Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, March 15, 2020

03/15 Links: Hamas antisemitic propaganda story taught in our schools; Rivlin: Coronavirus emergency will make Israel more resilient; Gantz gets 61 backers to form coalition, topping Netanyahu

From Ian:

David Collier: Hamas antisemitic propaganda story taught in our schools

The Times ran an exclusive in May 2018 about a young child, an aspiring footballer in Gaza being shot whilst playing football with his friends. A few months later the World Health Organisation (WHO) published an embellished version on their website -having the Israeli soldier deliberately shoot the child after a face-to-face confrontation. Schools provides the WHO story as a key case study for students to learn. The only problem – much of the story surrounding this tragedy was created by the Hamas propaganda machinery. Bookmark this blog – it details how the propaganda of a radical Islamic terrorist organisation ends up being taught to British students at school.
The boy who plays football

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), Scotland’s largest teaching organisation, provides material on the Israel /Arab conflict for both teachers and students. As you would expect, there is a lot of disinformation and distortion in their content. I was going through it to highlight the errors when I came across a shocking case study (activity 5) regarding the shooting of a young boy along the Gaza border.

The case study is a horror story. It is about Abdul, an eleven-year-old boy who loves to play football. He was too scared to play in his neighbourhood because of the ‘March of Return’ protests. Eventually his friends convinced him that his playground was far enough away from the fence. Then this happened:
One of the boys shot the ball too far and Abdul started running to get it. He was not aware that the ball had landed near the fence until he found himself face-to-face with an Israeli soldier. Abdul-Rahman had no time to run before the soldier aimed his gun at Abdul’s leg and fired. Because the bullet was fired at close range, Abdul-Rahman’s leg shattered and needed to be amputated below the knee. He is now the youngest amputee as a result of the mass demonstrations.

Propaganda Problems
Almost anyone who understands the Gaza protests can immediately see there is something wrong with the story. It claims Abdul came ‘face to face’ with the soldier who then deliberately shot him at near point-blank range. Israeli soldiers are not standing by the fence. Abdul would never have been face-to-face with anyone.

The case study describes a brutal, callous and deliberate shooting. It reads like it is carefully written propaganda. No student ever reading this would be left untouched by the tale. The story even has an image of a schoolboy kicking a football – designed to created identification between the student and the victim. The horror of this story made me look a little closer at the details. I am glad I did.

Reuven Rivlin: Coronavirus emergency will make Israel more resilient

President Reuven Rivlin told the Israeli public on Sunday to “keep calm and avoid hysteria.”

Speaking ahead of his meetings with members of the 23rd Knesset to receive their recommendations before announcing which member of Knesset will be tasked with forming a government in the next 28 days, the president reminded people to “follow the rules and instructions and do not give way to fear and panic.

“More than ever, the success of the State of Israel in dealing with this extreme crisis lies in the hands of our civil society,” said the president. “Now is when we are asked to give our children, on our own, a positive and normal routine. Now is when we are asked,more than ever, to take responsibility for our fellows, particularly the elderly among us – in our buildings, communities, neighborhoods, and those who are at the highest risk not just of getting sick, but of finding themselves isolated and without supplies.

“That is the spirit, our spirit, and if we maintain it, it will take care of us,” the president said.

He made clear that he did not believe that dealing with the coronavirus emergency - there are now around 200 people with the sickness in Israel - would be at the expense of Israeli democracy. Rather, he said, as in the past, dealing with enemies “has rather strengthened it and made our country, the State of Israel, more resilient.

“We are committed, more than ever, in light of the urgent need for a government, to hold essential democratic processes, even in a time of crisis,” he said.

Cabinet meeting taking place in 6 different locations to set an example of social distancing pic.twitter.com/ZRY5kSRLWz
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) March 15, 2020

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: The virus that has nothing novel about it

I have been tracking this virus for the last twenty years—no, make that for the last fifty years.

I am talking about another virulent virus, that of Jew hatred, a deadly plague that has managed to mutate over time and geography so that it is always at-the-ready, both in good times and bad, definitely in times of war, famine, plague, and natural disaster but also when hope is high and the going is good.

As has happened many times before, the Jews and Jewish Israel are being blamed for the Wuhan Virus by the mad mullahs of Iran. They say that “Zionists” are behind the Wuhan (Corona) Virus and that “Zionist elements developed a deadlier strain of Wuhan (Corona) virus just against Iran.”

China, ground zero for the pandemic, is now blaming America for having brought it into China in the first place.

Let’s visit Wuhan, Hubei Province, China for a moment.

My friend and colleague, Marion Dreyfus, has written about her time in Wuhan in the early part of the 21st century. The city had absolutely no potable water and little hygiene; there was open sewage in open marketplace “eateries,” where wild dogs roamed and where bats and all other manner of fish, fowl, and bird were slaughtered, sold, and eaten.

For lunch, Dreyfus and her Chinese friends went to “the dirty alley” where they purchased “unidentified frying objects in woks,” which were as “delicious” as they were unknown. Wuhan’s live market was like a “free zoo,” where rats, bats, snakes, and scorpions were sold to be eaten and the “floors were awash underfoot with spill from the livestock.” As she so delicately phrases it: “The smell was... not Chanel #5.”

Due to the Wuhan Virus, I cancelled my upcoming Sunday lecture in Philadelphia on Anti-Semitism. I’ve continually kept up with this subject—‘twas easier and easier to do since there have been so very many awful-beyond-belief incidents and many thousands of pages of analyses. It is a subject that never seems to go out of style. But for this new lecture, I wanted to read and re-read absolutely everything relevant since my last public lecture on this subject which took place four years ago.

On Monday, a member of the Iranian National and Foreign Political Security Committee, Shahrouz Berzakr, claimed that an unknown deadly virus diefferent from Covid-19 has appeared in one of the Iranian provinces and caused the death of a nurse.

