Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, July 04, 2014

Palestinian newspaper doubles down on blood libel

Yesterday I posted about a blood libel accusation given in Hamas-affiliated newspaper Al Resalah.

MEMRI independently found the same article and translated it, and the news was published in a number of Israeli papers.

Now Al Resalah is doubling down on the accusation. After writing about the reactions to its story, it says "It is worth mentioning that the Jewish historian known as Ariel Toaff talked about "blood libel", saying that the fact that unknown to many people that Ashkenazi Jews used human blood in the Passover festival in the Middle Ages."

How many times have we seen antisemites use idiotic Jews to shield themselves from charges of antisemitism?

Ariel Toaff is a Bar-Ilan professor who wrote a supremely idiotic book in 2007 with the purposefully inflammatory title "Passovers of Blood." After he was widely criticized for this book -

A second edition of the book appeared in February, 2008. In an afterword to this edition in defence of his book, Toaff responded to his critics. To forestall possible misinterpretations, he said that the idea that Jews practiced ritual murder is a slanderous stereotype, and that ritual homicide or infanticide was a myth. That said, the possibility existed that:

certain criminal acts, disguised as crude rituals, were indeed committed by extremist groups or by individuals demented by religious mania and blinded by desire for revenge against those considered responsible for their people’s sorrows and tragedies.
The evidence supporting this hypothesis draws on confessions extracted under torture. His book examines the strong documentary evidence in medieval medical handbooks that dried human blood, traded by both Jewish and Christian merchants, was thought to be medicinally efficacious. Under the stress of forced conversions, expulsions and massacres, Toaff thinks it possible that in certain Ashkenazi groups dried human blood came to play a magical role in calling down God's vengeance on Christians, the historic persecutors of the Jews, and that this reaction may have affected certain forms of ritual practice among a restricted number of Ashkenazi Jews during Passover.

In other words, Toaff now denies that Jews ritually murdered anyone, but claims - without any smidgen of proof beyond his own often very far-fetched conjecture and "confessions" made under torture - - that it is possible that some Jews used dried blood in medical and mystical rituals. (He bizarrely uses proofs from 17th century Kabbalistic use of animal blood to prove 14th century "magical" use of human blood. )

Toaff instantly became a celebrity among antisemites, few of whom bothered to actually read his book.

Naturally, Arabs now use Toaff to justify their antisemitism as well.

Algeria may restore synagogues, now that there are no Jews there

AFP (Arabic and French) reports:

Algeria, which has a small discreet Jewish community, is willing to re-open synagogues that were locked in the '90s for reasons of safety, assured the Minister of Religious Affairs Mohamed Aissa, quoted Thursday by the press.

"There is a well accepted Jewish community in our districts. It has the right to exist. Its representative, who is a patriot, is in permanent contact with the ministry," the minister said at a forum organized by the daily Liberté.

Asked about the reopening of Jewish places of worship, he said that Algeria was ready, but added that "the State does not intend to reopen them immediately" because "we must first secure a place of worship before delivering it to the faithful."

Jews were often the target of [Muslim] fundamentalists in the '90s and two leaders of this community were murdered in Algiers.

Let's look at some context.

First, a recent history of Jews in Algeria:

[By the late 1950s] the Jews could sit on the fence no longer when two events forced them decisively into the French camp: the first was the burning of the Great Synagogue in Algiers in December 1960. Arabs went on the rampage ripping memorial plaques from the walls, and torching books and Torah scrolls. The second was the murder in June 1961, while he was out shopping in the market, of the famous Jewish musician, Sheikh Raymond Leyris, a symbol of a shared Arab-Jewish culture and father-in-law of the singer Enrico Macias.

Like the pieds noirs, the Jews were faced with a stark choice: suitcase or coffin. They scrambled to reach seaports and airports. By the time Algeria had declared independence on 3 July 1962, all but a few thousand Jews had left for France.

The watchword was now ‘Muslim Algeria’ not ‘Algeria for the Algerians.’ No ‘foreigner,’ even those who had fought for the FLN, was awarded Algerian nationality, unless they had a Muslim father. There was no place for Jews in the new Algeria, as there is no place for Jews anywhere in the Arab world.

