list of things that we can do to push back against the abandonment of our Zionist consciousness. Most urgent is that we cannot afford to have a government that contains anti-Zionist elements, such as the Islamist Ra’am party of Mansour Abbas (not to be confused with Mahmud Abbas of the PA). I fully understand how it came about, but it is not acceptable. The presence of Ra’am in the Knesset (never mind the governing coalition!) violates section 7a of Israel’s Basic Law governing the Knesset, because the party platform “[negates] the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people.” Although it isn’t necessarily wrong to allocate a large amount of funds to improve services to Arab citizens, it is scandalous to place 30 billion shekels (almost US $10 billion) in Abbas’ hands to distribute as he wishes. By our cynicism, we have anointed him King of the Arabs.

Most important is the reinstatement of the Zionist goal of settling all of Eretz Yisrael by Jews. Programs should be created that will provide inexpensive homes in Judea and Samaria to young families who are priced out of the housing market today. This will require finding the gumption to oppose the US and Europe in order to build in Judea and Samaria, but we can do that.

There’s a great deal more, but readers can fill it in. Israelis often use the word “Tzionut” (Zionism) ironically. When I first made aliyah in 1979, someone asked me why I came. Tzionut, I said. He looked at me like I was insane. But it’s the reason there is a state at all, and if we forget the importance of Eretz Yisrael to the Jewish people, there won’t be one very much longer

11/10 Links Pt2: Fighting Anti-Semitism: Lessons From Kristallnacht; The ADL Convenes a Summit of Anti-Semites to Fight Anti-Semitism; Woman pleads guilty to raising PFLP funds through charity

From Ian:

Gil Troy: We need to focus on the Jews that love Israel, not those who are anti

Judaism is not just an heirloom. My great-grandparents passed on no valuables. All I inherited from them is something invaluable – pride in being Jewish, delight in belonging to this extraordinary extended family, and a strong sense of mission, not just to stay Jewish but to use my Judaism and Zionism to find meaning in my life while bettering the world.

The corona crisis reinforced how lucky we are to belong to this people – and how much we need one another.

Zionism counters the nihilistic Woke Left’s self-hatred of Israel and America along with the nihilistic, hyper-aggressive Right’s hatred of outsiders. Since establishing Israel in 1948, Zionism’s mission involves defending and perfecting Israel. That doesn’t mean you only defend Israel because it’s perfect; rather, defending Israel includes perfecting Israel – strengthening it from within.

This is constructive patriotism. No people ever improved by hating themselves. Such negativity neutralizes the optimism necessary to stretch, to reform.

Zionism also counters modern society’s hyper-individualism, technological addiction, materialistic madness, and enervating anomie by providing community, human contact, inspiring narratives, constructive values – and work to be done together.

Recently, Israel accused Palestinian human rights organizations of bankrolling the terrorist PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) without first publicizing evidence showing how Palestinians fool the world by slapping on noble-sounding names. A student asked me accusingly what I thought. The “aha” tone suggested – “you see, Israel’s unworthy, why should it exist… ” I replied, “like every move Israel makes in its fight against enemies, as I learn more, I’ll have one of two opportunities: either it’s a chance to again defend Israel, or it’s a chance to roll up my sleeves and improve Israel.”

That is Identity Zionism: fostering a rich, resilient, multidimensional, historically-infused identity in a world that often eviscerates the self; mobilizing our historic community in a world that often invites disunity not unity; and plunging in purposefully, to fulfill the Jewish mission of making our homes, our homeland and our world, better than they were yesterday – even if they are not yet as good as we will make them tomorrow.

Daniel Gordis: "The unraveling of American Zionism"

“Inside the Unraveling of American Zionism” is a headline bound to attract attention, and the article under that name in the New York Times did just that. It is not surprising that a piece about the “unraveling of American Zionism” would upset many people. What was surprising, given where it was published, was how accurate, informed and balanced the article was. Marc Tracy is a seasoned writer about the Jewish scene, and “Inside the Unraveling of American Zionism” brings both his talent and his knowledge to the fore.

What was surprising to me, but probably shouldn’t have been, was how his piece highlighted the similarity in language of progressive Jews (rabbinical students in this case) and progressive antisemites like Sunrise DC and BLM.

That proverbial double standard
When hostilities broke out between Israel and Hamas once again this past May, as Tracy notes, 93 American rabbinic students, enrolled at a variety of (non-Orthodox) seminaries, published a letter accusing Israel of “intentional removal of Palestinians” and “Apartheid,” among other crimes. One thing that the letter failed to mention was how Hamas had provoked the conflict. In fact, their letter didn’t mention Hamas at all.

