Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Hezbollah baby! (video)...and bonus Fatah kids!

From MEMRI:

Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV recently reported on a baby born in a Lebanese hospital, filmed dressed in the military fatigues of Hizbullah. "Military fatigues were the first garment to touch his tender body," said the reporter, adding that Mahdi "is a potential resistance fighter from the first hours of his life."

Following are excerpts from the report, which aired on January 18, 2014:

Reporter: Mahdi welcomed us in his own special way. He did not wear the clothes usually reserved for newborn babies. Military fatigues were the first garment to touch his tender body. He is a potential resistance fighter from the first hours of his life.

Mother of newborn Mahdi: Nothing could be better than him becoming a soldier of Imam Mahdi. This reflects the continuation of the path of the Islamic resistance, one generation after another.

Reporter: Mahdi was the only baby born in Rasul Aatham Hospital today. His family received an exemption from all hospital bills, and their baby was awarded a gold necklace, inscribed with the name of the Prophet Muhammad.

Meanwhile, on Fatah's official Facebook page we see this:

Someone responded with this:

Notice the iPad that the poor, depraved Palestinian Arab kid has.

If only Israel would compromise more, then members of these psychotic terrorist murder cult will make peace.

If not this generation...then the next.

From the IDF:

Last night, IDF forces found an improvised firearm during a search in the Jordan Valley. The Palestinian suspect had concealed the weapon in a child’s bookbag, which the forces discovered inside of his vehicle.

Late Tuesday evening, a battalion from the IDF’s Kfir Brigade discovered an improvised firearm and ammunition inside of a Palestinian vehicle during a routine inspection in the Jordan Valley. The weapon was found inside of a child’s bookbag at a checkpoint not far from the driver’s home. “The driver aroused suspicion after a preliminary search,” said Captain Sefi Mor, an IDF company commander involved in the inspection. “He seemed anxious, so we decided to perform a comprehensive search of the vehicle.”

Each day, thousands of people pass through the checkpoint, which is located on a major traffic artery in the Jordan Valley. Because of the high potential for terrorism and weapons smuggling, IDF forces stationed at the checkpoint are constantly on alert for threats. Last night, the same battalion detained another suspect who attempted to pass through the checkpoint.

About a month and a half ago, forces at the checkpoint discovered an explosive device in another Palestinian vehicle. “A large number of people pass through the checkpoint to get to work in the Jordan Valley, and we check anyone who seems suspicious,” Cpt. Mor said.

During the past several months, the Kfir battalion has been stationed in the Jordan Valley. In addition to their work at the checkpoint, the soldiers have carried out several arrests and weapons searches in the area. “It’s clear to the battalion’s fighters that their mission is to defend civilians and allow them to sleep safely at night,” Cpt. Mor added.

According to the calculus of Israel's critics, the inconvenience of these checkpoints is much more important than IDF accomplishments like these.

Because, you understand, these critics are so damn moral, as opposed to the monstrous IDF, which is merely saving lives.

01/22 Links Pt1: IAF airstrike kills Gaza terror chief, Waqf Blocked Harper over Jewish Bodyguards,

From Ian:

Anne Bayefsky: 2014, the UN Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

Palestinians, and their undemocratic UN cohorts, are off to a roaring start for 2014, the UN Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
Last week UNESCO tore down an exhibit on the Jewish people’s ties to the land of Israel, just before it opened to the public, because it offended Arab states. Unfortunately, the move was only the tip of the UN iceberg.
All visitors to UN Headquarters in New York, including school children from across America, walk off the elevator straight into the “Palestine” exhibit. (h/t NormanF)

Douglas Murray: Middle East Peace Process: America's Wishful Thinkers

For let us not forget that the premise upon which Mr. Kerry's peace plan, indeed anybody's peace plan, must built, is the presumption that the talks are between two parties who are sincerely and demonstrably committed to peace and not on the determination of one to annihilate the other. That is the presumption from which Mr Kerry is starting, surely? So how to explain that on the Palestinian side there appears to be, not exactly for the first time in living memory, a certain number of problems of trust which are going unaddressed by Washington?