Jewish Virtual Library says:

After being granted independence in 1962, the Algerian government harassed the Jewish community and deprived Jews of their economic rights. As a result, almost 130,000 Algerian Jews immigrated to France. Since 1948, 25,681 Algerian Jews have immigrated to Israel.

In 1994, the terrorist Armed Islamic Group - GIA declared its intention to eliminate Jews from Algeria; thus far, no attacks have been reported against the Algerian Jewish community. Following the announcement, many Jews left Algeria and the single remaining synagogue was abandoned. All other synagogues had previously been taken over for use as mosques.

If there is a remaining Jewish community in Algeria, it is minuscule. In 2011, Mrs Esther Azoulay, the last person in Algeria to get aid from the Joint Distribution Committee, passed away. Maybe there are a couple of Jews left, but I doubt that there is a minyan for a synagogue. Any synagogue, if one ever re-opens, would be a relic.

So what's the minister talking about?

Algeria is next door to Tunisia. In May, Tunisia hosted at least a thousand Jewish pilgrims from abroad for the annual Lag B'Omer pilgrimage to the synagogue in Djerba. Tunisian security maintained order and the country expects more Jews to come back next year.

It seems highly likely that Algeria's new-found tolerance of Jews is a combination of jealousy over the tourist dollars they bring to Tunisia and the fact that the remaining Jews in Algeria are pretty much invisible. (Notice that the religious affairs minister doesn't even mention the name of the Jewish community leader who he says he is in contact with.)

It is also interesting that last year an Egyptian documentary on the Jews of Egypt became an unlikely hit. There is nostalgia in Arab states for the days when Jews lived as dhimmis under Muslim rule - a period of time that Arabs now recall as if the Jews were happy. Some of their friends were Jewish! Why did they leave, anyway?

(One can imagine a similar nostalgia in a future Egypt about those Copts who were treated so well.)

Minister Mohamed Aissa seems to have that same selective memory about Jews of Algeria, not quite remembering how his nation forced them to leave. Sure, Muslims love their Jewish subjects - as long as they are silent or dead.

But they also want some of that Jewish tourism money!

07/03 Link Pt2: Chloé Valdary: Grand Larceny; Chomsky: BDS won't work; Who Put the BS in BDS?

From Ian:

Chloé Valdary: Grand Larceny

Palestinian identity has been forged out of a vacuum of historical nothingness. It culturally appropriates the history of the other (namely the Jew) and adopts it as its own. Consider the so-called “Nakba” – what the Arabs call the alleged tragic alleged expulsion of Arabs from “their” land and the subsequent mourning and longing to return. Does this sound familiar to you?
It should.
This is nothing more than Jewish history repackaged in 21st century fashion for the politically correct kleptomaniac, i.e. the Omar Barghouti types.
It was Jews who were kicked out of their land and Jews who longed to return to their homes, who had keys, (the real ones, not the fake gigantic ones Palestinian Arabs would have us believe fit into tiny keyholes in 1940) and prayer books, and Torah scrolls, etc. as proof of their history. For 3,000 + years they longed to return and mourned their exiled existence. Palestinian identity merely takes that true story, applies it to Arabs, and Viola! the crime of theft is complete.

Mazin Qumsiyeh compares Lubavitcher Rebbe to Hitler

Our friend at Elder of Ziyon has documented the antisemitism of Mazim Qumsiyeh in the past.
Mazin Qumsiyeh has just hit bottom. Writing in Facebook on the 20th yahrzeit of the famed Lubavitcher Rebbe's death Mazim Qumsiyeh has compared the renowned Rebbe to Hitler.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Scheerson may very well be the the most influential rabbi in modern history. His wisdom, his compassion and his insights have inspired hundreds of thousands. He helped organize outreach programs, social-service programs and aid to all those in need. After his death, Congress awarded the Rebbe the Congressional Gold Medal , honoring him for his "outstanding and lasting contributions toward improvements in world education, morality, and acts of charity".