Try telling the story of that conflict without mentioning Hamas. It’s quite the challenge.

So egregious was the lack of balance in the letter that the leaders of two of the rabbinical schools whose students signed the letter, Rabbi Bradly Artson Shavit of the Ziegler School at American Jewish University in Los Angeles and Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, President of Hebrew College just outside of Boston, wrote letters1 chiding their students for, among other things, a lack of ahavat yisrael, a love of the Jewish people.

That is true, but what the students’ letter actually did was precisely what Israel’s enemies have long done to the Jewish state, and what antisemites in America are increasingly doing to the Jewish people: holding Israel and Jews accountable to a standard that they do not apply to others. Examples abound, but I’ll point to just one.

The rabbinical students advocate rethinking American Jewish education about Israel to teach about “the messy truth of a persecuted people searching for safety, going to a land full of meaning … for so many other peoples, and also full of human beings who didn't ask for new neighbors.”

Emily Schrader: The Online Voice for Israel

There are few issues more hostile and controversial than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially when it comes to the digital world. As social media has transformed the way we operate online, we've seen a manifestation of real world political conflicts being played out on social media as well â€“ whether that be India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, the US, and Iran, or Israel and Palestine. As a result, there has also been a significant rise in hate speech against minority groups and increased political polarization. Emily Schrader, an Israeli content creator and the CEO of digital marketing firm Social Lite Creative, is hoping to fight that.

Schrader has been one of the leading voices in the fight for more accurate information across social media in the last decade â€“ whether through advising on policy change to fight antisemitism or in being a voice for what she calls "fighting misinformation."

Schrader's background comes from facing off against antisemitism on US campuses. As a politically involved student at University of Southern California, she encountered the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine which held the controversial "apartheid week" events to criticize Israel. Schrader said she was unable to understand why "these American students were so obsessed with Jews," and that many of the inaccurate statements they make about Israel are later repeated in the press as well. Thus began Schrader's journey of correcting exaggerated claims about Israel on a professional, and personal level.

Schrader became an activist on campus, working with organizations like CAMERA on Campus and StandWithUs, before eventually studying in Israel for her Masters's degree at Tel Aviv University. With a background in digital political campaigning, she established the digital department at StandWithUs, growing it to one of the leading pro-Israel platforms in the world today with over a million followers, including in Arabic. "I saw an opportunity to reach a wider audience and knew that there was a lack of information in the Arab world about Israel. I worked to build a team that could remedy that and helps stop lies that fuel incitement to violence," she said.

Israel: The only country with a net gain of trees in last century, the only country that recycles 90% of its water, a leader in green technologies.

PA: Burns down forests, makes giant tire fires, claims to emit 0 emissions and blames only Israel. ???????pic.twitter.com/cAAtHOQlZ9
— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) November 10, 2021

Kamala Harris, under the auspices of the Anti-Defamation League, is to be rehabilitated after her recent antisemitic oopsie. At least that was my impression on reading that the vice president was to be the featured speaker at the annual Anti-Defamation League (ADL) conference. Perhaps you remember the vice president’s “faux pas” in which she smiled and nodded as a student accused Israel of “ethnic genocide.” After which Harris congratulated the student for speaking her “truth.”

WATCH: Kamala Harris nods as student accuses Israel of "ethnic genocide": “your truth cannot be suppressed" pic.twitter.com/FcqCyT7Uo8
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 28, 2021

Now the ADL, under former Clinton and Obama appointee Jonathan Greenblatt, is giving Harris cover for her unforgiveable behavior, and attempting to blind us to the poor optics of that event.

Even before the conference, held Tuesday night, we were already told what Harris would say during her address. Harris was to denounce “the singling out of Israel ‘because of anti-Jewish hatred.’” Elder has already commented on the fact that such a statement is a tautology, that anything that is singled out because of Jew-hatred is antisemitism. As such, this makes Kamala’s denouncement, well, not very smart, and also meaningless.

As Elder rightly states, there is another issue with Harris’ denouncement. Harris is saying that the singling out of Israel is only antisemitism when it’s done out of anti-Jewish hatred. In so saying, the vice president is actually suggesting that it’s okay to single out Israel as long as you don’t do it out of anti-Jewish hatred. That means that any individual or group can claim their harsh, overweening focus on Israel is righteous, because it has nothing to do with Jews or antisemitism. Which of course, is a lie.

Just like Harris’ denouncement is a lie, framed so neatly to impress and mollify the Jews.

