Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

04/28 Links Pt2: Human Rights Watch’s long war against Israel; News Fit and Unfit to Print; Jewish Groups Mark Two-Year Anniversary of Deadly Passover Shooting at Poway Chabad

From Ian:

Human Rights Watch’s long war against Israel

HRW also refers to 6.8 million Jewish Israelis and 6.8 million Palestinians living between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, maliciously blurring the distinctions between Arab-Israeli citizens, and Palestinians living under autonomous self-rule in the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and in Gaza, under Hamas’s brutal dictatorship.

HRW further erases the distinct identity of Israel’s Arab citizens by lumping them under the blanket term “Palestinian,” although only 7 percent identify as such, and many belong to minority religious or cultural communities, such as Druze, Bedouin, Christian Aramean and Circassian.

In HRW’s fantasy world, Palestinian terror is practically non-existent. According to HRW, most Israeli security measures “have no legitimate security justifications.” HRW’s dismissal of Israeli security concerns entirely ignores or whitewashes the thousands of Israelis brutally murdered or maimed by ongoing Palestinian terror.

Finally, HRW dishonestly claims that Gaza is under Israeli occupation and blames the humanitarian crisis there solely on Israel, despite Egypt’s blockade of its borders and the fact that Israel withdrew from it completely in 2005. The Hamas terror organization has exclusively ruled Gaza since 2007, and is solely responsible for its failed rule and resulting humanitarian catastrophe.

It is worth recalling that this compulsive singling out of Israel for unjustified opprobrium led HRW’s own founder, Bob Bernstein, to write in 2009 that the organization had “lost critical perspective” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, warning that if it failed to rectify this, it risked seriously undermining its credibility. Twelve years later, one must ask, does HRW have any real credibility on this topic?

HRW’s report is another shot fired in the war to disenfranchise the Jewish people and criminalize the Jewish state.

Jews are no strangers to hysterical blood libels, hurled throughout history. Our response must be the same as that of Ambassador Chaim Herzog to the infamous 1975 U.N. “Zionism is Racism” resolution, of which this report is a natural continuation: “For us, the Jewish people, this resolution, based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance, is devoid of any moral or legal value.”

Seth Frantzman: Human Rights Watch really wants to push Israel and PA into one state

AT THE end of the day, the Palestinian leadership doesn’t want to surrender its autonomy and become part of Israel, and neither does Hamas in Gaza. The illusion that these areas are all seeking to be part of one state is used to present the area as a single entity.

There is no way, presented within these new human rights reports, for Israel to ever not control the “single entity.” Despite the fact that various accords and UN plans and resolutions have indicated that these are not the same entity – but, rather, are defined as two states, an autonomous region, or “occupied” territory – the new reports seek a one-state analysis.

This definition may be designed to delegitimize Israel – because forcing the Jewish state to retake all these areas, and thus arguing it must grant citizenship to millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, inevitably creates a road to a so-called “binational” state which would no longer have an Israeli majority.

Pro-binational arguments have been advanced for years without any evidence that the vast majority of people want this future. It would make more sense if half the people in the “single” area wanted a binational, one-state end result. That they do not and that they have lived apart for decades, and that Israel has improved its human rights record across the “single” area, indicates that advocating for this analysis has an agenda.

It remains to be seen if this new push will catch on among Western countries, which are the natural targets of this talking point. The fact that large parts of the world have less interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and many states already recognize a Palestinian state, as opposed to recognizing the Palestinian state as part of Israel, would appear to negate the “river to the sea” analysis.

The reports may have been designed to preempt the fact that Palestinians and Israelis are growing apart and to prevent a Palestinian state from becoming more autonomous. While it not clear whether the Palestinians are on board with this idea, Israel is clearly not.

This is a great resource from @The_ILF, that contains:

✅ Original @hrw report
✅ Public statements from Israeli Government officials
✅ In-depth reports responding to #HRWLies
✅ Visuals & graphics
✅ Articles, opinion pieces and statements from NGOs https://t.co/PSOyQbhdZa
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) April 27, 2021

Watchdog slams human rights group for branding Israel an apartheid state

In its report, HRW is calling on the international community to support the BDS campaign, calling for an embargo, banning entry of Israeli citizens, freezing assets, and banning business deals with Israelis. It also called on the Palestinians to end the security coordination with Israel, a move contrary to all values of human rights and non-violence.

"The distorted reality presented by Human Rights Watch is part of its ongoing political and obsessive campaign against Israel in recent years," Strategic Affairs Minister Michael Biton said.

The Israel legal system is one of the most respected ones in the democratic world. It works tirelessly to protect civil and human rights. The HRW report has nothing to do with human rights. It only aims to discredit Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, Biton said.

Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum, an Israel-based global network of lawyers dedicated to fighting antisemitism, terrorism, and the delegitimization of Israel in the international legal arena, issued a statement denouncing HRW.

The group's report accusing Israel of apartheid "is just the latest attack in HRW's longstanding and relentless obsession and lawfare campaign against the State of Israel.

"Written under the guise of 'international law and human rights,' this report is replete with malicious lies and gross distortions of truth and law while peddling in unhinged hate, incitement, and racist stereotypes.

"In short, this report is tantamount to an antisemitic 'blood libel' against the Jewish state," he said.

Thirty-six rockets were fired at Israel on Friday night, disturbing the Sabbath peace of Israeli civilians living in the south of Israel. Three more rockets were shot into Southern Israel on Saturday night, with a further three rockets launched at Israel on Sunday night. Where I live, in Efrat, rockets are so rare as to be almost nonexistent. But where my grandchildren live, in the South, rockets are the norm. What does it feel like to be targeted, to live with sirens and explosions, ruined homes and death?

I put the same five questions to each of three women in Southern Israel, all of them native English speakers, and all of them teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL), to see how they cope under fire.

First, a bit about the women:

Adele Raemer

Born in the United States, Adele Raemer has lived on Nirim, a kibbutz on the border with Gaza, since 1975. A mother and grandmother, Raemer founded and moderates Life on the Border, a Facebook group active since 2011, depicting life in that region. A teacher of EFL, Raemer is also an EFL teacher trainer and counselor for the Israeli Ministry of Education and a Tech Integration Coach.

Aside from all these qualifications and the rest of her busy life, Adele is a blogger and dedicated YouTuber on the subject of all things digital, and other things, too. You might, for instance, hear her talk about her side-gig as a trained medical clown. Raemer spends a lot of time with the kids in the pediatric ward in the hospital in Ashkelon. Then again, there are her diplomatic activities. An independent investigative committee invited her to address the UN in November 2018 to bear witness to the border situation, and in December 2019, Raemer addressed the UN Security Council at the request of the US ambassador to the UN.

Miriam Goodman

Miriam Goodman is from Montreal and Hamilton, Ontario. Along with her husband Avraham, Miriam lives in Ma'agalim. The couple have lived in Israel for 27 years.

Prior to making Aliyah, Miriam was a preschool teacher. In Israel she tutored children in EFL for many years, until her retirement. She adores her dog, Patches.