Peace Of Cake (h/t Israely Cool)

SodaStream shows the toxic hate - and hypocrisy - of leftists

Sodastream as a microcosm of Israel:

My first-ever holiday party was going great until someone in the living room wanted club soda for his vodka. It’s not that I wasn’t prepared. I was in the kitchen, overseeing eggnog, and I handed my co-host a bottle of seltzer made for the occasion with my SodaStream countertop carbonator. He’s the one who told me what happened next.

“Enjoy your Palestinian blood cocktails,” the left-wing reporter said to the vodka drinkers.

This wasn’t the first objection I'd encountered to SodaStream, which turns a bottle of tap water into sparkling with three pumps of a recyclable carbon dioxide cartridge. SodaStream is an Israeli company with a manufacturing plant in occupied territory in the West Bank, a fact that enrages a politically informed, far-left segment of the liberal-yuppie demographic the product is marketed to. By bringing environmental foodie-ism into conflict with humanitarianism, SodaStream has turned the most inoffensive of soft drinks — Sustainable! Sugar-free! — into a political liability for civilians and celebrities alike as they attempt to buy and endorse the correct products.

...For non-famous SodaStreamers, beverage diplomacy is a question of etiquette. At a Thanksgiving with college friends, the appearance of SodaStream’s distinctive, reusable bottles was met with similar tut-tutting. “Blood bubbles,” someone called them. Defending herself, the hostess said the machine had been a gift. Now I say that too, even though I bought mine myself.

Others will sacrifice SodaStream’s sleek countertop design in order to save face. “A lefty journalist friend of mine in Tel Aviv has a machine he keeps under his kitchen sink so that he doesn’t get embarrassed when other lefties come over for dinner,” said Ali Gharib, a reporter covering Middle East issues.

...Even the most fervent anti-Zionists will admit that, for seltzer addicts, SodaStream’s competitors leave something to be desired. iSi’s Twist’n’Sparkle was recalled after a series of dangerous bottle explosions. The Primo Flavorstation — now teamed up with Cuisinart — is a near fit, but its gas cylinder refills are harder to locate. So some fans devise elaborate work-arounds. After Gharib informed his SodaStream-owning cousin of the product’s settlement origins, the cousin began a “subversive campaign” to undermine SodaStream’s business model by using the gas cylinders, then mailing them back to the company claiming they’d been defective and receiving free replacements in return. “This went on for a year,” Gharib said.

Novelist and Code Pink activist Nancy Kricorian uses similar rationale when confronting friends about their SodaStreams. “The bulk of the profit comes not from the machine but from the refill,” she said. “If you can find an alternative source for the CO2 you can decrease your guilt by about 75 percent.”

Those brave leftists - insisting that everyone else boycott a product that they secretly love.

This is similar to the reaction that Cornell "Students for Justice in Palestine" had when it was pointed out they were using Israeli technology for their webpage. Insist that everyone else boycotts Israel, but use Israeli products yourself if it would inconvenience you otherwise.

How principled they are!

The leftist Jewish Daily Forward, also advocating boycotting SodaStream, grudgingly admits

To be clear, SodaStream’s factory is not located in a radical settlement; it is located a 10-minute drive from Jerusalem in an industrial park next to one of the largest settlement blocs — Ma’aleh Adumim — which will likely be incorporated into Israel in any future deal.

More to the point, if the boycotters would have their way, hundreds of Palestinian Arabs would be out of a job:

On a recent afternoon, women wearing hijabs hurried to their shifts at the plant located in Ma’ale Adumin, a suburban settlement about 15 minutes west of Jerusalem. Some 500 West Bank Palestinians work at the site, in addition to 400 Arabs from eastern Jerusalem and a mix of 200 Israeli Jews and foreign workers, including refugees from Africa.

The Maale Adumim factory has an on-site mosque and a synagogue, and Jewish and Arab employees share the same dining hall. SodaStream has two other facilities in Israel, in Ashkelon and the Galilee town of Mount Tabor. The Galilee factory employs several hundred Israeli Arabs.

“Everyone works together: Palestinians, Russians, Jews,” a Palestinian employee named Rasim at the Maale Adumim site told JTA. Rasim has worked at the plant for four months and asked that his last name not be published. “Everything is OK. I always work with Jews. Everyone works together, so of course we’re friends.”

For SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum, treating Arabs and Jews equally is a doctrine, not a convenience.

“We practice equality and full cooperation both on the job and off it,” Birnbaum told the Arab publication Al Monitor in a recent interview.

