Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Nazi-level Jew-hate in Jordanian news site op-ed

Sawaleif is a Jordanian news site. It isn't hugely popular but it has over 30,000 Facebook followers and covers mainstream news, if a bit tabloid-like.

And, like many Jordanian news sites, it expresses antisemitism frequently and shamelessly.

But this op-ed by Bassam Al Yassin, published Monday, hits Der Stürmer levels.

Jordanians hate Jews the most

The Jew is the epitome of evil and deceit, a professor of greed and deceit, a genius who plots against creation, a superman who spies wherever he is. The Jew is selfish, self-centered, and believes that God created no one but Him, and that the goyim – other peoples, were created to serve Him. That is why the Jew lives behind a false mask of oppression and the Holocaust.

The Jews lived as parasites on peoples, under the guise of persecution, then infiltrated into Palestine, with the Balfour Declaration, which gave what Balfour did not have to those who did not deserve it. It was a humanitarian catastrophe that has not stopped since. Palestine is Arab, and excavations have proven that Jews do not have a history there, and with conclusive evidence, their claims were refuted and they were disappointed, as they did not find a piece of pottery that proves that they had a state or a temple.

And still the "progressives" who pretend they hate antisemitism pointedly don't say a word. When pushed into a corner, they say that there must be a good reason for Arab Jew-hate: Israel.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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08/29 Links Pt2: Where it all began: The gathering that sparked Zionism; It’s Open Season on Jews in New York City; Looking beyond the NGO halo effect

From Ian:

A Zionist success 125 years later

By far, the most important accomplishment of the Zionist movement was its success in making Israel the home to the largest amount of Jews (close to a majority of Jews live in Israel) and making it ー almost from scratch ー the place where the continuation of Jewish peoplehood is guaranteed. Thanks to this enterprise, the Jews returned to their historical homeland as a functioning people, their national language was revived and their historic sovereignty was applied.

The bridgehead established by a minority with a radical vision in the Land of Israel became the vibrant center of Jewish life. What began two generations ago as a third-world, poor, and weak country that had only 6% of the Jews, transformed thanks to the dedication and talent of later generations into a regional democratic power with a thriving economy and top-notch accomplishments.

More important than the successes of the past are ensuring gains down the road. It is almost inevitable that Israel will continue to be the focus of Jewish life at the expense of the second most important Jewish concentration ー North America. The widespread assimilation in younger generations, coupled with declining birth rates, compared with almost zero mixed-marriages in Israel and a very high birth rate ensures that Israel will be the epicenter of Jewish life.

The major challenges within Israeli society are much more dangerous than the threats posed by Iran and its proxies. Israel has a successful track record of weathering through tough times, just like after the Yom Kippur War and the Second Intifadah. What should worry us is the radicalization of some Haredi groups and the continued control over millions of Palestinians. Those two trends threaten the democratic and pluralistic nature of the Zionist enterprise that have made it so successful over the past 100 years. Without them, Israel will devolve into a backward, authoritarian state that could threaten the future of the Jewish people.

Where it all began: The gathering that sparked Zionism

President Herzog will not be the only dignitary to honor the ceremony with his presence. Also among the guests are former Swiss President, Guy Parmelin, and dignitaries from Israel and abroad, including Diaspora Affairs Minister Dr. Nachman Shai, Former IDF chief of staff and former Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon, former Mossad Head Yossi Cohen, Chairman of the Jewish Agency Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Doron Almog, and publisher of the Israel Hayom, Dr. Miriam Adelson.

Among the hundreds of attendees at the concert hall in Basel there will also be 125 young Jewish entrepreneurs from all over the world and Jewish leaders from 38 countries. Organizers say that if they had space for 2,000 people, it would also be filled, because of the huge demand.

Guests participated yesterday in the first part of the event, which included discussions on topics such as "The Herzl Conference on Leadership," which focused on modern Zionism following in the footsteps of Herzl's vision, and a conference on socio-economic entrepreneurship.

Basel was decorated in honor of the event, which is a milestone in itself for the city's history. The Stadtcasino Basel hall is a central site that was founded in 1876 and serves, among others, as the home of the local symphony orchestra and for four years, since 2016, has been closed for a thorough renovation, "to bring it back to its days of glory."

On Monday, the main event of the conference in the renovated hall in Basel will host many Jewish men and women, who are a source of pride for the State of Israel, which in the summer of 1897 had just been put on the drawing board and was a distant dream. "When the war broke out in Ukraine, the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency and the State of Israel joined a rescue mission, which brought 18,000 Jews to Israel," Hagoel says. "I have never seen a country take action like this to save its people. This is the difference between today and 125 years ago, a time when Israel did not exist."

125 years on, this is my Zionism - opinion

This week marks the 125th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress held in Basel, Switzerland. In celebration of this milestone, a conference and gala are being held in the very same city and casino where the first Zionist Congress was held. While Theodore Herzl himself is not in attendance, the current chairman of the World Zionist Organization is, along with many other WZO department heads, President Isaac Herzog, Swiss officials, Israeli officials and hundreds of representatives of Israel and Diaspora Jewry are all there to discuss Zionism, Israel and celebrate this very special occasion. It seems only fitting that in honor of the 125th anniversary of the rebirth of Zionism and, of course, in recognition of the upcoming 75th Israel Independence Day that we as a nation should take the opportunity to reflect on what today’s Zionism and the state of Israel means to us.

What Zionism and Israel mean to us
When the first Zionist Congress took place, Zionism was not exactly a trendy idea. It took time, effort and years of work for the idea of Zionism to permeate the culture of the time. Interestingly, we find ourselves in a similar situation today. While there was a period in time where Zionism became a popular idea that ultimately led to the ushering in of the new State of Israel, recent years have again presented a downturn in the acceptance and popularity of the Zionist ideal. Theories as to why this is may vary but I think that the core issue remains the same. There is a lack of consistency and understanding of what Zionism means today.

We Jews are no longer the same wandering, constantly persecuted and beaten people we once were. Of course, we have our challenges – antisemitism is on the rise, Iran is creeping ever closer to obtaining nuclear weapons, etc. But all in all we are a flourishing, successful and strong nation with a mighty country to call our own. And yet, we still continue to find ourselves faced constantly with the question of the relevance of Zionism and the need for the Jews to have their own state.

