Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 28, 2017

12/28 Links Pt2: How the International Red Cross failed the Jews; The Fantasy of an International Jerusalem; Confessions of a Digital Nazi Hunter

From Ian:

How the International Red Cross failed the Jews

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has a startling and consistent history of anti-Semitism, despite its founding and reputation as an “independent, neutral organization.” Although mandated to eschew taking sides in international and internal armed conflicts and to protect victims of those conflicts — including wounded soldiers, prisoners of war, refugees and civilians — ICRC anti-Semitism emerged prior to World War II, broadened to encompass anti-Israelism after creation of the Jewish state and has continued ever since.

In the 1940s, it failed to intercede on behalf of Jewish Holocaust victims and was complicit with the Vatican’s protection of Nazi war criminals and collaborators.

Its modern-day expression of anti-Jewish sentiment was manifested in an initial refusal to accept the symbol of Israel’s own emergency aid organization, the Magen David Adom, while welcoming the Red Crescent of Muslim countries.

It provided solicitous aid to Arab-Palestinian terrorists whose homes were destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces in reprisal for and to prevent deadly attacks against Israel.

The ICRC also supported and glorified terrorism in a tree-planting ceremony honoring imprisoned Islamic terrorists who were guilty of murdering Jews.

It has unfairly singled out Israel as an “illegal occupier” and has falsely labeled Israel guilty of an apocryphal “Jenin massacre.” In addition to these actions, the ICRC has failed to condemn Hamas’ use of human shields and has not recognized Israel’s right to self-defense. Instead,

it has demonstrated a complete lack of sensitivity for the plight of Israeli civilians as perennial victims of rocket attacks and suicide bombings.

Remarkably, the ICRC — arbiters of the humanitarian standards of war by dint of their stewardship of the Geneva Conventions — recently instituted new policies prohibiting return fire upon civilian-inhabited areas. In effect, it empowered terrorists to fight worry-free amongst the general population.

Given this recent history, the organization’s reputation as a purveyor of “neutral humanitarianism” rings hollow.

Josh Meyer Gets an Echo Chamber Beat-Down

A week after Josh Meyer’s Politico expose,“The Secret Backstory Of How Obama Let Hezbollah Off the Hook,” former Obama officials are still berating Meyer for his 13,000-word article detailing how the Obama administration killed a nearly decade-long DEA effort to stem a global Hezbollah cocaine-smuggling-and-organized-crime ring to help secure its nuclear deal with Iran. “This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” former Defense Department analyst David Asher explained in the article. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”

Asher helped establish and oversee the project, codenamed Cassandra, that looked into Hezbollah’s wide-range of illicit activities across the globe, including weapons procurement, drug trafficking, and money laundering. Senior Obama officials, according to Asher, ignored the legal and financial instruments that he and others had provided to target a terrorist organization with American blood on its hands and was still plotting against the United States.

In response, a Twitter mob of mid-level bureaucrats and former intelligence officers orchestrated in the usual fashion attacked Asher in tandem with the media echo chamber used to sell the Iran Deal, with former political operatives from the Obama White House supplying the usual talking points to their hatchet-men. Meyer’s “on the record sources have undisclosed anti-Iran deal bias,” tweeted former Obama speechwriter Tommy Vietor, who has remade himself as a podcast host. Meyer’s “entire piece,” tweeted Obama lieutenant and former CIA officer Ned Price, “is based on pure speculation by these ‘1 or 2 sources’ w undisclosed anti-Iran deal bias.”

The catchphrase, “undisclosed anti-Iran deal bias,” is an extended replay version of the catchy slogans Team Obama used to market the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Opponents and critics of the nuclear deal were “warmongers” beholden to “donors” with “agendas” whose concerns were shaped by their loyalties not to America but rather to the Jewish state. Now, the echo chamber insisted, Meyer’s sources aren’t to be trusted because they were against the Iran deal, or have associated with think tanks that opposed the Iran Deal—which means that they are secret neocon slaves of Israel, of course.

Yair_Rosenberg: Confessions of a Digital Nazi Hunter

Like many Jewish journalists who reported on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, I spent the 2016 election being harassed by a motley crew of internet racists who coalesced around the future president. They sent me threats, photoshopped me into gas chambers and hurled an uncreative array of anti-Semitic slurs my way. A study by the Anti-Defamation League found that I’d received the second-most abuse of any Jewish journalist on Twitter during the campaign cycle. My parents didn’t raise me to be No. 2; fortunately, there’s always 2020.

As a result, I’ve become something of an unintentional expert on alt-right trolls and their tactics. For the most part, these characters are largely laughable — sad, angry men hiding behind images of cartoon frogs, deathly afraid that their employers will uncover their online antics. But there are also more insidious individuals, whose digital skulduggery can be more consequential than the occasional bigoted bromide.

And so last November, in the wake Trump’s victory, I decided to turn the tables on them. My target? Impersonator trolls.

You probably haven’t heard of these trolls, but that is precisely why they are so pernicious. These bigots are not content to harass Jews and other minorities on Twitter; they seek to assume their identities and then defame them.

The con goes like this: The impersonator lifts an online photo of a Jew, Muslim, African-American or other minority — typically one with clear identifying markers, like a yarmulke-clad Hasid or a woman in hijab. Using that picture as a Twitter avatar, the bigot then adds ethnic and progressive descriptors to the bio: “Jewish,” “Zionist,” “Muslim,” “enemy of the alt-right.”

False identity forged, the trolls then insert themselves into conversations with high-profile Twitter users — conversations that are often seen by tens of thousands of followers — and proceed to say horrifically racist things.