Barzakr told the ISNA news agency that "after a meeting of the members of the committee and the speaker of parliament with the Iranian Minister of Health this morning, what we understood from the words of the Minister of Health today is that there are two types of Coronavirus circulating in the country, one of which is the Chinese Wuhan virus and the other is a virus of an unknown source, and that the second virus did not show mercy to a 25-year-old nurse and killed her immediately. "

"The other virus is likely to be a type of American biological terrorism that Washington has transmitted to the country," he noted.

Hours later, a spokesperson for the Iranian Health Ministry flatly denied that they claimed anything of the sort.

Meanwhile, about eight Iranians accidentally killed themselves by drinking alcohol in an effort to inoculate themselves from the coronavirus, four in Fars and four in Shiraz.

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Time magazine has had two special double issues recently.

In February, there was an issue centered around today's youth and the future. Featured was a piece by Mahathir Mohamed, then-Prime Minister of Malaysia.

Mohamed is a proud antisemite. He's said so directly less than five months prior to this issue as well as previously. Yet Time didn't think it was important to bring that up. In fact, Time also honored Mohamed as one of its most influential people of 2019 also without mentioning his antisemitism.

If Mohamed had defended racism, it seems unlikely that Time wouldn't mention it. But antisemitism is more acceptable than racism is.

In its more recent special double-issue on a century of "Women of the Year," Time honored over a hundred women. The short bios were not hagiographic - they admitted that, say, birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger was associated with the eugenics movement, and that Indira Gandhi destroyed many basic human rights under her rule of India.

However, its piece on Angela Davis is entirely worshipful - despite her own antisemitism.

Besides her current support for boycotting the Jewish state, recognized by many nations and US states as being antisemitic and similar to Nazi boycotts of Jewish goods, Davis also scornfully rejected a chance to help Soviet Jewish dissidents in prisons behind the Iron Curtain. Around 1973, when Alan Dershowitz found out that Davis was accepting an award in the Soviet Union, he asked that she speak up to help the Jewish refuseniks, many of whom were arrested on charges of teaching Judaism. Her response was "They are all Zionist fascists and opponents of socialism" and the Jews should stay in prison where they belonged.

Yet Time doesn't see fit to mention this proof that Davis is not a freedom fighter but an antisemitic socialist.

To add insult to injury, her bio in the piece was written by Ibram X. Kendi, author of "How To Be an Antiracist." If you believe that Jews who want freedom from tyranny should be jailed, you are not an anti-racist.

A single racist tweet is enough to destroy careers. But explicit antisemitism is not. Time magazine proves that even in 2020, antisemitism is an accepted form of bigotry in mainstream media.

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Samir Geagea, chairman of the Lebanese Forces Party, called to impose a siege on Palestinian camps in Lebanon and to prevent Palestinians from entering and exiting the camps under the excuse of helping to contain the coronavirus.

As far as I can tell, no one in the camps has been diagnosed with the virus.

Geagea said in a speech from his party’s headquarters in Ma’arab on Friday, “It is necessary to announce measures against Palestinian camps and the Syrian presence in Lebanon, to close the camps, and refusing to allow anyone to enter and leave..."

Palestinian groups denounced his speech as a transparent means to attack the government while using them as pawns. An official from the PLO in Lebanon said, not inaccurately, that Geagea's words were "racist statements that are repugnant, rejected, condemned and incompatible with human values and with human rights, and it is clear that Samir Geagea are trafficking in politics at the expense of the rights of the Palestinians to a decent human life in Lebanon."

I have yet to see major human rights organizations outside Lebanon say a word about the endemic and explicit discrimination against Palestinians in Lebanon like this, which are always clothed in righteous language but are in truth the real apartheid against Palestinians in the Middle East.

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03/14 Links: Netanyahu: All leisure activities to stop Sunday; Bethany Mandel: Collapse of Bernie Sanders campaign saves us from administration full of anti-Semites; Iran Rages Against the Perfect Storm

From Ian:

PM says all leisure venues to shut, urges Israel to adjust to ‘new way of life’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and government officials on Saturday announced a shutdown of all leisure businesses and activities throughout the country, with the premier pressing upon the public the need to “adopt a new way of life” for the coming weeks and possibly months as the country deals with the new coronavirus — and particularly underlining a guiding principle of individuals maintaining a distance of at least two meters from others at all times.

Sunday morning will see public life further diminished, with the closure of all cafes, restaurants, hotels, malls, movie theaters, gyms, event halls and the like. It was implied that all non-essential shops would close, though not specifically stated. But Netanyahu stressed that supermarkets, pharmacies, banks and other essentials would continue to function.

Sunday will also see the closure of preschools, kindergartens and daycares that had remained open on Friday amid a closure of all educational institutions.

Furthermore, the government announced a new restriction on gatherings of over 10 people in the same place. There were no new restrictions announced on public transportation; Netanyahu said this matter was still under discussion.

For non-leisure workplaces, the prime minister said work would continue, but all employers were urged to encourage work from home wherever possible.

“This is a battle for public health,” Netanyahu said at a press conference from the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. “We are at war with an invisible enemy…We are adjusting as things develop. The situation is dynamic.” But, he said, “we can beat it.”

Comparing the situation several times to a state of war, the premier said it was imperative for Israelis to change gears and “adopt a new way of life” for the near future, noting that many Israelis appeared not to be heeding officials’ calls to avoid physical contact and displays of affection, but stressing that this was crucial for the nation to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Noah Rothman: Iran Rages Against the Perfect Storm

This violence comes at a time of unprecedented stress on the Iranian regime. The Islamic Republic has been hit particularly hard by the Coronavirus, in part, as a result of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions regime. Tehran’s efforts to evade American sanctions has increased its reliance on China—links that it could not afford to sever even as the outbreak worsened. “Iran’s strategic partnership with Beijing has created a constellation of potential contacts that helped unleash the illness,” the Wall Street Journal reported. This has only contributed to the anti-regime sentiment in Iran that has produced sporadic episodes of violent unrest for the better part of three years. “We were unhappy with all these crappy Chinese goods everywhere,” one Iranian housewife told WSJ reporters. “Now they brought us this crappy virus, too.”