Clifford D. May: Salaries for terrorists

I pay lots of taxes. Some of my money supports U.S. special forces, and that pleases me. I have no problem helping fund the U.S. Park Service or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I am, however, a tad uneasy about my tax dollars — and yours — going to support terrorists.
You think I’m joking? The U.S. government gives more than $400 million a year to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Last week, the Israeli prime minister’s office presented figures on the PA’s payments to terrorists imprisoned in Israel: In 2011-12, the PA’s Ministry of Prisoners Affairs transferred $150 million to imprisoned terrorists, released terrorists and the families of terrorists. Some prisoners are better paid than Palestinian police officers.
One might argue that these payments are charity — that most of the money goes to women and children who have no breadwinner at home. However, Palestinian Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs Issa Karake has not made that argument. He recently said that the salaries are paid “out of esteem for [the] sacrifice and struggle” of those who, under Palestinian laws, are seen as “martyrs,” “prisoners of war” and resisters of “occupation.”
In other words, both incentives and rewards are in place for the killing of Israelis (and, in some cases, Americans and other foreigners) anywhere in Israel — not only in the so-called Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel's Attorney General, Hamas' Defense Attorney

To win a verdict against a terror organization is one thing, to go out and collect the money is quite another. Since confiscating Hamas assets in Gaza or in Arab states is not possible, Advocate Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, head of "Shurat Hadin" which was representing the family, asked to put Hamas companies into their receivership, something which would allow in-depth investigation of Hamas finances in Israel, which is funneled through various Islamic charity organizations.
The idea was feasible, being based on various precedents of terror victims filing similar lawsuits in the United States and elsewhere. Aside from providing the victims' families with their compensation, such a move has huge political ramifications, allowing, for the first time, terror victims to directly "drain the swamp" of terrorist finances.
It therefore came as quite a shock when it turned out that the person blocking this move was none other than then Attorney General Meni Mazouz. Mazouz argued that the lawsuit must be set aside because "the right of the State of Israel or a public interest may be affected or involved in the process before the Honorable court." (h/t Yenta Press)

Haaretz reports:

Khaled Meshal, head of the Hamas political bureau, told Sky News in Arabic on Wednesday that his organization is not behind the kidnapping and murder of the three Israeli teens in the West Bank. According to the report, Khaled asked Turkey to intervene in the crisis with Israel and to convey a message that Hamas is interested in calming things down and avoiding further military conflict with Israel.

However, after this was widely reported, Hamas officials denied the report, saying that Hamas has no information either way about the kidnapping and murder of Eyal, Gil-ad and Naftali.

Al Resalah notes that Meshal had previously told Al Jazeera that he cannot confirm nor deny Hamas' responsibility for the abductions.

It seems that in Palestinian Arab society, denying that you are responsible for the depraved kidnapping and murder of kids is a sign of weakness, and therefore must be avoided. It would be a source of shame to flatly deny such a heroic act.

Which should tell you something, if you are willing to listen.

Al Resalah, a Palestinian Arab newspaper aligned with Hamas, has an op-ed by Wissam Afifah saying that Jews killed Mohammed Abu Khdeir as part of a Jewish ritual.

He says that the murder is part of a Jewish "history of treachery and murder," where he says Jews use human blood for their rituals and rites.

Afifah goes on, inevitably, to say that Jews slaughter gentile children and bring their blood to the rabbi where he mixes it with the dough to make Passover matzoh "for pious Jews."

Any chance that someone who pretends to be only "anti-Israel" will condemn this column? After all, they are all so exceedingly sensitive to racism, since they find it all over Israel.

07/03 Link Pt1: Gordis: Because they were Jews; Fatah to "Sons of Zion": "Blood for blood"

From Ian:

Daniel Gordis: Because they were Jews

To observers across the world, Israelis’ reaction to the abduction and murder of three teenagers may seem a bit overwrought. Of course, the deaths of any three children, anywhere, is horrific. And yes, a tightly knit country like Israel will invariably respond with greater emotion than might citizens of other countries.
But still, how does one explain the presence of thousands of weeping people at the funeral, most of whom did not know the families? Why did Israelis across this country light hundreds of candles on sidewalks, hold each other and cry softly? Why were Jews across the world, in France and in Australia, in the U.S. and in South America, so mesmerized for three weeks as thousands upon thousands of Israeli soldiers searched for them? Sad as it undoubtedly is, many people might understandably ask, “What am I missing here?”
It’s a fair question, with a tragically simple answer. What has Israelis so shaken is the simple fact that the three boys were hunted, kidnapped and murdered simply because they were Jews. They were not soldiers. They had not strayed into Arab villages. They were but the latest victims in a long, painful history of millions who preceded them — killed because they were Jews.