Note that Harris refers to “anti-Jewish hatred” as opposed to “Jew-hatred.” The distinction between the two phrases is important. “Anti-Jewish hatred” is about hating the Jewish religion or perhaps Jewish culture, like hating, for example, bagels. “Jew-hatred,” on the other hand, is about hating JEWS. Actual, live people.

The phrase “anti-Jewish hatred” was crafted with care to suggest that the singling out of Israel is never about hating people. And in fact, in making this linguistic distinction, Harris is pretty much saying that antisemitism isn’t really about a people, but their religious beliefs.

This kind of reminds me of the way parents are advised never to tell children that they are bad. Instead, the parent is supposed to say, “That is a bad thing you did.”

In other words, refer to the thing, never to the person.

It is the same with Kamala’s crafty phrase “anti-Jewish hatred.” When you characterize “antisemitism” as not being about people but about their religion or their culture, you pretty much suck all the meaning out of the word. Antisemitism is not about hating a religion or a culture. It’s about xenophobia. It’s about hating people.

By referring to Jew-hatred as “anti-Jewish hatred,” Harris, in effect, delegitimizes antisemitism as a concept. It’s as if she is saying there is no such thing as hating Jews because they are Jews, but only because of their beliefs. And she said as much in her address to the ADL conference: “I want to be very clear about this: When Jews are targeted because of their beliefs or their identity, when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is anti-Semitism.”

Yes, Kamala. Crystal clear. According to you, Harris, Jews are not targeted because they are Jews—they are targeted for their beliefs or because they identify as Jews.

This is not about missing the point, but a deliberate feint. Imagine you are a secular Jew in Germany and you identify not as a Jew, but as a proud and patriotic German. Do you think Hitler gives a crap how you identify? He hated and wanted to eradicate Jews not because of how they identified or what they believed in but because they were Jewish.

I am sure that many liberal Jews will point to the vice president’s remarks with satisfaction and put that little episode with the student behind them. They’ll say, “We knew she couldn’t be an antisemite. After all, she’s married to a Jew.”

And the people at JStreet will fawn all over themselves because they now have official government sanction to single out Israel, as long as they say they’re not singling out Israel from “anti-Jewish hatred.”

What of the ADL, the host of this vice presidential theater? Back in 1913, when Sigmund Livingston founded the Ant-Defamation League with a $200 budget, his stated mission was “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people.” Livingston understood that antisemitism is first and foremost about people—Jewish people. This became even clearer when around the time of the ADL’s founding, Leo Frank was lynched for a crime he did not commit. He was lynched because he was a Jew—and not because of his culture or religion.

Today, however, the ADL is presided over by Jonathan Greenblatt. Greenblatt makes no secret of his political leanings. In fact, the ADL leadership, as Jonathan Tobin put it, “seems to think they no longer even have to pretend to be anything but a Democratic Party auxiliary group.”

Support for Harris in spite of her nodding approval at a student’s statement that Israel is engaged in genocide is just the tip of the iceberg for Greenblatt. According to Tobin, “Greenblatt tweeted his opposition to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court within seconds of the announcement, no matter that there was no discernable Jewish issue at play, let alone one involving the ADL’s brief on anti-Semitism.”

Greenblatt also shared a stage with notorious Jew-hater Al Sharpton on the MSNBC show “Politics Nation With Al Sharpton” in July of 2020. Greenblatt’s excuse for appearing with Sharpton was that he was on the show only to promote the ADL's call for a corporate ban on Facebook because of the social media giant’s unwillingness to ban hate speech. No one else thought this partnership between the ADL and a flagrant and unrepentant antisemite was a good idea, except perhaps for Al Sharpton.

And then there’s this:

In @ADL's "Tools for Dealing with Anti-Semitic & Anti-Israel Incidents on Campus," ADL labels JStreetU as "pro-Israel activists" and a "tremendous resource and support" for Jewish students. 🤮

Six Proactive Strategies to Prevent Anti-Israel Activity… https://t.co/tFEtn4JivH pic.twitter.com/UnMtHv3AyO
— Dan (@DanFined) November 7, 2021

The ADL, under the heading "Tools for Dealing with Anti-Semitic & Anti-Israel Incidents on Campus," has a resource entitled, “Six Proactive Strategies to Prevent Anti-Israel Activity,” which proclaims JStreetU as “pro-Israel activists" and a "tremendous resource and support" for Jewish students.”

