Trump will seemingly not release the final details of his deal unless he first receives Arab assurances to bona fide negotiate with Israel in translating those details into binding commitments to end the long-running conflict.
Trump will not release his deal only to find it is dead in the water because no Arab negotiators will sit down with Israel.
Trump is interested in winning – not losing before he even jumps out of the starting gate.
Trump will need to now be satisfied that any new Israeli Prime Minister possesses the same views as Netanyahu on the issuesTrump has already identified as integral elements of his deal:
• extending Israeli sovereignty toJewish towns and villages in Judea and Samaria,
• declaring Jerusalem to be Israel’s eternal capital
• recognising Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights
Trump will now also need to be assured that any new Israeli Prime Minister will not call on Trump to renew America’s payments to UNRWA and UNESCO, to reopen the PLO Embassy in Washington or resume funding to the PLO.
Netanyahu’s uncertain political future and the absence of Arab negotiators ready to stand up and be counted – could see Trump’s deal being put on the political back burner until Trump’s bid for re-election for another four years is known on 3 November 2020.
Knifing Netanyahu introduces yet another wild card that could sink the release of Trump’s deal – leavingthe failed leadership of the PLO cheering and heaving huge sighs of relief.
On November 18, 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a momentous announcement: The United States does not consider Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria—the West Bank—illegal or illegitimate. The conventional wisdom, of course, is that Israeli building in the territories it captured in 1967 is a violation of international law. But after a process of many months, the Trump State Department has decided to return to an understanding of the Geneva Convention once embraced by the Reagan Administration, and to recognize that the status of Israeli building in Judea and Samaria is a political and diplomatic question, not a legal one.
In this podcast, Tikvah’s Jonathan Silver is joined by one of the world’s foremost scholars on Israel and international law. Eugene Kontorovich is a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, a director at the Kohelet Policy Forum, and author of of “Pompeo Busts the ‘Occupation’ Myth,” published in the Wall Street Journal on November 9, 2019. In this conversation, he makes the case for the legality of Israeli settlements and explains how an erroneous and hypocritical interpretation of international law became the conventional wisdom about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On Tuesday, a prominent politically and religiously conservative Jewish organization took 106 House Democrats to task for signing a “false and misleading” letter with respect to the Trump administration’s recent unilateral decision to declare that so-called Israeli “settlements” are legal. The group, the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), identifies as “the largest rabbinic public policy organization in America” and “represent[s] over 1000 traditional Orthodox rabbis in matters of public policy.”
As The Daily Wire reported last Monday, “the Trump administration … revers[ed] an Obama-era policy and now does not view Israel’s settlements in [Judea and Samaria] as a violation of international law.” “The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained at the time.
Led by Jewish Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI), 106 House Democrats responded to Pompeo with a scathing letter that issued strong legal and policy objections to the Trump administration’s bold move. “If the U.S. unilaterally abandons international and human rights law, we can only expect a more chaotic and brutal twenty-first century for Americans and our allies, including the Israeli people,” the tendentious screed concluded.
CJV responded with a powerful letter of its own that systemically picks apart Rep. Levin’s own missive. “The signatories demonstrated an alarmingly callous attitude towards Israelis, their self-determination, and their human rights,” said Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, CJV eastern regional vice president, in a press release accompanying the letter. “Jews were ethnically cleansed from towns in Judea and Samaria in 1929 and 1936, and then driven out entirely by Jordan in 1948 — yet the signatories claim that the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits them from moving back. It is hard not to read that claim as unsympathetic to Jews and history.”
Professor Richard Landes, being
an original thinker, has many new terms, or at least they are new to me. "Demotic." "Cogwar." But I particularly love the concept Richard Landes describes
as “Hopium” where hope, in the form of the coming of the messiah, acts as an
opiate to dull the pain of the struggle to live in a harsh and sometimes
unforgiving world. The idea is striking as an accurate description of the need for the belief in the messiah,
separate from whether or not he is actually on the way.
There’s one term, however, that
has become a part of the lexicon of every serious observer of the media’s war
on Israel and that is “Pallywood.” This term, too, originated with Richard
Landes, referring to photos, footage and news coverage staged to make Israel
look bad. Pallywood, as a concept, way predates “fake news.” And it was that
term and its underlying concept that made Richard Landes a household name for
those of us in the trenches defending Israel.
Richard Landes
When I thought of whom I wanted
to interview next, Richard came to mind not only because he is interesting, but
because I had a hunch he’d say yes, because he’s so approachable. I know that
if I comment on one of his papers, he will respond, even though I’m not a
scholar or a professor. To my mind, this is the way the internet was meant to
be: people with like interests who would otherwise never meet, can find each
other online to discuss important and serious concepts.
Not only did Richard Landes agree
to be interviewed, but he informed me in a subsequent progress report that he
was maybe having “too much fun” answering my questions. Which is when I knew he
was going to be giving me interview gold. Which is exactly what I got. Because Richard Landes is not just
interesting and approachable, but generous with his thoughts and time, as will
become clear in the scope and breadth of this in-depth interview.
Without further ado, I give you
Richard Landes:
Varda Epstein:
Where did you grow up? Can you tell us about your parents, and further back,
about your family roots? What is your earliest memory?
Richard Landes: I
was born in Paris as my father was researching his thesis on the Industrial
Revolution. My family left France soon thereafter, though I spent about seven
of my first 25 years in that country. I was otherwise in the US, from age 3-7
in Westchester County, then in Palo Alto, California from age 7-8, in Berkeley from
age 9-14, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts from age 15-21.
My father’s
family came to the United States in the early 20th century from Romania. My great
grandfather was a merchant, he sold dry goods and developed supermarkets in
Baltimore; my grandfather was a contractor, building skyscrapers in New York
City; and my father was a professor and an economic historian at Harvard.
My father wrote
several books, among them “The Unbound Prometheus,” “Revolution in Time,” “Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” and “Dynasties,” all about the
marvels of Western technology. I grew up with the question “Why the West?” today
considered politically incorrect, since it acknowledges that the West has
accomplished something no other culture has done, and therefore prompts
inferiority feelings of others.
My mother’s
family was from Tarnopol, in Russia. They were fur traders, though my maternal
grandfather was in real estate. My mother was an English teacher and the author
of a series on teaching children’s literature published with BookWise. She also wrote “Pariswalks” with my sister the year they were in Paris in 1973-1974,
and I was in the Pyrenees.