Ari Lesser - Innocent Blood

Murders of Israelis product of a Palestinian sickness

Despite all this, Israelis continue to be told that they must surrender land to the PA in order to bring about a long term peace settlement. If only a West Bank Palestinian state can be created, they are told, all will be well between the two sides. Fatah (the good guys) need to be separated from Hamas (the bad ones).
But the media war against the Jews, this terrible and insidious incitement, is promoted by Fatah as much as it is by Hamas. Thus any West Bank state will be founded on the demonisation of its Jewish neighbour, hardly a recipe for long term co-existence or stability. The notion that creating a radicalised Palestinian state will end this conflict is one of the grand follies of our time.
Unless attitudes and perceptions change for the better, the status quo is likely to remain. Israelis cannot and should not make concessions to those who want them dead.

Us Jews Should Respond With More than Tears

Jews throughout the United States will hold memorial services this week to mourn the murders of the three Israeli teenagers. There will be tears, there will be prayers, there will be words of consolation. And then the mourning needs to be followed by action -- political action.
The murder of the three Israeli boys is not just an Israeli problem. It is an American problem, too -- both because one of the victims was an American and because the U.S. government plays a major role in shaping what happens between Israel and the Palestinians. That's where the American Jewish community comes in. American Jews need to undertake focused political action to urge the Obama administration to help Israel in its fight against the Hamas terrorists.
So far, the administration's response to the crisis has been deeply disappointing. Despite the kidnappings, President Obama continues to recognize and support the Palestinian Authority-Hamas unity regime. The annual U.S. aid package of $500-million to the Palestinian Arabs continues, even though Hamas is now indirectly benefiting from that aid. (h/t Canadian Otter)

Mohammad Zoabi tells his cousin MK Hanin Zoabi "Get the hell out of Israel"

Mohammad Zoabi, the 16-year old cousin of antisemitic Arab MK Hanin Zoabi, has defied death threats for his Zionist positions and released a video attacking his cousin Hanin Zoabi.

In the video, where he speaks in English, Hebrew and Arabic, Mohammad refers to Hanin as a terrorist supporter, a traitor, and an antisemite, and tells her to "get the hell out of Israel."

(h/t Yoel, from Israel's Channel 2 website.)

60% of PalArabs say five year national goal is to destroy Israel

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy recently commissioned a survey of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. The results prove yet again that Palestinian Arab attitudes towards Israel are anything but peaceful.

The clear majority of Palestinians polled - 60%, including 55% in the West Bank - say that their five year national goal should be "to work toward reclaiming all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea."

Yes, despite the insistence of biased "experts" who claim that Palestinian Arabs support a two-state solution and only want peace with Israel, the fact is that a convincing majority explicitly say that the real goal is to eliminate Israel altogether.

Only 27% said the goal should be to "end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza to achieve a two-state solution," and 10% said "The goal should be to work for a one-state solution in all of the land: a state in which Arabs and Jews will have equal rights in one country, from the river to the sea."

What about the supposedly peaceful Palestinian Arabs who told other pollsters that they want a two-state solution? What exactly do they mean?

As in one previous survey, this poll confirms that the majority of Palestinians regard the "two state solution" as a Trojan horse, a mere stage in the ultimate goal to destroy Israel.

64% say that after a peace deal is signed with Israel, "resistance should continue until all of historic Palestine is liberated." And 65% say that the Palestinian Arab leadership agrees; that any negotiated solution "would be part of a 'program of stages,' to liberate all of historic Palestine later."

This is about as explicit as can be. The conventional wisdom that a majority of Palestinian Arabs want a permanent peace with Israel is a baseless myth. It is based on flawed surveys which do not list the alternative of an Arab-only state from the river to the sea.