Yeah. That’s the same JStreet that jumped on the bandwagon to defend John Kerry when he said that if Israel didn’t sign on to Obama’s fake peace agreement, it would become an “Apartheid state.” From the NY Times:

J Street, a pro-peace Jewish organization, defended Mr. Kerry. “Instead of putting energy into attacking Secretary Kerry, those who are upset with the secretary’s use of the term should put their energy into opposing and changing the policies that are leading Israel down this road,” it said in a statement.

In other words, if Israel doesn’t stop building homes in its indigenous territory and doesn’t allow terrorists to overrun the country and murder Jews, then that makes the Jewish State an Apartheid state. And JStreet signed on to that idea. What a “tremendous resource and support” for Jewish students to have these “pro-Israel activists” on campus.

Under the heading of “our values,” the ADL website makes a now ludicrous claim, “We stand up for the Jewish State of Israel—the only democratically-elected government in the Middle East.”

If that were true, the ADL would have condemned Harris for applauding that misguided, possibly evil student who accused Israel of genocide. Instead, the ADL gave Kamala Harris pride of place at its conference: what appeared, at least, to be the best possible cover for her bad optics with that student.

Sigmund Livingston may not have been able to even imagine a Jewish State back in 1913 when he founded the ADL. But dollars to donuts he would never have stood for turning the organization into a partisan mouthpiece that carries water for either political party. As such, he never would have allowed the ADL to be used as a platform for a Kamala Harris makeover.

In praise of (presumed) Israeli attacks on Iranian war facilities

Iran International reports:

A weekly publication in Iran says an incident reported as a fire in a military research center in September was an “attack” by Israel to exert pressure on Iran.

The little-known Sobh Sadegh publication of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) mentioned Tuesday that a “self-reliance research center” west of Tehran was in targeted by Israel in an operation similar to other attacks since July 2020, including two explosions in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.

The IRGC reported on September 26 that a fire damaged one of its research facilities and three personnel were injured. Hours later, the announcement was deleted from its website and another version appeared saying that the fire was in the depot of the facility. Later, IRGC said that two of its personnel died in the incident.

Days later, ImageSat International published images saying that an explosion had taken place in a secret IRGC missile center west of Tehran. The images showed that one-quarter of the building was destroyed.

According to Iran Watch, the IRGC Research and Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization is responsible for ballistic missile research and development;and has helped improve the missile capabilities Gaza, Hezbollah and Houthi terrorists. It has also reportedly overseen an IRGC missile and space research center; has developed combat drones and a 1,900kg solid-fuel motor.

Here are the before and after ImageSat images:

Based on Google Maps satellite photos, the total area destroyed was about 15,000 square feet (1400 square meters.)

One would need to smuggle a large amount of explosives into a highly secure facility to cause that much damage - or the facility already had lots of explosive materials that had to be ignited.

It is really remarkable espionage that saves lives, today and tomorrow.

11/10 Links Pt1: Israel’s UK ambassador evacuated from event under heavy security amid protests; Commentary Podcast: The Real Story of The Israel-Gaza War

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Is there still hope for American bipartisan support of Israel?

Part of the reason for that is that the two parties have more or less exchanged identities on Israel in the past half-century. Democrats were once the solidly pro-Israel party. Now, its members are deeply divided over it with its left-wing activist wing increasingly influenced by intersectional ideology that falsely claims that the Jewish state embodies “white privilege” and that the Palestinian war to destroy it is somehow akin to the struggle for civil rights in the United States.

At the same time, the GOP is now nearly unanimous in its affection for the U.S.-Israel alliance. That trend reached its apotheosis under Trump, who can lay claim to being the most pro-Israel president to date, even if Democrats and the majority of Jewish voters give him no credit for it.

While the congressional leadership of the Democrats still firmly identifies as pro-Israel—as demonstrated by the determination of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer not to let the opposition of the so-called progressive wing of their party stop funding of the Iron Dome missile-defense system earlier this year—members of the party as just as likely to be found among Israel’s most fervent ideological opponents as its friends.

It is wrong to label all Democrats as being as bad as the “Squad.” But when push has come to shove on key issues of interest to the pro-Israel community, most of them fell short. That meant that some who are not only Jewish but who have long claimed to be Israel’s most ardent defenders either joined the other side on the Iran deal—as did former Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.)—or simply acquiesced to their party’s betrayal, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did.

With courageous exceptions to this standard few and far between, such as Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), who both opposed the Iran deal and called out Tlaib and others for their anti-Semitic invective during the House debate about Iron Dome, it’s possible to argue that perhaps those cheering Haley’s comments are right about AIPAC’s failure and the need to reject bipartisan advocacy.

Yet it’s both premature and unwise to completely write off AIPAC.