My earliest
memory is of falling into the swimming pool on the Queen Mary and seeing
someone dive in to catch me when I was three years old.
Varda Epstein:
Your specialty is millennialism. What is the significance of the belief in the
coming of a messianic age to the Jewish people? Imagine if you will, Jews
without a belief in the coming of the Messiah. How would we be different
without that belief?
Richard Landes:
Millennialism, or the belief in a coming Golden Age of peace, plenty and
happiness on earth (also known as the messianic era) is, in my understanding, one
of the most powerful drives in history. It can lay dormant for years or even
decades, but generally bursts out into full-fledged apocalyptic movements (“Now
is the time!”), every generation or so. The egalitarian strands (what I call
“demotic” or “of the people”), are the driving force behind modernity, and a
key element in Jewish survival over the millennia.
Millennialism is
an outrageous hope that makes working for a better world possible, despite all
the disappointments of life. The belief in messianic era can be an addiction – hopium
– and lead to really stupid decisions, for instance sticking with the Oslo
Process long after it became clear it was in actuality a war process. Or like
today’s Progressives allying with the Caliphaters.
But
millennialism/messianism is like fire: at the right temperatures, it is
life-giving, but at the wrong temperatures, too much or too little heat, it can
cause massive destruction. My book, Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience,” traces the paths of some of the most spectacular
apocalyptic movements (i.e. movements of people who think, like the
Caliphaters, that the cosmic transformation is happening now!).
I don’t think
it’s possible to imagine the Jews without messianism, just as I don’t think
it’s possible to imagine either Christianity or Islam, both born in apocalyptic
times, without messianism, with all three religions renewing imminent
expectation generation after generation. I run across some raised eyebrows when
pressed to say whether I believe a messiah will come, and I claim that my
mother taught me that “if he didn’t come during the Holocaust, he ain’t coming.”
As far as I’m concerned, we’re on our own with all the tools we need. We just
need to use them wisely.
I guess I’m part
of an unknown number of people who can appreciate the value of messianic
thinking and not partake of it, a little like Odysseus and the sirens. Hitler
strapped me to the mast. I don’t expect the messiah.
Israel as a
state, on the other hand, could not have been built without the messianic hope
that the great and moral effort would result in our coming to our homeland free
and in peace. Whether secular (Plough Women) or religious
(Rav Kook), the messianic Zionist currents constantly met, crossed, reinforced,
and struggled against each other. Zionism, in fact, is the only egalitarian
millennial movement that has taken power and not, under the blows of hostile
neighbors, turned to megadeath and totalitarian coercion (examples of this
include the French Revolutionary “terror”, the Soviets, the Nazis, and the Jihadis, among others.) Indeed, Israel’s continuing
commitment to democratic principles for over 70 years of constant threat stands
as a unique achievement. (The United States, in its early years, managed to
overcome the same authoritarian paranoid tendencies as in the examples
mentioned above, although under a much lower level of threat.)
Varda Epstein:
Were you ever targeted on campus, for your stance on Israel? How has the
climate on campuses all over America changed for Jewish students? What should
we be doing to fight back?
Richard Landes:
I wasn’t targeted, as far as I know, and certainly not openly as what happened
to Andrew Pessin at Connecticut
College in 2015, the year I retired. But I did become isolated. People didn’t
want to hear me defend or discuss Israel. I remember showing “Pallywood” to a colleague in the history dept. He said to me, “I
don’t know if you realize this, but I’ve become a liberal,” by which he basically
meant, “I won’t acknowledge your evidence, discuss your analysis, or give you a
platform.”
Another
colleague, the one with whom, of all my colleagues, I had had the most
interesting intellectual discussions, noted how pale I looked one day in the winter
of 2002. “It’s all these suicide bombings,” I said.
“Yeah, what
choice do they have,” he responded without missing a beat.
I felt like I’d
been kicked in the stomach.
“You have heard of Oslo?” I said.
“Oh yes, that,”
he responded, as if the Palestinians had not just chosen war.
I only later
identified the revolting phenomenon of “humanitarian racism” in assuming
Palestinians incapable of any moral responsibility, and the transferring all of
that responsibility instead to Israel: “You give them no choice but to teach
their children to want to kill themselves trying to kill your children.”
And it’s not only
this man, this colleague, per se. We’d never before discussed the Middle East
that I can recall. He must have heard this idea of Palestinian Arabs having “no
choice” from others, and when they had said it, everyone around had nodded,
so he assumed it to be true. I wrote a response, a letter, which later became this essay. He never really responded.
I didn’t fully understand
this at the time it was happening, but 2000 was an historical turning point. As
far back as the 1980s, with its anti-Orientalism stance, academic standards for
handling empirical evidence, and thinking with any humane moral consistency
about the conflict in the land between the river and the sea had already taken
a sharp downturn. But by and large, the larger culture had resisted: public
figures, policy-makers, mainstream journalists, even most academics had remained
reasonably sympathetic to, and willing to take into account the Zionist narrative,
especially when the empirical evidence so strongly supported it.
In 2000, with
the outbreak of the Intifada, the post-colonial voice took over. This was
evident from the way journalists reported and progressive voices interpreted
that event. The anti-Zionists began to shout accusations – Nazis – while those sympathetic
to Israel fell silent.
By 2002, a
strident anti-Zionist narrative dominated whole areas of the public sphere,
from classroom to coffeehouse to dinner-table conversation and opinion pieces.
As for the previous, seemingly solid support for Israel, it had collapsed. By
2003, at the height of the suicide terror jihad that increasingly targeted the
West, you couldn’t be a Western Liberal if you weren’t pro-Palestinian.
We Zionist
sympathizers, on campus, in scholarship, and in journalism, resembled the guy
in the samurai movie after his opponent ducks under his blow – he stands stock
still, then there is a trickle of blood across his shins, and finally his body
falls away from his severed feet. The current craziness on campuses is the
result of the spread of that mentality from academia to the journalists and on
to the global Progressive movement in tandem with the impotence of the Zionist
response. And all of that went mainstream in 2000. In fact, the global progressive
protest in Seattle held the previous year, in 1999, did not even raise the
Palestinian issue.
Varda Epstein:
You are credited with coining the term “Pallywood.” How would you define the
term? When and how did you become aware of the phenomenon?
Richard Landes with his film, "Pallywood."