The survey, released June 25, was all but ignored in the media. Besides Zionist media, I cannot find a single mention of the survey anywhere else. The reason is simple: the mainstream media and pundits are ideologically wedded to the two-state solution and this involves willful blindness towards the majority of Palestinians who see it, at best, as a stage in destroying Israel.

The same thing happened with a similar survey released in 2011, the first one to actually dig deeper into the answers that Palestinian Arabs give to pollsters. That one even went further to expose Palestinian Arab antipathy towards real peace, as I showed in this video:

The scandal isn't that Palestinian Arabs have these attitudes. Anyone with an open mind and research skills knows that already.

The scandal is the conspiracy of silence to suppress this information.

The scandal is the millions of dollars being spent to pressure Israel to accept a "peace" that would be anything but peaceful.

The scandal is that over 20 years after Oslo, there is no credible attempt on the part of the international community to encourage Palestinian Arab acceptance of Israel as a permanent neighbor.

The scandal is that as a result of the willful blindness - or malicious intent - of politicians and media "experts," the world has exactly the wrong impression as to who wants peace and who wants to destroy the other side.

That's why this survey was buried, while the polls that use flawed questions get coverage.

Burying the truth is the biggest scandal of all.

From Ma'an:

The Islamic Jihad movement said Wednesday that settlers were a “legitimate target” for Palestinians and the resistance.

In a statement, Islamic Jihad held Israeli authorities and the army responsible for its continuous attacks on Palestinians, their lands and religious sites.

The statement condemned the “crime” of kidnapping and killing of Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir.

The movement said this “crime” was a continuation of a series of crimes by the Israeli army and settlers which also killed Youssef Abu Zagha from Jenin refugee camp on Tuesday.

The actual statement mentions "price tag" attacks as well, and says that the terror group is "regaining its vitality in the West Bank, and the day will come that punishes the enemy for each drop of Palestinian blood spilled by the aggression of the Israeli army and settlers."

This is not a change in policy, of course.

And no Palestinian Arab will speak out against this incitement to kill Jewish civilians, of course.

(And yes, it is obviously aimed specifically at Jews, and not at Israeli Arabs who moved across the Green Line since 1967. Which means that Islamic Jihad has something in common with the EU.)

We don't know anything. But here's what we do know. (update)

At this time, no one knows who killed Mohammed Abu Khdeir, or why. Different media are spinning the story differently; Times of Israel claims sources tell them that police are leaning towards the theory that Jews did it as revenge, while Haaretz is saying the police aren't sure about anything. Rumors are rampant as to how Arabs might be responsible - a family feud being the most dominant theory, with some Israeli media reporting of previous suspicious incident with Mohammed's brother.

That lack of knowledge is not stopping irresponsible news outlets from claiming that they know what happened. Particularly egregious is The Independent, which doesn't only claim that extremist Jews killed the youth, but that "Israel" murdered him.

(UPDATES: The headline has been changed but is still confusing; Harry's Place says [probably correctly] that it refers to Gilad/Eyal/Naftali, in which case it should have said "Murdered Israeli teenagers." But the Independent is hardly the only news outlet or organization that reflexively assumes a "revenge attack."

(The headline has been changed yet again, see CiFWatch)

Unfortunately, there have been plenty of irresponsible and disgusting statements made by some Jews who are deeply upset over the murders of Gil-ad, Eyal and Naftali. Facebook pages that call for revenge against all Arabs, rallies where "Death to Arabs" is said openly, and similar incidents are immoral and disgusting. Is it possible that in the frenzy of anger after the national mourning over the three kidnapped boys turned into murder of an innocent boy? In the flood of sadness and anger that followed the discovery of the bodies it is conceivable, and that fact is utterly shameful.

There is nothing wrong with saying that all terrorists should die. They should. But saying that all Arabs should die is unconscionable.

The "hate-Israel" crowd is as happy as can be with every single example, real or imagined, that they can find to prove their long-standing accusations of Israeli racism. Every society on the planet has some racism, and the amount in Israel is quite tiny compared with most nations, but context is not something that matters to the haters, and Israelis who speak this way in their anger are giving the anti-Israel crowd ammunition for years to come.