It is deeply wrong for Jewish Democrats to accuse their GOP counterparts of politicizing the issue of Israel since it was their party, and not the Republicans, which failed on Iran and Jerusalem, as well as by their cowardly refusal to reject the anti-Semitism of the progressives. But the goal of pro-Israel advocacy can’t be to convince all Jews to become Republicans. That would be true even if it were possible, which it isn’t, given the fact that most believe so-called social-justice issues are actually more important than Israel and fail to see that anti-Semitism is as much a danger on the left as it is on the right.

The objective for the pro-Israel movement is not to destroy the Democrats, but to get them to return to their former stance of strong support and revive a consensus that the left is destroying. That means that efforts to cultivate moderates and even some progressives—and to convince them to back the Jewish state—is still both the right thing to do and good politics must continue. At the moment, that looks like a losing battle, as the party’s growing progressive wing has fallen under the spell of toxic ideas like critical race theory that give a permission slip to anti-Semitism.

In American politics, change is a constant. The left may have thought the future was theirs after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the defeat of Trump. But the party’s radical tilt may herald its impending defeat in future elections and a necessary course correction that will eventually bring it back closer to the center. At that point, if AIPAC is still doing its job, pro-Israel Democrats will be there to reap the benefits.

That doesn’t mean Republicans shouldn’t continue to oppose the left’s anti-Israel invective and Biden administration policies that undermine the alliance. Yet in the long run, the pro-Israel community will be stronger if AIPAC is capable of vindicating its bipartisan strategy. If it can’t, then that will be a tragedy for the Democrats, the lobby and Israel.

Commentary Magazine Podcast: The Real Story of The Israel-Gaza War

The podcast crew is joined today by our pal Jonathan Schanzer, whose illuminating new book Gaza Conflict 2021 provides an eye-opening account of the hostilities earlier this year—and a guide to the state of play in the Middle East more broadly.

US Jews failed to anticipate antisemitic violence during Gaza conflict – study

A study of antisemitism in the US during Operation Guardian of the Walls in May found that Jewish communal organizations and leaders were taken by surprise by violence against Jews that took place during the conflict.

“This time the Jewish community was doubly surprised by the rapid transformation of protests by the American extreme left, especially the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli groups, into outbreaks of violent antisemitic acts that had broad geographic distribution, and by the increased criticism of Israel among larger circles within the Democratic Party than in the past as well as among several civil social organizations,” wrote Shahar Eilam and Tom Eshed of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

The report, titled “Increased Antisemitism in the United States Following Operation Guardian of the Walls: Permanent or Short-Lived?” also found that American Jews were surprised by the difficulty they experienced “in enlisting their natural allies and partners” in the fight against antisemitism.

“The main question that occupied me was how it was possible that the US Jewish establishment was surprised, despite its deep experience in dealing with similar previous incidents of escalation as part of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, in which there also was a similar dynamic in the US theater,” Eilam told The Times of Israel. “Deep changes in American society are not supposed to surprise the Jewish community.”

Eilam said he was worried by the “delay in the identification and in the deep understanding of the trends, and the hesitance in absorbing their implications and in building appropriate responses by the Jewish community along with its different partners.”

The report argued that the issue of antisemitism is becoming politicized in the US, rendering it “more difficult to form a broad and united front to condemn and combat antisemitism of any type.”

The report is slated for publication on Wednesday.

Israel’s UK ambassador evacuated from event under heavy security amid protests

Israeli Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely was evacuated under heavy security from an event at the London School of Economics on Tuesday evening amid a large protest by pro-Palesestinian activists against her presence.

Video from the scene showed security guards rushing Hotovely, who was clutching a bouquet of flowers, into a vehicle, while others tried to fend off a group of jeering activists, who chanted, “Aren’t you ashamed?”

Hotovely had been invited by the prestigious university’s student union to take part in a debate forum.

“We will not give in to thuggery and violence,” Hotovely pledged after the incident, according to Ynet. “The State of Israel will send its representatives to every stage.”

Hotovely and the spokesman for Israel’s embassy in London both stressed that the hour-and-a-half event took place in full, and 200 students were able to hear what Israel’s envoy had to say.

“The extremists will continue to demonstrate outside – and the embassy will continue to speak directly with students inside,” the spokesman said.

The event drew widespread opposition from pro-Palestinian and other groups on campus for “platforming racism.”

The protests specifically targeted Hotovely, saying that she had “advocated for settler colonialism, engaged in Islamophobic rhetoric and has perpetuated anti-Palestinian racism.”

Britian’s Home Secretary Priti Patel and Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi condemned the “aggressive and threatening behavior” against Hotovely.