Imagine if all of us took the time to think about the answers. It is at times easy to take Israel for granted – especially for those of us who were born well after the early days and wars of the state. If the Zionist mission is to continue, we must each recommit ourselves to its values. Really think about the question: What does Zionism actually mean to me and why is it still important?

Most of us know what the core mission of Zionism is: The right of the Jewish people to our own state in our ancient homeland, Israel. But this mission should also account for the global realities of our time.

Basel 125 years later: Our biggest challenge is anti-Zionism -opinion

AS JEWISH leaders return to Basel, antisemitism continues to be a grave issue with worrying manifestations that would have been familiar to people living in 1897. We also have seen new forms – like online hate and harassment, or the blaming and scapegoating of Jewish individuals and organizations for the actions of the Jewish state.

Last year, the Anti-Defamation League recorded the highest number of antisemitic incidents in the US since the 1970s. One major spike came during the conflict between Israel and the terror group Hamas in May 2021, when we tracked a 150% increase in incidents, including 15 assaults and grotesque displays of anti-Israel hate.

Jews were brazenly attacked in public places in major cities such as New York and Los Angeles simply for the crime of their faith and identity.

Likewise, in the US and around the world we have seen political leaders and candidates on the far-right parrot antisemitic talking points, and those on the far-left using anti-Zionist rhetoric that is antisemitism at its core.

In Boston, an antisemitic group created a “Mapping Project,” claiming to expose a sinister Jewish conspiracy with interconnected nodes of “Zionism, Policing and Empire.” They invoked classic antisemitic tropes and endangered the entire Jewish community, accusing houses of worship and service-oriented nonprofits of the libel of dual-loyalty.

At ADL, we are doing our best to combat antisemitism from all sides and fighting those who would seek to undermine Israel’s legitimacy. But the fact that such virulent antisemitism is aimed at “Zionists” – i.e., Jews – writ large is perhaps one of the biggest challenges of our time.

As I have said before, anti-Zionism is antisemitism. At this moment, there is a need for the entire Jewish world to stand together against this new and dangerous form of antisemitism.

We cannot guarantee a secure Jewish future without strong efforts to push back against the extreme anti-Zionism rampant in many countries and seeping into international forums and places like legislatures and college campuses.

Despite these obstacles, the Basel anniversary is a moment to celebrate. The Jewish people are much stronger now than we were in 1897. In the same ways that the First Zionist Congress offered strength to Jews around the world and redefined our narrative, we must endeavor to draw strength from that moment and let it nourish us to meet the challenges ahead.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

From Fox News:

Student organizations at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law are facing backlash from their own dean after adopting a statement that pledges to not invite any Zionist or pro-Israel speaker to give lectures.

Law Students for Justice in Palestine at Berkeley Law made an Aug. 21 post on Instagram stating that nine other student organizations have adopted a "pro-Palestine bylaw" that states they "will not" invite speakers who support Zionism or "the apartheid state of Israel."

"In the interest of protecting the safety and welfare of Palestinian students on campus, [insert organization name] will not invite speakers that have expressed and continued to hold views or host/sponsor/promote events in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine," the bylaw states.

There are no similar rules barring terrorists, or Nazis, or people who want disco to come back.

Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky emailed the groups, saying,

I want the Law School to be a place where all views can be expressed and where all of our students, staff, and faculty feel included and that they belong.
... It is troubling to broadly exclude a particular viewpoint from being expressed. Indeed, taken literally, this would mean that I could not be invited to speak because I support the existence of Israel, though I condemn many of its policies.
The principles of community for the Berkeley campus stress that we are committed to ensuring freedom of expression and dialogue that elicits the full spectrum of views held by our varied communities. As part of Berkeley’s Antisemitism Education initiative the campus has created a video which explains why singling out the state of Israel for special condemnation, or questioning the very legitimacy of its existence, is considered by many Jewish students to be a form of Antisemitism.

In fact, this rule would mean that no current or past Supreme Court Justices could be invited to speak at these groups. Neither could nearly all members of Congress and every single senator.

The idea that law school students enthusiastically support limiting free speech and "protecting" adult students from hearing opinions they might disagree with is almost more troubling than their obvious antisemitism.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

08/29 Links Pt1: On Iran, the Americans Are Not Going to Work with Israel Seriously on a Plan B; UNRWA needs restructuring before it gets more funding

From Ian:

Ron Dermer (WaPo): On Iran, the Americans Are Not Going to Work with Israel Seriously on a Plan B

The Biden administration from the beginning was committed to going back into the nuclear deal. They started by saying they were going to get a "long and stronger" deal - which was absurd. The core Biden administration policy is the same as the Obama administration policy, which is to contain a nuclear Iran. It is not to prevent a nuclear Iran.

Once you understand that, their refusal to walk away from the table makes sense. They will never fully walk away from the table because from their point of view, the alternative to almost any nuclear deal is worse than the deal itself, because they see the alternative is military action. I don't think that's the only alternative to walking away from the deal, but the goal for them is to avoid a military confrontation at all costs.

If you ask the senior people in the Biden administration which of these two scenarios is worse - a military confrontation with Iran or a nuclear-armed Iran - they will actually say a military confrontation is worse. Their logic is that a military confrontation will only set the nuclear program back two or three years and then Iran will reconstitute its nuclear program and get a nuclear weapon anyway. So the best we can do, according to their logic, is to delay it for a few years, but that's better than a military confrontation with Iran. That's how they've always seen this problem.

You hear Israeli policymakers say, "We need to speak to the U.S. administration about different Plan B scenarios." The Israelis don't seem to understand that there is no Plan B - because they are opposed to any kind of military confrontation. So they're not going to work with Israel seriously on contingency planning, other than to put handcuffs on Israel doing military operations.

If there would be a deal that would actually eliminate Iran's military nuclear capability and at the same time would remove all the sanctions against Iran, Israel would accept that deal because it would have solved the one problem that it was designed to solve - to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. This deal doesn't solve that problem. It at best delays it for a few years and in the meantime makes everything worse and gives them a kosher stamp for a nuclear arsenal.

On the Precipice of a Very Bad Iran Deal

it seems the U.S. is on the verge of reentering the Iran nuclear deal. The Islamic Republic has continued energetic work on its supposedly non-existent nuclear weapons program, making such progress that a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei claims Tehran is already able to fashion a weapon. (That raises the question of why talks are continuing.)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) identified in 2019 a number of questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities in Iran that had not been declared to the Agency and requested responses to these questions from Iran. After committing to answer IAEA questions, Iranian officials missed the agreed-upon deadline for responding. Reportedly, the current proposal to resolve the IAEA inspections dilemma is to condition implementation of the deal on the IAEA closing its investigation.