There is plenty that we don't know.

But we do know is that no Israeli openly celebrated the death of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. And no one will. (UPDATE: Unfortunately, there are way too many examples of Facebook pages and the like where some Israelis did disgustingly say they were happy. Even so, idiots on social mediaare a long way from openly handing out candy or shooting off fireworks.)

This is in marked contrast to this cartoon from Arabic social media that was captured by the Terror Watch Facebook page (h/t Yoel):

We do know that for every Jew who shamefully shouts "Death to Arabs," there are hundreds of Arabs who shout "Death to Jews.*"

We do know that there will be no headlines about Arab threats to Jews, but there will be headlines about Jews threatening Arabs, precisely because the first is pervasive and the second is so unusual.

We do know that thousands of Israelis rallied against racism today, and we have never ever seen a similar Arab rally against racism.

Plenty of irresponsible people are rushing to report what they don't know. But no one is reporting what we do know.

UPDATE: Yes, I know quite well that the photo above says "Death to Israel" and not "Death to Jews," I was only coming up with the fastest illustration I could while writing this. But if you don't believe that Arabs say "Death to Jews," you are suffering from problems way beyond what I can help you with.

Still:

07/02 Links Pt2: As Global Anti-Semitism Rises, We Must Stop Funding Terror; Congress Cuts PA aid

From Ian:

Daniel Mael and Chloe Valdary: As Global Anti-Semitism Rises, We Must Stop Funding Terror

As many in the Western world grieve and attempt to comprehend the brutal murder of three Israeli teenagers -- including one American -- emotions abound. Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Fraenkel, three yeshiva students from central Israel, were kidnapped and murdered by Arab terrorists while on their way home from school. Their crime was simply that they were Jews daring to live in Israel. Although disturbing, when viewed in the context of Palestinian culture, this crime is not shocking. One cannot be surprised that a society governed by a regime that indoctrinates its children to hate Jews would actually produce individuals who act on that impulse and murder them.
Viewed in the context of global Jew hatred, this heinous crime is not an aberration. There has been a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism around the world and responses have ranged from disinterest in the slaughter of Jews to sympathy with the “freedom fighters” seeking to “kill” them.

An Open Letter to Jeremy Ben-Ami

That noted, I found your recent post on the murders of Naftali Frankel, Eyal Yifrach and Gilad Shaar to be both disappointing and extremely disturbing. You began your post by referring to “three teenage boys…” You did not even show the boys or their families the dignity of referring to them by name. Moreover, you never mentioned the perpetrators of these horrific crimes and you never used the term “terrorist.”
To equate the murders of three Israeli teens who were hitchhiking home from school to the shooting of a Palestinian teen who was throwing rocks at soldiers is an outrage. I understand that you were trying to equate the grief of a Jewish mother with that of a Palestinian mother. To be sure, the anguish of a parent whose child has died is heartbreaking, no matter the circumstances. But there is no basis for equating how or why the two boys died. One was an innocent hitchhiker. The other was throwing stones – not pebbles, but stones – at soldiers.
You claim that, “until there is a two-state solution, this awful conflict will grind on and on and on, and there will be more tragedies – more Naftalis, more Mohammeds.” The terrorists who kidnapped and murdered Naftali Frankel, Eyal Yifrach and Gilad Shaar did not do so because there is no two-state solution. They kidnapped and murdered Naftali Frankel, Eyal Yifrach and Gilad Shaar because the teens were Jewish Israelis, because they cannot accept a Jewish State in the Middle East and because that is what terrorists do. To think such evil will cease when there is a Palestinian State is simply naive. (h/t Ken Kelso)

Israel Faces Death Once More

Outside of Israel, the kidnapping of the three teenagers has gone practically unnoticed. Many will say that there was other, more relevant, news, such as Iraq's collapse. However, I am convinced that it is just another excuse. To insult, intimidate, attack, and even to kill Jews has again become commonplace today. It is rarely denounced. For example, Belgian authorities tried to deny that the attack against the Jewish Museum in Brussels was an anti-Semitic terrorist attack.
The silence of the lambs is the product of fear. And in Europe, people are in fear -- a lot of fear -- of being seen as pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. A delegation of American Jews, for instance, was expelled last week from the African Union Summit, to which it had been invited. This happened because the delegates of Egypt, Iran and South Africa could not stand seeing the American Jews wearing the traditional Jewish kippah [skullcap]. Did any of our leaders, including the president of the Spanish government, make the slightest gesture of disgust or disapproval? No. There are too many interests in play, too many fears of being singled out by Arab countries, losing access to Arab markets, oil and gas; of becoming a target of Islamic and Palestinian terrorism.