Richard Landes:
I coined it as I walked out of the office of France2 TV on Jaffa Road in
Jerusalem, on October 31, 2003. I had just reviewed the TV footage shot by
Talal abu Rahmah, a France2 cameraman, who had persuaded Charles Enderlin to
run his video and story of the IDF targeting and killing a 12-year-old
Palestinian boy in the arms of his father. This was an event I considered a
global cognitive earthquake, and from the Jihadi perspective, a nuclear bomb in
the cognitive war (cogwar) against the West.
The video I saw,
which Enderlin refused to release, and showed only to vetted friends (I got
vetted by a colleague), was nothing but kids standing around, unafraid of the
Israelis, and trying to provoke them. These scenes were punctuated by extraordinary
staged footage of Palestinians being “shot” by Israelis, then taken by half a
dozen men and thrown into an ambulance (more Palestinian suffering at the hands
of IDF), followed by more fake fighting scenes (Palestinian David takes on
Israeli Goliath).
Violent "injured" evacuation
At one point, it
got so silly that Enderlin’s Israeli cameraman who was watching with us,
snorted. “Why do you laugh?” I asked.
“Because it’s so
obviously staged.”
“I know,” I said,
turning to Enderlin, who had used the footage of this photographer to tell his
explosive story.
“Oh yeah,” said
he in a burst of unconscious Orientalism, “They do it all the time. It’s a
cultural thing.”
“So why couldn’t
Al Durah be staged?” I asked.
“Oh, they
couldn’t fool me,” said Enderlin.
Muhammad al Durah, after he's supposed to be dead, looking at the camera in a scene cut by Enderlin.
As I walked out
of the office, I realized that not only do the Palestinian cameramen stage
these things all the time, but Western journalists had no problem with this. The
other shoe had dropped. It was not just the Palestinians who used Western
camera equipment to stage their war propaganda, but the mainstream news media,
who rummaged through the junk looking for the most believable sight-bytes to accompany
reports on events. It’s not a pick-up game, I thought, it’s an industry… it’s
Pallywood. That’s what blew my mind and seemed incomprehensible to so many
people outside of Israel – and even to some Israelis: that the media could so
violate its own most basic principles.
Journalists, I
suddenly realized, weren’t looking for what had actually happened, but for believable
footage to illustrate the Palestinian narrative that they had now formally
adopted: the narrative that runs somewhere between the Palestinian David versus the Israeli Goliath of the mainstream
news media (CNN, BBC, the New York Times)
and the Israeli Nazi versus the Palestinian
Jew-victim of advocacy journalism (the Nation, the Guardian, Open Democracy). And that narrative,
which increasingly overtook the Western public sphere in the aughts (‘00s) and teens,
began with Al Durah in 2000, and continues with the current weaponization of
BDS on campus.
Varda Epstein:
Why do you call your blog “Augean Stables?”
Richard Landes:
I realized that Enderlin and his colleagues (the journalists who bring the news
of what’s happening here in Israel), had developed atrocious habits, accepting
staged footage from their cameramen, and then using the best parts to tell
their story to viewers back home. Indeed, the encrustation of bad habits, both
empirical and moral, involved in adopting the Palestinian narrative as news and
dismissing Israeli counter-claims or counter-evidence as propaganda, struck me
as the modern (free) journalist’s version of the Augean Stables: layer upon
layer of bad choices, and bad reporting, never corrected, never changed, which
had led to an edifice that literally stank globally of accumulated layers of
bullshit. And of course, as Heracles cleaned out the stables in a day by running
a river through them, I thought the internet would become that river, the one
that could sweep away those atrocious habits.
I was, of
course, wrong. Lethal journalism is still as strong and as self-destructive as
ever. In fact, that brand of lethal journalism has spread. The first “fake
news” of the 21st century was the reporting of the Western press of
what was happening here in Israel. It was widespread and sustained (think Jenin
in 2002, Lebanon in 2006, and so forth)
and it fundamentally disoriented Western thinkers into mistaking the first
Jihadi attack on a democracy in the new century, one that pioneered the
apocalyptic weapon of suicide terror, for a bunch of “freedom fighters”
fighting an evil empire. In 2002, reports of an Israeli massacre at Jenin had
Spanish models wear nothing but mock suicide belts to show their solidarity
with their Jihadi enemies, celebrating mass-murderous attacks on civilians in
(by far) the most progressive culture in the Middle East. It was a massive
victory in the cognitive war Caliphaters are so effectively waging against the
West.
I’m beginning to
wonder if the cleaning out of the stables will happen in time to stop what
these bad habits continuously empower, namely people who indeed want to burn
down the free news media’s stables, now highly explosive with accumulated
fertilizer. Perhaps cyberspace is not a river, but an electric current.
Varda Epstein:
Tell us about your Aliyah. When did you know you would make Aliyah? Why did you
make Aliyah? Any regrets?
Richard Landes:
I came here as an 18 year-old, weeks after the 1967 war was over, and again for
a year after the Yom Kippur war, and once more with family in 1994-5. And I always
thought of staying, telling myself I’d eventually come back.
In 2004, while
here working on the Al Durah Pallywood documentaries, I met Esther Sha’anan
(thanks to Tova Weinberg of “Saw You at Sinai” fame). Esther
had told Tova she wouldn’t marry someone who wasn’t going to live in the Land.
Tova, without knowing she was right, told Esther I was planning to make Aliyah.
We were married
in 2005; I polluted the skies with my trips to Israel over the next ten years,
then, with a sigh of relief, left Boston University and the Western academic
scene in 2015. I think I made Aliyah formally in 2009. At that point it was
just a question of working with Nefesh b’Nefesh. I’m somewhat
ashamed it took me so long to finally do it.
Varda Epstein:
Do you think the “fake news” phenomenon is real? Is it recent? A resurgence of
an old problem?
Richard Landes:
I’d say it’s very bad, indeed, when you look at what’s happening to democracies
around the world, whether political insanity (Labour, Progressive Democrats,
Trump) or an inevitable self-protective move to the “right” (Right-wing parties),
reacting to the suicidal “cosmopolitanism” of the political and information
elites who consider it a sacred duty in honor of the Holocaust to bring in
waves of Jew-hating Muslims and spread them over Europe.
Now we swim in
fake news that has taken over even the mainstream news media. Venerable brands
are predictable only in the narratives they pitch. This level of sloppiness and
disregard for the basic principles of modern journalism (also known as “post-modern
advocacy journalism”) that we see everywhere from our information
professionals, began at the Middle East desks of our major news outlets. Such
outlets include, for instance, the BBC,
CNN, France2, the New York Times,
Le Monde, and Haaretz, with their coverage of the “Al Aqsa Intifada” or what we
might be better understood if we called it the “Oslo Jihad,” or the opening
round of the global Jihad against democracies.