According to official regime statistics, just over 500 people have died as a result of the outbreak. But there’s reason to be skeptical of these figures. As CNN reported, private satellite imagery indicates a rapid excavation of trenches around the city of Qom—a municipality with some of the closest economic links to China—which analysts believe are to be used as graves. A provocative analysis by the Atlantic‘s Graeme Wood concludes that Iran is deliberately underreporting domestic COVID-19 cases by tens or even hundreds of thousands. Still, Iran’s official news agencies are reporting that the disease has taken a grim toll on the nation’s governmental and security apparatuses. “Iran’s senior vice president and two other Cabinet members have contracted the new coronavirus,” Iran’s FARS news agency reported this week. “Among the dead are five of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard members and an unspecified number of the Guard’s volunteer Basij force,” Iran’s health ministry revealed.

“The economic depression is far more pervasive and contagious than the virus itself,” said one Iranian business owner. Iran’s economy is already estimated to have contracted by almost 10 percent in 2019 as a result of international sanctions, and the reduced domestic economic activity and trade with its remaining partners will only exacerbate these conditions. Perhaps more urgent for Iran, the efforts by Saudi Arabia and Russia to ramp up energy production have sent global oil prices into a tailspin.

Tehran is slightly more insulated from the oil-price shock than it might have been in the absence of American sanctions, which have curtailed Iranian energy exports. But plummeting rates of production and export have deepened the economic crisis in Iran and produced “mass layoffs” in the Iranian oil sector. It was only last November that the economic pressure on the Iranian regime forced it to pare back the subsidies that kept domestic gasoline prices low, yielding to widespread protests, violence, and a shutdown of the Internet. It’s unlikely to be coincidental that this domestic unrest coincided with the escalating military provocations against Americans and their allies in Iraq that culminated in the Soleimani strike.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the level of risk the Iranian regime is prepared to accept is directly proportional to the economic hardships it endures. And for Tehran, the threat posed by a global Coronavirus pandemic alongside the collapse of global oil prices is a perfect storm. It’s reasonable to assume, then, more violence in the Middle East will be forthcoming.

Bethany Mandel: Collapse of Bernie Sanders campaign saves us from administration full of anti-Semites

In the wake of recent 2020 primary election results, there is an unexpected silver lining for Jewish Americans: Sen. Bernie Sanders will almost certainly not be the Democratic presidential nominee.

One would think that for the Jewish community, having a Jewish nominee would have been an achievement to be celebrated instead of a possibility to fear, but sadly, no. Due to both the Vermont independent’s radical beliefs and policy positions, as well as his propensity for surrounding himself with suspect characters, the prospect of a Sanders presidency was concerning indeed for many Jewish Americans like me.

Sanders often touts his trip to Israel to live on a kibbutz when he discusses the America-Israel relationship. But there is an important point lost on many Sanders supporters: He wasn’t spending time in the Jewish state learning about or promoting Judaism or Zionism.

Writing for the Hudson Institute, Ron Radosh explained:
"But in 1963 when Sanders worked on Hashomer’s kibbutz, its members considered themselves Marxist-Zionists, and they held a pro-Soviet orientation which included supporting Soviet foreign policy. Their ideological orientation on Zionism and socialism came not from the social democrats of the Socialist International, who were strongly anti-Communist and anti-fascist during the years of World War II (like Germany’s Willy Brandt), but from a rather unknown figure, a Zionist named Ber Borochov.

"I knew members of Hashomer Hatzair in the same period that Bernie worked on their kibbutz. They would always urge me to read Borochov’s books. Although he passed away in 1917, too early to see the horrendous results of the Bolshevik Revolution, Borochov’s followers argued that he had proved that “socialist Zionism” had to be Marxist-Leninist.

"Their only criticism of the official Israeli Communist Party was its refusal to see that Stalin was wrong to argue that Jews did not need their own nation and that they instead should work within their own countries to foment a communist revolution. (If you want to know more about Borochov, Wikipedia accurately summarizes his views.)"

Things aren’t any better in the present day either. Sanders has consistently surrounded himself with surrogates who are clear about their position not just on the Jewish state but on Jewish people as well — and it’s not pretty.

Ilhan Omar Iranian minister for antisemitism https://t.co/Kv0hpYz3oG
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) March 14, 2020

Hamas Joins Bernie Sanders’ Presidential Campaign (satire)

Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has taken some public criticism for some of his campaign surrogates’ questionable views on Israel. It seems though that rather than attempt to assure Jewish communities that the Sanders campaign doesn’t support anti-Semitic propaganda, they’ve gone the other direction:

Earlier this week, Hamas announced that it was going to join the Sanders 2020 campaign as a digital media partnership.

In a statement, one Hamas spokesperson said, “The Bernie Sanders campaign is struggle against a powerful regime to achieve hilariously unrealistic goals by calling anyone who disagrees with them a terrorist and we very strongly identify with that attitude.” He continued by explaining “that it was nice to work with someone who hates Benjamin Netanyahu as much as we do”.

Although the Sanders campaign is facing serious criticism for the choice, Sanders supporters such as IfNotNow, Linda Sarsour, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are praising the bold choice. The campaign has also defended itself saying that the choice to include Hamas in their election efforts stems from Hamas’ position as being anti-occupation and their commitment to make sure every citizen of Gaza has a job in tunnel construction. The Sanders campaign comms director said that “Hamas was hired for their experience creating viral videos like the 2014 song titled Kum, Aseh Piguim, whatever that means”.