Esther Revivo

Esther Revivo made aliya in 1977 straight after college. Revivo married an Israeli of Moroccan extraction and after a year of study for Esther at the Michlala Seminary in Jerusalem, the couple moved to Netivot. Esther taught EFL, first for 19 years in a comprehensive high school and then for 22 years in a local religious high school in Netivot. Revivo remarks that so many years later, she is still “in love” with Netivot, where today she runs a bridal gemach (free loan society) collecting and distributing dowry items to poor brides of all backgrounds who live in her city. Esther’s gemach is recognized by Israeli nonprofit Yad Eliezer.

Now our Q&A:

Varda Epstein: Can you describe how you feel, including any physical manifestations you experience when the siren goes off?

Adele Raemer: You go into fight or flight mode and of course, this isn’t a question of “fight.” It is flight. Your heart rate goes from zero to two hundred in a nanosecond. I personally grab my phone and run. During times of escalation I’m always careful to have my phone near me so that I can be in touch in case anything happens when I’m in the safe room or in case family are worried and I want to tell them how I am. Your heart will go from zero to two hundred in a nanosecond but getting it back down after you hear the explosion, after it’s over, that takes a while, and if that wakes you up in the middle of the night it’s not easy getting back to sleep. But during times of escalation you are in a period of being super-aware, super-sensitive . . . tension . . . every little sound, you think it’s the start of a red alert siren or something exploding nearby. It’s tense.

Miriam Goodman: Varda, my first thoughts are Oh no! Hamas is firing rockets again. I say a prayer, “Hashem, may no one be injured,” and I go and check my messages to see where the rocket was sent.

"I Say tehillim"

Esther Revivo: My heart stops for a moment and I rush to the safest place in my home (as we have no mamad [safe room, V.E.]) and wait to hear the boom. I say tehillim [psalms, V.E.] while waiting.

When the Iron Dome takes a rocket down that's one heck of a loud boom. I am then filled with such anger I can't express it adequately, for although I do stress over little things, the rockets don't faze me—not me or my husband. However, my heart bleeds for the many pupils at my high school who are terrified and have heard sirens in such areas as Moshav Shokeda and in Sderot, since they were born.

Additionally, many of the old buildings like ours in Netivot lack a mamad and that is awful for anyone who panics when the sirens go off. They've nowhere to go!

Varda Epstein: How does rocket fire—even when it’s not daily—change your daily life and routine?

Adele Raemer: It’s sort of like [coronavirus] in that you get messages all of a sudden that you didn’t expect and I didn’t know if I was going to be going into school this morning until I woke up this morning and saw that there were no messages canceling and just saying that school is on as usual which is kind of difficult to swallow, because you can go from zero to two hundred, but as I said, going back to feeling safe and normal and calm is not easy, and you can certainly feel it in the students as well.

During periods of escalation when I’m walking around, I constantly have in mind: "If there’s a red alert, now where I would run to?"

The Other Shoe

Miriam Goodman: It doesn’t. I continue doing whatever I was doing. If we have to go out, we follow the instructions of the IDF. If they say, “Don’t go out,” we don’t. The only exception is in the middle of the night. If the siren wails, I stay awake, waiting for the other (next) shoe to drop.

Esther Revivo: It doesn't change my daily routine at all, except that I can't invite my children and grandchildren during a tense period like the present. Not only because we lack a mamad, but because even with a mamad, many of their children get hysterical when a siren goes off.

My daughter who lives locally, flees Netivot when things get tense, as she lives in a rented apartment on the top floor. Last year, a bunch of balloons with a grenade attached to them landed on a tree outside of her building and in Tzuk Eitan [Operation Protective Edge, 2014, V.E.], their living room windows were blown out when a rocket landed nearby.

Varda Epstein: Can you talk about how your children or grandchildren are affected by rocket fire?

Adele Raemer: My daughter lives here on the kibbutz. She has children of her own. It is very, very, very difficult for her and I was actually very surprised a few years back when I realized that she did plan on settling here and building her house here. Her children are very young and they hadn’t experienced a red alert in quite a while, but you know, they talk about it in the children’s houses and at home and they know what to do. I don’t know how my three-year-old granddaughter reacted when there was a red alert here last night on the kibbutz. That’s probably the first time there was a red alert that she heard, the first red alert that she remembers, because before that she was a little baby.

First sound: Boom, Boom!

Miriam Goodman: Seven of my grandchildren have lived with terror all their lives. Our youngest grandson was born during a terror attack when a rocket was fired at Beersheva and exploded outside of Soroka Hospital. His first sound on this side of the world was “Boom, Boom!”

Usually, the kids will sleep in the bomb shelter if there are more than a couple of rockets.

Esther Revivo: My local grandchildren are used to being packed into a car and zoomed up to Central Israel. My other daughter, who used to live in Netivot, now lives in Ofakim, which has not, during the past 2 years, had any rockets. When she lived here they had a mamad. However, when they visited us once during a siren her children were terribly scared. We adults were calm, so they didn't become hysterical, but they were clearly very, very scared.

Varda Epstein: Would you move if you could? Why/Why not?

Adele Raemer: No! No. This is my home. I had my children here. I raised my family here. My parents are buried here. My husband is buried here. There’s no reason for me to move. And if you’re in Israel, where is it safe?

You go to Ashkelon, there’s rockets. You go to Beersheva, they have rockets, too. Tel Aviv has had periods with buses exploding, and Jerusalem certainly isn’t the quietest place, either. Where in the world isn’t there terror, these days?

So, no. I wouldn’t move because this is my home and I love it and it’s 95 percent heaven (and five percent hell.)

"My Homeland"

Miriam Goodman: Never! Israel is my homeland. I live in the biblical area known as Gerar. This is where Avraham Avinu (Abraham the Patriarch) set up his tents, where his animals grazed, and where he conducted his business affairs. Arabs will never throw me off my land.

Esther Revivo: No, NEVER! Because I adore Netivot! This town has a unique character or “nature” if you will. Netivot lacks the polarization one might find elsewhere. Folks whom others might label according to sector: secular; National Religious; Haredi; Ethiopian; or Russian; and etc. coexist in our town in harmony. A dear Ethiopian friend of mine told me once that Netivot is Gan Eden for precisely this reason.

Varda Epstein: What’s the solution to these attacks from Gaza?

Adele Raemer: I don’t know what the solution is. I’m just an English teacher. You need to ask the politicians who aren’t quite doing their job now because they’re so busy trying to figure out who’s in charge and who has what position and it’s not a very good opportunity for getting things done.

In fact there are a NUMBER of possible solutions, and they run the gamut between all out war to diplomacy, including to recognizing Hamas as the de-facto government and talking to them..... and other options in between. All options have high prices to pay.

The danger with all out war is that you know how it begins, but you can't know where it will end. When you go into a war, you need to be willing and ready to go ALL THE WAY. That would mean being willing to totally flatten Gaza into a parking lot, (which we have the capability of doing, but I do not believe is something any of us want).