For those countries concerned about Iran's malign intentions, a "return" to "compliance" with the JCPOA will be nearly moot, as the agreement's restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities will begin to expire in a year and a half, and almost all will lapse by the end of this decade. At that point Iran will be fully within its rights under the agreement to do all the things that the Biden administration tells us today it is too risky to permit Iran to do.

Iran's nuclear program is largely on track; its missile and terrorism programs are untouched. The White House will likely ignore the angry denunciations of the new deal by the Israelis with conciliatory pats, new arms exports, and empty promises.

European Draft of Iran Nuclear Deal Leaves Critical Matters Unresolved

A close look at the final draft of the nuclear deal with Iran, proposed by the EU in July, reveals the pace of sanctions' removal is greater than the schedule for Iran to quit its uranium enrichment and get rid of its stocks of already enriched material, as well as its centrifuges.

The emerging deal addresses only the fissile material needed to build a bomb, and not other components of Iran's military nuclear program, including its development of nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them.

The deal also ignores Iran's belligerent policies in the Middle East and its use of proxies to destabilize the region.

In practical terms, in the first three months of the agreement, the IAEA will be unable to inspect Iran's nuclear program. Iran will be able to produce advanced centrifuges and hide enriched material.

Here come the Ramon Airport conspiracy theories

Well, this was inevitable.

Palestinian and Hezbollah media are claiming that Israel's plan to allow Palestinians to use Ramon Airport in the Negev is really part of a sinister plot.

In an article that's been published in multiple news sites, Arab "experts" claim that Israel's allowing Palestinian from the West Bank to travel via Ramon Airport is only the first stage towards forcing Arab Israelis to use the same airport, to leave Ben Gurion airport for Jews only.

Ameer Makhoul, an Arab Christian from Haifa who can use Ben Gurion anytime he wants, insists that Ramon Airport will become a nightmare crossing, adding hours to Palestinian travel times that Israeli checkpoints supposedly do. He compares Palestinians using Ramon Airport to South African apartheid.

Arab Member of the Knesset Mazen Ghanem echoes this theory, saying, "It is clear that Israel, with political malice, is turning the airport into a place of suffering to deport Palestinians who wish to travel from the West Bank." He adds that the airport will be a place of "suffering that will be worse than what is happening to the Palestinians at the Erez checkpoint and the Rafah crossing, which are known for the endless journeys of Palestinians through them torment and tragedy."

This is all insane. If Ramon Airport becomes a terrible place to travel to, then the Palestinians can still travel through Jordan as they have been, right? No one is forcing them to use Ramon Airport - are they?

According to this Knesset member, the Palestinians will have no choice but to go through Ramon. He doesn't exactly describe how, but he emphasizes that for the Palestinians who do use Ramon, no one should blame them because they have no choice.

This is all a crazed fever dream.

But meanwhile, there is another benefit to Palestinians from even the possibility of Ramon Airport opening for them.

While Jordan has been strenuously protesting the airport as an attack, because of the potential loss of revenue of captive Palestinian customers for their Amman airport, politicians and some media realize that the nightmare of travel though the Allenby Bridge and to the airport is the main reason Palestinians would choose Ramon to begin with.

Jordanian MP Khalil Attia publicly asked 20 questions to the Jordanian prime minister, asking why the Palestinian experience in traveling through Amman is so lengthy and expensive. Palestinians from Jerusalem without Jordanian citizenship need to purchase a temporary Jordanian passport every few years, at a cost of $300, for example; there are other fees at the Jordan River crossings. Palestinians have to go through a gauntlet of lines and checkpoints, even on the Jordanian side, in order to travel. Jordan's waiting areas for Palestinians don't even have air conditioning. Palestinians cannot have their bags checked normally; after security checks the luggage is piled into a room where people have to find their own luggage which can take hours. There is no mechanism for Palestinian complaints about the Jordanian procedures.

Attia also listed no less than 15 different procedures with lines that Palestinians traveling to Amman's airport must go through.

In order to remain competitive with Ramon, Jordan will need to improve their own policies regarding Palestinian travelers, whom they have up until now treated like cattle.

It looks likely that even for Palestinians who refuse to use Ramon Airport, Jordan is being pressured to improve their travel experience.

Amazing what a little competition can do.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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The Abraham Accords are helping Palestinian businesses

It has been two years since the Abraham Accords were signed. Trade between Israel and the UAE is booming - over $1.4 billion so far this year, more than all of 2021.

However, it isn't only Israel and the UAE that are benefitting. Palestinian businesses are gaining as well.

DANA describes itself as "an Abu Dhabi based venture builder and investment platform that supports women-led startups in desert tech, including sectors of agritech, water solutions, food security, waste management, and renewable energy through regional collaboration, innovation mentorship, impact community, and funding."

They currently support "six startups from different countries including the UAE, Israel, Palestine, and KSA, all of which are led by at least one female founder, focusing on sustainability in the desert climate, that address pertinent pain points in the region’s most significant industries. "

The three women who founded DANA include a Jewish American, an Arab Israeli and a Jewish Israeli.

Majd Mashharawi, founder of Gaza's SunBox

Currently, companies that are being nurtured by DANA include BioCloud, an Israeli company that makes herbal pesticides; Sunbox, a Gaza-based solar power startup which is now reliably powering water treatment facilities; Eco-Bricks, which converts polluting stone slurry water from quarrying into quality bricks for construction; and The Food Engineer, a UAE-based vertical farming firm that created a misting technique that uses 95% less water than standard farms.

While the media has taken note of the skyrocketing increase in trade between Israel and the UAE in the wake of the Abraham Accords, one sees very few articles on how the normalization is helping Palestinian firms. They are getting know-how and funding as well as access to world-class expertise that simply would not have been possible before the Accords.

Moreover, DANA fosters women-owned businesses in the notoriously patriarchal Palestinian society.

Israel haters deride the idea of "economic peace" as a basis for a stable Middle East, but this is how real peace can take root and grow. The UAE is an ideal bridge that allows Palestinian businesses to work with Israelis while bypassing the stigma of direct "normalization."

The peace between Israel and the UAE is also creating unforeseen benefits for Palestinians, especially Palestinian women, and this is something to be applauded.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Elaph published details of a report showing that Fatah official "Major General" Tawfiq Al-Tirawi was guilty of corruption.