“This is deeply disturbing, I am so sorry Ambassador Hotovely,” Zahawi tweeted.

She later thanked the British government and others “for all the support I have received.”

One major difference between anti-Israel demonstrations and pro-Israel rallies is that the Israel-haters rely heavily on repeating slogans.

Here's a small clip from yesterday's London demonstration that successfully threatened and attempted to physically attack Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely:

We see it over and over: every anti-Israel rally is filled with repetitious sloganeering, from small venues to large rallies.

Countless studies show that repeating anything makes it more likely to be believed.

A 2020 article in Psychology Today notes:

First described in a 1977 study by Temple University psychologist Dr. Lynn Hasher and her colleagues, the illusory truth effect occurs when repeating a statement increases the belief that it’s true even when the statement is actually false.

Subsequent research has expanded what we know about the illusory truth effect. ...For example, the perceived truth of written statements can be increased by presenting them in bold, high-contrast fonts or when aphorisms are expressed as a rhyme.

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."

"There is only one solution, Intifada revolution:"

"Hey hey, ho ho, Zionists have got to go!"

"Khaybar Khaybar al Yahud, jaish Mohammed sa yahud."

See a pattern?

The repetition is used in many different ways. The entire point of "Israel Apartheid Week" on campuses is to have people associate "Israel" with "Apartheid," and this year Ken Roth of HRW used the words "Israel" and "apartheid" over 130 times together - and stopped using the word "apartheid" with any other country (as he had previously done). It is all part of the brainwashing technique with the express aim of demonizing Israel.

This is especially true for the young people who are the targets of anti-Israel brainwashing. Neuroscientist and physiologist Kathleen Taylor explains in her 2004 book on the subject that

repetition is an integral part of brainwashing techniques because connections between neurons become stronger when exposed to incoming signals of frequency and intensity. She argues that people in their teenage years and early twenties are more susceptible to persuasion. Taylor explains that brain activity in the temporal lobe, the region responsible for artistic creativity, also causes spiritual experiences in a process known as lability.

Britannica summarizes:

The techniques of brainwashing typically involve isolation from former associates and sources of information; an exacting regimen requiring absolute obedience and humility; strong social pressures and rewards for cooperation; physical and psychological punishments for non-cooperation ranging from social ostracism and criticism...

Taylor's solution to brainwashing is actually amazing because it shows how the socialist Left is making freedom of thought into a thoughtcrime:

In the final portion of the book, Part III: "Freedom and Control", Taylor describes an individual's susceptibility to brainwashing and lays out an acronym "FACET", a tool to combat influence and a totalist mindset.FACET stands for Freedom, Agency, Complexity, Ends-not-means, and Thinking.

How many times have you seen the Israel haters say stuff like this:

They don't want their followers to think. They want facile, false, repeated slogans instead to brainwash them.

They hate complexity. Real life is messy, but they want to reduce problems to black and white: everyone is good or evil, oppressor or oppressed, moral or Nazi.

They don't want their followers to even be exposed to the other side of the argument - hence "cancelling" and censorship, forcing self-censorship because of fear of violence, all with the goal of ending any possibility of voicing other opinions. The Tzipi Hotovely episode is one of many where they were successful. (My Twitter feed is blocked by hundreds of people I never heard of - the haters share lists of tweeters that they want to ensure they are never exposed to.)

They are against agency - Palestinians are passive victims with no responsibility, and so are members of every "oppressed" group.

The Israel haters and socialists not only knowingly brainwash young people, they are trying to set up an alternative morality where individual rights and freedom of thought are bad and unquestioning, blind following them is the only correct path.

The reason the pro-Israel and anti-Israel rallies are so different is because pro-Israel activists rely on truth, anti-Israel activists rely on brainwashing. And brainwashing is more effective.

The sad part is that it takes orders of magnitude more effort to combat brainwashing than it takes to brainwash to begin with. Facts are not relevant to those who are already in the cult (which is what Wokeism is.)

When do the UN, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, PFLP-linked NGOs, the BDS Movement, Students for Justice for Palestine, Peace Now, Jewish Voice for Peace and J-Street not condemn Israeli citizens living in the West Bank?

When they are Arabs, of course.

From Haaretz:

Rawabi markets itself as a unifier of Palestinian interests and an actionable road map for statehood, replacing the grandiose promise-making of traditional leadership with literal facts on the ground.

Located in Area A – placing it, on paper at least, under full control of the Palestinian Authority – and situated some 35 minutes north of Ramallah, construction began here in 2010, financed initially by the Palestinian-American entrepreneur Bashar Masri and aided by substantial Qatari funds.