But the Israel-haters don't worry about such things - because it doesn't affect them, only the Palestinians they claim to love.

“SodaStream has always been a target of the BDS movement, and has developed into a major campaign since late 2011,” a BDS spokesperson told Al Arabiya News.

“We reject any suggestion that the reality that Palestinians are sometimes left with no choice but to work in illegal Israeli settlements is a reason not to take action to end international complicity in human rights violations,” the spokesperson added.

"We reject the suggestion" - what more proof do you need? Meanwhile, hundreds more Arabs, who get significantly higher salaries than those who work in PA-controlled areas, would be jobless.

The Forward, trying to justify its anti-SodaStream position, linked to a study by a rabidly anti-Israel group named Who Profits that claimed that Sodastream exploits Arab workers, but even that study admits that the problem was cleared up years ago. I've shown previously that Who Profits only fights against Jewish-owned factories in the territories, not those owned by Israeli Arabs. In other words - they are antisemitic and their objectivity is close to nil.

But the leftists will keep trying to find reasons to justify their hate after the fact, and if a study by an antisemitic group says that something was bad in 2007, well, damn, that's enough reason right there to hate it!

Here's a company that employs hundreds of Palestinian Arabs, treats them well, in an area that will undoubtedly remain a part of Israel in any peace agreement. A company whose president publicly berated Shimon Peres for not treating his Arab employees with respect. Instead of treating Arabs as helpless children, as leftists do, Sodastream empowers them. SodaStream does more to actually help Arabs than any NGO does.

And the leftists, filled with bile, dismiss its products as "blood bubbles." Their positions are never about their supposed support for Palestinian Arabs, but rather about their hate of Israeli Jews.

Make no mistake - the psychology behind an irrational hatred of everything Israeli is exactly the same as any other bigotry. The same brain chemistry that is behind racism and sexism is behind the crazed, visceral loathing of anything Israeli.

The only difference is that the leftist hate is accompanied by a smugness that their hate is somehow righteous.

Jordanian paper upset that Arabs don't hate Jews enough

An article in Jordan's Assawsana is upset over reported secret ties between Israel and some Arab countries.

It starts off with "I would not be surprised in the coming days to see Israelis wearing the Arab turban and robe, sitting in the palaces of the oil sheikhs without fear or shame as if they were the owners of the land, and not trespassers of sacred Islamic and Arab land who displaced and killed our family and still wreak havoc by bombing Gaza and arresting people in the West Bank and filling their prisons with detainees.

How can the Arab countries deal with an occupier of Islamic lands, while at the same time, these countries claim to support the right of the Palestinian people to return home and live in peace? Quite simply these countries cooperate with representatives of Israel the aggressor Palestinians as the victim are a supporting actor. How can the mind to accept such a contradiction??????

Facts confirm this contradiction even with those countries which do not have a treaty with Israel....Several months ago the defense minister of Israel went on a visit to Dubai for military industries; the Zionist minister with a high-level delegation participated in the exhibition to coincide with the time when his Zionist military Zionism was killing the sons of the West Bank under the direct orders of the same minister. Which contributed to create the impression of the West and the world of the legitimacy of the death and destruction that Israel is doing to the Palestinians without condemnation from the Arab host.

It is a fact that is no longer hidden of the presence of Israeli security companies offering their services in most countries of the Arabian Gulf and who find a viable market in those countries.An announcement by some Israeli newspapers recently notes that one of the indicators adopted internationally to signify the strength and durability of the relations between states is the presence of security coordination between them and that is exactly what we have seen in some Arab countries, relations with the Israeli entity.

Then came the Dubai Film Festival, where the Israeli film was about the the non-eligibility of the people of Palestine to return to their land and their towns and villages. To display such poisonous cultural material is to blow up the march of struggle and resistance for more than sixty years that has killed martyrs that fell from all Arab and Islamic nationalities. How could any Arab view this film in an Arab country, claiming his support for the Palestinian cause.????

These relations recently culminated with an official visit carried out by Silvan Shalom, the Israeli minister at the head of an economic delegation of businessmen Israelis at the official invitation of the government of the UAE, to participate in an economic conference held in Abu Dhabi. It is natural to find Zionists using the opportunity to market their investments and exploit opportunities to increase the strength of their economy, which in turn strengthens their hold on state territories. Linking economic agreements with Arab countries is no less dangerous to Arab security that from non-traditional weapons.