Al-Tirawi was the chair of the Board of Trustees for the Palestinian Military and Security Academy in Jericho, associated with Al Istiqlal University. Abbas recently removed him from that position.

The report accuses Tirawi of professional and financial abuse, and of appointments to close people and relatives.

The college initiated real estate projects that appear to have been created to line the pockets of Tirawi and his cronies. The university received none of the revenues from Jericho villas and an office building in Al Ram, ostensibly for Al Istiqlal University but that the university does not need.

An audio recording of Al Tirawi surfaced where he attacked Minister of Civil Affairs Hussein al-Sheikh and his family. Al-Sheikh is a rival of Tirawi to succeed Abbas and is widely considered to have the inside track.

There is an additional investigation into Al Tirawi on "very serious" charges that Elaph said it did not want to publish yet.

Apparently, all of those who want to succeed Mahmoud Abbas, who is 87, are now digging up dirt on their rivals and planting stories. Not that the stories aren't true! But Tirawi has a history of criticizing Mahmoud Abbas and it looks like some of these accusations are sourced at the top.

Meanwhile, others note that Al-Tirawi is the head of a special investigation committee set up by Mahmoud Abbas more than ten years ago to investigate the circumstances of Yasser Arafat's death. The committee receives a monthly budget but it has yet to issue any reports.

Al Tirawi responded to that accusation, saying the committee has not yet completed the investigation, and has not yet reached accurate, objective and conclusive results about the "assassination." But as soon as it does find the "irrefutable proof" it will set up trials of the supposed murderers.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Elder Comix: The magic word that wards off being called an antisemite

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

08/28 Links: Any power the JCPOA had to curb Iranian nukes is long gone; Holocaust inversion: Abbas' longtime weapon of choice

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel’s rational and irrational Iran policies

For their part, Israel’s generals did their best to discredit and subvert Netanyahu. From 2010 through 2012, Dagan, Pardo, Ashkenazy and Gantz all rejected repeated orders from Netanyahu to prepare the security services to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. In 2010 Dagan flew to Washington without authorization to tell then CIA chief Leon Panetta that Netanyahu had ordered the Mossad and the IDF to attack Iran. Pardo and Gantz similarly refused Netanyahu’s order to prepare to attack Iran in 2011.

Israel’s military and intelligence leaders also worked to undermine Netanyahu’s credibility by refusing to stand with him when he waged his public campaign against the JCPOA in 2014 and 2015. While refusing to publicly criticize the deal which gave Iran a glide path to a nuclear arsenal, military and intelligence leaders gave off-camera interviews applauding the deal. Eisenkot openly embraced the JCPOA after he retired in 2019.

During Donald Trump’s presidency, Pardo condemned Netanyahu for revealing that the Mossad had seized Iran’s nuclear archive, despite the fact that the operation, and its publication, paved the way for Trump’s abandonment of the JCPOA and implementation of his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which brought the regime to its knees and dried up its funding for its terror proxies. Gantz and Ashkenazy opposed the Abraham Accords and torpedoed Netanyahu’s sovereignty plan in Judea and Samaria. Gantz refused to fund a project Netanyahu advocated that would significantly improve Israel’s ability to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.

Last year, with the newly elected Biden having pledged to return the United States to the JCPOA, and with Netanyahu out of power, Israel’s dual rational-irrational response to the JCPOA came to an end. Irrationality won out.

Upon entering office, then prime minister Naftali Bennett, Lapid and Gantz made the security establishment’s defense of the JCPOA and its refusal to recognize its strategic implications the basis of their policymaking. They adopted a policy of silencing criticism of the administration’s Iran policy, and continuously blaming Netanyahu for Iran’s nuclear advances. They ignored the fact that all of Iran’s nuclear advances happened after Biden won the presidential elections in November 2020, and attributed them instead to Trump’s abandonment of the JCPOA. Indeed, they claimed Netanyahu’s public opposition to the JCPOA was the reason Obama signed onto it, and that Netanyahu’s success in persuading Trump to abandon the deal is the reason Iran is now a nuclear threshold state.

Bennett, Lapid and Gantz announced a policy of “no surprises” in relation to Israel’s operations in Iran, giving Biden an effective veto over all of Israel’s actions—which all but ended shortly thereafter. Lapid ended Israel’s independent foreign policy and opted to transform Israel into the State Department’s echo chamber. In so doing, he destroyed Israel’s relations with Russia, endangering Israel’s operations in Syria and paving the way for Russia’s decision to upgrade its ties with Iran.

Whereas Obama’s JCPOA was a looming strategic disaster for Israel, Biden’s nuclear deal is an imminent existential threat to Israel. Despite Lapid and Gantz’s calming messages, Barnea’s warnings are entirely accurate. Even if it is true that Sullivan whispered sweet nothings in Hulata’s and Gantz’s ears, the fact is that under Biden’s deal, the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear operations begin expiring next year, and effectively end in 2025. Biden’s deal leaves Iran’s illicitly enriched uranium in Iran. It hamstrings the IAEA. And it massively enriches Iran, transforming it into a regional power, boasting a nuclear weapons program legitimized by the UN Security Council and guaranteed by an administration that will remain in power until the nuclear restrictions end.

So too, as Barnea warned, Biden’s deal with Iran endangers the Abraham Accords, by compelling the Sunnis to reach accommodations with a hegemonic Iran, leaving Israel without regional partners.

The rational response to this catastrophic turn of events is to disengage from the Biden administration, work with the Republicans to wage a public relations war against the deal, ratchet up Israel’s ties with the Gulf states, mend fences with Russia and work intensively to develop and deploy military means to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations. The irrational response is to fly to America, pretend that everything is fine, and proclaim, based on a “feeling,” that the Americans will solve the Iran problem for us.

Ruthie Blum: Time is running out to act against Iran

With the United States and its P5+1 partners on the last stretch of their frenzied race to sign a new version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, a number of retired Israel Defense Forces generals and current think-tank experts have been taking the opportunity to insist that “a bad deal is better than no deal.”

Take Israel Ziv, for instance. A panelist on Saturday afternoon of Channel 12’s “Meet the Press,” the former head of the IDF Operations Directorate argued that the absence of a deal, or violation of it by any of the parties, will not prevent Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold in any case.