Unfortunately, our government is not doing anything now - we had a year of #CORONAQuiet when the issue was easily swept under the table, pushed aside for more "urgent" issues. It's time the Western Negev got back ON the table, and in a BIG way. To finally deal with it seriously, thoroughly, in one way or another. Of course, personally, I believe diplomacy will get us much farther than warfare, and I don’t believe that route has ever really been seriously, thoroughly, attempted.

Miriam Goodman: Hit them hard by air and by sea. No boots on the ground, unless absolutely necessary. Forget the world and their condemnation. Place serious sanctions on Gaza. Close all the checkpoints and crossings. Give them no humanitarian aid: nothing goes in. Right now all we do is give a little slap on the hand and say “Nu, nu, nu!”

"Ho Hum. What’s for Dinner?"

Esther Revivo: I have no idea. What I will say is that I am totally fed up at being ignored by our government. It's as though, "Ho hum, rockets in Sderot. What's for dinner?"

Rockets in Netivot, Sderot, Ashkelon, and the Gaza Envelope are considered A-OK. Only if Beersheva is rocketed or somebody dies, chalila [Heaven forbid, V.E.], will the government do something, but even then—it is only a stopgap measure.

Our Enemies Deploy the Cognitive Bomb (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal

The first thing you need to know about the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report that was released on 27 April accusing Israel of “apartheid” is that the accusation has nothing to do with apartheid as most people understand it, the racially-based system of oppression that was in place in South Africa before roughly 1991.

HRW is accusing Israel of “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution,” which are defined by a treaty called the “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid,” based on a UN General Assembly resolution passed in 1973, and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

It should be noted that neither Israel nor the USA are parties to either treaty. The 1973 convention was signed by 109 countries, which do not include Israel, the USA, Canada, Australia, or any of the developed countries of Western Europe.

Here is the definition of the crime of apartheid as understood by HRW:

1. An intent to maintain domination by one racial group over another.
2. A context of systematic oppression by the dominant group over the marginalized group.
3. Inhumane acts.

The “inhumane acts” referred to by the definition include such things as murder, torture, “arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment,” forced labor, “deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part,” all on the basis of race or ethnicity. While Palestinians often claim such mistreatment, their claims – often amplified and lent authority (the “halo effect”) by HRW and similar NGOs – are overwhelmingly false, exaggerated, or lacking in context (e.g., the claim is commonly made that a Palestinian was “executed” when he was shot in the act of stabbing a Jew or running one down with a car).

HRW also adds that

The reference to a racial group is understood today to address not only treatment on the basis of genetic traits but also treatment on the basis of descent and national or ethnic origin, as defined in the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Human Rights Watch applies this broader understanding of race.

In other words, apartheid doesn’t have to involve “race.” Any alleged discrimination against a national group can be considered apartheid. And given that “Palestinians” have diverse origins, including Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, and even the same Canaanite tribes as the forbears of the Jewish people, they don’t even fit this broader definition.

When I hear “apartheid” I think of white, black, and colored beaches and restrooms, laws against interracial marriage or even sexual relationships, laws establishing segregated housing, employment, and public transportation, denial of the right to vote or hold office, and so forth. I think of official classification of people by color. It is not an exaggeration to say that such a system, brutally imposed by force (as it was in South Africa), is a crime against humanity.
And that, of course, is why HRW, an organization that has changed over the years from a legitimate human rights watchdog into part of the well-oiled (and thickly greased with dollars and euros) machine for the delegitimization and demonization of Israel, wishes to accuse the Jewish state of apartheid, a crime that today evokes revulsion throughout the world – and which, following the precedent set by the treatment of the Republic of South Africa, justifies the boycotting, sanctioning, and total expulsion from the international order of Israel.

As the Kohelet Forum notes in its response to the report, no country other than South Africa has ever been deemed an “apartheid state” by a majority of the international community, including China, Sudan, and others that have engaged in massive systematic oppression of minorities.
None of the characteristics of South African apartheid can reasonably be applied to Israel. Everyone who knows anything about apartheid South Africa and Israel knows that. There is simply no resemblance, and HRW’s abstraction of the crime of apartheid and application of the word to Israel is dishonest and is part of the cognitive war that is being waged against her as a prelude to her hoped for physical destruction.

But never mind. Israel is being accused of seriously mistreating Palestinian Arabs, both its Arab citizens and the residents of the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, simply because they are Palestinians. If that is true, it is certainly reprehensible. So we should consider if the report even succeeds in making that case.

The report is 213 pages long, so it is impossible for me to critique it in detail in a short blog. But here are some things that I noticed in the first few pages (see the Kohelet response to HRW for more):

The report says that

From 1967 until the present, [Israel] has militarily ruled over Palestinians in the OPT, excluding East Jerusalem. By contrast, it has since its founding governed all Jewish Israelis, including settlers in the OPT since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, under its more rights-respecting civil law.

This is untrue. There is no military government in Gaza – there is zero Israeli presence there at all – and areas A and B of Judea and Samaria are ruled by the PA. There is a military administration of Area C, the territory that is under full Israeli control according to the Oslo Accords, but that administration governs both Israeli communities and Palestinian ones. There is no “separate law” for the two populations.

In general, the report ignores the existence of the PA and the Hamas government of Gaza. It’s true that Israel controls the borders and airspace between the river and the sea (with the exception of the border between Gaza and Egypt). But it does not control the daily lives of all of the residents of those areas as the report asserts.

HRW criticizes Israel for not allowing free movement of Palestinian Arabs from the territories into pre-1967 Israel, and for not allowing those Arabs outside of Israel recognized by the UN as “Palestinian refugees” to enter the territories or pre-1967 Israel. It dismisses Israeli explanations that this is a consequence of the amply-demonstrated Palestinian propensity to commit murderous terrorist acts against Israelis, saying “[e]ven when security forms part of the motivation, it no more justifies apartheid and persecution than it would excessive force or torture.” Tell it to those thousands of Israelis who have lost friends and family members to Palestinian terrorists.

There is almost no mention of Palestinian terrorism throughout the full report, even though most restrictions placed on Palestinian movement, such as the Judea/Samaria security barrier, were instituted after the murderous Second Intifada, in which more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered by terrorists. The selective blockade of Gaza is criticized without reference to the thousands of rockets that have been fired into Israeli towns, or the numerous tunnels intended to infiltrate terrorists into Israel. There is no mention of the 2015-2018 “stabbing intifada” which took the lives of dozens of Israelis.

The report claims that within pre-1967 Israel, “Palestinian [sic] citizens [have] a status inferior to Jewish citizens by law” as a result of the Nation-State Law, which in fact does not restrict them in any way, and which is similar to constitutional provisions in other ethnic nation-states, including the proposed constitution for the State of Palestine. It also invents or misrepresents other laws, including those concerning citizenship and residence.

The report will probably be a prime exhibit in the upcoming “Durban IV” conference on racism which will be held this September at the UN in New York, on the 20^th anniversary of the first Durban conference, which devolved into an “anti-Israel hate-fest.”