Palestine Today reports that Hamas official Mohamed Awad announced a series of measures taken to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in the Gaza Strip.

Awad said during a joint press conference with the Ministry of Health on Saturday evening, "It was decided to close the Gaza Strip crossings in both directions until further notice except for emergency cases."

Just the day before, IfNotNow complained that Israel, by enforcing a partial closure on Gaza, was going to make things worse for Gazans trapped inside. Somehow I don't think they will say a word against Hamas for their far more draconian closure of the entire Strip.

Because they are allies of the terror group.

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03/13 Links Pt2: Jonathan S. Tobin: Pandemic panic a breeding ground for Jew-hatred; Melanie Phillips: Will a microbe seal the fate of Iran's virulent regime?; Caroline B. Glick: What happened to the Israeli Left?

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Pandemic panic a breeding ground for Jew-hatred

What happened during the period when the bubonic plague through Europe from 1347 to 1351 has been burned into the historical memory of the Jewish people. The "Black Death" was one of the greatest demographic catastrophes to afflict the human race in recorded history. Historians estimate that up to 50% of Europe's population died in the pandemic with death rates as high as 75% in Italy, Spain, and France, where the disease was present for four years.

The tragedy for Jews was not just the risk of a deadly contagion. In the midst of unimaginable suffering, many European Christians wanted a scapegoat. The Jewish minority – often set apart in ghettos, and subject to demonization from both church and state – was an easy choice, and massacres and pogroms targeting Jews across Europe followed.

Though the world changed a great deal in the following centuries, the impulse to find someone to blame for diseases or other calamities is still embedded in the human psyche. It's hardly surprising to learn that there has been a surge of anti-Semitic activity in which anti-Semites have sought to tie Jews to the creation and/or spread of the coronavirus.

As JNS reported on Monday, a group of George Washington University students attended the AIPAC policy conference and, due to fears of an affected person being at the event in Washington, DC, were briefly quarantined. Some of them found themselves being targeted on social media by other students who spread the lie that people would get the disease because of the actions of "white supremacists" and "Zionists." Another student, who wears a kipah, reported that he was surrounded and taunted by a group who called him "yahood" (Arabic for "Jew") and asserted that Jews had "started" and "produced" the virus.

The presence of an infected person at AIPAC also drew an unhealthy interest from many Israel-haters with none other than Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) reportedly retweeting (and then subsequently deleting) an account of what happened – either out of a sense of schadenfreude or to please fans of the hate she's spread about Israel and its Jewish supporters.

The disturbing reactions to the AIPAC story weren't isolated incidents. The Anti-Defamation League reported in early February that neo-Nazis and white supremacists were using the Internet to spread conspiracy theories about Jews being behind the disease. Since then, the contagiousness of anti-Semitic bile has kept pace in parallel with the spread of the virus and likely will continue to build, as frustration over the increasing shutdown of communal life gives idle minds even more time to waste staring at the screens of computers and smartphones.

There are some obvious conclusions that can be drawn from this depressing example of humanity's weaknesses.

Melanie Phillips: Will a microbe seal the fate of Iran's virulent regime?

This week, the International Atomic Energy Authority has reported that Iran is accelerating its production of enriched uranium and is blocking its nuclear inspectors from inspecting Iranian activities. Some analysts suggest that Iran has dramatically shrunk its theoretical "breakout" time to acquire a bomb's worth of weapons-grade uranium to less than four months.

The regime's failure to protect Iranians against the virus has provided a fresh outbreak of public protests. More ominously for the regime, the people are openly mocking it. Since mockery is a sign of condign disapproval in Iran, the regime will be well aware that its already fragile hold on power over the public is slipping further.

This all adds to the increasing pressure the regime has been under through the resumption of sanctions, not to mention the grievous blow it suffered from the US drone killing of its principal military strategist, Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

In addition to all of the above, having empowered the Shia from Beirut to Baghdad, the regime is now finding that these people are also turning against it. They are blaming its corruption, ineptitude and foreign adventurism for causing their many woes. In Iraq, the Shia are literally praying for the coronavirus to kill the mullahs.

This week, two Americans and one British soldier were killed after the Taji military camp hosting US and UK troops in Iraq was hit by a rocket attack. No one has claimed responsibility, but the most plausible suspect is Iran.

If so, this suggests that the regime is panicking. For when fanatics feel cornered, they are likely to lash out on the basis that if they're going down, they'll take down with them the enemies they believe are their Divine mission to destroy. Perhaps that's also why it's not fanciful to suggest that the coronavirus is "a blessing" they wish to magnify.

This microbe might just achieve what humankind has failed to do and seal the fate of the regime itself. With the pandemic predicted to reach its peak around Passover, the coronavirus may thus lay claim to becoming the 11th plague.

Caroline B. Glick: What happened to the Israeli Left?

This week, with the liberal mass media providing wall-to-wall support for Blue and White's efforts to form a post-Zionist government dependent on the anti-Zionist Joint Arab List, it appears that over the past 19 years, Shelah's post-Zionism has moved from the margins to the mainstream. The media's energetic attempts to defend Blue and White's efforts show that post-Zionism is the predominant position of the Israeli left.

How did this happen?

Dozens of leading lights of Israeli society signed the Kinneret Charter in July 2001. The next month, the ideals they embraced were bludgeoned by the international community. In late August 2001, the UN convened its anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa. At Durban, UN member states and the most prominent non-governmental organizations in the world came together to libel and criminalize the Jewish state and people with unprecedented brutality.