He then proceeded, peculiarly, to downplay the significance of the multi-billions of dollars that an agreement would grant Tehran for the development of its nuclear capabilities, while at the same time stressing that the money would be spent on terrorism. Indeed.

Nevertheless, he added, a deal would buy “crucial time” for Israel. Whatever that means.

Though all other participants in the discussion—with the exception of former Israeli Navy commander Vice Adm. (ret.) Eliezer Marom—conceded that a deal is just around the corner, and that a nuclear Iran would pose an existential threat to the Jewish state, they clung to two absurd claims.

One was that former U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 was a mistake, because it enabled Tehran to hone its nukes unmonitored. You know, as though the mullahs were allowing International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors access to uranium-enrichment sites.

The other was that former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s staunch stance against the deal, and famous address to a joint session of Congress in 2015, did nothing but anger outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama and cause him to abstain from, rather than veto, a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel.

The purpose of this distortion, other than to kill two birds (Trump and Netanyahu) with one stone, is to defend the interim “anybody but Bibi” government’s policy of kowtowing to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden. Prime Minister Yair Lapid, like his immediate predecessor and “alternate,” Naftali Bennett, had set out to illustrate that once Netanyahu was no longer at the helm, Israel would enjoy full bipartisan support in America.

To this fruitless end, Bennett vowed last year to Biden that Jerusalem would make no military or other moves without first informing Washington. Lapid, of course, took up that torch and ran with it.

The trouble is that it’s not a reciprocal arrangement. Perhaps this explains why Lapid has had trouble reaching Biden by phone of late. The latter leader clearly isn’t interested in being coached, yet again, about the safeguards that have to be included in the deal to make it palatable to Israel.

Any power the JCPOA had to curb Iranian nukes is long gone

It is possible that the original JCPOA even with its shortcomings in 2015 could have been an imperfect partial solution to a major Iranian threat to regional and international security. Diplomacy very rarely produces perfect solutions. It may have delayed and limited the Iranian nuclear program for a certain amount of time perhaps several years, but the situation has now changed dramatically.

While the United States, Great Britain, Germany and France (the EU3) remain committed to a renewed JCPOA it still remains to be seen whether Iran will agree to its resumption and even comply with its limitations thereafter. Given Iran’s track record, no one should harbor any illusions about Iranian moderation regarding its nuclear aspirations, its regional destabilization and the nature of the present regime under Khamenei and Raisi.

A broader strategic vision
Israel must continue in its efforts to engage the US and the EU3 and outline the dangers and shortcomings inherent in a return to the JCPOA. Coordination with America should remain a high priority but Israel’s determination to define and defend its own national security must remain clear. While it is not up to Israel if this deal will be reached or not, it is also crucial to emphasize the need to back up any new deal with Iran by a robust American determination to deter Iran from approaching or crossing the nuclear threshold. There are tools in diplomacy and national security that can be effective and are not dependent on Iranian consent.

This should also be a time for intense behind the scenes consultations with our Arab peace treaty and Abraham Accord partners regarding the Iranian threat in order to harness and share our diplomatic efforts where they are best served. In that context, forging a broader regional understanding could also help in demonstrating how this new constellation in the Middle East could support other shared strategic interests not least of which should be a renewed search for an effective political horizon between Israel and the Palestinians.

In the final analysis a renewed JCPOA will be a limited agreement in time and substance regarding the nuclear threat. Ultimately, Israel and the other states in the region must contend with an Iran that has become more aggressive in recent years on many different levels and will not abandon its nuclear aspirations in the foreseeable future. This is the time for a broader strategic vision for the region to meet this central challenge.

Because no one else is doing it....

Amad (Palestinian): The Popular Struggle Front accuses Israel of stealing the organs of Palestinians who were killed during terror attacks,

Ad Dustour (Jordan): "Palestine is an Arab Palestinian from the sea to the river, and there is no place for the Jews in it, and they have to go back to where their fathers and grandfathers came on one black night.. to land on our shores as locusts landed, to eat the vegetation."

Freedom and Justice Gate (Egypt): Asks why the UAE, in allowing a synagogue to be built in its territory, is "embracing of the enemies of Islam."

Alsaa (Jordan): The Holocaust industry continues: this time against the Argentinian president.

Al-Ahram (Egypt): The UN's recognition of the American Zionist Movement as an advisory NGO is the "whitening" of Zionism and shows support by the UN of "systematic racist policies practiced by Israel against the Palestinian people."

Sama News (Palestinian): A poll of Palestinian academics shows that 94.9% support the position of Abbas not to apologize for the Munich massacre vs. only 0.02% who opposed it. 85.9%, agreed that Israel perpretates "holocausts" against Palestinians, while 7.1% opposed the use of this term.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Haaretz is perplexed:

In addition to dealing with the progress toward a new nuclear agreement with Iran and the talks aimed at preventing a teachers’ strike September 1, Israeli decision makers had another matter to ponder this week. Much time and other resources were devoted to trying to figure out what Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is up to. The answers, so far, have been very partial.

There seems to be no logic to Nasrallah’s frequent threats to strike Israeli drilling platforms in the Mediterranean, risking war, if a final agreement is not reached on the Israel-Lebanon maritime border. Lebanon is in the midst of a severe economic and political crisis, and if war were to break out Hezbollah would likely be widely blamed for embroiling the country in an unnecessary and very costly military adventure.

Nevertheless, throughout the summer Nasrallah has spoken out the dispute over natural-gas drilling rights, growing increasingly extreme in his statements. What’s worrisome, especially to Military Intelligence, is the difficulty of analyzing his views and intentions. Despite the high likelihood of an eventual agreement, with U.S. mediation, there is still genuine apprehension about possible surprises from Hezbollah.

It still amazes me that serious analysts think that Hezbollah leader Nasrallah makes any real decisions on his own. His loyalty is to Iranian leaders, and no one else. The well-being of Lebanon is not one of his goals, it is an impediment to his goals.

Even UNIFIL, which is reluctant to publicly criticize Hezbollah, has called out its increased militarization and violations of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah's increasing bellicosity must be seen in context of what is happening with other Iranian proxies. For example, this story today says that Syria asked Iran and its proxies not to conduct attacks against Israel from its territory - which means that Syria is aware of such plans.

Not to mention the Islamic Jihad mini-war earlier in August, which was prompted by an attempt for a major terror attack against Israel. That was all orchestrated by Iran, seemingly against Hamas wishes for stability in Gaza.