Accusations of apartheid and persecution are tremendously powerful, especially in the US in today’s climate of racial antagonisms. But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is actually a national/political one, and not a racial one (although antisemitism plays an important role). It has little in common with pre-1991 South Africa or the racial problems of the USA. It is also a small part of a much larger project by a group of nations, international institutions, NGOs, and others to eliminate the Jewish state. These antagonists are motivated by geopolitics, religion, ideology, antisemitism, or all of these. By focusing only on the Palestinians, the HRW report has the effect of hiding this broader context.

Israel’s domestic political paralysis, which has been ongoing for at least two years, makes it hard enough to respond to the military challenges it faces from its enemies. But it is impossible for an essentially leaderless nation to properly fight a cognitive war. Fixing this has to be Israel’s top priority today.

04/28 Links Pt1: EU moves to stop funding Palestinian terrorists, inciting textbooks; Abbas Unleashes Profane Rant Against Rest of the World; Where John Kerry’s truth lies; Washington’s Weirdest Think Tank

From Ian:

EU moves to stop funding Palestinian terrorists, inciting textbooks

The European Parliament Wednesday reaffirmed its commitment to ensure EU funds do not reach anyone affiliated with terrorists. It also rapped UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, for iinciting hate and violence in their textbooks.

The legislature’s annual budgetary report says the EU must “thoroughly verify” that its funds are not “allocated or linked to any cause or form of terrorism and/or religious and political radicalization.” Any funds that did go to any person or organization with terror ties must be “proactively recovered, and recipients involved are excluded from future Union funding.”

The article in the report came following an ongoing dispute between Palestinian NGOs and the EU over the affiliations of some of the organizations’ leadership and employees. Palestinian NGOs demanded that the EU erase a stipulation that aid can only be sent to organizations without ties to EU-designated terrorist groups, claiming that groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is designated a terrorist group in the EU, US, Canada and Israel, and has been responsible for many terrorist attacks on Israelis, are political parties.

Last March, EU Representative to West Bank and Gaza Sven Kuhn von Burgsdorff wrote in an official letter to the Palestinian NGO Network that said as there are no Palestinian individuals on the EU’s “restrictive measures list” which bars funds to terrorists, NGOs would not be penalized if members of terrorist groups benefit from their EU funding. The Israeli Foreign Ministry summoned EU Ambassador Emanuele Giaufret to protest the policy, following Jerusalem Post reporting on the letter.

The new guideline doubles down on the European Parliament’s commitment to prevent EU donations from ending up in the hands of terrorists, by calling for proactive recovery of funds.

Palestinian President Unleashes Profane Rant Against Rest of the World

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas was recently caught badmouthing several countries, including the United States and his Arab neighbors, during a profanity-laced rant that raises new concerns about the 85-year-old leader's deteriorating health.

The Arabic language rant is renewing speculation that Abbas—who is overweight and a heavy cigarette smoker—is in poor mental and physical health as he carries out his 16th year in office. His government is under great strain amid monumental regional shifts that have seen Israel make peace with its traditional Arab foes.

When asked by an unidentified attendee at the Fatah political party's April 19 meeting what his message to China is on the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, Abbas went ballistic.

"Fuck the c—t of China with a shoe!" Abbas screamed, according to an independent Arabic translation of his remarks provided to the Washington Free Beacon. "That good for you?"

After pausing for a few seconds, Abbas continued yelling: "And Russia, America, and all the Arabs. What's wrong with you? All of you go to hell!"
Leaked audio recording of Mahmoud Abbas cussing out Russia, the Arabs, and China (Fatah Central Committee meeting April 19,2021) pic.twitter.com/bLngjLMXl8
— Fadi Elsalameen فادي السلامين (@Elsalameen) April 22, 2021

The rant raises new questions about Abbas's health ahead of Palestinian elections scheduled for late May. The president's age and deteriorating health have been a much-discussed topic in the Israeli and Arab media for years, and it still remains unclear who is poised to succeed him. Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been mostly dormant in the wake of Israel's landmark peace agreements with leading Arab nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Jonathan Schanzer, a Middle East expert and vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Abbas is under "immense pressure" and may be reaching his breaking point. Israel's newfound peace with Abbas's traditional Arab allies also could be fueling his anger.

"Abbas has been under immense pressure to hold elections after being marginalized for the last four years by former president Donald Trump and a number of Arab states," Schanzer said. "He has felt alienated. Now he is boxed in. He is lashing out."

Where John Kerry’s truth lies

So which is it: Should we trust Iran or not?

John Kerry is the biggest proponent of the nuclear deal with Iran. We can believe that country to abide by its provisions, he says.

Yet when Iran Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said that Kerry had revealed to him the fact that Israel had conducted 200 airstrikes in Syria, the Biden official bristled. Zarif was lying.

“I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false,” Kerry said in a statement. “This never happened when I was secretary of state or since.”

To be sure, the likeliest scenario remains that John Forbes Kerry is guilty of doing exactly what Zarif claims he did. But let’s engage in a little thought experiment: Let’s say Zarif made the whole thing up and the underlying leaked recording was part of a cynical Islamic Republic disinformation operation to create more “daylight” between two of Tehran’s greatest adversaries, the “Big Satan” of America and the “Little Satan” of Israel.

Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at United Nations headquarters.

In this hypothetical scenario, it is not Kerry who is the bald-faced liar — it is Zarif. But in that case, why in the world is Team Biden currently prostrating itself in Vienna before the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism, with Zarif himself as that No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism’s leading diplomat, in the quixotic hopes of securing a “longer and stronger” nuclear deal?

Kerry’s Denial on Leaking to Iran Doesn’t Add Up

Either way, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that the Israelis had signed off on Kerry revealing this information to Tehran. We’re left where we started: John Kerry knowing about military actions that an allied country had taken in Syria that were not meant to be public knowledge — and sharing information about them with the Iranian foreign minister.

Also note that by speaking this bluntly and critically of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the late Major General Qasim Soleimani, it seems clear Zarif did not expect this interview to go public at this time. Maybe he thought his comments would be revealed far in the future, after his retirement or after his death — if they were ever revealed at all. For what it is worth, the Iranian foreign ministry says the recording was never meant to be released to the public:
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said today that the recording was not supposed to be released to the media. The interview took place with economist Saeed Leylaz, who is a supporter of the Rouhani administration. Khatibzadeh said the recording was a “typical discussion within the administration.” The intention of the talks was a Rouhani administration initiative that all Cabinet members record their experiences in order to serve as documents to help the next administration.

It seems pretty clear that we in the West were not meant to hear this interview anytime soon, if ever — which makes it even more implausible that this is some sort of Iranian misinformation effort to undermine John Kerry’s reputation. However, it does feel as if somebody in the Iranian government wanted to kneecap Zarif, and/or his political allies. Iran is scheduled to have a presidential “election” in June 18. (Those scare quotes are deliberate.) While the final ballot has yet to be set, take a look at who a bunch of the top contenders are:
A number of Iranian military leaders, from both the army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), are among the likely candidates for Iran’s presidential election, which will be held on June 18. Among these candidates are the former IRGC air force commander and former defense minister in the Rouhani government Hossein Dehghan; former IRGC commander and current Secretary of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council Mohsen Rezaee; and the former head of the IRGC’s Khatam Al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters Brig. Gen. Saeed Mohammed, as well as other politicians with a military background, including Ali Larijani, Parviz Fattah and Mehrdad Bazrpash.