In this manner, unsuspecting readers glancing through their feed are given the impression that someone who looks like, say, a religious Jew or Muslim is outlandishly bigoted. Thus, an entire community is defamed.

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

“Anyone who takes the approach that this is a black and white situation with a good side and a bad side clearly does not understand the conflict – nor could they have a peaceable solution in mind.” – Laura Ben-David

I took this quotation from an open letter to the singer Lorde (of whom I admit I have never heard), who recently announced that she would not perform in Israel after pressure from pro-Palestinian fans in her native New Zealand.

The letter was fine and I hope the young (21) performer reads it and pays attention. But the statement quoted above is wrong.

The conflict is “a black and white situation with a good side and a bad side.” As far as a solution, I admit that I don’t have a peaceable one in mind, but that’s because the people who have adopted the cause of the Palestinians are not going to give us one. They are preparing for war, and although we are doing our best to delay it, it’s just a matter of time.

Here is the conflict in a nutshell: Muslims cannot abide Jewish sovereignty in places that they have decided ought to be dar al islam, and that includes my country, Israel. That’s wrong, it’s racist, and it’s unnecessary.

The Palestinian Arabs, the point of the spear of the anti-Israel movement, have created a whole mythology to justify their opposition to our existence, but that’s all it is: a mythology. Their cause inflames Muslims everywhere in their genocidal racism, which they would quickly and happily implement if they weren’t afraid of us.

Laura Ben-David also said “the disputes and challenges in Israel are very real and very complex. If they were easy to solve, they would have been.” This, too, is misleading. There is one overriding reason that the conflict continues, and it isn’t complexity. It’s because various powerful outsiders have found it in their interest (real and imagined) to take the side of the racist Arab nations, and especially the Palestinian Arabs.

So for example, the disintegrating British Empire thought the Arabs would be far more useful than the Jews in protecting their routes to India and supplying them with oil. The KGB waged (and possibly its successor continues to wage) vicious psychological warfare against the Jewish state as part of the great-power conflict of the cold war. The American State Department’s Arabists are more comfortable with their pure desert nomads than sneaky, tacky Jews. The Europeans cancel their Holocaust guilt by assuring themselves that we are, after all, as bad as the Nazis. And today, the burgeoning Iranian empire sees Israel as standing on its path to Middle-Eastern or even world domination (not to mention the dar al islam issue).

Western leftists, like the ones that bothered Lorde, are so obsessed with escaping their inescapable whiteness that the old KGB propaganda lights them right up. For those that are themselves Jewish, the pleasure in attacking the only Jewish state is at least doubled. Not only do they escape their whiteness, but they jettison their Jewishness at the same time! Two for one.

It’s always someone, isn’t it? There’s no other place in the world besides our tiny state that so many seem to care about so much. If only they didn’t.

Regarding solutions, we’ve tried agreeing to several of them, many highly disadvantageous from a strategic standpoint, but somehow, the more we talk about peace – or worse, withdraw from some place we are ‘occupying’ – the more we get war (this in itself tells us something about the simple polarity of the conflict).

So that is the story. I apologize to Laura Ben-David, whose heart is clearly in the right place, but there can be too much nuance. Not everything is so complex, not every argument has two sides that are both compelling, and conflicts do not always evaporate when you make an effort to understand both sides. Some things provide clear moral choices – and this is one of them.

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"But....but...what about the occupation????" (Poster)

I received a very typical Twitter response to my earlier article about the high life expectancy of Israeli Arabs: "Does that legitimise occupation?"

I've noted in the past that many people, when looking at Israel, wear "occupation glasses." Nothing else matters. If the information they receive is bad, then it is the "occupation"'s fault, if it is good then it is being used to divert attention from the "occupation."

The Israel-haters think that they have a slam dunk when mentioning "occupation" - it is their shorthand for repression, injustice, and colonialism.

For some reason Israel doesn't do a good enough job when answering this. So here is a short response that works wonders:

If there was a Palestinian state, there would be no "occupation."

And the ONLY reason there is no Palestinian state is because the Palestinian leadership has rejected every offer for one.

Every time.

Pointing this irrefutable fact out does a number of things. It shows that Israel doesn't want to control another people, it shows that Israel wants peace, and it shows that Palestinians prefer "occupation" to statehood.

Moreover, it puts the Israel-hater on the defensive, forced to stutter that the peace offers weren't good enough or whatever. To which the response is....then the "occupation" cannot really be so bad, can it?

When forced to answer this simple observation, the Israel-haters show that they don't want a state either. They will say that a state without Jerusalem or without "return" of "refugees" - not to Palestine, but to Israel - is not worth it.

Showing that they don't really care about "occupation" but about destroying Israel.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Zionists said they would accept a state the size of a handkerchief. They accepted a UN partition plan that wrested Jerusalem from them. They desperately needed a state for the Jews to live in without fear of being murdered.

Palestinians, however, don't have any sense of urgency in their supposed quest for a state. They are willing to wait decades.

If that is true, then they are the ones who are prolonging 'occupation," not Israel.

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12/28 Links Pt1: Ben Shapiro: Time to defund the United Nations; Trump should crack down on UNRWA, finally end fiction of Palestinian ‘refugees’; UNRWA Steals Christmas

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: Time to defund the United Nations

Last week, Democrats and many in the mainstream media became highly perturbed by the Trump administration’s suggestion that the United States might tie continued foreign aid to support for its agenda abroad. Foreign dictators agreed. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who spent the last year arresting dissidents, announced, “Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey’s democratic free will with your dollars, our decision is clear.”