Fake news is, of
course, an old problem. One can even argue that modern, free, reasonable,
accurate journalism is the appearance of an island of news in a sea of fake
news. In time of war, the problem becomes especially acute. Historically the
danger was “patriotic war journalism”
that reported its own side’s war propaganda as news (e.g., the way
Hearst and Pulitzer started the Spanish war for Teddy Roosevelt). It was a high
moral and professional aspiration to have the media skeptical enough to resist their
own side’s war propaganda.
Pallywood is a
form of “partisan war journalism,”
in which outside reporters take sides in a conflict and report that side’s
propaganda as news. That’s how the Oslo Jihad was reported. But what the 21st
century has wrought that is, I think, unique, is “own-goal war journalism,” in which the post-modern journalists
report their enemy’s – Caliphater – war propaganda as news. Hence, the reported
massacre at Jenin inspires infidels to cheer on apocalyptic, suicidal Jihadis
as they attack a democratic society. Hence, the increasing and increasingly
dysfunctional fissure in Western democracies between journalists and the
increasingly restive and pained citizenry they are trying to manipulate into
peaceful choices. On some level our social body has contracted a kind of CIPA
(congenital insensitivity to pain) in which the nerves/information
professionals do not deliver to the brain/public sphere the news of where it
hurts and who did it.
Results of own-goal journalism: identifying with your enemy, London 2009
Varda Epstein:
What can regular people do to combat media bias? How far should we go to punish
biased outlets? Should we avoid reading the content of anti-Israel
publications? What outlets do you trust for hard news about Israel?
Richard Landes:
On the grand scale, we need to initiate and participate in the establishment of
reliable websites (like Snopes used to be), that people can go to for a
trustworthy escape from fake news. This is an enormous endeavor, but in an age
of information excess and collapse of reliability, it should have a very high
value… cognitive anchors, if you will. These shouldn’t be Jewish or uniquely Jewish-themed,
but collective efforts to make a free, productive, self-correcting society
possible by providing a cleaning process that strips away fake news – a kind of
information dialysis.
On a more
individual level, I think it helps to realize that the problem is systemic,
that fighting the details, however important – and thank God for sites like CAMERA, HonestReporting, and UK Media Watch, there should
be many more – is not going to turn the tide. The height and depth of the
failure of information professionals in the 21st century is hard to
imagine, partly because they’ve convinced themselves they’re doing a good job. (The
Augean Stables smell just fine to them.)
And this is no
longer just a problem over here (the Land of Israel) and not there (the West).
It’s metastasizing. BDS is a symptom; it can only succeed because both media
and academia have succumbed to the replacement narrative
of Palestinians suffering genocide at the hands of the Zionists. In the
process, they have betrayed the ethical demands of their profession.
What this means
for how you speak with people who don’t understand what’s going on, really
depends on the individuals who are interacting. But the orienting principle to
articulate is that anti-Zionism is an attack not just on autonomous Jews but on
the Western progressive world and on democracies: lands to which a majority of
the rest of the world’s inhabitants would love to emigrate. The West’s susceptibility
to lethal journalism about Israel is the soft underbelly whereby Caliphaters
can infiltrate the Western progressive world and implement their authoritarian
vision. When you can’t be a Progressive and
a Zionist on campus, the Caliphaters have won their fight to turn infidels into
useful idiots (think Linda Sarsour).
At least for
now, BDS damages academia much more than it damages Israel, which continues to
thrive. Real scholarship, meantime, high professional standards for the
gathering and analyzing of data, especially where the Middle East is concerned,
continues to degrade dramatically. Today, it’s extremely difficult for anyone
in college to be exposed to the narrative that Israel represents the future of
progressive politics, including feminism, in this crazy neighborhood. And yet,
as my kids used to say, it’s a “no duh.”
Humor helps. I
think we need to develop truly telling and penetrating jokes about the idiocy
of the current acamediacracy. It’s a bit beyond my skill set. Caroline Glick
had a great comedy group going about a decade ago. Latma. Maybe it made too much fun of our cousins
and not enough of the insane “global progressive left.” We need some good
comedians to write us some one-liners.
Ultimately, if
we make our way out of this, it’ll be because people who have been too timid
till now, at least play nice cop to some Zionist’s tough cop. When the thought
police yell “Islamophobe” and “racist” and “blaming the victim,” any time people
start to describe some of the less savory elements of the Arab and Muslim
world, the (until now, largely silent) bystander needs to intervene and explain
how what’s being said needs to be listened to and considered and not driven
from the public sphere. That’s especially important on campuses. The reason the
other side is so vociferous and morally agitated is because if they let us
speak and our audience were fair-minded, they would lose.
Varda Epstein:
What did you think about Israel applying its No Entry law to Rashida Tlaib and
Ilhan Omar? Who won? What is the ultimate goal of these people, from your
perspective?
Richard Landes:
It was a win-win for them. The way they set it up, whatever Israel did, we lost
and Tlaib-Omar won. They’re both Caliphaters, vying for top spot in the American
cogwar. It was a major victory for them to make it into Congress, and for Omar
to win a place on the Foreign Relations Committee. It was, of course, majorly
stupid of both voters and the democratic congresspeople who put her there. But,
alas, virtue signalers would rather shoot themselves in various body parts than
give the appearance of being prejudiced.
Saying the two
could come to Israel, long before they made a formal request with a written
agenda, was a big mistake. (We may have been virtue-signaling about how open we
are.) We jumped the gun there. I wanted to put up a site welcoming them, and
that would serve to, among other things, fact-check their statements while
here. I still think that site should be prepared.
Another lesson
learned from this incident: don’t wait for them
to put us in a corner. Start thinking
aggressively and not defensively. Israeli spokespeople have an unfortunate
tendency to consider a draw or not too big a disaster, a victory of sorts, and
don’t follow through when they have the upper hand. It’s a modified form of
battered-wife syndrome, especially as we’ve seen it since the beginning of 2000.
