Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Iran isn't very subtle about its antisemitism by naming its missile "Khaybar-buster"

From the Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

On February 9, just as the nuclear talks in Vienna reached a critical stage, Iran unveiled its “Khaybar Sheikan” (Khaybar Buster) missile, which has a purported range of 1,450 kilometers. This significant development demonstrates, more than anything, the increasing size and range of Iran’s slant-firing solid-motor missiles. The Khaybar reference, meanwhile, points to a seventh-century battle between Muhammad’s army and Jewish communities near Medina whose members refused to convert to Islam and were defeated after their hardened fortresses were overrun.

This isn't exactly subtle. The primary target for such a missile is Israel and they name it after a battle where Muslims massacred Jews.

Anti-Israel protests are often punctuated with chants of "Khaybar, Khaybar ya Yahud, Jaish Muhammad, sa yahud,” which means, “Khaybar, Khaybar oh Jews, the army of Muhammad is returning.” No one can miss the symbolism.

Yet no one is calling Iran out for its obvious antisemitism in naming the missile as a weapon built specifically to attack Jews. The supposed experts on antisemitism from the Left have been silent about their Iranian allies naming a weapon to evoke killing Jews.

It isn't even like this is the first missile named after Khaybar. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah introduced the Khaybar-1 rocket in 2006 and it was used in the 2006 Lebanon war against Israel, hitting Haifa.

Iran and its apologists love to insist that the country has no problems with Jews, only Zionists. They can't explain this Khaibar Sheikan away, so they simply ignore it.

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

02/15 Links Pt2: Why We Lied to Ourselves About Whoopi Goldberg and Antisemitism; Jewish left leader accidentally calls PA chief an anti-Semite; AOC heckled by pro-Palestinian protestors

From Ian:

Why We Lied to Ourselves About Whoopi Goldberg and Antisemitism

For me, the motives were somewhat personal. When I was growing up the whole family loved Goldberg’s performance as the wise and ageless bartender Guinan on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” I’ve always looked at Goldberg with great affection, and would prefer to continue doing so; I imagine a great many feel the same, for our own reasons. I loved Goldberg on “TNG,” and I didn’t want her to be an antisemite. So, I decided she wasn’t. I accepted comfortable bromides about ignorance and education, and reflexively absolved her of all responsibility.

The problem is that no one can look into anyone else’s soul. With very few exceptions, it is all but impossible to say a person is “an antisemite” in the essence of their being. We can only know what they say and do. As James Baldwin said: This is the evidence. What Goldberg said and did was, without question, monstrous. And as Barlow put it, “What evidence is there that Goldberg is a friend of the Jews? I don’t yet see it.”

Neither do I. The latest evidence we have indicates that she is, at best, not particularly fond of us, and we should have treated her accordingly. We were wrong to do otherwise. Moreover, our rush to the “education solution” indicates a deeper problem: We want to believe that antisemites, despite all evidence, can be fixed. That if we apply the progressive methods of nurture and consciousness-raising, the problem will simply go away. It is to this comfortable fantasy that we clung when we were faced with the uncomfortable necessity of repudiating a celebrity we admire.

And it is a fantasy. The truth is that education does nothing to fight antisemitism, because antisemites are, by definition, people who have refused to be educated. They are not antisemitic because they are ignorant — they are antisemitic because antisemitism serves selfish needs, rooted in the depths of their psyches, often unknown even to themselves. You could have educated Haman until the cows came home, and it would have made no difference, because his hatred of the Jews was not circumstantial but primordial.

In the end, against people who are immune to rational argument, self-defense is the only option. Resistance and deterrence can effectively fight antisemitism. Nothing else works or has ever worked. This is the evidence. In the face of not simply the Goldberg affair but our own reaction to it, we would all do well to remember that.

Whoopi Goldberg returns to ‘The View’ after suspension

Whoopi Goldberg returned to her hosting chair on “The View” Monday after a two-week suspension for her much-criticized comments about the Holocaust, pledging to “keep having tough conversations.”

“I listened to everything everybody had to say, and I was very grateful,” Goldberg told her viewers in a brief address at the top of the talk show as her co-hosts told her they missed her.

“It is an honor to sit at this table and be able to have these conversations, because they are important,” Goldberg said, without offering another direct apology or mentioning the Holocaust or Jews at all.

“Conversations,” she said, “are important to us as a nation, and to us more so as a human entity.”

Goldberg’s suspension had followed her Jan. 31 remarks on the program that “the Holocaust is not about race,” but rather about “man’s inhumanity to man.” Many groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, objected, saying that Hitler saw his planned extermination of the Jews as a racial project. Goldberg apologized, but further comments she made on the subject — including on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” — continued to add fuel to the fire, leading to ABC News President Kim Godwin announcing her suspension the following day “to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments.”

Jewish left leader accidentally calls Palestinian Authority chief an anti-Semite

Last week, for example, Jacobs was quoted by The Washington Post in its article about the Senate hearing concerning the nomination of Holocaust historian and Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt as U.S. envoy for combating anti-Semitism. Jacobs has no particular connection to Lipstadt and no particular expertise on anti-Semitism; nonetheless, the Post chose to present her as a Jewish leader commenting on the issue.

Now here’s where things got interesting.

Jacobs made a few general, unremarkable statements about examples of anti-Semitism. One of her examples was “denying Jewish history.” And that’s obviously true.