If you’re the IRGC or an ally of that faction within the Iranian government, and you come across an audiotape of the foreign minister trashing your beloved brigadier-general-turned-airport-highway-speedbump, you’re sure as heck going to release that.

This isn’t a lie designed to smear Kerry. There’s no good reason to think Zarif is lying to the interviewer. Kerry’s reputation is collateral damage in a fight among factions within the Iranian government.

We as Americans have very little ability to influence who runs what within the Iranian regime. But we can decide which people can be trusted with secrets within the U.S. government — and John Kerry isn’t one of those people.

Religious IDF soldiers training in Yiddish (video)

This is interesting:

I don't know if this is completely legit, the video is from Arutz-7 so perhaps they were given permission by the IDF to document this, although the soldiers seem to be hamming it up a little.

One interesting comment on YouTube in both Hebrew and English (I'm combining them):

"Thank God, for 72 full months I was in such a unit over 19 year period as a Chasidic Haredi Jewish soldier. I merited to the revelation of the light of G-d's presence through so many revealed miracles daily, monthly and yearly, that were so strong that I went from simple belief in G-d to truly knowing G-d."

(h/t Yerushalimey, Yoel)

Hypocrite @JohnBrennan bashes Israel for doing things HE supported as CIA chief for Obama

To be a good intelligence officer, one needs to be able to look at the facts dispassionately and without bias.

Based on the editorial he just wrote for the New York Times, former CIA director John Brennan is an incompetent intelligence analyst.

He starts off with describing how humiliating checkpoints are - based on a short fictional film.

I knew that Israel had legitimate security concerns in the aftermath of the 1967 and 1973 wars, worries that had been heightened by attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets by Palestinian terrorist organizations.

Half a century has passed, and the political and security landscape of the Middle East has profoundly changed.

Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. The Abraham Accords, brokered by the United States last year, have paved the way for four more Arab states — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco — to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.

There also has been significant progress in reducing violence carried out by Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories. The exception is Hamas, which continues to launch rocket attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip.

The implication is that checkpoints are no longer necessary because the Palestinian security forces are adequate to do the job.

In 2009, Brennan told a newspaper, "the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities have to bat 1.000 every day. The terrorists are trying to be successful just once."

And how does one stop them? Brennan had defended the Bush administration support for "advanced interrogation techniques" and the policy of extraordinary rendition, moving terrorism suspects to countries where they might be tortured.

But suddenly he is critical of Israel's techniques to keep terrorists out of the country. Moreover, he ignores that Israel has spent millions to improve the checkpoints, some of which have reduced the amount of time to cross the border into minutes.

The major hurdle will be to reverse the trend of diminished interest that the Israeli government has shown in pursuing a two-state solution. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has spearheaded relentless expansion of settlements in the West Bank. That expansion has brought along more concrete walls, security barriers and control points.

During the Obama administration while Brennan was CIA director, Israel accepted a peace framework suggested by the US which would have led to a Palestinian state - and the Palestinians didn't only reject that, but they rejected a plan that was much more favorable to them. They even bragged about their rejectionism to Susan Rice, who told them effectively that they were idiots.

Under Netanyahu, there have been virtually no new settlements although existing ones have more people. The amount of space Israel controls is likewise essentially the same as it was during the Oslo process. Israel's policies have not made the two state solution less likely - Palestinian rejection of peace has.

The most offensive thing Brennan wrote, however, was not in the article. It was in a tweet promoting the article. It shows that his years as an Arabist (American University in Beirut, CIA station chief in Riyadh) has given him antisemitic tendencies:

I always found it difficult to fathom how a nation of people deeply scarred by a history replete with prejudice, religious persecution, & unspeakable violence perpetrated against them would not be the empathetic champions of those whose rights & freedoms are still abridged.

This is a polite version of the "Jews are Nazis" trope.

Brennan is saying that Israeli Jews are heartless monsters who don't care about Palestinian human rights It is a pernicious lie. Israeli Jews may be paranoid, but they have good reason for their paranoia.

During this holy month of Ramadan, Palestinian youths are celebrating by attacking religious Jews for fun and TikTok videos. Should this be ignored?

The issue, as always, isn't whether Palestinians deserve human rights. No one argues with that. The issue is how to best balance Palestinian human rights with Israeli human rights.

The reason that the number of attacks has gone down isn't only because of Palestinian security services frustrating terror attacks - it is because Israel created an atmosphere through defensive measures like fences and checkpoints, as well as pro-active attacks on terror cells, to make it less likely that terror attacks would succeed.

It wasn't that long ago that Palestinians were writing their own op-eds justifying terror attacks as legitimate.

And it was only a couple of weeks ago that Palestinian TV heavily promoted a music video inciting terrorism:

Should Israel take these threats seriously - should they try to bat 1.000 - or should they just shrug off this incitement and terrorism?

It is more than condescending for "experts' to tell Jews that the lesson of Auschwitz is to be sensitive to human rights. Guess what - we are, and we were way before Nazi Germany. The lesson of Auschwitz is to take threats to murder Jews seriously and ensure that they are not successful.

When the threats go away, so will the checkpoints.

Here are excerpts from a 2004 article by Stan Crooke which can be read, believe it or not, at the Workers Liberty website.

It shows the origins of the "Zionism is Apartheid" lie, along with many others.

The Stalinist roots of left "anti-Zionism"
In the 1970s the rulers of the USSR launched a sustained 'anti-Zionist' campaign, in fact anti-semitic.

No surprise. But an examination of the publications from that campaign shows something much more shocking than the fact that the old Stalinist despots were ready to use any sort of reactionary prejudice for their own ends. It demonstrates that much of what many British and international leftists - even Trotskyists - say about Israel is an indirect and unwitting copy of the Stalinists' efforts at constructing a Marxist-sounding gloss on old anti-semitic themes.

Zionism equals racism; Zionism equals imperialism; Zionism equals South African apartheid; Israel is the USA's 'watchdog' in the Middle East; Zionism is complicit with, or even promotes, anti-semitism - all these themes, now commonplace on the left, were pioneered by the Stalinists.

The core of the Stalinist argument was their old technique of 'the amalgam'. Zionism, so the Stalinists claimed, was tied up with, allied to, linked with, or responsible for, every reactionary force that right-minded people might detest - capitalism, imperialism, even anti-semitism and Nazism.

The creation of a national home for Jews was the means whereby Jewish-bourgeois hegemony over Jewish workers was to be maintained. "The powerful Jewish bourgeoisie, allied with imperialism, needed the creation of a 'national home'... first and foremost in order to keep under its influence the mass of Jewish workers".