Herein lies the great irony of the United Nations: While it’s the Mos Eisley of international politics — a hive of scum and villainy — and it votes repeatedly to condemn the United States and Israel, the tyrannies that constitute the body continue to oppress their own peoples. Among those who voted last week to condemn the U.S. for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving its embassy to Jerusalem were North Korea, Iran, Yemen and Venezuela. Why exactly should the United States ever take advice from those nations seriously?

We shouldn’t. And we should stop sending cash to an organization that operates as a front for immoral agenda items.

The United Nations spends the vast majority of its time condemning Israel: According to UN Watch, the U.N. Human Rights Council issued 135 resolutions from June 2006 to June 2016, 68 of which were against Israel; the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization only passes resolutions against Israel; and the U.N. General Assembly issued 97 resolutions from 2012 through 2015, 83 of which targeted Israel.

Trump should crack down on UNRWA, finally end fiction of Palestinian ‘refugees’

While an official report was eventually sent to Congress, its contents were kept classified to deny the American public from knowing the truth. The Trump administration can take a giant step toward Middle East peace by declassifying that report, updating it and formally adopting a definition for Palestinian refugees that makes a clear distinction between refugees displaced by the 1948 war and their descendants.

The administration and Congress should work together to change the way America funds UNRWA, making clear to taxpayers how much money goes to refugee assistance and how much subsidizes a culture of welfare and terrorism.

Future funding of the agency should be tied to a clear mission of resettlement, integration and economic self-sufficiency. A timetable and work plan should be established for UNRWA’s integration into UNHCR. Conditions should be set in the annual foreign bill, giving Haley the leverage she needs to force changes in the agency’s next biennium budget.

Nations of the world showed their true colors last week. Far too many cared more about castigating Israel than their relationship with the United States.

UNRWA is a case study in the institutional bias that America helps fund at the United Nations. Shining a light on this agency and making it a centerpiece of a new reform agenda would be a victory for American taxpayers and a defeat for the international movement to castigate our closest ally in the Middle East.

UNRWA Steals Christmas

First female Druze judge appointed in Israel

The Druze community in Israel Facebook page reports that Malka Azzam Awida, a lawyer, has been appointed to be the first female Druze judge in Israel.

Surprisingly, this did not seem to make the news anywhere.

(h/t Dror)

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Dr. Essam Adwan, a columnist writing in Felesteen, says its way past time to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews.

The affirmation of Palestinian rejection of Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank requires violent resistance against the settlers, convincing them that there is no security, no peace and no rest for those who have remained in the West Bank. It remains for the various Palestinian forces to reach an understanding and even cooperation to impose violent resistance against Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Adwan says that this is something that is agreed upon by all Palestinian factions, not just Hamas.

All the Palestinian factions agreed on the National Reconciliation Document in 2006, in which all agreed to establish a Palestinian state in the territories occupied in 1967 and to use all methods of resistance against occupation in these territories. This is the minimum that has been agreed upon, without relinquishing the right to the rest of occupied Palestine. Therefore, these Palestinian factions have a national duty to carry out the armed resistance against the settlers in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority must defend and protect its back and convince the world of the legitimacy of this resistance, especially after the UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements in the West Bank.

The National Conciliation Document of 2006 was signed by Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP and DFLP. Its wording can be interpreted to mean that all those factions agree to kill Jewish settlers, by using the formulation "To affirm the right of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation, to preserve the option of resistance by various means, and to concentrate the resistance in the territories occupied in 1967, concomitantly with political action, negotiations and diplomacy.

Adwan is saying that all major Palestinian groups had already agreed to murder Jews, so why not get moving already?

Our heroic Palestinian people, and their courageous men, should not wait for permission from anyone to do what is a national duty and a religious duty .... The quickest way to prevent Jewish immigrants from thinking about migrating to Palestine or to settle in the West Bank is armed action, supported by all other resistance tactics. It is the responsibility of the national and Islamic forces to form an incubator for the West Bank Intifada by forming a leadership for it, providing material assistance to each injured person, granting lawyers to all the detainees and signing a document of honor to punish anyone who causes the arrest of a Palestinian because of his national revolutionary struggle.

It is important to stress yet again that this is not an outlying opinion. There is no controversy in Palestinian Arab media when an explicit call to murder Jewish civilians is published.

The everyday hate and incitement to murder does not make it to the news. So the world has no clue that Palestinians read this sort of thing every day with their morning coffee.

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Arabs in Israel have higher life expectancy than in any Arab or Muslim country

A report just released by the Taub Center in Israel on "The Health of the Arab Israeli Population" includes this interesting graph:

Given the amount of articles about Israeli "apartheid", it is notable that Israelis Arabs live longer on the average than Muslims or Arabs in their own countries.

To be sure, the report notes that the life expectancy of Israeli Arabs is some four years lower than that of Israeli Jews. It didn't give enough details to determine if this is because of their generally lower socio-economic status. It would be interesting to compare this statistic with those of Haredi Jews, who are generally on the same socio-economic levels in Israel.

Another related reason that could explain the gap is that Israeli Jews are much more likely to seek private specialists not covered by insurance than Israeli Arabs are, according to the report.

How about Palestinian Arabs? Where do they fall in the chart above?

According to this site, the Palestinian numbers would be 73.3 (2015) and 70.6 (2000), putting them in the middle of the pack. Given that they have been involved in three wars in Gaza and a years-long intifada in the territories, it doesn't appear that Israeli defensive actions have hurt their life expectancy at all. Their life expectancy has continuously increased since Oslo, although not as fast as those of Israeli Arabs.