I don’t think we’ve won a single mivtza,
a military operation, in the cogwar as yet. I think we need to amend the prayer
for the IDF. ביבשה באוויר בים ובתקשורת*
Part of the
problem is we don’t realize how much ground we’ve lost in the last 20 years. We
think people agree with us when it comes to reality. Most Zionists think most
people understand that Jenin was a massive episode of fake-news lethal
journalism. Most outsiders, though, old enough to remember, think the reporting
might have been exaggerated at the time, but was more or less accurate along
the main lines. And so it has been with every subsequent story of Palestinian
suffering, right down to the recent reporting on the weekly “Border March,” a
euphemism for violent, staged protests.
Figuring out how
to get out of this hole we’re in calls for deep and long-term (though urgent)
thinking. Not “how can I (temporarily) move the needle for my donor?” but a
serious dedication of funds (a couple of fighter jets’ worth), strategy, and
tactics with which we might fight a cognitive war, not just for Israel, but for
any democracy that wants to remain free and productive.
Varda Epstein:
What is the main lesson we learn from history?
Richard Landes:
That it’s those who fail to learn the right lessons who are fated to
repeat the wrong decisions. Like the “woke left” of today, that is still
unable to absorb the lessons of the millennial madnesses of the 20th
century like communism and Nazism, and is about to repeat the madness by allying
with and empowering a terrifyingly destructive millennial movement (the Caliphaters),
endorsing them as carriers of a redemptive message.
Solidarity with the most ambitious and ferocious imperialist movement on the planet, Denver Democratic National Convention, 2008.
As I mentioned,
I grew up with the question “Why the West?” – and my answer is, above all, the
ability to absorb criticism and learn from it. It’s the major difference
between an honor-shame culture and an integrity-guilt culture. In the former,
public admission of wrongdoing or failure is a shameful sign of weakness and
hurts your standing in others’ eyes. In the latter, it’s a way of both
maintaining integrity and learning from mistakes. One dynamic favors a culture
of consensus, the other a culture of dispute. The integrity-guilt culture is
why the West is so spectacularly successful in all kinds of technology and
learning, and why the Jews are so successful in the modern West.
Self-criticism
is very hard, and many people spend most of their emotional energy defending
their honor or image in others’ eyes (lethal journalists). They invest a great
deal of time anticipating and imagining attacks. The learning curve of the 21st
century Western “intelligentsia” (the people who have a large impact on the
conversation in our public sphere), has been lamentably low.
We need a
generation of all ages that can learn from and give criticism effectively. But
for that we need to quiet the moral hysteria – indignant cries of “Islamophobia,”
“white supremacism,” “racism,” “hate-speech,” and even “antisemitism” – so we
can listen and be listened to, and respond in a thoughtful manner.
*On land, in the air, at sea, and in the news media
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There are national and international Quran competitions as well. But all of the famous ones do not require the competitors to study the texts - but to memorize them. These are competitions on chanting beautifully. Some of the criteria for scoring in this Toronto competition, for example, are:
½ mark will be deducted for each time the participant is unable to read fluently
1 mark will be deducted for any Hifz errors that are corrected by the participant himself after being informed by the Questioner by the ringing of the bell
2 marks will be deducted if the Questioner has to correct the mistake
If a participant makes more than 3 Hifz mistakes in a question, which the Questioner has to correct, the participant will fail that question.
The Questioner will ring the bell to bring any Hifz mistakes to the participant’s attention.
For Tajweed errors, the bell will not ring but the Judges will mark the mistakes on the mark sheet.
The Jews study the content. The Muslims memorize words and punctuation.
Every once in a while a Muslim writer will point out that Israelis have more Nobel prizes than the entire Arab world combined. This comparison of how the religious of each faith look at their sacred texts - analysis versus rote memorization - is a strong clue as to why this is.
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Anti-Zionism has exactly the same characteristics directed agains the collective Jew in Israel: an obsessional and unhinged narrative about Israel based entirely on lies; accusing Israel of crimes of which it’s not only innocent but the victim; holding Israel to standards expected of no other country; depicting Israel as a global conspiracy of unique malice and power.
The Palestinian cause, meanwhile, is based on an attempt to wipe out another people’s country, a campaign consisting entirely of lies about the present and the past in an attempt to write the Jews out of their own history in the land, accompanied by virulent antisemitic bigotry.
Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority regularly present the Jews as the source of all evil in the world and a conspiracy against all humanity. They claim that the Jews were behind 9/11 and that they control the world’s media, finance and US foreign policy.
So why should anyone be surprised when Labour party supporters and other so-called “progressives” come out with their claims that the Jews were behind 9/11 and that they control the world’s media, finance and US foreign policy in a conspiracy against all humanity?
Alas, experience tells us that the Chief Rabbi’s intervention is likely to make antisemitism in Britain even worse. Yet he was right to have spoken up; indeed, he had no moral alternative but to do so.
Because decent people need to be in absolutely no doubt about the nature of the Labour party which is campaigning to become the government of the country.
And because Jews have a duty to bear witness to the truth, however painful.
But even if the Labour party is defeated at this general election, even if Jeremy Corbyn is removed as the party’s leader, that will not eradicate the terrible scourge of antisemitism which now courses through Britain.
After all, the Labour party is a racist political party. The most successful racist party in Britain since the BNP – though wildly more successful than Nick Griffin’s gang ever managed to be. So if I were a paid or unpaid activist for the Labour party these days I’d be wary about throwing around accusations of racism. As for ‘transphobia’ – this is just the accusation made against anyone who won’t automatically nod through medical experimentation on children. So while I’m not happy about it, I’m content to roll with it for now.
And that was that. I thought that Holly’s smilingly ignorant face would never bother my mind again. But fanatics are extraordinary things, and this morning – after the chief rabbi issued an unprecedented denunciation of the Labour party’s high-command for its anti-Semitism – Holly was one of those who attempted to mount a retaliatory strike.
For Holly, it matters enormously that ‘racism’ remain a tool that their ilk can wield, but one that can never be used against them. And so Holly – in her infinite wisdom – chose to retaliate to the chief rabbi’s criticism of the Corbyn-ite Labour party for anti-Semitism by attacking the chief rabbi.
Once again, Holly showed herself to be deeply untroubled by facts. Nobody who knows anything about rabbi Mirvis could describe him as any kind of unalloyed ‘supporter’ of Boris Johnson. Nobody who knows anything about the chief rabbi could describe him as ‘an uncritical supporter of Netanyahu.’ These are claims so laced with presumption and ignorance that it is hard to know how Holly can embarrass herself so publicly. Or rather, it would be hard to imagine, if I hadn’t experienced Holly’s weapons-grade ignorance myself only days earlier.