See a pattern?

There was also an intriguing story of a possible Israeli strike at a Houthi camp in Yemen on August 7, during the Gaza fighting, where six Iranian and Lebanese advisers were killed. The Houthis, using Iranian technology, have been increasing their ballistic missile and cruise missile ranges to reach Israel and have directly threatened Israel as well.

From all indications, Iran is gearing up for a major escalation of fighting against Israel, but it is not ready to directly attack. It wants its proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and seemingly Yemen (maybe even Iraq) to overwhelm Israeli missile defenses with thousands of rockets from all directions. (One must also assume that Iran is working with some Israeli Arabs to create a fifth column of terror attacks within Israel itself in the case of any war.)

The escalation of threats by Iran and its proxies is almost certainly linked with the nuclear negotiations. The billions of dollars that Iran would gain from an agreement would help fund these proxies, a basic fact that the West is consciously overlooking in its zeal to close out a bad deal with Iran. Iran understands the West much better than the West understands Iran, and the mullahs have already proven that they can gain far more leverage with militancy than with confidence building measures.

And they know quite well that the West, after finally sighing with relief at an agreement, will not have the will or desire to threaten new sanctions in response to an Iranian-directed proxy war against Israel.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The American Jewish Committee in the 1960s: Peter Beinart's NYT lies more egregious than I reported

I wrote my fisking of Peter Beinart's NYT op-ed quickly, but the true depth of Beinart's dishonesty can be seen from a deeper dive into one of the topics he mentioned and I touched upon.

He wrote, "Although supportive of Israel’s existence, America’s leading Jewish groups did not make it the center of their work in the mid-20th century. And when they did focus on Israel, they often tried to bring its behavior in line with their broader liberal democratic goals. The A.J.C. repeatedly criticized Israel for discriminating against its Palestinian Arab citizens. In 1960 the head of the group’s Israel Committee explained that it hoped to eliminate “antidemocratic practices and attitudes” in the Jewish state so the organization could more credibly “invoke principles of human rights and practices in our country and abroad.”

Beinart links to a fairly obscure 1998 academic paper, "Transformation Through Crisis: The American Jewish Committee and the Six-Day War," by Lawrence Grossman, published in the journal American Jewish History. This is already a red flag - if American Jewish organizations in the 1960s were so uniformly critical of Israeli democracy, wouldn't there be a New York Times article about it that Beinart could link to?

The entire point of the academic article Beinart links to is to show that the AJC was out of the mainstream of American Jewish opinion on Israel and Zionism before 1967. It refutes Beinart's point - but Beinart quotes a small portion and pretends that the AJC's ambivalence on Israel represented mainstream American Jewish thought.

On the contrary - that attitude made the AJC nearly irrelevant in the 1960s. The paper makes the AJC's anomalous status clear:

The Jewish community had shifted massively toward the Zionist pole, and the AJC risked being marginalized if it did not adjust.

By the early 1960s, writes Naomi Cohen, AJC "had virtually stopped growing." In 1962 Executive Vice President John Slawson told a newly organized AJC Committee on National Growth that one reason Jews were reluctant to join was that "there is still a feeling that we are anti-Israel."

The article also notes that the AJC was literally the only Jewish organization in America to criticize Israel for a 1966 retaliatory raid in Jordan after a series of Arab attacks and not to condemn a UN anti-Israel resolution on the issue. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Organizations, the major American Jewish umbrella group, condemned the UN resolution. The National Community Relations Council, the other large American Jewish umbrella group, was prevented from joining the Conference of Presidents resolution because its rules required a unanimous vote - and the objection of the AJC, which had only recently joined the NCRC, vetoed it.

Beinart must have read the entire piece to find the out-of-context quote he published, which means he knows very well that he was misrepresenting the opinions of major American organizations.

To be sure, American Jews in the 1960s had other issues to worry about besides Israel. There was still explicit antisemitism in America, and the plight of Soviet Jewry started gaining recognition. But I did a quick survey of the front page of the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, as a representative of Jewish mainstream concerns, on its first issue in each year from 1960 to 1967. Israeli topics were featured as the top story in every issue (judged as the right-most story on the front page):

January 1, 1960: Golda Meir criticizes a World Bank loan to Nasser's Egypt

January 6, 1961: David Ben Gurion says a speech of his was distorted and he lauds US Jewry

January 5, 1962: Soviet-Egyptian pact on arms a concern for Israel

January 4, 1963: "Middle East arms race unfolding to Israel's disadvantage": Javits

January 3, 1964: Israel charges Syria with "barbarism" in treatment of Israeli prisoners

January 1, 1965: Cabinet decides against reopening Lavon affair

January 7, 1966: State Department confirms supplying Jordan with up to 100 Patton tanks

January 6, 1967: Israel complains to Security Council over Arab raids

Beinart is making things up, knowing full well that most people - and certainly the New York Times editorial board - will not fact-check him. This is a pattern with Beinart, who is not only lying, but attempting to rewrite history itself.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

08/27 Links: The Use Of Human Shields Is A War Crime. America Must Hold Terrorists Accountable; Why are Israelis so happy? Because Israel is small

From Ian:

The Use Of Human Shields Is A War Crime. America Must Hold Terrorists Accountable

The administration and Congress should take several steps to more effectively counter the widespread use of human shields by PIJ and other terrorist organizations.

First, the administration should implement its legal authority to designate terrorists who use human shields. Despite strong evidence of human shields use by PIJ and other terrorists, and the requirements of U.S. law, neither Trump nor Biden has thus far imposed any human shields sanctions on anyone. Imposing sanctions on PIJ leaders for their use of human shields would be an important first step.

Meanwhile, Congress should reauthorize and enhance the existing sanctions law,which is set to expire on December 31, 2023.

In addition, the US, Israel, and other allies should work together, including with NATO, to press the UN and other international organizations to investigate, condemn, and encourage penalties for human shields use by terrorist organizations and their material supporters. For example, the UN human rights high commissioner and council should be encouraged to vigorously investigate, condemn, and encourage accountability for the use of human shields.

Finally, the militaries of Israel, the United States and other NATO members, and other allies must coordinate in sharing best practices for more effectively addressing the use of human shields by terrorist organizations.