(h/t UKMediaWatch)

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12/27 Links Pt2: Genocide Fail. Israeli Arabs have the highest Life Expectancy in the Arab World; Cary Nelson: The Middle East Studies Association Is Fundamentally Anti-Zionist

From Ian:

Genocide Fail. Israeli Arabs have the highest Life Expectancy in the Arab World

According to a recently released report from the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, Israeli Arabs have the highest life expectancy in the Arab world.

According to the report "The Health of the Arab Population in Israel", the life expectancy of an Arab in Israel is higher than even those living in the wealthy gulf states.

What was that you were saying about "genocide" again?

WATCH: Anti-Semites On New Jersey Town Council Go Silent When Jews Called An 'Infection'

On July 17, 2017, Mahwah officials ordered the South Monsey Eruv Fund to stop construction of an eruv through Mahwah, despite the group getting permission from Orange & Rockland Utilities, which owned the poles where the PVC pipe was attached. Mahwah argued that the eruv violated township regulations. The Monsey group was given until August 4 to remove the eruv.

A legal firm was hired to fight for the eruv’s existence; on August 14 the eruv was reported vandalized. In late October, Christopher S. Porrino, the state's attorney general, issued a press release in which he condemned the town’s "hatred," "bigotry," "small-minded" and "bias," likening Mahwah’s citizens and leaders to "1950s-era white flight suburbanites who sought to keep African-Americans from moving into their neighborhoods."

Mayor William Laforet responded with a statement in which he cited Council President Robert Hermansen for Mahwah's "loss of reputation,” adding, "It has been a lonely and painful struggle for me and my family these past several months, having to deal with a reckless and oblivious council president, Rob Hermansen. He personally led his council mates to this action by the state's highest law enforcement official, and is most accountable."

On December 1, the Township Council unanimously approved the allocation of $175,000 to fight the two lawsuits alleging that the town discriminated against Orthodox Jews.

On December 14, the public session of the Mahwah, New Jersey town council meeting was witness to a woman telling them, “I want to make it known here, that the town of Ramapo, I’m sure, is suing the Hasidic people, because they have completely sucked the blood out of that town, from ruining their schools, from claiming that their husbandless women … complete corruption, and possibly criminality. And I want to know why it’s taken so long to remove, to remove the infection from our town. Thank you.”

The council sat silently, without offering any rejoinder to the hatred.

Yet back on August 10, Michael Cohen of the Simon Wiesenthal Center spoke to the council, stating, “You are, in fact, doing nothing more than saying Jews are not welcome.”

No friend of Israel

Around two weeks ago, and mere days after U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Berlin was opened at the Jewish Museum. Spanning over 1,000 square feet, the "Welcome to Jerusalem" exhibit is huge and includes hundreds of displays and exhibits.

One would have expected this type of exhibit at such an important Jewish museum to emphasize Jerusalem's unique character as the holiest city in Judaism and also possibly focus a bit on the historical narrative of Zionism and the State of Israel. Such an exhibit could also have presented, in a balanced manner of course, the different religions that coexist in the city in spite of the ongoing conflict. But regrettably, the exhibit does nothing of the sort, but rather serves to strengthen the theory of Muslim-Arab-Palestinian ownership of the city, mainly through a biased presentation of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

A historical documentary about the conflict, one of the exhibit's highlights, portrays Jews as domineering invaders. It notes the massacres and terrorist acts committed by Jewish paramilitary organizations while completely ignoring those same acts when they were carried out by Arab organizations at the behest of Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini; completely ignores the Arab revolt of the 1930s and Husseini's collaboration with the Nazis; presents a fairly long segment from an interview with late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from the early years of his leadership, in which the then-PLO chief explains that the Palestinians have no choice but to take up arms; and repeats the theory according to which the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is what led to the disintegration of the peace process, as well as the proven lie that then-Opposition Leader Ariel Sharon's 2000 visit to the Temple Mount sparked the Second Intifada. In short, according to the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the Jews are bad while the Arabs are victims.

[[File:Openly antisemitic Protester in Berlin (17.7.2014).jpg|Openly antisemitic Protester in Berlin (17.7.2014)]]

It’s been said that quashing antisemitic speech isn’t wise, for in forbidding expressions of antisemitism, you only drive the hate underground. Better our enemies should identify themselves by their hate speech, so we know who they are. Better they feel free to say what they really think, so we can gauge the danger to ourselves and our families.

So we can leave before the gates slam shut.

But it’s far more complicated than that. You have only to look at Europe to know this. Europe knows it went much too far with the Holocaust. So now it must look contrite to itself and to the world. It must at least pay lip service to silencing expressions of antisemitism.

How do we know it’s only a show of contrition and not the real thing? We know this because of Europe’s treatment of Israel, the only Jewish State.

Europe’s active anti-Israelism, such as the recent UN vote rejecting U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, is only putting lipstick on a pig, antisemitism in drag. Like Justice Potter Stewart and porn, we know it when we see it: Jew-hate. And Europe’s financial and verbal backing for the enemies of the Jewish State, for terrorism, is just part of the ongoing effort toward the genocide of the Jews.

Now because they don’t speak of the Final Solution or shove us into gas chambers, they think we’re fooled and maybe they’ve even fooled themselves. They think that having created legislation against antisemitism in Germany, they’ve passed the morality test. They don’t speak of hating Jews, so they can claim it’s something other than Jew-hate, though it’s not.