But Jacobs, who fervently supports the Palestinian statehood cause, does not seem to have considered the implications of her statement with regard to the man who would become the head of the Palestinian state that she wants to see established in Judea and Samaria, and the Old City of Jerusalem.

I’m talking about the fact that Abbas is one of the most outspoken deniers of Jewish history in the world today. He has made so many statements denying Jewish history that they could fill a book—and, in fact, they have; he is the author of an entire book claiming that the Nazis killed only 1 million Jews and accusing Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, of collaborating with the Nazis. But for now, I’m going to cite just two of his speeches because they are particularly revealing.

Today's joke: UN Human Rights Council claims it cares about impartiality (plus ElderToon)

UN Watch wrote a letter to the head of the UN Human Rights Council and attached a 30 page report proving that Navi Pillay, who was appointed to lead an inquiry on Israeli actions, is biased against Israel.

The facts aren't even in question. Of course she is biased. Here is the table of contents of the report:

STATEMENT OF FACTS
A. Commission of Inquiry Was Created to Target Israel.
B. Pillay Declared Israel Guilty for 2021 Hostilities That She is Investigating
C. Pillay Repeatedly Accused Israel of “Apartheid”
D. Pillay Described Israel’s Actions as “Inhuman”
E. Pillay Defended Antisemitic Durban Process
F. Pillay Defended Agenda Item Targeting Israel
G. Pillay Pre-Judged Israel Guilty in Prior Gaza Conflicts
Pillay Prejudged Israel Guilty in 2009 Hamas-Israel Conflict
Pillay Prejudged Israel Guilty Within Hours of 2010 Flotilla Incident
Pillay Prejudged Israel Guilty in 2014 Hamas-Israel War

The head of the Human Rights Council responded with one of the more ridiculous statements the UN has ever put out:

The President of the Human Rights Council places the utmost importance on examining the independence and impartiality of each member in order to ensure the objectivity of the body.

Additionally, the President places special emphasis on the qualifications, skills, expertise and experience of the candidates when making his/her appointment.

While there were differing views during the negotiations and voting on the resolution that created the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, once the Council adopted that resolution, the Commission became a mechanism of the Council that deserves the full respect and cooperation of all Council stakeholders.

In other words, we are wonderfully objective and you cannot complain about us with facts.

And it could not be any other way, because he cannot refute a single sentence of that document.

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

A Hamas Valentine

I admit that I don't quite know what this means - it seems to say "Jenin" جنين within the heart, but I cannot find any major stories that happened in Jenin recently - but it was the caricature in Hamas' Felesteen on Valentine's Day.

Which means, even love is an occasion for killing according to Hamas.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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

02/15 Links Pt1: Bahrain chooses alignment with Israel over submission to Iran; Why we should care about the fate of Ukraine; Hamas Plan to Target Israelis in Philippines Thwarted

From Ian:

Bahrain chooses alignment with Israel over submission to Iran

Since the announcement of the Abraham Accords in August 2020, ties between Bahrain and Israel have grown steadily, reaching a milestone last week when an Israeli military aircraft, carrying Defense Minister Benny Gantz, touched down in Manama. It was the first Israeli military plane to fly over Saudi Arabia and land in a Gulf country.

Bahrain has long suffered from Iranian bullying. In 2007, Hussain Shariaatmadari, an aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, wrote that Bahrain was once a Persian province that Western powers unlawfully separated from Iran. In 2017, the state-owned daily Iran reiterated this claim, asserting that until 1956 Bahrain had been Iranian, with a 70% Persian-speaking Shiite population. In other words, Bahrain belongs to Iran, and its independence is not acceptable.

Neither history nor demographics supports Tehran’s claims. Today, the majority of Iranians who live on the east bank of the Persian Gulf, under Iranian sovereignty, are ethnic Arab citizens of Iran who suffer under immense discrimination and a policy of Persianization.

An island nation that could just about fit inside the Washington Beltway, Bahrain needs allies. Now it has found in military cooperation with Israel a good way to deter Tehran. Close ties to the Jewish state were once unthinkable for the Arab Gulf monarchies, but Iran has kept up its threats despite mounting evidence that it is driving its adversaries closer together.

In Bahrain, the Israeli defense minister met with top officials, including King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa and Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al Khalifa. Gantz also signed a memorandum of military cooperation with his Bahraini counterpart Abdullah al Nuaimi.

The memorandum accorded the Israeli navy basing rights in Bahrain, also home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, according to Israeli media reports. David Salama, the Israeli navy chief, implicitly substantiated such reports when he said that cooperation with Bahrain “will bring safe passageway and a secure maritime area for the State of Israel [like it does] for our partners in the U.S. Central Command.”

Cognizant that military cooperation between Bahrain and Israel will make Iranian bullying harder, Tehran-funded media threatened Manama, citing an attack that pro-Iranian militia launched on an alleged Mossad office in Iraqi Kurdistan. State-backed outlets quoted Israeli reports about the basing agreement, while pundits argued that the real added value to Israeli military power would be Bahrain’s proximity to Iran. “Israel will use Bahrain as a platform to conduct its intel operations” directed against Islamist Iran, an analyst wrote.

Only 170 nautical miles separate Bahrain’s Sitra port from the Iranian docks of Bushehr.