A robust U.S. government response to the use of human shields by PIJ and other terrorist groups would concretely advance several American national security and foreign policy objectives. These objectives include protecting U.S. and other NATO troops against terrorist use of human shields; setting the record straight in the face of UN and other efforts to falsely accuse Israel of committing war crimes; and undermining PIJ, Hamas, and other terrorist groups while supporting Palestinians who are prepared to make peace with Israel.

Jonathan Tobin: An end to the delusions about Biden, Iran and Israel?

Like any gambler who is willing to seize on any glimmer of hope that irresponsible betting will be rewarded with an unexpected reversal of fortune, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid was sounding hopeful this week. The Israeli government that he now leads spent the last year wagering the Jewish state’s security on the idea that better relations with the Biden administration and a decision to downplay differences would influence Washington to finally show some spine and stop appeasing Iran. So, it was hardly unexpected that Lapid would seize on the news that the United States had “hardened” its response to the latest Iranian counter-offer in the talks about renewing the 2015 nuclear deal.

The “good news” consisted of a report claiming that Lapid had been told by Washington that it would not give in to Iranian demands that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cease investigating Tehran’s nuclear program or take the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) off the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Shorn of context, that might be an encouraging development. But with the international media publishing multiple stories based on leaks from the administration about an agreement between the two sides being imminent, the notion that any victory on these two points, whether temporary or not, vindicates the decision Lapid’s tactics is risible.

Even taken in isolation, these points don’t mean that much.

As bad as giving in on that point would be, the IRGC issue is largely symbolic. If a new deal is reached, Iran’s terrorist arm will be immeasurably strengthened and enriched along with the rest of the regime, regardless of whether they’re on a U.S. list of terror groups. It’s also true that even if Iran doesn’t get Biden to agree to drop the involvement of the IAEA altogether, that means nothing. As the Iranians have demonstrated ever since former President Barack Obama’s signature foreign-policy achievement was put into force in 2015, violating they have no compunctions about repeatedly violating it, especially with regard to flouting the components requiring compliance with IAEA regulations.

More to the point, if these provisions and other points of equal importance are the only obstacles standing between an agreement, then Lapid knows his hopes of persuading the administration not to sign a new deal are negligible. As Lapid has recently reiterated, Israel’s position is that the United States and its partners in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) are making a huge mistake. Mossad chief David Barnea has been adamant in insisting that the plan is a “strategic disaster” for Israel and based on “lies.”

‘Basmanny Justice’ and the Jews of Russia

Six months into the war in Ukraine, Russia is being Russia once again.

By that, I mean the predatory, bullying Russia that we know from history. The Russia that persecutes Jews and other minorities, whether under the tsars or the Bolsheviks. The Russia that sneers at freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the other precious individual rights that prevail in the democratic West, while pushing its own brand of nationalist, obscurantist ideology.

When it comes to the “Jewish Question,” as the Bolsheviks were fond of calling it, Russia’s hostility is eminently recognizable. For much of the Putin era, that reality has been obscured, as the Russian dictator actively promoted the impression of a benevolent disposition towards the country’s Jewish minority, assisted in this task by a number of Jewish influencers abroad who really should have known better. Yet as was predictable, with the first whiff of a geopolitical crisis, Jews have once again been cast in a villainous role.

In a recent interview with the Voice of America’s Russian-language service, Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet Jewish refusenik who served as head of the Jewish Agency from 2009 to 2018, observed that Russia is “almost completely isolated from the free world.” Like a wounded animal, it is lashing out at its adversaries as a result, trying to find and pressure any weak spots. Sharansky pointed to the example of Germany, where the coming winter is anticipated with dread given the German dependence on Russia’s heavily sanctioned energy sector.

“They are scaring Germany with the fact that people will start dying from the cold in winter,” said Sharansky.

In Israel, of course, the mild winters and the lack of dependency on Russian natural gas—earlier this year, the European Union even signed a deal to import Israeli and Egyptian natural gas as part of weaning the bloc off Russian supplies—mean that the regime in Moscow has to select a different pressure point. “In the same way, they are starting to put pressure on us, using the Jewish Agency,” emphasized Sharansky.

Russia’s campaign against the Jewish Agency, which assists Jews wishing to emigrate to Israel, was launched at the end of last month. The Russian ministry of justice filed a legal bid to close the agency’s local operations, alleging that a database of Russian citizens was being maintained in contravention of Russian law.

08/26 Links Pt2: The Jewish and intellectual origins of this famously non-Jewish Jew; Ottawa's approach to anti-racism like asking Big Tobacco to cure cancer

From Ian:

The Afterlife

Alexander Pechersky Led a Successful Prisoner Revolt at the Sobibor Death Camp. His Extraordinary Story is Also That of Millions of Soviet Jews.

In November of 2018, at the National Arts Club in New York City, I attended a screening for the film Sobibor, which was described in the program as “First Russian Oscar Contender About Holocaust” (sic). The screening was part of a promotional campaign to secure a nomination in the best foreign film category, and was presented by the film’s producers, along with the Alexander Pechersky Foundation and the Russian American Foundation. Annexed to the auditorium where the screening was to happen was a small exhibition about Alexander “Sasha” Pechersky and the uprising he led at the Sobibor concentration camp, which was the subject of the film.

Konstantin Khabensky, the film’s star and director, had come to the screening from Russia. A panel of historians and experts was convened. The audience consisted of members of the local Jewish community and the Jewish press, not a few of them Russian-speaking. A group of elderly Russian Jewish war veterans, some in uniform, all decorated with their medals, were seated near the front of the room. Among them was a woman who wore a yellow star button on her blouse to identify her as a Holocaust survivor.

In opening remarks, a scholar of Soviet Holocaust cinema commended the producers for making a Russian film about the Holocaust, a suppressed subject for most of the Soviet period. In fact, any acknowledgment of the unique nature of the tragedy experienced by Soviet Jews in painting, sculpture, poetry, fiction, history, public monuments and other forms of remembrance was practically forbidden. In a nation that suffered so profoundly, with as many as 27 million citizens perishing during the war, the official position was that it was wrong to divide the victims. At sites of mass killings, if there was any commemoration at all, it memorialized “peaceful Soviet citizens” who had died at the hands of “the German occupiers.” Sobibor might therefore be regarded as the Russian equivalent to Schindler’s List.