In substituting “Israel” for “Jew” they think they have every right to their hate, that it’s not unreasonable. They think this covert form of antisemitism makes antisemitism okay, polite, Western. They pat themselves on the back, congratulate themselves for this sea change. But antisemitism doesn’t come and go. It’s cyclical, cycling between overt and covert forms of the same thing.

The cycle of antisemitism in its covert form is like a moth inside a cocoon. The moth must at some point, leave the cocoon, for this is part of the life cycle. By the same token, the cycle of overt antisemitism will always out. Just as this current covert form of EU antisemitism necessarily follows the overt antisemitism of the Holocaust.

As individuals, we tend to think of the overt form of antisemitism as being the more dangerous of the two. But the real danger is in failing to see both forms of antisemitism: overt and covert, as part of one continuous cycle, with one following the other with the inevitability of time. The covert antisemitism lulls Jews into thinking they are safe. Since they think they are safe they don’t leave the host country, become trapped, and then suffer and/or die in terrible ways.

Thinking you can stay in a place as long as antisemitism is in its covert phase of the cycle is a crap shoot. You really have no way of knowing if you’ll make it out in time. Your luck isn’t better than the luck of so many who waited too long to get out of Europe, not so long ago. And no matter where you go, you’ll experience the same cycle.

By Orijentolog (hr.wikipedia.org) [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

A synagogue in Tehran

These are the thoughts that occurred in relation to the vandalizing of the Chadash synagogue in the Maleh neighborhood of Shiraz, Iran. Reports have been sketchy. What has been reported thus far is that two Torah scrolls were torn to pieces, while the prayer books were found in the bathroom, many of the holy books submerged in toilets.

It’s a horrible story. An overt manifestation of antisemitism that brought to mind an incident of some 17 years ago. A friend I’d made through random chat on AIM was dating a fellow who was originally from Iran. She kept thinking he would propose any minute, but something was holding him back. I volunteered to talk to him, my friend consented.

I made my point: my friend was not getting any younger. She wanted to have children. If he wasn’t going to get serious and pop the question, he should let her move on.

He got the point and they were engaged the next day.

Why had he been dragging his feet?

It was all about his father, back in Iran.

My friend thought her suitor’s parents were divorced. But this was not so. The guy’s father was still married to her mother in-law-to-be, but he was in Iran, while his wife was in LA, for reasons unknown to my friend. My friend’s fiance didn’t want to get married without his father by his side. But it was a difficult and complicated thing to bring him to the States for the wedding.

Somehow, the father did make it over to the States for the occasion and my friend was surprised to see that her in-laws were this fabulous love story. They doted and fawned on each other.

She had assumed they couldn’t get along, which is why dad was in Iran, while mom was in LA.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Here is what really happened: they left Iran for a better life in LA. But dad couldn’t acclimate to the American way of life. He was a fish out of water.

He was miserable.

And so, even though he loved his wife and family, HE WENT BACK TO IRAN.

Unfricking real. To leave the safety of America for THAT. To leave his FAMILY for that. But so it was.

Now here he was, reunited with his family in LA, once more, for the sake of his son’s upcoming marriage.

Would he stay? They had all missed each other so much.

He stayed for two months. Pampered his wife night and day, 24/7. Enjoyed his family. Until he couldn’t. Couldn't take it anymore.

And went back to the covert antisemitism of Iran.

Because it’s what he was used to. It’s what he knew, his whole life.

Ever since then, every time there is a report of overt antisemitism in Iran, such as what happened at the Chadash synagogue, I fear for this man, though I never actually met him.

The man who went back to Iran is the prototype of the Jew who fools himself, thinks there is a lull in the hatred, while it is covert. He is the prototype of the Jew who doesn’t make it out when the cycle goes from covert to overt and the gates slam shut.

via GIPHY

He is like the Jewish community in Germany, complaining every time there is an anti-Semitic incident. What are they even doing there in that horrible country with its awful history?? WHY are they still there?

Because they’re used to it. They’ve been lulled into Jewish somnolence, by the polite, covert cycle of German antisemitism. They don’t see what’s coming next. They don’t even know they’re caught in a never-ending cycle.

They don’t want to know.

Now you might wonder: if it happens all over the world, this cycle of antisemitism, even in Israel, then why try to escape it at all? Why make Aliyah?

The answer: Israel is the only place where your life will have meant something. Where if you die because a terrorist cuts you down, you do so defending your land, so your children might stay Jewish and inherit your inheritance. It’s the only place where just walking four cubits earns you a mitzvah.

You can’t escape the cycle of antisemitism. Not the covert and not the overt. Not anywhere. But throwing your lot in with your brethren in Israel, now that’s where you can make a difference by strengthening the Jewish presence in our indigenous land. It’s where you can do something beautiful for your people, instead of toiling for the society of those awful Europeans (or Iranians, etc.).

Isn’t it time you at least considered the notion of Aliyah?

Who knows? You maybe even stop the cycle, cold in its tracks, and change the world for good.

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Faced With Accusations Of Focusing Only On Israel, BDS To Also Target Vulgaria (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

: Credit: Softeis via Wikimedia Commons

Durban, December 27 - Leaders of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement that singles out the world's only Jewish state have responded to criticism that their declared concern for human rights extends only to where Jews can be blamed, by announcing a campaign to call for political, economic, cultural, and diplomatic pressure on the European nation of Vulgaria, which also violates the rights of those under its dominion.

Mustafa Barghouti, Rania Khalek, and several other prominent BDS activists issued a joint statement this morning (Wednesday) to the effect that the movement seeks to dispel the false accusation of hypocrisy by highlighting at least one place other than Israel whose alleged misdeeds must be combated through BDS.