Amb. Alan Baker: Area C of the “West Bank,” EU Hypocrisy, and Double Standards

The EU Signed as a Witness to Uphold the Oslo Accords
Recent policy decisions by the European Union regarding the Israeli-Palestinian dispute indicate profound contradictions, double standards, and hypocrisy.

Being signatories as witnesses to the 1991-3 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, together with the United States, Russia, Norway, and Egypt, the EU took upon itself a responsibility to encourage the parties to observe the obligations and commitments encapsulated in the Accords and ensure that they would be duly honored and followed by the parties.

By the same logic, one would expect that those witnesses, all highly involved and active stakeholders in the Middle East peace process, would meticulously ensure that they honor the agreements and refrain from any action that could undermine or frustrate them. The significance of such expectation would be that a witness would seek to assist the parties to fulfill their respective commitments pursuant to the Accords and not encourage one of the parties to violate such commitments.

This would be the obvious responsibility of a witness to such a vital international instrument. Otherwise, why would the EU or any of the other witnesses have added their signatures to the Accords?

Witnesses should refrain from actively seeking to undermine and frustrate the Accords by urging the Palestinian leadership to summarily violate their obligations and thereby hinder the viability and integrity of the Accords.

Even if the EU takes issue with the manner in which Israel or the Palestinian leadership implements or fails to implement the Accords, the EU, as a party seeking to help advance the peace process, should act with the parties to assist in settling any dispute rather than encourage that party to openly and blatantly work to defy the Accords.

Regrettably, this is precisely what the EU is doing in assisting the Palestinian leadership to violate the Oslo Accords by encouraging and financing unauthorized development projects and building in that part of the West Bank area of Judea and Samaria under the control and jurisdiction of Israel.

Jonathan Tobin: Why we should care about the fate of Ukraine

Large-scale wars like the one that may happen in Ukraine, which was unimaginable in the not-so-distant past, are now very real possibilities. Small countries that looked to international opinion and a strong United States to ensure their independence are now pretty much on their own. And rogue states like Iran can be forgiven for thinking that the United States is committed to appeasing them no matter the cost.

A weak America doesn't just mean a dismal fate for Ukraine. It means a budding Chinese superpower will be further seeking to limit America's influence and undermine its security. It means that after the next Iran deal, Tehran will be emboldened to further aggression and threats against Israel and regional Arab countries alike. And if Americans think all this will have no repercussions for their economic security, then they haven't been paying attention to what's been going on in Europe and Asia.

Given that the United States is in no position to stop Putin, reversing these losses will be difficult. It would mean a reaffirmed commitment to reasserting power in order to save Taiwan, as well as backing away from the appeasement of Iran.

Right now, that seems unimaginable, especially with an American surrender to Iran in the nuclear talks being held in Vienna seeming already a done deal. Nor is it easy to imagine an administration still obsessed with demonizing its domestic political foes and crippled by leftist intellectual fashions that have undermined belief in American exceptionalism being able to assert itself again on the global stage.

The threats to Ukraine will be the least of America's worries if we are now living in a world in which Washington is neither respected nor feared.

I've been going through Y. Harkabi's 1972 book, "Arab Attitudes to Israel," and this is something else:

The Jordanian English language daily, Jerusalem Times, published the following "Open Letter to Eichmann" on April 24, 1961:

Dear Eichmann,

1 address you in your glass cell to extend a word of sympathy in your present plight. German genius that has invented Sputniks and missiles and all sorts of things has failed to inspire you to avert the disaster that has befallen you.

What a pity Eichmann that you allowed those swine to arrest you and stage their drama. But don't worry Eichmann it will in the end fall on their heads.

Listen Eichmann you are accused of decimating six million of this breed. Whether this is correct or not it is not our object to debate this issue but what we like to say is this if you actually managed to liquidate six million of them and if the remaining six million have been instrumental in inflicting so much havoc and suffering on the Arabs and disgorging them from their homes we wonder what would have been the result if the decimated six million would have been allowed to survive.

It is likely that a similar drama would have been staged in another part of the Arab countries. So that by liquidating six millions you have minimized the extent of the calamity and conferred a real blessing on humanity you can imagine dear Eichmann the feelings of the million or so of Arab refugees at this drama.

.The object of this trial is simply to attract more tourists to the occupied section and to exploit it for fund raising and for skinning the rest of mankind.

But be brave Eichmann find solace in the fact that this trial will one day culminate in the liquidation of the remaining six million to avenge your blood and the manner in which you have been kidnapped and brought to trial by the very same people who tortured and ejected a million or so from their homes.

It's pretty clear whose side the Jordanian media was on.

Harkabi brings other examples of Arab media during the trial, for example a cartoon in Lebanese paper al-Anwar of June 9, 1960 with Ben Gurion and Eichmann yelling at each other:

Ben-Gurion: "You deserve the death penalty for killing six million Jews."
Eichmann: "There are many who argue that I deserve the death penalty for not finishing the job."

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

More than 150,000 Palestinians now work for Israelis

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics Labor Force Survey for the fourth quarter of 2021 has been released.

There are now 153,000 Palestinian workers employed in Israel or in the settlements, which I believe is the highest since Oslo. It is an increase of 8,000 workers over the 3rd quarter of 2021.