...Israeli politicians roam about in the Gulf states and investigate their goals without the need to announce their relationship with the embassies and consulates as is the case in international relations; they and consider it politically foolish to declare their presence in these countries and reveal their relationship in public so they can implement what they want from behind the curtain.

Israel's policy in the next phase its exercising hegemony is to extend its policy on the Arabs continuing the current fragmentation and weakness with the infighting and rivalry for power going on currently in the Arab countries, without a doubt Israel had the biggest role in the creation and adoption and sponsorship of this infighting to enable them to achieve the dream of Greater Israel and the realization of their verse, "your land, O Israel, from the Euphrates to the Nile."

But Jewish Zionist ambition at this stage has grown to change the motto to "Your Land, O Israel, from the Atlantic to the Gulf."

The conspiracy theory that Israel is behind the Arab spring and infighting has become accepted fact in Arab media over the past couple of years. The idea that Israel is planning the dissolution of Arab states into smaller parts has been around for a while but is getting lots of play lately.

It is notable that the idea of peace between Israel and Arab states is so heinous to so many Arabs, while it is what Jews dream of. You would think that the Western nations might have noticed this little pattern after 65 years.

Jews of Judea and Samaria fighting boycott with website (plus video)

The New York Times reports:

ELI, West Bank — Among the most ardent advocates of labeling products made in Israeli settlements are Gedaliah and Elisheva Blum, American-born religious Jews raising four children high on a hilltop here, in the heart of what most of the world envisions as the future Palestinian state.

The Blums have since 2009 run a website promoting small businesses — mechanics, real estate brokers, caterers, etc. — in the settlements generally viewed as illegal under international law, and last fall they unveiled an online boutique selling settler art. Their approach is an attempted antidote to the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” movement that has been gaining ground lately — buy local, invest, celebrate.

“We wanted to use that same tool everybody else is using against us, for us,” said Mr. Blum, 35.

...Their operation is admittedly small bore and symbolic. The “Orange Pages” — the color is taken from the campaign opposing the 2005 evacuation of Gaza Strip settlements — gets 1,000 hits a day. It lists 2,000 businesses, 700 of which pay about $14 a month for more prominent play. Mrs. Blum, who is 30, said some settler leaders told her “don’t promote us, just keep quiet,” but that only a handful of companies had ever declined to be listed.

The new art boutique has sold a dozen prints and one original, totaling $4,500. Profits are put into the Orange Pages — as Mr. Blum put it, “a man from Alabama buys a painting from Hebron and enables a plumber from Shilo to get more exposure.”

Like many settlers, the Blums think Israel should annex the West Bank.

“If you created a time machine and you went back 2,000 years, the center of Jewish life was here, it was Judea and Samaria, it wasn’t Tel Aviv,” Mr. Blum said, using the biblical names for the territory. “If we don’t want to fight for this land — I mean fight as in living and building — we’re erasing our history.”

Mrs. Blum moved at age 5 to Efrat, a settlement south of Jerusalem. Mr. Blum grew up secular in New Jersey, and came to Israel in 2000 on the first free trip for young diaspora Jews run by Birthright. When he came back with Birthright in 2003, she was one of two Israeli volunteers greeting the plane with rugelach from the famed Marzipan bakery. He decided that day they should marry.

They run the websites from their modest home, where Mrs. Blum’s paintings — of an archway in Safed and a Kabbalistic interpretation of creation — adorn the walls and the children, ages 2, 4, 6 and 8, wander in and out.

“The message for our children is, you see something wrong, you fix it,” she said. “We saw a boycott, we see injustice, then you do something about it. Even if it’s just one little baby step.”

OK, so now I feel guilty.

Because I interviewed the Blums nearly a year ago and I had never edited the video for the blog! (Although I did mention them last October when the English version of their website went online.)

Now that they are newsmakers, it is only right for me to try to make up for it.

Here they are in a house in Eli that they were renting at the time, talking about what life is like as Jews living in Judea and Samaria.