"We have in the past dismissed characterization of our emphasis on Israel's oppression of Palestinians as attempts to distract from the issue," the statement read. "However, following extensive consultations with many of our activists around the globe, we decided to make a good faith gesture to demonstrate our sensitivity to concerns that our actions match our rhetoric. We therefore call on all governments, companies, organizations, artists, academics, and institutions to cease all contacts with Vulgaria and its officials effective immediately."

The statement continued with a description of the Vulgarian regime's mistreatment of its indigenous population. "Baron and Baroness Bomburst must cease their depredations against their people," it declared. "Practices such as child-catching and a ban on producing or raising children carry ominous echoes of everything we accuse Israel of doing against Palestinians, and must stop."

BDS movement figures explained that Vulgaria represents a compromise. "The apparent hypocrisy of caring about human rights only where Israeli policies are concerned has taken a toll on our credibility," observed one activist who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety. "So a small but vocal minority among us have been agitating for a visible expansion of our activities to encompass other places where human rights are egregiously violated - not to imply that Israel isn't the most evil, corrupt, oppressive, genocidal regime in existence, but to give some token acknowledgement that groups other than Palestinians under Israeli occupation might also have rights that are being denied or violated: Ukrainians, Rohingya, Sudanese, Uighurs, Tibetans, Syrians, even Palestinians not under Israeli occupation. But to the majority of us, such a change of direction would dilute the effectiveness, such as it is, of our focus on Israel. So we worked out an in-between proposal under which BDS calls for pressure on a country that doesn't exist, and that pleased everyone."

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12/27 Links Pt1: Toameh: Arab Apartheid Targets Palestinians; Fatah`s guide to rock throwing for kids; The blue-eyed poster girl of Palestinian

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Arab Apartheid Targets Palestinians

Iraq has just joined the long list of Arab countries that shamelessly practice apartheid against Palestinians. The number of Arab countries that apply discriminatory measures against Palestinians while pretending to support the Palestinian cause is breathtaking. Arab hypocrisy is once again on display, but who who is looking?

The international media -- and even the Palestinians -- are so preoccupied with US President Donald Trump's announcement on Jerusalem that the plight of Palestinians in Arab countries is dead news. This apathy allows Arab governments to continue with their anti-Palestinian policies because they know that no one in the international community cares -- the United Nations is too busy condemning Israel to do much else.

So what is the story with the Palestinians in Iraq? Earlier this week, it was revealed that the Iraqi government has approved a new law that effectively abolishes the rights given to Palestinians living there. The new law changes the status of Palestinians from nationals to foreigners.

Under Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, the Palestinians enjoyed many privileges. Until 2003, there were about 40,000 Palestinians living in Iraq. Since the overthrow of the Saddam regime, the Palestinian population has dwindled to 7,000.

Thousands of Palestinians have fled Iraq after being targeted by various warring militias in that country because of their support for Saddam Hussein. Palestinians say that what they are facing in Iraq is "ethnic cleansing."

PMW: Fatah`s guide to rock throwing for kids

Fatah posted on its Twitter account the above photo of a young boy hurling rocks with a slingshot together with an explanation to Palestinians how best to throw rocks:

Posted text:
"In order to hit the target, there are three conditions:
1. Stand stably and balance your legs, arms, and body well
2. Focus your gaze on the center of the target, and do not look at anything else
3. Keep the desired balance between your body and your weapon; you are the one that controls the weapon, and not the other way around
If you did not understand this, read it again, and if you still have not understood, here is an example picture for you"
[Official Fatah Twitter account, Dec. 16, 2017]

Rock throwing at cars has caused hundreds of injuries and many deaths, including the following babies who were killed by stones thrown at their family's cars:
Yehuda Haim Shoham, age 5-months;
Jonathan Palmer age 12-months (his father Asher was also killed);
Adele Biton age 3. The 5 people convicted of murdering Adele were all teens.

PMW calls on UNICEF to issue a stern condemnation of Fatah's recruiting children to commit acts of terror. Recruiting children to attempt to kill others and to endanger their own lives is clear child abuse.

Melanie Phillips: Our crazy world

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the UN Jerusalem vote, the revelations about President Obama and Hezbollah, and further evidence of American collusion at the highest level –– between the FBI and the Democratic party.

From Arab News:

The King Abdulaziz Foundation for Research and Archives (Darah) has released a documentary, “The Call of Nobility,” about the Saudi Army in Palestine in 1948.

The film was published on the foundation’s official YouTube channel and announced on its official account in Twitter.

It tells the story of Saudi Arabia’s role in the Palestine issue and its participation with the Arab forces to save Palestine from the Zionist occupation in 1948, where the Saudis performed well and a number of them died.

The film includes interviews and meetings with Saudi and Arab historians and writers, and with Saudis who shared their memories about their participation in the 1948 war.

King Abdul Aziz had a keen interest in the Palestinian issue and had been a supporter of it and was aware of its importance from the very beginning, according to Yousef Al-Thaqafi, a Saudi historian and writer.

...Ali Majid Qabban, a retired general, explained that the Saudi forces were composed of two war brigades and were assigned to defend Gaza City along with the Egyptian forces, in a strategic location called Tabab Al-Mentar, east of Gaza City. The forces were stationed there to attack Jewish settlements on the road that links Gaza to the city of Majdal in the north.

Brig. Fayez Al-Asmari, another participant in the war, said, “The Arab soldiers were in control until the war was stopped because of the truce. Were it not for the truce that was imposed on the Arab forces, we would have prevailed. We were not satisfied with the truce because we were in control, and we assure our love for the land of Palestine and its people.”