Here is the trend in fourth quarter Palestinian employees in Israel and settlements since 2012:

The number of employed persons in Israeli settlements increased from about 21,600 thousand in the 3rd quarter 2021 to about 22,400 thousand employed person in the 4th quarter 2021. This is not close to the highest number working in settlements - that number reached 28,000 in 2018.

While most Palestinians working for Israelis work in construction, all of the increases between the third and fourth quarters were in other sectors: manufacturing, commerce and hospitality.

The average daily wage for Arab employees in Israel and settlements was about 269 NIS, about 1% higher than the third quarter and 3% higher than in 2020.

To give an idea of how dependent each economy is on the other, about 3.7% of all workers in Israel live in the Palestinian territories while about 15% of all Palestinian workers (West Bank and Gaza combined) work for Israelis.

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

Times of Israel reports:

Israeli officials and journalists Monday gushed over a video showing Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi walking across a Cairo convention hall to personally greet Israeli Energy Minister Karine Elharrar at a conference.

Sissi entered the large hall to fanfare, welcomed the convention’s guests, and then put down his mic to walk to the other side of the hall, where he spoke a few words with Elharrar.

Elharrar, who uses a wheelchair, received international attention after infamously being unable to enter the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow last year.

A spokesperson for Elharrar said Israelis are right to be enthused over Sissi’s warm welcome at the Egyptian Petroleum Show in Cairo.

“The president approaching the minister, the fact that he said he is happy she came, and invited her to return, is super exciting and testifies to the fact that ties that were once under wraps have become public,” the spokesperson said.

It is a remarkable and touching moment.

Egyptian media mostly ignored the story from what I can tell, while some other Arab media covered it, or covered Israel's positive reaction to it.

On Twitter, the Arabic reaction to the move was mixed, with most praising Sisi and Egypt, and some pointing out that Elharrar is from a Moroccan Jewish family. (I don't know what language Sisi spoke to Elharrar.) And there were a few negative reactions as well as happens every time an Israeli is mentioned.

Altogether, the fact that Israel was represented in this conference at all, for the first time, is at least as significant. Normally Egyptian media, including official media, is hostile to Israel. The two original peace partners of Israel seem to always be walking a line between wanting to gain the economic benefits of working with Israel and keeping their antisemites happy.

There is no doubt that the Abraham Accords has warmed up the cold peace between Egypt and Israel.

The main Arab story about Karine Elharrar was not about Sisi's greetings, but about a comment she made at the conference. When asked what she thought about the possibility that Israeli gas might make its way to Lebanon via Egypt and Jordan, she answered that there's nothing wrong with that.

Lebanon had denied Israeli reports that any Israeli gas would reach that country under an agreement to transport Egyptian gas there, and Elharrar's response is being taken as confirmation that this is in fact true. Of course, Israeli natural gas seems to have special properties that can harm the Lebanese, judging from the crazed reactions to the story when it came out.

Both stories show how Israel is now an integral part of a Middle East that has been dead-set against that very possibility.

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

02/14 Links Pt2: Benny Morris:The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Isn't about Race; CAIR's Media Enablers; The Harvard Hummus Protests; AOC bemoans ‘cancel culture’ that fired Marc Lamont Hill

From Ian:

Benny Morris (WSJ$): The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Isn't about Race

In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank - which most Israelis refer to as Judea and Samaria - and East Jerusalem from Jordan. This territory was the heartland of the biblical kingdom of David and Solomon, and successive Israeli governments have been unable or unwilling to give it up. Since then, more than half a million Israelis have settled there, making an Israeli withdrawal inconceivable even if Palestinian leaders were sincerely willing to agree to peace in exchange.

Despite what the new Amnesty International report says, racism is not what underlies the Israeli-Arab relationship. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essentially national, a struggle between two nations over the same tract of land.

The Amnesty report "charges" that Israelis define Israel as "the nation-state of the Jews." Of course, that definition is correct. The world is divided into nation-states and Israel is the Jews' nation-state, just as the 22 member states of the Arab League are Arab nation-states.

Many Israeli Arabs resent the fact that "their" Palestine has become a Jewish state. But most seem to have made their peace with life in Israel, appreciating the prosperity, the social and health benefits, and the freedom that the Jewish state guarantees. Most Israeli Arabs, to judge by opinion polls, aren't eager to be inducted into a Palestinian Arab state should one arise next door.

If that did happen, many, if not most, Israeli Jews would regard it as a mortal threat. After Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas took over and began to rain down rockets on Israel, eventually sending missiles flying toward Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion International Airport.

Hamas would likely gain control of the West Bank if Israel withdrew, allowing it to bombard Israel's population centers. Hamas rule would allow Iran to install forces and weapons in the West Bank, as it has already done in Lebanon.

Who Are the Arabs of Jerusalem?

Jerusalem Arabs numbered 70,000 on the eve of the Six-Day War (according to a Jordanian census from 1966) and today, they are 380,000, while 120,000 live in the neighborhoods under Jerusalem Municipality jurisdiction but beyond the security fence.

Prof. Itzhak Reiter, an expert on Islam and the Middle East at Ashkelon Academic College, describes the different parts of Arab society in the city.

"About 50% of the present Arab residents of Jerusalem originally came from Hebron and...took over and developed their careers at the expense of the old locals, like the Nusseibeh, the Nashashibi and the El Khatib families."

Another group are educated Israeli Arabs who moved to Jerusalem from villages in the Galilee. The Christian community has shrunk to 13,000.