Jeremy Corbyn’s interview with Andrew Neil was one of the most uncomfortable half hours of the Labour leader’s tenure. In contrast to the ITV debate, where he appeared confident and quick-witted, Corbyn struggled to answer questions on a number of different issues, complaining all the while that Neil wouldn’t let him finish. By the end, he might have wished that he’d had more interruptions as this was a very poor interview.
His refusal to apologise for the Labour party’s handling of anti-Semitism has naturally attracted the most attention. He point blank disagreed with the Chief Rabbi, saying he was ‘not right’ to say it was ‘mendacious fiction’ that Labour had investigated every single case of anti-Semitism, and once again saying he was ‘looking forward to having a discussion with him because I want to hear why he would say such a thing’. He expressed clear irritation at having his anti-racist credentials questioned, insisting that opposing racism is ‘what my life is about’ and that he felt ‘very passionately’ about this, as though making the sort of statements you’d see in a university application immediately inoculates you against ever being wrong. Taken together, these two responses to Neil’s questions suggest that Corbyn still blames those who accuse him, rather than wondering whether there might be a different way of approaching the racism in his own party. He could quite easily have said that he too was appalled that his party had given Jews the impression they wouldn’t feel safe if he were in government, and that he would do everything in his power to change things in Labour to win back trust. Instead, he wants to do everything in his power to persuade those Jews that they are wrong.
In case anyone still wonders whether the Palestinian keffiyeh is a symbol of terrorism, this story in the official PA Wafa news agency should dispel all doubt.
The largest Palestinian keffiyeh, in memory of Yasser Arafat, was presented at the Dura International Stadium in Hebron on Wednesday.
When Palestinians dedicate something to Arafat, it is never in terms of him being a peacemaker.
The keffiyeh is over 3,000 square meters large.
Wafa adds that "the Palestinian keffiyeh is a symbol of pride and dignity. It is a symbol of martyrs and prisoners."
Which means....terrorists.
Every time I have a keffiyeh story I like to post a photo of the Zionist keffiyeh, only because it upsets the bigots so much.
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Thousands of people took part in a mass demonstration Wednesday outside the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza and elsewhere.
It seems likely that these demonstrations were organized by UNRWA officials themselves.
The demonstrators chanted slogans emphasizing the need for UNRWA to continue its work until the "right of return" is realized.
In plain English, that means that the UN agency should continue being funded until millions of Arabs of whose ancestors lived in Palestine in 1947 can flood Israel and destroy the Jewish state.
They aren't demanding the world recognize a Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state. They are demanding the "right" to move to an enemy state in order to destroy it from within.
UNRWA, of course, is on board with that plan. They have taught generations of Palestinians that they will "return" one day and are complicit in keeping them stateless for over 70 years.
Ironically, large numbers of schoolchildren took off from their UNRWA schools and participated in the demonstrations. This was probably with UNRWA's blessing. They are being taught that protests are more important than education.
Schoolchildren in the West Bank were off school yesterday as well for the "Day of Rage" declared by the PLO.
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This is a video from the far-right Christian site TruNews, edited by Right Wing Watch:
That’s the way the Jews work, they are deceivers, they plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda.This ‘impeach Trump’ effort is a Jew coup and the American people better wake up to it really fast because this thing is moving now toward a vote in the House and then a trial in the Senate. We could have a trial before Christmas. This country could be in civil war at Christmastime. Members of the U.S. military are going to have to take a stand just like they did in the 1860s with the Civil War. They are going to have to decide: are you fighting for the North or the South?
People are going to be forced, possibly by this Christmas, to take a stand because of this Jew coup in the United States. This is a coup led by Jews to overthrow the constitutionally elected president of the United States and it’s beyond removing Donald Trump, it’s removing you and me. That’s what’s at the heart of it.
You have been taken over by a Jewish cabal. The church of Jesus Christ, you’re next. Get it through your head! They’re coming for you. There will be a purge. That’s the next thing that happens when Jews take over a country, they kill millions of Christians.
Rick Wiles, who runs TruNews, is a known nutcase who has accused Queen Elizabeth of being a satanist lizard. Donald Trump Jr. was interviewed on this show but he says it was not planned and he had no idea of their positions when a correspondent from the site asked him some questions.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
President Mahmoud Abbas gave instructions to send medical staff and food to Albania following an earthquake that hit the country earlier today.
President Abbas ordered immediate medical help to the areas and people affected by the earthquake to ease their calamity.
There is no news yet on exactly how much aid and how many people are being sent. If any.
UPDATE: I can find no news story n Arabic showing any actual aid being sent by Palestinians to Albania. Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of 25 countries sending aid, including Israel. "Palestine" is not one of them.
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Mirvis described the last four years of having Labour repeatedly minimize and deny the rampant anti-Semitism in the party and the attacks, and even death threats, Jewish party members faced for speaking out about it, with many hounded out of the party.
Illustrative: People hold up placards and Union flags as they gather for a demonstration organized by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism outside the head office of the British opposition Labour Party in central London on April 8, 2018. (AFP/Tolga Akmen)
He noted Labour’s “quibbling and prevarication” over whether to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance‘s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, finally only doing so after adding an amendment that emphasized the right to “free speech” on Israel.
And he highlighted the party being formally investigated by the UK’s anti-racism watchdog.
“And all of this while in opposition. What should we expect of them in government?” Mirvis asked. “Therefore, with the heaviest of hearts, I call upon the citizens of our great country to study what has been unfolding before our very eyes.”
Mirvis dismissed Labour’s claims that it was doing everything possible to root out anti-Semitism as a “mendacious fiction.”
“According to the Jewish Labour Movement, there are at least 130 outstanding cases before the party, some dating back years, and thousands more have been reported but remain unresolved.
“The party leadership have never understood that their failure is not just one of procedure, which can be remedied with additional staff or new processes. It is a failure to see this as a human problem rather than a political one. It is a failure of culture. It is a failure of leadership. A new poison – sanctioned from the top – has taken root in the Labour Party,” he wrote.
Mirvis said given Labour’s record, it “can no longer claim to be the party of equality and anti-racism.”
UK Chief Rabbi Slams 'Poisonous' Labour Party
Less than two weeks before the contentious upcoming election, Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis slammed the head of the Labour party, saying “Jeremy Corbyn [is] not fit for high office.” In an opinion piece written for British daily The Times, Rabbi Mirvis wrote that “the overwhelming majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety” at the possibility of a Labour victory on December 12.