Moreover: "In the West Jewish capital became such a powerful force that it was able to participate independently in the colonial division of the world.

According to the Stalinists: "Zionism and anti-semitism are two sides of the same coin - racism. Zionists greeted the anti-semitic policies of Tsarism in its time and also the monstrous policies of genocide at the time of Hitler."

Zionists "co-operated with Hitlerites and helped them to destroy millions of Jewish lives, attempting to save only the capitalists. The Zionists always regarded anti-semitism, and still do so, as an important means of forcing all Jews to leave their countries and escape to the 'Promised Land' in Israel".

There was, moreover, an overlap between the theories of Zionism and fascism: "As regards the theory of 'racial purity', the treatises on 'lower' and 'higher' peoples, the concepts of the 'Aryan' and the 'superman', here there is really not a little in common between the Zionists and the fascists." The theories of various 'Zionist ideologues' did not differ "at all from the views on racial exclusiveness to be found in the 'collected works' of Hitler, Rosenberg, and other fascist theoreticians." "Zionism is akin to Nazism" because "the ideologues of Zionism and apartheid are related to it (Nazism), (and) are merely contemporary variations of the myth about the supposedly innate inequality of people and races".

For the Stalinist writers, Israel was not only a sort of offshoot or outpost of the USA. It was, with fiendish cunning, simultaneously an offshoot or outpost of South Africa as it was before 1994, under the system of apartheid.

"Israel and South Africa are linked by a common racist ideology and practice, and by reactionary domestic and foreign policies... The union of the racists of Israel and South Africa is a massive threat to the African peoples and to the whole of humanity."

Facile analogies, now prevalent on the British left, featured constantly in the Soviet campaign. Zionism and apartheid possessed 'common ideological roots'. "In the South of Africa, in the Republic of South Africa, and in Palestine, close to the Suez Canal, there arose two platforms of world imperialism, summoned... to put a check to the national-liberation movement of the peoples".

Many of the footnotes for the charge that Zionism is akin to apartheid come from a 1975 book by Valery Ivanovich Skurlatov, entitled Сионизм и апартеид - Zionism and Apartheid, published by the official Soviet Politizdat of Ukraine.

Skurlatov's book is summarized in this article by R. Nudelman:

In his book Zionism and Apartheid Skurlatov sketches the following pattern of Jewish history from ancient times to modern Zionism: even in ancient times the world needed middlemen for trade and in the course of centuries a trade clan or order formed whose most successful embodiment was the upper crust of ancient Jewish society. In ancient times this upper class had already turned into a "transnational Jewish corporation." From then on this "transnational Jewish corporation" has appeared under different guises in world history but always with a single purpose: to win supremacy over the world. With this aim in view, the corporation first created "the religion of the God-chosen," Judaism, a religion created by stealing, in its usual manner, "not only material but also cultural values, from other peoples." Judaism proved to be a very useful religion for gaining world domination, for it "very consistently generates a solid ideology of race superiority and apartheid." Later on, "Judaism's racial concept served as a prototype for European racism," first of all Catholic (because Catholicism posed as "New Israel"), then Protestant ("Protestantism is a version of Christianity pregnant with racism"), and finally Masonic ("Masonry is secular Judaism"). In modern times "the racist God-chosen prescripts of the Jewish corporation proved even more compatible with the bourgeoisie." This was particularly evident in the USA: "The Judeo-Protestant influence made itself distinctly felt in the formation of American imperialist ideology." And now, having inculcated Judaic formulas of conduct throughout the world, "the international Jewish elite already knows no bounds to its world power ambitions." But bourgeois ideologists, "although imbued with Judaic components," proved insufficiently useful for this purpose, writes Skurlatov, and so "the financial-monopolistic corporation of the Jewish bourgeoisie concluded that it was necessary to equip itself with a caste-exclusive doctrine, Zionism." Today, concludes the author, "because it considers itself God-chosen," this corporation "openly lays claim to world domination."

This purely antisemitic drivel is literally the source for today's Leftist antisemitism, including the Human Rights Watch report equating Israel with apartheid - which, as is shown above, really means Judaism and apartheid.

04/27 Links Pt2: Human Rights Watch Report Maligns Israel with Lies on Top of Lies; For many French Jews, Halimi murder a ‘watershed moment’ of distrust in France

From Ian:

Human Rights Watch: Israel commits crime of apartheid, UN must apply sanctions

The right-wing Israeli group NGO Monitor condemned the apartheid accusations, saying they were part of larger global campaign to discredit Israel and undermine its identity as a Jewish state.

“HRW’s report is part of a concerted NGO campaign over the past 18 months to interject the term ‘apartheid’ into discourse about Israel,” it said. “Indeed, HRW reiterates, cites and quotes many of these NGOs in its publication.”

“In a broader context, this report is another move in the decades-long series of obsessive attacks against Israel and its legitimacy as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” NGO Monitor said.

HRW’s report distanced its accusation of apartheid from any comparisons with South African apartheid, which is often used to discredit that claim.

Instead, HRW spoke of a three-pronged definition based on the Rome Statute: an intent to maintain racial domination by one group over another; a context of systematic oppression of one group over another; and inhumane acts.

Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, both within and outside sovereign Israel, met this definition of the crimes of apartheid, HRW said. The report did not take direct issue with Israel’s identity as an ethnically national Jewish state. But as an example of discrimination, it cited Israel’s Law of Return, which grants citizenship to Jews who want to immigrate to Israel. Palestinian refugees and their descendants who had lived on territory now under Israeli sovereignty did not have that same right of return, it said.

New @kohelet report debunks @HRW's propaganda doc on Israel: a mix of lies and fantasies; an alternate reality where the Palestinian Authority doesn't exist, terrorism doesn't exist, and Israel agreeing to the "Right of Return" amounts to Apartheid https://t.co/Q7h0nLSjiP
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) April 26, 2021

Gerald Steinberg: Human Rights Watch demonizes Israel via propaganda of apartheid - opinion

Beyond South Africa, no other regime or government has been deemed to meet the international definition of apartheid, not even murderous and oppressive regimes practicing separation based on race, religion, and gender such as Saudi Arabia and China.

In pursuing this 20-year campaign, HRW, led by Kenneth Roth, has continuously invoked the “Israel apartheid” theme, including playing a central role in the notoriously antisemitic NGO Forum at the 2001 UN Durban conference. The final declaration referred to Israel and apartheid repeatedly, and called for the “complete international isolation of Israel as an apartheid state.”

After members of HRW’s board criticized this involvement, Roth replied cynically: “Clearly Israeli racist practices are an appropriate topic.” Roth and other top officials have repeated the apartheid and racist smears frequently since then. In one of many examples, in the context of the 2017 white supremacist march and violence in Charlottesville, Roth tweeted a link to a propaganda piece headlined “Birds of a feather: White supremacy and Zionism.” He included a picture depicting a Confederate and Israeli flag, commenting, “Many rights activists condemn Israeli abuse & antisemitism. Some white supremacists embrace Israel & antisemitism.”