Inside the Muslim population there are Sufis, identified with a mystical approach to Islam, as well as Salafists, who are much more extremist both in religious and political terms.

There are also those identified with Hamas, which is quite strong in eastern Jerusalem, and those identified with Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Thanks, Whoopi! Why Holocaust Education Is mostly counter-productive

At best, Holocaust education accomplishes little or nothing for perpetuating Judaism or Jews and, at worst, offers unhelpful talking points to ignoramuses for their unrelated agendas. In its most ubiquitous form, Holocaust education results in “Godwin’s Law,” which posits that every argument on social media sooner or later finds one adversary calling the other a Nazi.

I personally know and pastor to Holocaust Survivors and their offspring. For most, the Shoah singularly defined the rest of their lives. Of course it did — and no decent person would tell them: “Get over it.” Their understandable life-calling is to bear witness. Moreover, Holocaust Denial eventually emerged as its own new form of anti-Semitism as memories faded, evidence vanished, and Survivors died. So it became even more compelling for Survivors to relate their personal experiences and show the branded numbers on their wrists. The truth must be known.

Nonetheless, it is time to re-think the “common wisdom” that tens of millions of dollars must be budgeted on general Holocaust education. A time comes when enough data exist for people to see what works and what not. Data and results on the street demonstrate unequivocally that fifty-plus years of Holocaust education has not brought young Jews closer to Judaism. Rather, it has driven them away. It does not inspire observance of Shabbat or kosher dietary practice. It just makes kids feel bad and determined not to grow up to be sheep and martyrs. Young Jews don’t want that in their lives, and they think they can run away from it.

Finally, even much worse, for pathological haters among non-Jews, Holocaust education ultimately inspires a deadly inference: If a hater despises several groups and wants to murder people in at least one of them — Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asians — Shoah education proposes that Jews are easiest to murder without payback. Blacks, Mexicans, Asians might have illegal hand guns and shoot back. But Holocaust education propagates that Jews apparently are pretty easy and safe to kill. They don’t seem to carry guns but briefcases. They seem to go like sheep. So the imagery actually is counter-productive. You watch movies like The Godfather or Goodfellas, and that teaches you never to start up with Italians. But not enough focus is directed to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising or the armed revolts in places like Treblinka that show Jews fighting back.

That is partly why some people cannot process the idea of Israel fighting back when attacked. Holocaust education has so ingrained that Jews do not fight back that, when the one Jewish polity in the world actually does, the woke cannot handle it. Well, tough noogies.

If we do not re-allocate our Holocaust education funding to educating Jews instead about their culture and religion, we will end up with history museums recounting what Jews once were.

There is a lot of talk about virtual reality, virtual real estate, virtual money. And a lot of people are thinking a great deal about how these spaces intersect with the real world and what it means when people spend so much of their time in virtual spaces.

Israel haters have been living in such a space for years. And the problem is when no one can distinguish between the virtual and real.

In the virtual reality world of Israel haters, Israel is the worst human rights violator on the planet. Israel is guilty of colonialism, apartheid, genocide, white supremacism, racism, persecution and an illegal occupation. Israeli forces regularly disregard the laws of war by violating the rules of distinction and proportionality. Terrorists are freedom fighters who have the right - or obligation - to attack the "occupier" which includes killing Jews in the name of "resistance."

None of this is remotely true in the real world.

But you do not need 3-D headsets to join the virtual world of the haters. They love their virtual world so much that they have been moving it into the real world as fast as they can. They arrange rallies and demonstrations, they write letters to newspapers and politicians, they tweet in the same spaces as the people who inhabit reality.

And they teach at universities, which are now pretty much a part of the virtual world with the students not realizing that they have become part of an experiment where they can become residents of a world of lies. Some of them join the real world and spread the lies to more people who don't realize they are now living, partially, in this virtual reality where facts are not important, where feelings are dominant and where human rights have been inverted to encourage Jew-hatred.

In virtual worlds, people can make up whatever rules they want. As long as others accept them, they have the force of natural law. One can change the laws of physics. When the virtual world of Israel haters leaks into the real world, it has lots of people who are willing to change reality as well.

One example is in the realm of international law. Jews wanting to live in their ancestral lands are now counted among the worst war criminals - as bad as war rapists and mass murderers and slavemasters - according to the Rome Statute.

There are builders of these worlds who intend to create a new reality. Amnesty and HRW, together with Palestinian NGOs and some media, know quite well that their world is not real - but they love their constructed worlds and want to mold the real world around it.

You cannot talk to people in these virtual worlds. Because they constructed a world that is so far from reality, their basic rules and objective facts are different from the real world. To them, the evil of the "Zionists" is so absolute and so clear that it is axiomatic. They can only argue amongst themselves within their carefully constructed world, and they are clueless about the real world that they sometimes are forced to inhabit.

If sociologists want to understand what the future of virtual reality is, they just need to understand the nature of the virtual reality that has surrounded Israel for decades.

Of course, the sociologists would need to understand that their own "realities" might be constructed as well.

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

02/14 Links Pt1: Recent antisemitic events should serve as a wakeup call for Israel; UN Watch: Pillay is biased against Israel, must be ousted from UNHRC probe

From Ian:

Recent antisemitic events should serve as a wakeup call for Israel

Colleyville, Whoopi Goldberg, Amnesty International. These are just some of the names and headlines that have been circulating around the world and the hot topics of conversation in the Jewish community. Whether the nature of these incidents, verbal or otherwise, was antisemitic and what the ramifications will be for the Jewish community as a whole and Israel, in particular, has been the discussion held around many a Shabbat table in the last few weeks.