Films are subjective things and it’s not my intention to engage in criticism of a film released two years ago. Also, the quality of the film is of negligible importance to the larger story of Alexander Pechersky’s life and legacy. But there were many people in the auditorium who were moved to tears by the film, gasped at acts of brutality or laughed at an incident of comeuppance against the Nazis, just like they were watching a regular movie. Unless they’d read the literature about Sobibor and Pechersky, none could have detected the places where the film departed from historical fact, though a partial list would include: Leon Feldhendler (spelled “Felhendler” in recently-discovered archival documents), one of the leaders of the camp underground, wasn’t killed during the revolt; Pechersky didn’t carry the corpse of a young woman named Luka out of the camp in his arms; a Nazi named Frenzel wasn’t shot by Pechersky; there was no crematorium smokestack in Sobibor; and Shlomo Szmajzner, a young Polish prisoner, didn’t, as the end titles assert, hunt down and kill Gustav Wagner, perhaps the camp’s most notoriously brutal SS officer, and 17 other Nazis in Brazil.

At the conclusion of the film, one audience member did inquire about historical accuracy, in response to which the gathered historians offered a general defense of the artist’s right to bend documentary truth for the sake of the emotional one. The Holocaust survivor, a small but pugnacious woman in the Russian Jewish mold, rose to praise the film, which she had now watched for the second time, though it caused her pain in every cell in her body. “Never again!” she proclaimed. One of the veterans took the floor and affirmed that the film showed what had happened in his generation and hoped it would serve as a lesson for the future. He proceeded to make some observations about Arab aggression and, after meeting with a mixed response, resumed his seat.

Nobody in the audience subjected the film to the kind of scrutiny it met in the more exacting corners of the Russian Internet. A widely circulated op-ed written by a commentator on Garry Kasparov’s website accused the filmmakers, and by extension the Russian state, of evading the truth about Sobibor and the heroes it pretended to celebrate: Where was the reference to the Soviet citizens who filled the ranks of the camp guards? What of the local population’s complicity with the Nazis? How about the Soviet Union’s merciless attitude toward its own POWs? And might they have spared a word about the tribulations Pechersky experienced after the war on account of both his captivity and his ethnicity?

Attack on Rushdie mirrors 1925 killing of writer who satirized Vienna antisemitism

Hadi Matar, the man charged with the attempted murder of the distinguished novelist Salman Rushdie, admitted that he had only “read like two pages” of “The Satanic Verses,” Rushdie’s 1988 novel that angered fundamentalist Muslims around the world. Iran’s former Supreme Leader, Ayatalloh Ruhollah Khomeini, who announced a fatwa calling on all Muslims to murder Rushdie in 1989, hadn’t read it at all.

“The Satanic Verses” wasn’t the first – and won’t be the last – novel to provoke the rage of a fanatic who has no grasp of literature’s nuances.

In 1922, an Austrian writer named Hugo Bettauer published a novel set in Vienna called “The City Without Jews.” It sold a quarter of a million copies and became known internationally, with an English translation issued in London and New York. A silent movie adaptation, which has recently been recovered and restored, appeared in the summer of 1924. The following spring, a young Nazi burst into Bettauer’s office and shot him multiple times. The author died of his wounds two weeks later.

A novel published in a polarized city
As in the US today, there was a major gap between rich and poor in early 20th-century Vienna.

The impressive architecture of the inner city sheltered immense wealth, while there was desperate poverty in the working-class districts beyond. The opulence of the banks and department stores, the culture of the theaters and opera house – especially in the predominantly Jewish district of Leopoldstadt – inevitably stirred deep resentment.

In the years immediately preceding World War I, populist mayor Karl Lueger saw his opportunity: He could win votes by blaming every problem on the Jews. Many a Jewish refugee would later say that the antisemitism in Vienna was worse than Berlin’s. An impoverished painter living in a public dormitory in a poor district to the north of Leopoldstadt was inspired to build a new ideology following Lueger’s blueprint. His name was Adolf Hitler.

Gil Troy: The Jewish and intellectual origins of this famously non-Jewish Jew

Editor’s note: Excerpted from the new three-volume set, “Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings,” the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People edited by Gil Troy, to be published this August marking the 125th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress. This is the second article in a series. The first in the series is available here.

Theodor Herzl was born on May 2, 1860, in Pest, Hungary, across the River Danube from Buda. The second child and only son of a successful businessman, Jakob, he was raised to fit in to the elegant, sophisticated society his family and a fraction of his people had fought so hard to enter. But it is too easy to caricature his upbringing as fully emancipated and assimilated.

His paternal grandfather, Simon Loeb Herzl, came from Semlin, today’s Zemun, now incorporated into Belgrade. There, Simon befriended Rabbi Judah ben Solomon Chai Alkalai. This prominent Sephardic leader was an early Zionist, scarred by the crude anti-Semitism of the Damascus Blood Libel of 1840, inspired by the old-new Greek War of Independence in the 1820s—and energized by the spiritual and agricultural possibilities of returning the Jews to their natural habitat, their homeland in the Land of Israel. It is plausible that the grandfather conveyed some of those ideas, some of that excitement, to his grandson.

Still, the move from Semlin to Budapest, from poverty to wealth, from intense Jewish living in the ghetto to emancipated European ways in the city, placed the Herzl family at the intersection of many of his era’s defining currents.

The 1800s were years of change—and of isms. Creative ideas erupted amid the disruptions of industrialization, urbanization and capitalism. Three defining ideologies were rationalism, liberalism and nationalism—with each one shaping the next. The Age of Reason, the Enlightenment—science itself—rose thanks to rationalism. Life was no longer organized around believing in God and serving your king, but following logic, facts, objective truth. The logic of reason flowed naturally to liberalism, an expansive political ideology rooted in recognizing every individual’s inherent rights. Finally, as polities became less God-and-king-centered, nationalism filled in the God-sized hole in many people’s hearts. Individuals bonded based on their common heritage, language, ethnicity, or regional pride—and needs.

Ideas are not static. In an ideological age rippling with such dramatic changes, the different isms kept colliding and fusing, like atoms becoming molecular compounds. Some combinations proved more stable—and constructive—than others.

Liberalism combined with nationalism created Americanism, the democratic model wherein individual rights flourished in a collective context yielding the liberal-democratic nation-state. An offshoot of liberalism emphasizing equality more than rights fused with rationalism and created Marxism, although Karl Marx admitted his theories could only be enacted with irrational terror. Marxism with that violent streak, drained of liberalism, became communism, while a hyper-nationalism, rooted in blood-and-soil loyalty, and the kind of Marxist rationalism and totalitarianism also drained of any liberalism, created Nazism.