01/21 Links Pt2: Lies, bigotry and silence: Britain’s Stain, MLK: Israel a great outpost of democracy

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Lies, bigotry and silence: Britain’s permanent stain

British Jews who care about this sort of thing have had the disturbing experience of observing not one but three examples of public, home-grown anti-Jewish bigotry over the past few days.
First off the block was the former Labour Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who in an article in the Independent repeated not only his inexplicable belief that his idol, Iran’s President Rouhani, was ushering in a new world order of peace and harmony, but also that the benighted Israelis were buying up Washington in order to frustrate this nirvana (I paraphrase, but you get the general idea).

Britain’s Anti-Jewish Parliamentarians

Yet, this deep dislike of Israel stems not only from Israel’s alliance with America and the West, but also from the fact that it is a Jewish state. For the decidedly post-nationalist British left, Zionism is an anathema–the idea that a people as cosmopolitan as the Jews would have set themselves on the wrong side of history by establishing a nation of their own. The Jews were once favored by the left, when they were poor and widely discriminated against. But as Britain’s Minister for Education Michael Gove has explained of the left’s mentality, “when Jews are successful, assertive, self-confident or, worst of all, conservative, then they move, metaphorically, beyond the pale.”
Given the way in which those such as MP Grahame Morris would so casually associate the Israeli flag with Nazis, it would appear that there is a sense of growing confidence among the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish fringe in Britain’s parliament. But with such views flying around among lawmakers, there must be concerns about the future diplomatic relations between the two countries. And more than that, the questions about the future of the British Jewish community become ever more troubling.

Labour and Hamas UK

The Labour Party’s public position is that it has no truck with Hamas, or with those who seek the destruction of the State of Israel. As Ed The reality is somewhat different. Prominent Labour MPs continue to support high profile Hamas activists in the United Kingdom, and are happy to speak at the same rallies as Jenny Tonge.
This weekend, you could have attended a demonstration in support of Gaza which was addressed by Jenny Tonge and Labour’s shadow Justice Minister, Andy Slaughter MP.

Palestinians Divided Over Boycott of Israeli Universities

A professor in the College of Pharmacy at Al-Quds, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue, said more than 50 Palestinian professors were engaged in joint research projects with Israeli universities, funded by international agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development. He said that, without those grants, Palestinian academic research would collapse because “not a single dollar” was available from other places. He rejected the call for a boycott as having no practical value.

As for travel restrictions on foreign academics seeking to enter the Palestinian territories, which include the West Bank and Gaza, Mr. Palmor acknowledged that access to and from “Hamas-controlled Gaza” is now rarely possible via Israel, but he said Israel had played no part in the tight control of Gaza’s other border crossing, via Egypt.
For the West Bank, he said, academics are not routinely denied entry. “There is no ban on the entry to the West Bank of any lecturer, professor, or researcher. There never was.”

Iran still trying to unite (and lead) all Muslims in its superpower quest

Back in 2005, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first entered office, I wrote a post that explained Iran's goal and strategy.

In short, Iran intended for many years to become a world superpower, and it wanted to use a combination of scientific expertise, military strength, and fearmongering to reach that goal. But above all - Iran intended to become the undisputed leader of the Islamic world, to move the center of the world's power from the US to Islamic lands.

While I made some mistakes - not realizing at the time how limited the powers of Iran's president were, and how Ayatollah Khamanei was really pulling all the strings, as well as underestimating the hatred that Sunnis and Shias have for each other - the analysis holds up pretty well for an 8-year old editorial.

Reading the tweets from Iran's Supreme Leader today one can see that this strategy has not changed at all.

Khamenei is, of course, pushing Islam as the enemy of the West and a liberator from Western ideas:

But he has also been spending a lot of time lately trying to heal the Sunni-Shia rift by emphasizing what they have in common and berating those who try to keep their conflict going. He even attended a recdnt pan-Islamic conference.

Of course, the evil US and UK are the ones behind the 1300-year old rift to begin with:

You can see that Iran only wants unity under its leadership, because unity is not meant to heal Islam, but to entrench Iran as the undisputed leader of Islam.

Given that the Shiite-Sunni divisions have only grown over the past couple of years, it seems unlikely that Khamenei will make any headway. But an Iranian nuclear weapon - or clear demonstration that it could build one at will - would change the calculus of the region tremendously, especially since Sunni Gulf states are no longer feeling like the US is protecting them.

Note also how Khamanei creates a cult of personality around himself, with every single graphic featuring - him.

Just like every other autocratic dictator.