So often, these kinds of conversations wind up circling back to rising antisemitism in the diaspora and the diaspora Jewish community’s response, how they should fight back or even, at least within Israel, asking what Jews are still doing living outside of Israel. It’s time that we, in Israel, start to change our perspective.

Once upon a time, when Israel was still a newly born state, fighting every day for its survival, Israelis viewed Diaspora Jews as their saving grace. They looked to them for support, lobbying, assistance with government relations and money. Israel relied on them to help in their struggle and continued existence, and diaspora Jewry readily accepted that role. But somewhere along the way, there was a shift. Israel is no longer the brand new “little engine that could.” Instead, Israel became the Start-up Nation, a nation of strength, a nation of fighters and tech and innovation. And slowly, Israel stopped relying on Diaspora Jewry and started taking their support for granted. Sadly, in addition to the change on Israel’s side, change was also seen on the Diaspora side. No longer was support for Israel unquestionable. Jews around the world have become more critical and questioning – especially among the younger generations. Now, diaspora Jewry is facing a rise in antisemitism – something that until now, young Jews have yet to contend with and face. In many cases, this antisemitism stems directly from anti-Zionist and anti-Israel sentiments and diaspora Jews are automatically the target for those attacks.

This rise in antisemitism and ignorance surrounding its nature has already woken up diaspora Jewry, we in Israel must wake up now. We need to take responsibility for our brothers and sisters around the world, just as they once took responsibility for us. We need to find ways to build a bridge and connect with them. We need to encourage the strengthening of Jewish and Israel education in diaspora communities so that the younger generation remembers what their ancestors fought for all those years ago and be ready to take up the fight themselves.

Case Study The Anatomy of ONE of Amnesty’s Falsehoods

There’s nothing new in Amnesty International’s latest report seeking to delegitimize Israel’s existence.

The dogma of anti-Israelism — not criticism of Israel, but opposition to the survival of the Jewish and democratic state — is many decades old. Palestinian leaders violently opposed immigration by the children of Israel to the Land of Israel before the State of Israel even existed. In 1948, the Arab world went to war to prevent a United Nations compromise calling for both a Jewish and an Arab state on the coveted territory. And for decades, the Palestinian national movement has viewed the struggle against Jewish self-determination as, in the words of historian Benny Morris, a “zero-sum game: if the Jews win, we are lost.”

While Middle Eastern fundamentalists continue to issue pithy calls to “wipe Israel off the map,” radical NGOs have taken the longer route, using reams of paper and scores of footnotes to demand the same. Now, even organizations that were once mainstream have radicalized and joined that number.

This drift to radicalism, too, has been years in the making. In 2009, Robert Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch, issued a stunning rebuke of the organization he created, lamenting that it had lost perspective, abandoned its mission, and risked undermining its own reputation, largely because of its unjustifiable obsession with Israel.

Long before that, and certainly before 2010 when Salman Rushdie charged Amnesty International with “moral bankruptcy,” Amnesty officials expressed similar concerns. In 1970, the group’s US chairman Mark Benenson publicly slammed the organization, charging that its reporting on Israel “reveals the zeal of the prosecutor, convinced of the defendant’s guilt,” and “omits material which would help the defense.”

Two years later, after Amnesty appeared to shrug at the massacre of Israeli Jews by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympics, Gidon Gottlieb, Amnesty’s representative to the UN, resigned, citing his colleagues’ “moral obtuseness” and the organization’s “climate of tolerance from inhuman acts by ‘the underdog.’”

Anti-Israel extremism and rejectionism have been the consistent background music accompanying conversations about the Jewish state, and before that about Jewish immigration to the Levant. Amnesty might have brought some new tinsel to the party. But the bubbles are flat, the ashtrays are full, and the phonograph keeps spinning the same, stale tune.

Several fatal flaws in Amnesty's 'apartheid' smear

While much has been written refuting Amnesty’s report accusing Israel of imposing an apartheid regime on Arab citizens of Israel and Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, their argument, in its declarative accusation cited below, is also a priori flawed on at least three accounts:
Israeli authorities impose a system of domination and oppression against the Palestinian people in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and against Palestinian refugees.

The first flaw is the use of the term “Palestinian” to refer to Arab Israelis. This represents the frequent attempt by anti-Israeli NGOs – in this case Amnesty – and media outlets to use the term “Palestinians” i.e., Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank – to describe Arab Israelis – i.e., Arab citizens of Israel. This is an attempt to create a completely false equivalence.

The Atlantic magazine recently presented the results of research demonstrating that, in fact, Arab Israelis, by a large majority, do not consider themselves of Palestinian nationality (to the extent that a stateless group can be considered a nation, of course), but either just “Arab” or “Arab-Israeli” .

Moreover, there is a growing trend among Israeli Arabs to hold a positive view of Israel, which of course for good reason was never the case in apartheid South Africa.

Nasser Al-Hadmi is the head of the Jerusalem Committee against Demolition and Displacement.

He is also apparently a member of Hamas.

He is in Palestinian media today warning about plans by "Jewish settler groups" to "storm" the Temple Mount during the Passover season.