Just ten years before, in 1991, the US used its post-Cold War clout at the UN to repeal UN General Assembly resolution 3379 from 1975. Resolution 3379 defined Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement as "a form of racism." At that time, it was still taken for granted in the Western world that it is anti-Semitic to deny the Jewish people's right to self-determination in their homeland.

Two conferences were convened at Durban – a conference of UN member nations and a conference of non-governmental organizations. In both, Resolution 3379 was not merely brought back from the dead. It was transformed into the cri de coeur of the UN and the international NGO community. The NGO conference produced a shocking resolution that called for Israel's destruction as a Jewish state and accused Israel of being a Nazi, Apartheid regime that was committing genocide and other war crimes. UN member states and NGOs were directed to enact a total boycott of Israel.

The international boycott campaign against Israel was initiated shortly thereafter.

One of the groups most responsible for the diplomatic pogrom at Durban was an Israeli Arab legal advocacy organization called Adalah. The heads of Adalah played leading roles in drafting the resolution. Adalah, which is funded by the EU and anti-Israel foundations in the US set about organizing the Israeli Arab community around the NGO resolution. Arab MKs all parrot the language of hatred and rejection of Israel and Jewish peoplehood that was so violently expressed in the Durban resolution.

Together with other subversive, anti-Zionist NGOs, Adalah works through the post-nationalist Supreme Court to block elected officials in the government and Knesset from enforcing the laws of the state towards Arab Israelis. In accordance with the Durban NGO resolution, they demand that Israeli Arabs be accorded "communal rights," and so effectively undermine Israel's ability to operate as a democracy governed by the rule of law. Internationally, Adalah is actively involved in boycott efforts against Israel whose goal is to criminalize Zionism, Israel's supporters abroad and Israel's very existence. The anti-Israel portion of the Black Lives Matter charter was reportedly written by Adalah.

Among Israeli Jews, views like Adalah's have long been dominant in many universities. Already at the outset of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, professors from Israel's premier universities signed petitions calling for IDF soldiers to refuse to serve in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and calling for the economic boycott of Israel.

The @NYTimes, painting Israeli Jews as racists, asks the wrong question

From the New York Times:

Israelis eager to end Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s career won a slim majority in last week’s election.

But one thing has kept them from uniting to send him packing: A sizable chunk of the anti-Netanyahu majority consists of Arab lawmakers, and the Jewish ones cannot agree on whether to consider them partners or the enemy.

Mr. Netanyahu says the Arab bloc includes lawmakers who support terrorism and oppose Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state.

His opponents, led by the former army chief Benny Gantz, who held coalition talks with Arab party leaders on Monday, say a vote is a vote, and that Mr. Netanyahu is happy to rely on those same lawmakers when it suits him.

But even some of Mr. Gantz’s supporters balk at teaming up with Arab politicians, saying that a state established to protect the Jewish people, and still in conflict with the Palestinians, cannot entrust weighty policy decisions to people whose sympathies may be with the other side.

The roiling debate, which has set back the effort to depose Mr. Netanyahu and could force Israel to hold a record fourth election, turns on a question at the heart of the country’s existence as a democratic and Jewish state:

Are the votes of Arab citizens worth as much as those of Jews?

No, that is not the question. And it is insulting to say that is the question.

The question is whether a political party that is against the founding tenets of Israel, that is against the existence of a Jewish state, should be considered a partner in a governing coalition of a state whose reason for existence fundamentally oppose.

The major parties in Israel have had Arab members. No one has a problem with that.

The "Joint List" includes the Israeli Communist party Hadash which has one current Jewish member of Parliament. That doesn't make its positions as part of the Joint List any more palatable to most Israelis.

Here's the thought experiment that proves that the NYT thesis that assumes Israeli racism is wrong: Imagine a moderate Arab party that accepts the concept of a Jewish state and that seeks to join a coalition to push an agenda of helping fight for equality for all Arabs in Israel. Not only would Labor eagerly work with it, not only would Kachol Lavan work with it, but even Likud would negotiate with it to be part of a coalition. The fact that they are Arabs is not the issue - as long as they accept that Israel is the Jewish state, no one would have a problem with that.

Yes, Israeli politicians have an unfortunate tendency to lump all Arabs as voting for the "Arab party." But Israel is some 20% Arab and the Joint List gets about 13% of the vote, which means that (assuming that Arabs vote in roughly the same proportion as Jews) plenty of Arabs are voting for Zionist parties.

I would welcome a moderate Arab party being active in Israeli politics. I think most Israelis would. If they were racist, they wouldn't.

(h/t David B)

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03/13 Links Pt1: Israel Now Looks Like a Coronavirus Containment Visionary; Palestinians Choose "the Cause"over Statehood

From Ian:

Israel Now Looks Like a Coronavirus Containment Visionary

The walls went up, and Israel is now a fortress. In a dramatic decision the government made this week, all those entering the country from abroad – regardless of where they have been – must be quarantined for two weeks to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Many other Western countries have begun taking similar measures, including the US, which barred entry from Europe on Wednesday night.

But when Israel first started pulling up the drawbridges, it was taking the most extreme measures in the West to contain COVID-19. After the government announced it was stopping flights from China, there was talk about adverse diplomatic effects.

China is very sensitive to its image in the world, and as a result, Israel made efforts to show that its problem was with the virus, not all of China. Those efforts included a video, produced by the Foreign Ministry, of Israelis saying that they stand with the Chinese in this difficult time; it was such a success that major Chinese newspapers and official TV channels reported on it. Israeli aid organizations also tried to send supplies to Wuhan, where COVID-19 first broke out.

The challenge is to try to maintain economic ties as normally as possible, even when people are not moving between the countries because of steps necessary to maintain the public’s health, sources in the Foreign Ministry said. (h/t Zvi)

127 Israelis infected with coronavirus, 2,479 health workers in quarantine

The Israeli Health Ministry confirmed that 2,479 healthcare workers had entered quarantine as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 127 people on Friday.