During a recent visit, I sat down with the city’s first-ever mayor, Ibrahim Natour.

Asked about the presence and role of the Arab Israeli population in the city, Natour hastens to correct me: “We’re not looking at them as Arab Israelis: they’re Palestinians. To be Palestinian is not about having an [Israeli] ID card. I’m Palestinian but I’m from Jerusalem. We don’t discriminate.”

Despite early hopes of attracting as many as 40,000 residents, Rawabi’s current population sits at a somewhat meager 5,000, of whom 70 percent consider the city their permanent home. A municipal official described the other 30 percent as “weekend/vacation” visitors. Except for wealthier Palestinians holding dual citizenship, it stands to reason that many of them are Arab Israelis – the only ones capable of passing through the border crossings uninhibited.

Amal, a 46-year-old resident of the Arab Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm, was surprised by the demographic breakdown of the city, which had marketed itself as a stepping-stone in the direction of statehood. “I also asked how many residents come from outside [i.e., Arab Israelis]. I had the impression that at least 80 percent were from [the West Bank]. You see all the yellow [Israeli] car license plates and most of them come every few months for a visit – but they’re never going to tell you that,” he says, referring to the municipality.

Any way you count it, thousands of Arab Israelis own houses and live at least part time in Area A - under Palestinian control.

They are settlers.

In an area Jews aren't allowed.

The mayor says "we don't discriminate." Well, as long as you don't count discriminating against Jews, I suppose not.

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch has said that "Each transfer of a settler to occupied territory is a war crime." Both Jews and Arabs voluntarily move to the West Bank. But Roth only considers it a "war crime" if they are Jewish.

There is a word for that.

The Israeli Arabs who live in Rawabi can vote in Israeli elections - just like the Jews who live in less than ten kilometers away in Shiloh or Eli.

They can drive on every road in the West Bank - not only the mythical "Jewish-only roads" but the Arab roads as well that are off-limits to Jews.

Every single argument that Israel practices "apartheid" is demolished by the existence of Israeli Arabs living in an Arab community that, we are told, is "occupied."

The more you look at the "apartheid" claim, the most you see that it is prompted by its own bigotry - against Jews and only Jews.

(h/t Ahron)

From BBC Russian:

The Russian Ministry of Justice has included in the list of extremist materials the Soviet propaganda film "Secret and Explicit. Aims and Deeds of the Zionists." The film was shot in the 1970s on the wave of "anti-Zionism" in the USSR, but it never made it to the wide screen because of the fears of the Soviet authorities.

The decision to ban the film was made by the Syktyvkar City Court in July this year, but it was only on November 8 that it was officially included in the list of extremist materials.

The documentary black and white tape was released in 1973 by the Central Documentary Film Studio.

[T]he script for the film was approved at the highest level - in the international department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a whole group of reputable consultants from the USSR Academy of Sciences, the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the KGB were assigned to work on the picture. The filmmakers were even allowed to travel to Europe to collect material.

The well-known historian of the Soviet era Yevgeny Dobrenko wrote: "This film was the Soviet version of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion ," so odious and wild even by Soviet standards that it was assessed as anti-Semitic and banned even by the KGB and the Central Committee."

I found a version of the film where it appears that someone added clips from the 1990s (Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak). But it seems to include the original complete film.

I don't understand Russian but the antisemitism is obvious - scenes of Jews praying, shots of Jewish books that are almost certainly being claimed to demean non-Jews, accusations that Jews collaborated with Nazis on the Holocaust.

Leftist anti-Zionism started off indistinguishable from classic antisemitism. After missteps like this film, the Left learned to hide their Jew-hate a little better, always insisting that they weren't anti-Jew but only anti-Israel.

That doesn't change the fact that the anti-Zionists are still motivated by the same hate for Jews that they always were. Hiding it better doesn't make that any less true.

11/09 Links Pt2: Why we haven't solved antisemitism yet; Phillips: The unconscious historical experience of the Royal Court theatre; Israel Commemorates 83 years Since Kristallnacht

From Ian:

Why we haven't solved antisemitism yet

November 9, 1938, anti-Jewish demonstrations broke out across Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland region of then-Czechoslovakia. Over the next 48 hours, about 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, homes and schools were destroyed. Ninety-one Jews were murdered, with another 30,000 Jewish men arrested and sent to concentration camps. The Jews were officially blamed for their own victimization and German Jews were fined one billion reichsmarks (today that would be worth over $7 billion) for the riot that rose up against them.

Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”), the night when anti-Jewish rhetoric turned into state-sanctioned action that would culminate with the Holocaust, was over eighty years ago, yet Jews all over the world are still living with the reality – and the increasing prevalence – of violence against them for the sole reason of who they are.

The United States is unique in the world for recognizing the moral responsibility to respond to the rise in antisemitism. Yet President Joe Biden’s nominee to The Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, has still not gotten her confirmation hearing. The reason: political rancor over determining the country’s self-proclaimed identity.

The “Jewish question” was first asked in the 19th and 20th centuries as countries began debating what defined them as nations, and it is still the question that undergirds national identity. What to do about the Jew in society is just another way a society asks, “How do we define ourselves?” It is the leitmotif of the modern world’s life story.

The Jewish question always demands a reason for the Jew – since a Jew’s very being says something about everyone else. The very begging of the Jewish question reveals the structural antisemitism that pervades western society.

‘Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism,’ Head of ADL Declares in Speech to Summit Combating Hate and Discrimination

The head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) will warn in a speech on Tuesday night that a belief is taking hold on the political left “that all Jews are oppressors — part of a white establishment that has exploited racial and ethnic minorities for generations.”

In his address to be delivered later to the ADL’s three-day “Never is Now” annual summit, the organization’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said that such views represented an “ugly form of historical revisionism” that would “come as a big surprise to my grandparents who fled Europe for their lives — only to come to this country and experience discrimination. Or to Iranian or Ethiopian Jews who came more recently but also seeking refuge from vicious persecution. Or to the more than half of Israeli Jews who aren’t of European descent.”

Greenblatt’s speech, a copy of which was shared with The Algemeiner in advance, sounded the alarm on antisemitism on both left and right. Comparing the rise of antisemitism to the global environmental crisis, Greenblatt quoted the observation of a German anti-racist activist who told him that far-right antisemitism was reminiscent of devastating weather events like hurricanes, whereas antisemitism on the left was akin to the gradual change in climate.

“Slowly and surely, the temperature is increasing,” Greenblatt said. “Often people don’t perceive the shift or choose to ignore it even when there are once uncommon storms. But the environment is becoming more hostile, and the conditions threaten to upend life as we know it if we sit back and do nothing.”

Addressing the widespread hostility on the left to Israel and Zionism, Greenblatt said, “Don’t get me wrong: there certainly are things that the Israeli government has done that deserve rebuke. But, criticizing the actions of a government is categorically different than deeming it illegitimate because of wildly inaccurate claims that it is instituting ‘apartheid’ or leading a ‘genocide.'”

StandWithUs: Launches Website Exposing Corporate Antisemitism

StandWithUs is proud to announce the launch of a website dedicated to exposing corporations that are complicit in discrimination and hatred against the Jewish people. The site is located at www.corporatehate.com

"Corporations are among the most powerful and influential forces in the world today, and it is crucially important to hold them accountable when they promote or enable antisemitism," said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs. "An initial focus of this effort is Unilever, a multinational corporation which owns Ben & Jerry's and is complicit in a discriminatory boycott targeting Israelis. In the face of ample evidence that Unilever's actions empower extremists who oppose Israel's existence, and despite multiple requests that Unilever reverse course, the company has refused to do so."

The new website includes a video explaining how Unilever is enabling antisemitism, along with additional resources about the company. It also exposes the corporate sponsors of a non-profit called Slow Factory, which has repeatedly promoted antisemitic rhetoric and double standards. Additional corporations will be added to the site as appropriate.

Corporate antisemitism exists when a corporation or business promotes or enables hatred and discrimination against Jews, individually or as a group. StandWithUs uses the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, which is the internationally accepted standard, to determine whether a corporation falls into this category. Corporate antisemitism is not new and has taken many forms. Henry Ford, who founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903, was one of the most prominent sources of anti-Jewish propaganda in the United States. Volkswagen, a company established under Nazi rule in Germany, used Jews to do forced labor in its factories and operated four concentration camps and eight forced-labor camps on its property (it has since taken significant steps to atone for this history). In the 1970s and 1980s, numerous Japanese car companies and other corporations refused to do business in Israel because they were afraid of economic punishment from the Arab League. The Arab League was engaged in a boycott of Israel, aimed at destroying the one Jewish state in the world.

Arab, Israeli, and Proud

Yoseph Haddad has served in the Israeli Defense Forces. He’s also an Arab. Why would an Arab volunteer to join the Israeli military? If Israel really is an apartheid state, why would Haddad be proud to defend it? He explains. (h/t NormanF )