Al Resalah says, "The Jewish settlement associations are working to mobilize their members for a major attack on the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque in the coming month of Ramadan, which coincides with the holidays for the Jews."

He is counting Shabbat Hagadol which is Sabbath before Passover, the fast of the first born which is the day before Passover, the entire holiday of Passover itself, Yom HaAliya and Yom HaShoah, all of which occur during the Hebrew month of Nisan, which coincides this year with Ramadan.

Israel often has to juggle access to holy places where Jewish and Muslim holidays coincide, but the haters are trying to use this year's coinciding calendars as excuses for violence and a repeat of last year's Hamas rocket attacks on Jerusalem.

Nasser al-Hamdi wants a pre-emptive "explosion" to pressure Israel to take away Jewish rights in Jerusalem, saying, "Unless things explode in the coming Ramadan, the occupation will impose a new reality, permanent prayers for settlers inside Al-Aqsa, and setting times for Jews to pray in the mosque, especially in Bab Al-Rahma."

This is as explicit incitement to violence as can be.

Last year, Israel temporarily expelled al-Hamdi and three other Hamas activists from Jerusalem in order to keep the calm. He might still be under that ban. Given that he has made clear his desire to start an explosion in Jerusalem this April, they might need to do more in order to keep things calm.

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

Arab antisemites following their Nazi forebears

It has been widely reported that some Arab countries like Kuwait and Lebanon are banning the film "Death on the Nile" because it stars Israeli Gal Gadot. Anti-Israel groups in other countries like Jordan and Egypt are calling to ban the film as well.

This is not the first time Arab nations have banned films of Israelis, Zionists or Jews. Lebanon had previously banned Schindler's List and Wonder Woman.

The Wall Street Journal wrote in 2009 that the Lebanese even banned books about or by some Jews like "Sophie's Choice","Schindler's List"; Thomas Friedman's "From Beirut to Jerusalem", books by Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Isaac Bashevis Singer - and even The Diary of Anne Frank. According to the article, "all books that portray Jews, Israel or Zionism favorably are banned." Previously, Arab countries have banned films with Frank Sinatra or Elizabeth Taylor for Jewish or Zionist ties.

The Arab censors have good company, as this 1936 story shows:

It turns out that there are other Nazi antecedents for Arab and Palestinian antisemitism that occurs today.

Recall how modern antisemites like to claim, every Christmas, that Jesus was not a Jew but a Palestinian refugee who was "crushed on the cross by occupation"?

Their antisemitism was also anticipated by the Nazis.

Just as Palestinian Christians claim Jesus as one of their own, so did German Christians in the 1930s, aghast at the idea that their Lord and Savior could have been a Jew who lived in Judea.

It started in 1934:

And this was picked up and expanded upon by Julius Streicher in Der Sturmer ahead of Easter in 1937:

The parallels between today's Arab antisemites and Nazi antisemites are striking. Yet apologists for modern antisemitism prefer to claim that today's version is merely "anti-Zionism."

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

My next random page from Amnesty to fisk is page 210. It coincidentally comes right after my last section.

Page 210 says:

ATTACKS AGAINST HEALTHCARE WORKERS AND MEDICAL FACILITIES
Over the years, Israel’s army has repeatedly targeted medical facilities during its military offensives. According to the NGO Medical Aid for Palestinians, 147 hospitals and clinics, and 80 ambulances, were damaged or destroyed in military offensives on Gaza between 2008 and 2017. In the same period, 145 medical workers – most of them ambulance drivers – were killed or injured.

Israel's targets are legitimate military targets. Sometimes they are Hamas hiding in medical facilities that Israel tries to verify are empty.

Here are only a few examples of how Hamas uses medical facilities. Amnesty does not mention any of them.

Wafa hospital, where the IDF repeatedly ensured that no patients were there and that Hamas was firing from it:

Terrorists using an ambulance:

And again:

In the 2009 war, I categorized dead "medics" who were terrorists:

Azmi Abu Dallal. medic, was a member of the Nuseirat Battalion of the Al Qassam Brigades.
Ahmed Al-Khatib, nurse, was a field commander of the Popular Resistance Committees.
Mohammed Abu Hassir, medic, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades:

Ihab ‘Umar Khalil al-Madhoun, physician, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades.
Yaser Kamal Shbeir, medic, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades.
Anas Fadel Na'im, medic, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades:

Ra'afat Sami Ibrahim, medic, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades.His obituary says that he had been responsible for firing rockets at Israel.
Issa Abdul Rahim Saleh, physician, planted explosives and acted as a spotter for the Al Qassam Brigades.
Abdullah Sa'id Saleh al-'Imawi, nurse, was a fighter for the Al Qassam Brigades who specialized in armor. He also fought in the Fatah coup. He was killed together with his squad leader, Tareq Fadel Abdullah Ja’afar.
Ihab Jaser Ahmed al-Sha'er, physician, was an apparent fighter ("mujahid") for the Al Qassam Brigades.

Hamas also used ambulances to transport terrorists many times in that war.

Shifa Hospital is the de facto Hamas headquarters. It was reported by journalists before Hamas threats to punish them.

There was a Hamas sniper position on the tenth floor of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society building in 2014.

Hamas booby-trapped an UNRWA medical clinic, and blew it up when IDF soldiers entered.