A major addition to the usual allegations is that the planned annexation of parts of the West Bank controlled by Israel under the Oslo framework (the strategic and sparsely populated Area C) constitutes apartheid (repeated 32 times in the HRW text). Indeed, at the time when Israeli officials made such statements, HRW and the NGOs issued a wave of apartheid condemnations. Now, even though the annexation was dropped, the condemnations remain, again demonstrating the centrality of slogans over substance.

In 2009, HRW founder Robert Bernstein, writing in The New York Times, took on his organization, criticizing the leaders for losing their moral compass, and “issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.” Many years later, and with much larger budgets and visibility, the organization’s delegitimization continues.

Ben-Dror Yemini: A most dangerous and mendacious report

Let us imagine for just one moment that an Iranian official penned a damning report on human rights in Sweden, or a member of the American far-right wrote about the Democratic Party in the U.S.

Would anyone take such a document seriously?

But we are expected to all take heed of "A Threshold Crossed," a new report criticizing Israel written by Omar Shakir, who heads the Israeli-Palestinian desk at Human Rights Watch.

Shakir is a provocateur and a quarrel-monger, who has spent more than a decade campaigning to deny Israel's right to exist.

He actually resided in Israel until the Supreme Court revoked his residency permit when the scale of his actions against the very existence of the State of Israel was revealed.

He was also denied entry to Bahrain when he wanted to attend a FIFA conference solely to persuade the organization to boycott the Israeli national soccer team.

Shakir's abysmal hatred of Israel is evident even when compared to the established hostility of other bodies branding themselves as "human rights organizations."

As far back as 2010, Shakir was urging the Palestinians to abandon the right to self-determination and instead adopt the terminology of apartheid and universal rights in order to make a single binational state a reality.

In 2015, he signed a petition opposing a visit to Israel by a group of Muslims who were supposed to be guests of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

It goes without saying that Shakir is a clear supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, an organization whose leaders do not try to disguise the fact that they are working for not peace but for the elimination of Israel.

Iran cancels Quds Day because of COVID

For the second year in a row, Iran is canceling its annual Quds Day hatefest against Israel because of the coronavirus.

The holiday was originally created by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, when he announced:

I invite Muslims all over the globe to consecrate the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan as Al-Quds Day and to proclaim the international solidarity of Muslims in support of the legitimate rights of the Muslim people of Palestine. ... I ask all the Muslims of the world and the Muslim governments to join together to sever the hand of this usurper and its supporters. I call on all the Muslims of the world to select as Al-Quds Day the last Friday in the holy month of Ramadan—which is itself a determining period and can also be the determiner of the Palestinian people's fate—and through a ceremony demonstrating the solidarity of Muslims world-wide, announce their support for the legitimate rights of the Muslim people. I ask God Almighty for the victory of the Muslims over the infidels.

I always though Jews were dhimmis,. not infidels (kafirs) - but who am I to argue with the Ayatollah?

Quds Day is held on the last Friday in Ramadan, which would have been May 7 this year.

Iran is now seeing record numbers of deaths and illnesses from COVID-19.

But not to despair - the festivities might still occur in London, which has an enthusiastic Quds Day rally every year.

Far-Left Jews want FEWER police to protect synagogues in the Bronx

The response by the far-Left on the multiple attacks against synagogues in Riverdale is different than in the past (when attacks like these from non-white supremacists were ignored.)

This thread by Sasha Parsley Kesler, a member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, was widely shared:

I am holding the pain & fear in my #Riverdale #Jewish community after 4 synagogues were vandalized in 6 incidents this weekend. Jews have a long history of seeing our synagogues attacked, triggering the memory of deadly violence that has followed across the world.

As Jews we feel the profound threat of antisemitic violence. Our community’s fear & pain demand action. Our vision is a NYC free from hate violence, where all communities impacted by bigotry come together & reject approaches that pit us against each other.
https://jfrej.org/campaigns/freedom-to-thrive/hate-violence-prevention-initiative

I am also imaging another way to respond to this violence, one that does not invite further militarized policing of our streets & communities. I am hearing that the local @NYPD50Pct will double its patrols in response to these incident.

I understand the gut reaction in white Jewish communities to look to police as our protectors. And we all know that more policing does not make us ALL safer. Riverdale is a diverse community - I do not want the attempts to secure my safety to threaten that of others.

I’m dreaming of a world with community-based rapid response, restorative justice & anti-hate education. Where we join our neighbors across NYC who are afraid because who they are makes them a target of hate & violence.

Jewish safety & dignity are intertwined with that of all communities. My fellow Jews - here is a moment for us to do something different. To radically reimagine who protects us. Our neighbors protect us. We protect us. Join me?

They are saying that violence like this could be stopped by "community-based rapid response, restorative justice & anti-hate education."

Really?

Let's look at their detailed plan:

Support Restorative Approaches to Violence
The following are proactive steps that can be taken to address and prevent hate violence in New York City and State.
●• Rapid Incident Response: Finding ways to call attention to, and increase awareness about hate violence in the immediate aftermath of incidents of violence is an important part of hate violence response and prevention. It can be important for impacted and allied communities, as well as city agencies and elected officials to respond with a unified voice against violence. Rapid incident response may include community alerts, town hall meetings, neighborhood safety events, and school-based and neighborhood education across multiple identities.
●• Data and Reporting: Data and information about the hate violence occurring in our communities is a critical tool for identifying strategies to end violence. Marginalized communities feel safest reporting incidents to community-based organizations, which can help them to make a safety plan and determine whether or not they would like to report to law enforcement or another city agency. Groups must be funded to do this data collection work. This includes support for training and access to data collection software, as well as support for community-specific hotlines to receive reports. New York State must pass the Hate Crimes Analysis and Review Act (A08070/S06066-B) and both the city and state must create funding for community-based data collection options.
●• Community Education: Many incidents of hate violence occur in public spaces and go unchallenged by witnesses. Bystander/upstander intervention training empowers community members to safely ally themselves with individuals targeted victims when an incident of hate or harassment is underway in public.
●• Restorative Justice Programs: Much of the current effort at stopping hate violence is focused on criminalizing acts of hate, while the root causes of hate violence remain unaddressed and the violence remains unchecked. Restorative justice (RJ) is a means of giving all who are stake‐ holders in an incident—survivors, people who have done harm, and the communities to which they belong—a voice in how harm can be repaired and future harm prevented. RJ can give survivors more of a voice and provide opportunities for healing while holding those who cause harm accountable for their actions. NYC Against Hate supports the creation of a RJ pilot program focused on incidents of hate violence committed by minors which do not meet the hate crimes standard to provide opportunities for education, accountability, healing and reform

Would any of that have stopped a determined, probably mentally ill man who specifically sought out all the Jewish houses of worship he could find - attacking them at night, with no one around?

Would community education have stopped him?

Would Jews be the least bit safer?

Would "increasing awareness" work?

No. Not in a world when publicity for hate crimes makes them more likely. Just like the Blacks who laughingly attack Hasidim in Brooklyn or Arabs TikToking their attacks on haredim in Israel, they want to be seen and for people to laugh about it!