The Church of England on Tuesday expressed support for the Jewish community amid worries of rising anti-Semitism, after the country’s chief rabbi took a stand against the Labour party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn ahead of next month’s general election.
A statement by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby on Tuesday warned of a “deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews.”
The statement was released hours after Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis accused Labour party chief Jeremy Corbyn of allowing the “poison” of anti-Semitism to take root in his party.
“None of us can afford to be complacent. Voicing words that commit to a stand against antisemitism requires a corresponding effort in visible action,” Welby’s statement said.
He did not mention Corbyn by name.
Welby’s statement came less than a week after the Church of England admitted in a major report that centuries of Christian anti-Semitism helped lead to the Holocaust.
Today’s front pages of British 📰, with unprecedented intervention by @chiefrabbi, over grave concerns about future of British Jewry from the ‘poison’ of #Antisemitism engulfing @UKLabour & @jeremycorbyn’s leadership.
Peter Boghossian at the Wall Street Journal writes ‘Idea Laundering’ in Academia about how academia pretty much makes things up while pretending that they are following some sort of scientific method.
I hate to publish the entire article which is behind a paywall, but it all hangs together:
You’ve almost certainly heard some of the following terms: cisgender, fat shaming, heteronormativity, intersectionality, patriarchy, rape culture and whiteness.
The reason you’ve heard them is that politically engaged academicians have been developing concepts like these for more than 30 years, and all that time they’ve been percolating. Only recently have they begun to emerge in mainstream culture. These academicians accomplish this by passing off their ideas as knowledge; that is, as if these terms describe facts about the world and social reality. And while some of these ideas may contain bits of truth, they aren’t scientific. By and large, they’re the musings of ideologues.
How did this happen? How have those working in what’s come to be called “grievance studies” managed to extend their ideas far beyond the academy, while convincing people that their jargon adds something meaningful to public discourse? Biologist Bret Weinstein, who was run out of Evergreen State College by a leftist mob in 2017, calls the process “idea laundering.”
It’s analogous to money laundering. Here’s how it works: First, various academics have strong moral impulses about something. For example, they perceive negative attitudes about obesity in society, and they want to stop people from making the obese feel bad about their condition. In other words, they convince themselves that the clinical concept of obesity (a medical term) is merely a story we tell ourselves about fat (a descriptive term); it’s not true or false—in this particular case, it’s a story that exists within a social power dynamic that unjustly ascribes authority to medical knowledge.
Second, academics who share these sentiments start a peer-reviewed periodical such as Fat Studies—an actual academic journal. They organize Fat Studies like every other academic journal, with a board of directors, a codified submission process, special editions with guest editors, a pool of credentialed “experts” to vet submissions, and so on. The journal’s founders, allies and collaborators then publish articles in Fat Studies and “grow” their journal. Soon, other academics with similar beliefs submit papers, which are accepted or rejected. Ideas and moral impulses go in, knowledge comes out. Voilà!
Eventually, after activist scholars petition university libraries to carry the journal, making it financially viable for a large publisher like Taylor & Francis, Fat Studies becomes established. Before long, there’s an extensive canon of academic work—ideas, prejudice, opinion and moral impulses—that has been laundered into “knowledge.”
They then have an answer when one asks the obvious question: “How could fat be just a narrative? There’s overwhelming medical evidence—A1Cs, the surge of type-2 diabetes, demonstrable risk factors—reliably indicating that excess fat is a health hazard. This has nothing to do with ‘stories we tell ourselves’ or ‘societal power structures,’ and instead directly corresponds to facts about the human body.”
In response, grievance scholars point to articles in the peer-reviewed journal Fat Studies: “Toward a Fat Pedagogy: A Study of Pedagogical Approaches Aimed at Challenging Obesity Discourse in Post-Secondary Education.” Not knowing any better, and seeing a veneer of scholarly rigor and scientific peer review, people reasonably assume that such articles are trustworthy sources of knowledge. (They assume this because it’s how the peer-reviewed process has traditionally worked: Academics try to disconfirm or falsify claims, as opposed to seeking support for them.) These articles tell us that obesity is but a narrative and there are other narratives, such as being healthy at every size, and there’s no reason to “privilege” one narrative over another.
It doesn’t stop there. Grievance scholars then use articles like those published in Fat Studies to credential themselves and receive promotion and tenure. They proceed—from the safety of professorships they’ll hold for life—to design courses around this literature. They test students on the material, marking answers right or wrong according to how closely they replicate the laundered ideas.
Within their academic ecosystems, grievance scholars hire new faculty members with similar moral commitments who’ve written for the same journals. Eventually, they institutionalize their ideas in the larger academic system. This process, which has been propagating laundered ideas for at least three decades, now has enough “scholarship” behind it to have a significant cultural impact.
Students leave the academy believing they know things they do not know. They bring this “knowledge” to their places of employment where, over time, laundered ideas and the terminology that accompanies them become normative—giving them even more unearned legitimacy. And this is why you’ve heard some of the terms we began with: cisgender, fat shaming, heteronormativity, intersectionality, patriarchy, rape culture, and whiteness. They’ve been laundered through the peer-reviewed literature by activist scholars, then widely taught for years, before being brought into the world.
Now, at least, you won’t mistake them for knowledge.
This is exactly the pattern done by anti-Israel academics. Someone makes up a concept like "settler colonialism" and within years it is a recognized field of study, where opinion is presented as fact and previous papers are treated as legitimate no matter how sloppy they are, as long as they agree with what the current author "feels" must be true. Ideas like "Israel is an apartheid state" or "Zionism is racism" or "violent resistance is legitimate" or "Israel engages in pinkwashing" are accepted as not only true, but proven, because of previous papers by Israel haters.Then the more adventurous academics try to extend this house of cards into new areas - if Zionism is racism, then maybe it is sexism, too! Can I define "Israeli apartheid" as a form of genocide?
Over time, just as the article notes, absurd concepts become accepted in academia, and then when the time is ripe, it starts spilling into the real world, where people who think they know something because they read some papers are free to spout their opinions in op-eds - which are eager to publish writings of "experts" as they present themselves.
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Huffington Post UK has an article critical of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis' editorial about the Labour Party's antisemitism. While the author, Em Hilton, acknowledges that this antisemitism exists, she asserts that the Tory party is worse
Hilton engages in one of those progressive tropes that sound reasonable but in fact is not true at all:
If we truly want to root out ant-Semitism [sic], we must fight Islamophobia, xenophobia and all other forms of racism along with it. ...The best way to fight anti-Semitism is through building solidarity with those who are also on the frontline of fighting racism...