Ali Kurdi, a retired general said, “I wrote to my father in Ramadan that we will have our Eid in Tel Aviv, we were victorious, the Jews could not defeat us, they did not have an organized army since they were extremist armed gangs, called ‘Haganah’.”

The number of Saudi volunteers was 513, 134 of whom were killed, including 34 who were seriously wounded, and 130 who received medals from the king.

After the truce the Zionist forces were able to get support from different sides, and more Jewish migrants arrived, many were well trained, and the Arab role toward the issue began to decline after negotiations began on the Greek island of Rhodes with the United Nations mediating between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

I love revisionist history and the excuses for losing.

26% of the Saudi volunteers were killed - and they are claiming that they were winning?

None of the Arab nations who fought in 1948 cared about "Palestinians." No one even used the term. They just wanted to defeat the Jews, and they were quite clear then that they mean Jews, not "Zionists"

Now, 70 years later, Saudi Arabia is pretending to be the savior of the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. It is probably not a coincidence that the Saudis are releasing this just as they are trying to push their own agenda in the Middle East, and how to handle the Palestinian Arabs.

The Arabic documentary is here.

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From Arutz-7:

According to a report by the Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot on Wednesday, Israel Railways, Israel’s national train operator, is planning on naming the last stop in Jerusalem for its new train line after President Donald Trump, in honor of his historic December 6th recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city.

The station will be the final stop on the Tel Aviv to Jerusalem train line, which is slated to open next spring. The new train line, which will operate alongside the city’s light rail system, will include a three-kilometer tunnel (1.9 miles), linking the Binyanei Haumah convention center near the Central Bus Station to the entrance of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Last year, however, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud), proposed an extension of the high-speed train line, adding another stop near the Western Wall on the southeast side of the Old City.

A steering committee for Israel Railways has approved the proposal, and is reportedly planning on naming the new station the “Donald John Trump Train Station”.

The new station will be built 52 meters (171 feet) below ground, like a similar station planned for central Jerusalem, near the intersection of Jaffa and King George streets.

This is an extraordinarily bad idea.

I can understand showing appreciation to Trump for his mostly symbolic gesture. But that is all it has been so far: symbolic. The embassy is not being moved any time soon. People born even within Green Line Jerusalem are still not considered to have been born in Israel by the US State Department. Nothing has changed on the ground.

But this is a bad idea for other reasons.

The Kotel, and the Temple Mount that gives it its sanctity, is holy. Whether you are pro-Trump or anti-Trump, the man has not lived a moral life. I don't need to go into details - they are on videotape. Trump is not a role model for anything except ruthless, naked self-promotion.

Associating him with the holiest place on Earth is a perversion. It cheapens and devalues the Kotel. It is viscerally appalling.

Much less important, but still worth mentioning, is that a move like that would alienate Israel even more, for no good reason. I have no problem with Israel doing the right thing when liberal American Jews and Western European countries disagree, but this isn't the right thing. It would not strengthen Israel's claim to all of Jerusalem to the world - it would weaken it. It would make Israel look like it is trying to suck up to an American leader rather than act as a proud, sovereign nation. It would turn what should be a symbol of Jewish unity into a reason for division.

It is a bad idea politically, it is an awful idea religiously, and it is a huge mistake strategically.

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A short Palestinian lexicon (poster)

One of the dumbest tweets in recent memory came from James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, angry that food celebrity Rachael Ray referred to food as Israeli:

Damn it @rachaelray. This is cultural #genocide. It’s not #Israeli food. It’s #Arab (#Lebanese, #Palestinian, #Syrian, #Jordanian). First the Israelis take the land & ethnically cleanse it of Arabs. Now they take their food & culture & claim it’s theirs too! #Shame. https://t.co/1nDXlcfRHA
— James J. Zogby (@jjz1600) December 26, 2017

Yes, Rachael was guilty of "cultural genocide" by calling some salads that are popular in Israel, "Israeli."

So just to explain how Palestinians use language, here is a very short lexicon of Palestinian expressions. Only two of them, but they are quite representative.

Feel free to retweet the poster.

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12/26 Links Pt2: BDS claims – an Ethiopian answer; Murray: UK: Going about Our "Normal" Lives?; Dishonest Reporter of the Year Award 2017

From Ian:

PMW: PMW report spurs Denmark to cut funding to PA NGOs

On May 26, 2017 PMW reported that funds provided by Norway, the UN and a conglomerate of countries including Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland had been used to build a center for young women that was subsequently named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi. Mughrabi led a terror attack that resulted in the murder of 37 Israelis, including 12 children, in 1978.

Denmark
Last week, Denmark decided to cancel some grants and review further funding of Palestinian NGOs. The decision was made following an investigation initiated after PMW's report that the women’s center funded by Denmark, was named after a Palestinian terrorist murderer. Denmark announced that it will also tighten the conditions for providing funding to all Palestinian NGOs and that the majority of the aid, suspended after PMW’s report, will not be paid.

“Denmark will tighten the conditions for providing money to Palestinian NGOs, Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said... The review followed revelations [by Palestinian Media Watch] in May that a women’s center partly funded with European aid money... was named after Dalal Mughrabi, who took part in the Coastal Road massacre in 1978 that killed 37 people... Samuelsen also said that the 'majority of aid' suspended from the summer while the review was under way will not be paid.” [The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 24, 2017]

Norway
When PMW released its report documenting the center named for terrorist Mughrabi, Norway immediately demanded that the Norwegian money be returned:

Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende:
"The glorification of terrorist attacks is completely unacceptable, and I deplore this decision in the strongest possible terms. Norway will not allow itself to be associated with institutions that take the names of terrorists in this way... We have asked for the logo of the Norwegian representation office to be removed from the building immediately, and for the funding that has been allocated to the centre to be repaid." [Norwegian Foreign Ministry website, May 26, 2017]

Belgium
When PMW reported that a Palestinian school built with Belgium funds, was also named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi, Belgium condemned it and froze the construction of ten additional Palestinian Authority schools.

Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Didier Vanderhasselt:
“Belgium unequivocally condemns the glorification of terrorist attacks [and] will not allow itself to be associated with the names of terrorists... Belgium has immediately raised this issue with the Palestinian Authority and is awaiting a formal response... In the meantime Belgium will put on hold any projects related to the construction or equipment of Palestinian schools.” [The Algemeiner, Oct. 7, 2017]

Douglas Murray: UK: Going about Our "Normal" Lives?

But the more this conspicuous, self-conscious egging-on of such attitudes is stressed, the thinner it seems to get. In March, after Khalid Masood ploughed a car across Westminster Bridge, mowing down locals and tourists, and crashed the car and stabbed policeman Keith Palmer to death inside the gates of the Palace of Westminster, one prominent British journalist took to the pages of the New York Times to pour out the clichés.

"By Thursday morning, London was, if not quite back to normal, then certainly back in business. As I traveled through the south of the city, up to Chelsea and later over to King's Cross, Londoners really were going about their lives as on any other day.

"This behavior reflects something deeper than conscious defiance, I think. It would simply not occur to the 8.6 million citizens of this megalopolis to allow one man to send them into hiding. As they say in the East End, you're having a laugh, aren't you?"

One wonders when the author last went into an East End pub to have a pint, and whether he honestly believes such honest cockneys still reside there? Nevertheless, he went to boast of the "stoicism" and "ancestral pride" that still exists there and to insist that, "The only way to proceed is -- in the much-loved British slogan -- to keep calm and carry on." Quite why this spirit is meant to reside in the bones of a city in which most of its current residents (according to the last census) have arrived in the decades since the Second World War is never clear.

Similar clichés spilled out after the suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena in May. They came out yet again after the London Bridge attack in June. Yet one of the most striking images from that night was of drinkers in Borough Market, where the terrorists finished their assault, being marched out of the Market under police escort with their hands on their heads. The British public at that point, at any rate, looked not like stoical, pugnacious heroes, but like a defeated army being marched into captivity. Still the clichés continued. The day after the attack, in her address to the nation, Prime Minister Theresa May assured the public that "Our response must be as it has always been when we have been confronted by violence. We must come together, we must pull together."

One of the most striking images from the June 3, 2017 Borough Market terror attack was of drinkers being marched out of the Market under police escort with their hands on their heads. The British public at that point looked not like stoical, pugnacious heroes, but like a defeated army being marched into captivity. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

So it is interesting to consider, beneath all the talk of business as usual, and Blitz spirit, and keeping calm and carrying on, what, in fact, are the British public actually feeling? Last month provided a sobering demonstration.

Douglas Murray Takes Us Inside The Strange Death Of Europe

Douglas Murray: I'm only going to speak for about 15 minutes because I wanted as much time as possible for Q&A, because I sense that there hasn't been much, so far, and because I'm always very excited about hearing other people's views and questions. But let me start by making a few remarks.

The first, by the way, is that I'll talk a little about my recent book. It's always rather difficult to understand another country, let alone another continent, or another culture. There are things you have in common. There are things which seem bizarre, when you look at them from outside, and there are things that look recognizable. There are things that rhyme. There are an enormous number of similarities between where I'm from and where most of you are from, and an enormous number of differences too. I've been in the states a week, spoken at a campus, and was on the West Coast at the beginning of the week, and I had one of those disassociation moments in San Francisco, when I had been in my second day in the city, and I just noticed that absolutely everywhere, there seemed to be posters advertising delivery services for marijuana. And I thought this is interesting because if there's one thing it seems to me that San Francisco doesn't need it's easier access to marijuana. More of it, just so that people who smoke it don't even have to go down the street. But there are lots of similarities between our societies as well, and one of the, I suppose, most gratifying things since the "Strange Death of Europe" came out in June here in the U.S. is the number of people who have come over to me and written to me from America, from Canada, from Australia, and said this book is about us isn't it? And, perhaps I could stop by just saying a little about what it is about, and you'll get some of the resonances.

The "Strange Death of Europe" centers on the 2015 migration crisis, which you all remember was the moment when Angela Merkel massively exacerbated an already existing problem by announcing, unilaterally, that the external and internal borders of Europe were basically dissolved. In a single act, the mass movement of people that had been going on for decades sped up exponentially, so that Germany in a single year took in an additional 2 percent of its population. Sweden took in an additional almost 3 percent of its population. This is all part of a pattern. I say that has been going on for many decades. And, just like those previous decades, what happened after the 2015 crisis was that politicians and the media found excuses to justify something that would have happened anyway. So, for instance, German citizens and others were told that this mass migration, millions of people into Europe, was there would be a net economic gain for their society, that it would enrich their society. Now, actually, all of the studies that I have gone over on this show that, at best, most such migration cannot be called to be any kind of economic gain. A study in Britain showed that over a 15 year period, migrants took out 95 billion more in services than they put in taxation. And, of course they would. If you go to another country, you don't speak the language. You don't have the skills. It's going to be a very long time, before you've put in anything into the welfare system, remotely like the amount that you and your family will have taken out. But, this is one of the arguments that is made.