Amnesty categorized these three Islamic Jihad terrorists as innocent "ambulance drivers."

Here is the martyr poster for 'Aatef Saleh al-Zameli. Note that he is not wearing scrubs. He's in uniform.

The name of the "nurse" killed was actually Yousef Ahmad Sheikh al-Eid. Here is his Islamic Jihad martyr poster:

The "paramedic" Yousef Jaber Darabih was also a proud member of the jihadist terror group:

Amnesty's not mentioning how Hamas and Islamic Jihad use medical locations and equipment as covers for terrorism is a highly relevant fact that Amnesty is purposefully omitting in order to demonize Israel and whitewash Hamas/Islamic Jihad crimes.

Does that sound objective to you?

EoZ book, "Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism," is now for sale!

I am pleased to announce that my book has been released.

Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (EoZPress, 2022) is based on my essays on the blog over the past several years, somewhat expanded and improved.

Today we have updated, and equally fictional, versions of the Tsarist forgery about the Elders of Zion. protocols. The new protocols might not take the same written form as the older forgery, but they are imprinted in the minds of modern antisemites. These protocols include ideas such as: the Jewish lobby controls the American government; Israel ethnically cleanses non-Jews from Israel; Zionism is racism; Israel violates international law in myriad ways; and Jews use the Holocaust to justify their own Nazi-like crimes.

In some circles these new protocols have practically become a religion, and the people who believe the new lies are as fanatic as the ones who believe the old ones.

This book defines and exposes modern antisemitism. It shows how the scourge of Jew-hatred is as virulent as it ever was and how modern antisemites hide their hate behind the pretexts of "human rights" and "international law." Protocols identifies and refutes the arguments of today's haters. It is indispensable to understand how the "world's oldest hatred" has returned and how it tries to disguise itself.

It is especially relevant today, as so called "human rights" and "progressive" organizations are twisting the definitions of "racism," "apartheid" and "genocide" specifically against Israel and only Israel - a perfect example of how the Jewish state has replaced the Jewish people as the stated target of the world's oldest hatred.

The book is divided into five parts.

After defining what antisemitism is, I describe different manifestations of the hate that comes from the Left, the Right, the Arab world and others.

Section 2 looks at what international law really says, not what Israel haters claim. I also show how international law itself has been hijacked by those who hate Israel. Topics include how the media gets basic human rights law wrong in various Gaza conflicts, how NGOs redefine "human shields" to exonerate Hamas, the "right of return" and who is a refugee under international law.

Section 3 looks at how supposed experts and pundits keep getting Israel wrong, and why. It also looks at how anti-Israel thinkers have been against the Abraham Accords, actually rooting for them to fail.

Section 4 includes my takedowns of the most articulate and clever demonizers of Israel, and how they use propaganda techniques to make their lies harder to recognize and counter. I take on Peter Beinart, Judith Butler, Noura Erakat and more.

Finally, Section 5 reviews how "human rights organizations" have been using their platforms to attack Israel. I show in detail how they use half-truths to give an overall false impression of Israel. It is very relevant today in the wake of Amnesty's and Human Rights Watch's accusations of Israel as guilty of apartheid. I could write an entire book twice as long as this one just taking apart their reports since 2009. (Maybe I should!)

The people I sent advanced copies to - all academics and prestigious authors - have enthusiastically endorsed Protocols. Examples:

Elder strikes again. Incisive, insightful, illuminating, and overall devastating essays on topics of deep concern to Jews and their allies today: antisemitism, anti-Zionism, the left's turn against the Jews, the abuse of "international law," the dishonesty of many Israel-haters, etc. Elder's work is truly substantive, not only displaying greater intellectual breadth and depth than so many of the "academics" who weaponize their work against the world's only Jewish state but decisively shredding their webs of dissimulations and lies. If only there were a committee of Elders of Zi(y)on running the world....

-Andrew Pessin, Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College, editor, Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS

This is a brilliant and forceful book about modern antisemitism—except that it is really an anti-propaganda weapon of war. Our venerable Elder of Zion has written a witty, pithy, and yet comprehensive work; his argumentation and documentation are superb, smart, and based on a knowledge of Judaism, history, warfare, and propaganda. He skewers Jew haters/anti-Zionists with such skill that the reader is prompted to laugh, cry, and/or fly into a rage—and all at the same time. Elder exposes all the “word games” with which journalists confuse legal reality, the Big Lies, about “racism” and “apartheid,” the quadruple standards by which Israel alone is judged by the “academic fraudsters,” and by the NGOs, the UN, the churches, the media, the Palestinian terrorists, and by all the many Masters of the zero sum game. Dare I say, that this work is a Bible of sorts and should immediately be translated into Arabic and distributed all over the Middle East—as well as read into the record, annually, at the United Nations.

- Phyllis Chesler, author, The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It

Antisemitism is both the oldest hatred and the newest, and in exposing the lies behind the modern embodiment of the infamous "Protocols", Elder of Ziyon has written the essential reference handbook. In tackling the broad range of hate campaigns, from manipulating the slogans of international law and human rights in the United Nation, to the fake media experts and the NGO anti-Zionist jihad, the New Protocols is a concise and fact-filled response.
-Professor Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor

Right now the book is available as paperback and e-book. In the near future I hope to have a hardcover edition as well as well as extended distribution beyond Amazon so it can be ordered from all major booksellers.

If you like this site, you will love this book!