The Jews in Riverdale are afraid - but the far Left wants them to be the guinea pigs in an experiment on how to protect them using no police, or asking the entire community first before bringing police in.

This is nuts.

I'm not saying that their ideas are all bad. But they should be implemented together with law enforcement, not as an alternative. Police are as interested in education and community involvement as anyone. They want to see crime go down too, despite the slurs against them.

And when we are talking crimes that are motivated by sheer hate, it is mere wishful thinking that education can make a dent in it - and certainly not while we are in a middle of an epidemic of such crimes.

The phrase "roto causes of hate" in this context also sounds suspiciously like there might be some justifications for it. If you asked this antisemite why he is attacking a synagogue, he will probably answer that his landlord or employer is Jewish and he has been wronged, or that a Jew looked at him funny. It is not hard to imagine the facilitators showing sympathy for his antisemitic rants, or even turning and asking the Jews to comment on his supposed victimhood as if it is their fault.

Don't throw Jews under the bus for utopian vision of "restorative justice."

04/27 Links Pt1: John Kerry, Enemy of Israel; Iran Aims to Expand WMD Program, German Intel Agency Concludes; San Remo Resolution Day, April 25, should be an Israeli holiday

From Ian:

John Kerry, Enemy of Israel

As the Trump years proved, there are a number of options available as we wait for the Iranian regime to come to its senses or, hopefully, crumble, including maximum economic pressure and sabotage. Last week, Israel reportedly blew up Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility’s electrical substation, located 40 to 50 meters underground, damaging “thousands of centrifuges.” This is likely the second time in the past few months that the Israelis have been able to smuggle explosives into the facility and detonate them remotely. Of course, this incident is only one in a long line of unexplained fires, assassinations, and computer worms that have caused substantial delays and damage to the illegal Iranian nuclear-weapons program. All of these efforts have likely saved lives by delaying the ability of Iran to become another North Korea — or worse, since Iran exports terror all over the world.

During the Obama years, Democrats would offer an ugly false choice: You either support diplomacy with the “moderate” wing of the theocratic state, or you endorse “war”; either fly unmarked euros in tonnage and bail out the Mullahs, or plunge America into another Iraq War. At one point, Obama claimed that the Republican caucus was making “common cause” with Iranian hard-liners.

The opposite was true. In the leaked audio from Zarif, we hear that the military and theocratic forces in the nation “call the shots” and overrule “government decisions and ignoring advice.” According to the Times, Zarif says that the political wing is “severely constricted” and decisions “are dictated by the supreme leader or Revolutionary Guards Corps.” Obama’s contention that the Iran deal was being forged with the “moderate faction” was always a fantasy.

The real moderates in Iran were forsaken by Obama and Biden when they decided that the United States wouldn’t support the 2009 Green Movement, in what Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky called one of the biggest failures of human rights in modern history. Democrats Murphy, Biden, and Kerry are more interested in ensuring Iran becomes a regional counterforce to Israeli power.

Whatever you believe about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Biden’s iteration of the deal, it should not have to be said that high-ranking United States officials shouldn’t be sharing sensitive information about an ally with a terror regime. Yet it also seems quite likely that’s exactly what John Kerry did.

John Kerry is skirting the line of treason with Iran

The rather curious defining feature of Democratic Party foreign policy, going back at least four decades, is that our friends must be bullied and our enemies must be appeased. The Democratic worldview holds that America is a source of geopolitical evil whose destructive influences must be tamed and reined in, and that America’s enemies must be emboldened in order to tilt the global playing field away from America’s noxious ambit.

Barack Obama’s administration encapsulated this toxic ideology through its single-minded pursuit of a nuclear accord with the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism during the president’s lame-duck second term. Many of the leading hucksters who comprised Team Obama’s “negotiators” with Tehran — Wendy Sherman, Robert Malley, and Colin Kahl among them — are now reprising their roles during Uncle Joe Biden’s third Obama term.

No individual personified the Obama Bros’ supine tango with the mullahs better than then-Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry, the “statesman” who has been on the wrong side of every major foreign affairs issue since at least the Swift Boats of Vietnam, betrayed his country in borderline-treasonous fashion as Obama’s chief diplomatic lackey. Not content to sell the farm — and scores of unmarked pallets of U.S. taxpayer cash — to a mullocracy with untold American blood on its hands as a diplomat, Kerry then traitorously colluded as a layman with his pal, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, to undermine the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” Iran containment strategy.

Alas, we now know it is apparently even worse. New leaked audio appears to reveal that Kerry, now Team Biden’s special climate envoy, divulged to Zarif the details of over 200 clandestine Israeli military operations taken against Iranian targets in Syria. One might be loath to take on blind faith the claims of a thug like Zarif, but in this case the shoe fits. This is who John Forbes Kerry is — who he always has been, and always will be.

Seth Frantzman: John Kerry, the latest victim of Zarif’s big mouth - Analysis

The BBC reported in 2015 that Iran was quietly deepening involvement in Syria. Zarif says he didn’t know about Iran’s role. Didn’t he read the BBC? Is he the most uninformed foreign minister in the world?

Or is he up to some game, trying to pretend he didn’t know as a way to get some benefit? What might Zarif receive if he can claim he didn’t know about Iran’s role in Syria? He can make it seem like deals he negotiates are being “violated” by other elements in Iran. He can perhaps prepare himself for a post-ministerial career.

Zarif’s comments remind one of the scene in the film Casablanca when Captain Renault is “shocked” to find gambling taking place in a café that he himself gambles in. Zarif is shocked to find out that there are Iranians in Syria and claims that Kerry told him about airstrikes. Which is more reasonable: that the Iranian foreign minister learns of Israeli airstrikes from the former US secretary of state, rather than read media reports, or that he simply wants to convey something about his relationship with Kerry?

KERRY HAS a long history of being close to the Iranian regime. This goes back to Davos in 2007 and likely before. He wanted to radically re-orient US policy in the region to work with Iran. His goal in this was likely to achieve some fame for himself as the person that brought Iran in from the cold.

The US worked hard on the Iran Deal, in part because it was such a sunk cost and the US needed a diplomatic win. Kerry fronted that win. Without the Iran deal, which the US begged for at the time, there would be little to show for the efforts to work with the Islamic Republic.

The US narrative at the time was that there would be “war” if there was no deal. In reality, there was no war, which was revealed when the Trump administration walked away from the deal. Iran also wasn’t blocked from uranium enrichment; it openly enriches uranium in violation of the deal while the other signatories beg Tehran to stop.

Kerry and Zarif cultivated a relationship in which they would help one another, ostensibly confronting “hardliners” back home in both of their societies. It was a symbiotic relationship: They would rise and fall together.

The leaked tape has embarrassed Kerry, which resulted in his denials. It’s not clear how it will impact Zarif. He was already distrusted at home, and now it’s not clear if he can be trusted abroad to further Iran’s aims if he paints himself as ignorant of Iran’s own policies – although this may work in his favor because he can continue to be the cherubic face of Iran’s regime.