Some 1,174 hospital workers are in quarantine, as well as 171 MDA employees, 24 IDF healthcare workers, 93 psychiatrists, 128 geriatric care workers, 106 east Jerusalem healthcare workers, 20 administrative workers and 763 community staff.

Furthermore, the ministry reported that 949 doctors, 635 nurses, 127 assistants, 81 lab technicians, 64 logistic workers, 40 administrators, 83 pharmacists, 14 dietitians, 31 social workers, 108 physiotherapists, 171 paramedics and 176 others have entered quarantine.

Two of the coronavirus patients are in serious condition, five are in moderate condition and 119 are in fair condition. The others have recovered and been released.

The Health Ministry shared the epidemiology of many of the sick patients Friday morning, including four new cases - siblings between the ages of six and 18 - who had been in "close contact with a known coronavirus patient." These four, numbered patients 119-122, have gone to their respective schools and preschools before being put into isolation, those being the "Orot" school in the town of Or Yehuda, and the "Tzivoni" and "Dekel" kinder-garden, as well as the "Ulpana Tzfira".

Corona Is Slowing Down, Humanity Will Survive, Says Biophysicist Michael Levitt

Nobel laureate Michael Levitt, an American-British-Israeli biophysicist who teaches structural biology at Stanford University and spends much of his time in Tel Aviv, unexpectedly became a household name in China, offering the public reassurance during the peak of the country’s coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak. Levitt did not discover a treatment or a cure, just did what he does best: crunched the numbers. The statistics led him to the conclusion that, contrary to the grim forecasts being branded about, the spread of the virus will come to a halt.

The calming messages Levitt sent to his friends in China were translated into Chinese and passed from person to person, making him a popular subject for interviews in the Asian nation. His forecasts turned out to be correct: the number of new cases reported each day started to fall as of February 7. A week later, the mortality rate started falling as well.

He might not be an expert in epidemiology, but Levitt understands calculations and statistics, he told Calcalist in a phone interview earlier this week.

The interview was initially scheduled to be held at the fashionable Sarona complex in Tel Aviv, where Levitt currently resides. But after he caught a cold — “not corona,” he jokingly remarked — the interview was rescheduled to be held over the phone. Even though he believes the pandemic will run its course, Levitt emphasizes his support of all the safety measures currently being taken and the need to adhere to them.

Levitt received his Nobel prize for chemistry in 2013 for “the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.” He did not in any way intend to be a prophet foretelling the end of a plague; it happened by accident. His wife Shoshan Brosh is a researcher of Chinese art and a curator for local photographers, meaning the couple splits their time between the US, Israel, and China.

When the pandemic broke out, Brosh wrote to friends in China to support them. “When they answered us, describing how complicated their situation was, I decided to take a deeper look at the numbers in the hope of reaching some conclusion,” Levitt explained. “The rate of infection of the virus in the Hubei province increased by 30 percent each day — that is a scary statistic. I am not an influenza expert but I can analyze numbers and that is exponential growth.” At this rate, the entire world should have been infected within 90 days, he said.

Arutz-7 reports:

Terrorists opened fire at an Israeli vehicle near Hadoar junction in the Talmonim bloc of the Binyamin region on Thursday night.

No one was injured.

The driver, a resident of the western Binyamin region, continued driving toward the community of Na'ale, where he reported the incident to the IDF and police.

At least 9 bullets were fired at the vehicle, causing it damage.

Security forces are searching the area in an attempt to locate the terrorists.

This is about story number 30 on the Arutz-7 website. It isn't reported at all even in most Israeli media.

Other sources say there were 12 bullet holes in the car.

These aren't a few rocks. These are bullets.

And it happens more often than you think - because the media ignores the constant terror attacks that, thankfully, do not cause serious injuries or deaths.

For example, a week or so ago, a bus was shot near Alfei Menashe. Arabic sites trumpet these events while Israeli and world Jewish news websites aren't even aware of them!

For people who control the media, we are doing a pretty bad job.

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ACLU lies about Arizona legislation saying it "criminalizes anti-Israel speech"

From the ACLU-Arizona:

OPPOSE ATTEMPTS TO CRIMINALIZE PROTECTED SPEECH!

Could publicly criticizing the state of Israel be used as evidence that you’ve committed a hate crime? If SB 1143 becomes law, it might. Mirror bills, SB 1143 and HB 2683 amend Arizona law to incorporate a definition of anti-Semitism that is so broad and vague that statements that are solely critical of Israel could be used as evidence of a hate crime, including many statements protected by the First Amendment.

The legislation’s broad definition of anti-Semitism risks incorrectly equating constitutionally protected criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. People who protest Israel could find themselves facing a bias crime prosecution because of their political speech. The First Amendment squarely protects political speech, including criticism of any government.

What does the legislation cover? It doesn't criminalize any speech. It is only meant to determine when someone committing a violent crime might be guilty of a hate crime.

The department is responsible for the effective operation of the central state repository in order to collect, store and disseminate complete and accurate Arizona criminal history records and related criminal justice information. The department shall:...
...Collect information concerning criminal offenses that manifest evidence of prejudice based on ANTI‑SEMITISM, race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender or disability.
...The chief officers of criminal justice agencies of this state or its political subdivisions also shall provide to the department information concerning crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on ANTI‑SEMITISM, race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender or disability.

And later on it says:

"ANTI‑SEMITISM" INCLUDES THE DEFINITION OF ANTI‑SEMITISM THAT WAS ADOPTED BY THE INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE ALLIANCE ON MAY 26, 2016 AND THAT HAS BEEN ADOPTED BY THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE, INCLUDING THE CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLES OF ANTI‑SEMITISM IDENTIFIED IN THE ADOPTED DEFINITION. ANTI‑SEMITISM DOES NOT INCLUDE CRITICISM OF ISRAEL SIMILAR TO THAT LEVELED AGAINST ANY OTHER COUNTRY.