Arab countries worried about having to naturalize their Palestinian "guests"

Assawsana (Jordan) reports that Jordan's trade unions are worried that John Kerry's frequent visits indicate that he intends to "liquidate the Palestinian cause at the expense of the people of Jordan and other Arab countries."

The trade unions rejected "any solutions which threaten the security of the homeland and do not give Palestinians the right to return to their homeland in addition to compensation, " stressing that the "right of return" is a sacred, legitimate right and may not be bargained or waived.

Is this because they love the Palestinians so much?

Oh, please. They say Kerry's supposed plan is "not a conspiracy against Palestine and its cause, but a conspiracy against Jordan."

Now, most Palestinians in Jordan are already Jordanian citizens, so what is the problem?

There are apparently two problems. One is that they don't want even the Palestinian Jordanians to stay in Jordan - they want an excuse to send them over the river!

The other one they hint at: "Resettlement and naturalization could empty the West Bank of the population and this is part of the liquidation of the Palestinian issue."

They are worried that if Arab countries tear up their existing bigoted laws discriminating against Palestinians and allowing them to become citizens, then the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank might just decide they don't want to live in Palestine anymore, and move across the river or to other Arab countries.

If "Palestine" fails as a state, which is extremely likely given how incompetent and corrupt the PA is, then Arab countries will not only have to worry about their existing Palestinian "guests" - but they will face the prospect of five million more Arabs leaving Palestine to move their families to somewhere more stable.

To the Arab countries, the "right of return" really means "the right to keep our nations free of Palestinians." But they will swear up and down that they only mean to save the "Palestinian cause."

New Waqf pamphlet denies Jewish history in Jerusalem

This is a new pamphlet being given out by the Muslim Waqf to visitors on the Temple Mount. I added two pages from the Waqf pamphlet of 1925 which shows how much they are lying nowadays. (Their 1950 pamphlet largely agreed with the earlier one; they changed history afterwards.)

Lies of the Islamic Waqf in Jerusalem

(h/t Temple Institute Facebook page)

01/21 Links Pt1: Palestinians vs. Pro-Pal Israelis, UNESCO is slapping the face of every Jew

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians vs. Pro-Palestinian Israelis

There are a number of disturbing elements in the story of the "anti-normalization" advocates.
First, the protesters are acting against Israelis who openly support the Palestinian issue and are completely opposed to the policies of the current Israeli government. In other words, the Palestinians are "spitting in the face" of those Israelis who support their demands and are prepared to put their lives at risk by entering Ramallah to talk peace.
Second, most of the activists who are protesting against such meetings are affiliated, in way or another, with the same Palestinian Authority, which is conducting official peace talks with Israel under the auspices of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. So why don't the "anti-normalization" folks also turn out against the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah? Most probably because they are scared of being arrested or harassed by Palestinian security forces. Moreover, many of the activists are on the payroll of the PA and are afraid of losing their salaries.

UNESCO’s scrapping of Israel exhibit ‘a slap in the face of every Jew’

“I’m not going to hide the frustration in my voice when I say that this decision is a blow to peace, and a slap in the face of every Jew,” said Rabbi Avraham Cooper, associate dean of the SWC and project director of the exhibition.
Cooper said the press conference was “a plea to Arab nations” that think that portraying Jews’ historical ties to the land of Israel would be a barrier to peace negotiations in the Middle East, calling such thoughts “sheer nonsense.”

Author of UNESCO’s nixed Israel exhibit decries ‘appalling betrayal’

Professor Robert Wistrich had bought a ticket to Paris to attend the opening of an exhibition he wrote about the Jewish people’s connection to the Land of Israel, which was supposed to take place Monday at the headquarters of UNESCO. But after the exhibition was indefinitely postponed, without prior warning, due to Arab pressure, he canceled and decided to stay in Jerusalem.
“This is such a betrayal. To do it in this way is so disgraceful,” fumed Wistrich, who directs the Hebrew University’s Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism and is one of the world’s leading authorities in the field. An “appalling act,” the cancellation “completely destroyed any claim that UNESCO could possibly have to be representing the universal values of toleration, mutual understanding, respect for the other and narratives that are different, engaging with civil society organizations and the importance of education. Because there’s one standard for Jews, and there’s another standard for non-Jews, especially if they’re Arabs, but not only.”