It sounds like it should be true, right? Bigotry is bad no matter whether the victims are Jewish, black, Muslim or women, and it stands to reason that they should be fought the same way.
It isn't true.
People who identify as people of color generally don't look at Jews as their fellow victims. They look at Jews as their oppressors. The only coin of the realm of identity politics and grievance studies is perceived victimhood, and all victims have oppressors. In the US at least, Jews do not have the obstacles that people of color or women have.
Unlike every other victim of bigotry, Jews are hated in modern times because they are perceived to have too much power.
Fighting racism and sexism is a struggle for gaining a fair share of power; fighting antisemitism is not. It is a fight against pure, illogical, unbridled hate often disguised as a fight for fairness and equality. The two types of bigotries are not only different - they can be perceived as contradictory.
Some 30% of blacks and Hispanics in America are antisemitic. How, exactly, can racism and antisemitism be tackled together when the victims of each consider the other to be the oppressors?
"Progressive" spaces like the women's movement have their own problems with antisemitism, disguised as solidarity with Palestinians under the rubric of intersectionality, which consciously excludes Jews from its list of victims of bigotry. When a "progressive" group like Women's March excludes liberal Zionists but includes bigots from the Nation of Islam, it loses any claim to care about antisemitism.
Whether we like it or not, the tools and methods to fight antisemitism are completely different than those to fight other bigotries. And when the fight against other types of bigotry helps enable antisemitism, then the methodology being used is immoral.
When the methodology is victimhood, the implication is that every victim of bigotry has an oppressor who is immoral for doing that to them. When you look at the world through that lens, Jews - especially Zionist Jews - are always perceived to be the oppressors. As such, within the context of a grievance culture, Jews are deserving of punishment, and cannot ever be considered victims in their own right. The grievance and victimhood mentality subtly encourages antisemitism.
What is needed is an overhaul of how bigotry is fought. The yardstick cannot be victimhood, but equality. Everyone should treat everyone else with respect and judge them to the same standards as everyone else. There can no divide between victims and oppressors because the victims in one context can be oppressors in another. People need to concentrate on what they can do, not how they were wronged.
This would require a complete overhaul on how bigotry is fought. Then, and only then, can antisemitism be fought at the same time as racism, xenophobia, ageism, sexism and other bigotries.
Since the current cult of victimhood is not going away any time soon, antisemitism must be fought on a different playing field than other bigotries. No one is immune from the disease of Jew-hatred, including Jews themselves.
Claiming that antisemitism is just another bigotry ends up too often not only making Jews into the victims, but justifying it.
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Following US State Secretary Pompeo’s announcement that the US no longer views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as “inconsistent with international law,” Palestinian leaders called on their people to participate in a “Day of Rage” today and to continue Day of Rage activities to protest against the alleged “Zionist-American plots”: “The [PLO] factions… called on their activists and our people to take part in these [Day of Rage] activities, which will begin during the week in order to express our people’s opposition to all of the Zionist-American plots against the Palestinian cause.” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 25, 2019]
Fatah official Jamal Muhaisen announced that the Day of Rage activities are part of “a comprehensive program of struggle,” and promised that it will end in terror – “a comprehensive intifada”: “Fatah Movement Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen said that the day of rage is the start of a comprehensive program of struggle to deal with the American-Israeli steps, even to the point of a comprehensive intifada against the occupation’s crimes.”
To enable children to participate in the Day of Rage activities, the PA Ministry of Education closed all its schools for one hour in the middle of the day: “The [PA] Ministry of Education emphasized… that it is necessary to participate in the activities, and that studies at the schools will be stopped from 11:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. so that there will be active participation in the mass marches and the activities that will be organized against these unfair decisions.” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 26, 2019]
Fatah official Muhaisen recently expressed his concurrence that violence and terror are effective Palestinian tools and instructed Palestinians to “benefit from” the previous terror waves, as Palestinian Media Watch reported last week.
The Palestinian 'Day of Rage' in the West Bank
Palestinian rioters hurled rocks at Israeli security forces on Tuesday, in part of the “Day of Rage” protest organized by Fatah party throughout cities in the West Bank, Hebrew-language outlet Walla News reported. Protests are being held in Tulkarem, Ramallah, Hebron and Nablus, among others. No casualties were reported thus far. The protests are aimed against “unjust US resolutions, which have violated international conventions and law. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's remarks on Israeli settlements are contrary to international law,” a Fatah statement read.
The third way we know that accusing Israel of targeting Palestinian children crosses the line into antisemitism is the way in which, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it paints Israel as an evil entity that either specifically targets children, or doesn’t care if children get targeted.
Bernie Sanders’ surrogate Linda Sarsour tweeted as much recently when she said Israel has “stripped the Palestinians of their humanity to justify the indiscriminate killings including of children. Half of the population of Gaza ARE CHILDREN.”
In reality, Israel’s military goes to unprecedented levels to reduce casualties. The Israel Defense Forces emphasizes “purity of arms” and consistently works to avoid harm by distributing flyers and sending text messages to Gazans alerting them of impending airstrikes, even using non-explosive “roof-knocking” projectiles to warn residents who may not have vacated the area.
Col. Richard Kemp, national security expert and former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, has spoken at great length to this very point. So has former U.S. chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, who praised Israel’s measures to reduce civilian casualties. In the latest round of violence, these measures explain why adult males (considered by Israel to be combatants) constituted the vast majority of casualties.
So if accusations made by Patel, McCollum, Tlaib and others are so far from the truth, one has to wonder why they continue pushing this narrative. The simple answer is that such claims are modern incarnations of centuries-old blood libels, antisemitic slander that falsely accused Jews of killing Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals. Circulating throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, this formed the basis for countless anti-Jewish pogroms.
Proportionately critiquing Israel’s military actions in the interest of reducing civilian casualties and the detention of Palestinian children is completely legitimate, if not encouraged.
Israel should — and I expect will — continue to take great measures to minimize collateral damage. However, to suggest that Israel purposefully and maliciously targets innocent children is plainly antisemitic. When espoused by elected officials no less, it impedes any genuine debate about how to reduce child suffering during conflict.
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Michael Oren: The Altneu Antisemitism: Part II
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Wednesday, November 27, 2019