So what is the ACLU (and CAIR and IfNotNow....) defending?

If someone attacks a black person and calls him the "n" word, it becomes a hate crime. No one has a problem with that.

If someone attacks a gay person and calls him a faggot, it becomes a hate crime. No one has a problem with that.

If someone attacks a Jewish family at a mall and screams that they are all "fucking Zionist baby killers" - they don't want that to be called a hate crime.

Similarly, if someone stabs a black person and says "This is for all white people!" the ACLU has no problem calling that a hate crime.

But if someone stabs a Jew and says "This is for all Palestinians!" then the ACLU wants to defend the stabber.

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There was a nice detail in a much longer antisemitic article in Jordan's Al Ghad about how Jews constantly attack Muslims.

The article says:

Many of those who ignite these conflicts are Jewish social media people and their weapon is rumor and lies, and unfortunately, many Muslims - individuals, groups and countries - accept this pernicious approach!
...
The ugliest of all is what Al-Jazeera in particular did to help Jews penetrate the minds of Muslims by opening the way for them to promote their falsehood through its pulpit, and the crime of Al-Jazeera grows when it deliberately brings a weak opponent before the trained Jewish who is professional in promoting falsehood, which is the primary media game in directing and misleading the masses.

You see? The reason Jews beat Muslims in Al Jazeera is because Al Jazeera is putting up smart Jews against dumb Arabs!

If you have the time, you can see one of these beatdowns, with Mordechai Kedar speaking after Trump first said he intended to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.

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03/12 Links Pt2: Obama is back; Bernie Sanders and the End of Sharia-Bolshevism; IfNotNow Endorses Bernie Sanders for President

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Obama is back

The centerpiece of Obama's foreign policy was an attempt to bring about a rapprochement with Iran that would, in the words of the former president, give the Islamist regime a "chance to get right with the world."

Unfortunately, Iran was never interested in that opportunity and exploited Obama's eagerness for a nuclear deal that would be his signature foreign-policy accomplishment. The result was a weak pact and an emboldened Iranian regime.

Trump's decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal has been denounced by Democrats, as well as Obama's "media echo chamber." But his "maximum pressure" campaign against Tehran has put the regime on its heels and given other states in the region hope that its quest for regional hegemony can be stopped.

The other major difference concerns the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Biden has sounded more supportive of Israel than his boss or most of his 2020 Democratic competitors. But the former vice president also remains an enthusiastic supporter of Obama's efforts to pressure the Jewish state into concessions that the majority of its people have rejected as irresponsible and a danger to their security.

Biden opposes Trump's efforts to end Obama's policy of more "daylight" between the United States and Israel, such as the move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory and the effort to force the Palestinian Authority to stop funding terrorism.

Instead, a Biden administration – staffed by Obama alumni – may take the region back to the old failed US policies that believed Israel had to be saved from itself, and which also rejected the strong consensus among the Jewish state's voters that there is no viable Palestinian peace partner.

Turning back the clock to the way the world looked four years ago may sound good to Trump's critics, but in the Middle East, it will be also be good news for a dangerous regime in Iran and Palestinian rejectionists who long for the days when America was joining with the mob trying to pressure Israel rather than standing up to it. Unless and until Biden is ready to say where he differs from the man he served so faithfully, he will be vulnerable to criticism that his election will be a rerun of Obama's Middle East policies that have already been tried and failed.

.@KenRoth As the #1 campaigner for the U.N.'s new blacklist of 96 Israeli companies, are you willing to declare that your staff & followers should boycott a vaccine tied to any Israeli company that may be on or added to the blacklist?

Didn't think so.https://t.co/PiKBgQ1N4T
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) March 12, 2020

Bernie Sanders and the End of Sharia-Bolshevism

The men running Senator Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic Party nomination may have been oblivious to how ordinary Americans feel about his close relationship to Sharia-supporting Muslims, but the rest of the country, including liberal Muslims and Indian Americans, found his close association with more radical Muslims deeply disturbing.

Sanders' advisors make for a strange combination. His Campaign Co-Chair is Rep. 'Ro' (Rohit) Khanna who, despite being a Hindu of Indian ancestry joined the 'Pakistan Caucus' in the U.S. Congress; a move hailed by Pakistan's Ambassador, but condemned by 230 Indian American organizations.

Sanders' campaign manager Faiz Shakir, also of Pakistani Muslim ancestry, was believed to be instrumental in getting the Senator to speak at a convention of the controversial group Islamic Society of North America.

If the objective was to add an extra (Muslim) 2-3% of the vote to an already enthusiastic base of young Americans, blue-collar white workers and the Latino vote bank, it is not difficult to understand why on the eve of Super Tuesday One, Sanders was pictured hugging controversial Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

As if this wasn't enough, liberal and reform-minded American Muslims tell me, even the socialists and social democrats among them have said goodbye to America's "democratic socialist."

Some of us are old enough to have seen the failings of the mainstream left in Europe, Iran, India, Turkey, the Arab World and Africa. The Islamists latched on to the 'anti-Americanism' of the Marxists and then decimated the left like a parasite.

Today, they would rather live with a President Biden or even a re-elected Trump than see a potential Islamist in the White House.

Rasha Al Aqeedi, Managing Editor of Raise Your Voice magazine, put the feelings of liberal and secular U.S. Muslims in a tweet: "Seriously who is advising Sanders? It's not a marginal issue when we have been for months hearing about "Muslims support Sanders." Either drop that line if you don't want to hear the counter perspective or change it to "opportunist sectarians support Sanders."

California State University Professor Claims Israel Will Place Arab Coronavirus Patients in ‘Mass Prisons’

A professor at California State University, Stanislaus, with a long history of anti-Israel and antisemitic statements claimed on Sunday that the Jewish state was planning to discriminate against Arab coronavirus victims and put them in “mass prisons,” and then blamed subsequent complaints on the work of “Zionist hoodlums.”

Asad Abukhalil, a professor of political science, tweeted on March 8, “Israel will — I am sure — have different medical procedures for Jews and non-Jews. Non-Jews will be put in mass prisons.”

The response was immediate, with many pointing out that there is equality of treatment and employment in Israeli hospitals, with many Arab doctors and nurses.

“I’m so surprised you would say that,” said one response. “My Israeli mom was hospitalized for 2 months in Israel. Her supervising Dr. & many of her Drs & nurses were Israeli Arabs working side by side w Israeli Jews. They were wonderful.”

“Are you suggesting that those Arab doctors will discriminate???” it asked.

Another respondent said, “Ive personally been in Israeli hospitals seeing Jewish & Arab Israeli staff treating Jewish & Arab citizens w/ same protocols in same rooms.”

On Tuesday, Abukhalil said he had been merely joking, and then went on a tirade about “Zionist hoodlums” reporting his tweet.

“If mocking Israeli racism is anti-Semitism, how do you deal with the true racism of the Israeli state, which was founded on series of discriminatory law [sic] and which has only been adding more Racist discmriminatory [sic] laws ever since it was founded atop the Palestinian nation,” he tweeted.

Syria has far more female Palestinian prisoners than Israel. Oh, and they torture them to death.

I have seen scores of articles, tweets, and protests against how Israel holds large numbers of Palestinian women prisoners and how they are supposedly mistreated. It is a huge propaganda effort that has been happening for years; here are a few posters:

How many Palestinian women are in Israeli prisons now?

As of September - only 40. And that number has been steadily decreasing throughout the past decade - there were 61 in 2017 and 73 in 2008. NGOs, the UN and anti-Israel activists spend thousands of hours publicizing this and claiming Israel tortures and abuses these women.

They never admit that the women themselves are usually terrorists. There have been plenty of women who have been involved with terror attacks against Jews. It seems sexist to assume that women are innocent - especially since Palestinians celebrate their female terrorists.

But the sheer amount of attention that these activists give women in Israeli prisons makes this story, just out today, most interesting:

The Syrian regime has been holding 110 Palestinian women in secret detention throughout its vast prison network, with a large number of them tortured to death, a human rights organisation has found.

The London-based organisation Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS) revealed that in addition to at least 486 Palestinian women who have been pronounced dead since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, 110 others have been secretly detained by the regime of Bashar Al-Assad and at least 34 have been tortured to death within its prisons.

The group has stated that it believes the number of Palestinian women who have been killed overall throughout the war are much higher than is officially acknowledged, as the regime has reportedly kept their names secret and left their cases undocumented, as well as the fact that many families of the victims refuse to reveal their relatives’ names out of fear of retaliation by the regime.

The organisation cited the accounts of former Palestinian female detainees of the regime who said that they were regularly subjected to intense psychological and physical torture during their detention, including heavy beatings with irons sticks, electric shocks and rampant sexual abuse.

If these NGOs cared about the welfare of Palestinian women prisoners so much, why has everyone been silent about those imprisoned, tortured and killed in Syria for the past nine years?

Even the worst reports from the biggest anti-Israel liars do not approach the reality of what is happening in Syria. Yet there is silence on Syria and lots of noise about Israel.

The double standard needs to be called out for what it is - antisemitism.

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Pandemic Prompts Divine Thoughts Of Postponing Passover Till After Sukkot (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Jerusalem, March 12 - Ministering angels disclosed today that the Almighty has begun consultation with His advisory board regarding the possibility of delaying this year's observance of the Feast of Unleavened Bread for more than six months until the danger of a burgeoning plague has passed.

Archangel Gabriel told reporters Thursday that the LORD has voiced concern for several weeks already that the observance of a pilgrimage festival under current circumstances will prove catastrophic, as it is expected to bring together hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps even millions, in a single location for days at a time. Such prolonged proximity to an unknown number of plague carriers, whether they display or do not display symptoms of the affliction, carries frightening epidemiological implications.

"God is close to a decision as to whether Passover will happen on schedule this year," the angel stated. "We should have an announcement by the end of the workweek tomorrow. The most likely scenarios under discussion at the moment include canceling Passover entirely for this year, but perhaps more likely, postponing it until after the onset of the autumn holidays, perhaps as an extension of Sukkot when so many people come to Jerusalem anyway. We all want to know what to expect so we can make adequate preparations and take the necessary precautions, but the economic, social, spiritual, and other effects of moving the festival deserve due consideration and discussion. I urge the public to maintain its admirable discipline and cooperation to date with the hygienic and other measures to help contain the disease, and ask a little more patience so that this important issue can undergo proper evaluation."

Hospitality industry figures voiced consternation. "We need to know already," declared a Judah Hotel owner. "In a typical year I'm full to capacity with pilgrims who've come to bring the paschal and festival offerings, and that means ordering food, arranging adequate laundering of guest linens, and providing extra services such as guides if that's what they want. I understand attendance might be sparser this year, but I'm still going to be out a pretty perutah if I order things that no one is here to eat."

Spiritual community figures also expressed concern. "I think it might be better to cancel Passover outright rather than delay it till after the Feast of Booths," argued a tribal elder of Ephraim named Jeroboam. "It's entirely the wrong season to be celebrating Passover, the spring festival, in the fall. I say just call off pilgrimage festivals to Jerusalem entirely, while we're at it. No need to take these epidemiological risks all the time. It courts disaster even in less troubling conditions."

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