Wikipedia says:

William Dennes Mahan (July 27, 1824 - October 19, 1906) was an American Cumberland Presbyterian minister in Boonville, Missouri and author of a book, commonly known as The Archko Volume (1884), purported to be a translation of a Jewish, Roman, and other contemporary documents about the trial and death of Jesus of Nazareth. The volume was initially received by some as true, but soon after its publication, its authenticity was questioned. The book has been definitively discredited as a forgery and fraud.

In 1884 Mahan published the first version of the Archko Volume, entitled The Archaeological Writings of the Sanhedrin and Talmuds of the Jews, Taken from the Ancient Parchments and Scrolls at Constantinople and the Vatican at Rome, Being the Record Made by the Enemies of Jesus of Nazareth in His Day: The Most Interesting History Ever Read by Man. This included an expanded version of "Pilate's Court" plus a series of other texts that he claimed to have obtained himself in a visit to Rome and Constantinople and translated with the aid of Dr. M. McIntosh of Scotland and Dr. Twyman of England, also otherwise unheard of. These texts include interviews with the shepherds, Gamaliel's interview with Joseph and Mary, Caiaphas's reports to the Sanhedrin, Eli's story of the Magi, Herod Antipater's defense before the Senate for the slaughter of the innocents, and Herod Antipas's defense before the Senate—all with the claim that they were copied from ancient manuscripts and translated into English.

The texts are otherwise unknown to scholarship, and the volume contains various inconsistencies.
...
Among the first to call Mahan's work into question was Rev. Dr. James A. Quarles, of Lexington, Missouri. He was soon followed by William E. Curtis, a correspondent for the Chicago Record-Herald. In Rome, Curtis investigated Mahan's claims and declared the manuscript spurious and the alleged translation a forgery.

Mahan denied all the charges against him and asserted the truth of he had written. He was summoned before church authorities in September 1885 on charges of falsehood and plagiarism, and a church trial was held. The New Lebanon Presbytery, of which he was a member, tried the case at length.

Evidence was introduced to show that Mahan had never been to Rome, but that he had spent the time he was absent from Boonville on a farm in Illinois. The editor of the Boonville Advertiser showed that the letters that paper had printed were postmarked from a small town in Illinois. Mahan rebutted the evidence by saying that they had been sent there to be re-mailed. Additional evidence that Mahan had not traveled to Rome included a letter from Father Ehrie, prefect of the Vatican Library. Ehrie stated that Mahan was entirely unknown there and that no person connected with the library had ever seen or head of the "Acta Pilati" or any such manuscript.
...
The verdict of the presbytery was nearly unanimous. He was convicted and suspended from the ministry for one year.

The early versions of this forgery are available online, and even a cursory reading shows an ignorance of Tannaic writing style and basic Judaism. For example, the forgery quotes Caiaphas the High Priest about Jesus: "He looked upon the whole of the Levitical institutions, temples, sacrifices, and priesthood included, as no longer necessary and not worth the life of the animal. This was certainly the opinion of the Hillelites. Jesus, it seems, found in this Hillelite school a party furnished to hand, ready to take up with his heresy."

Hillel a heretic?

In a later chapter Hillel the Third is said to have approved Peter's teachings, first-hand of course.

The book also purportedly has a conversation between Gamaliel with Jesus' contemporaries when the latter would have been 26, with the Tannaic giant concluding that there is no doubt that Jesus is the Messiah.

It is quite obvious that the entire work is meant to fulfill wishful thinking for contemporaneous accounts of Jesus' life that would correspond with the New Testament stories.

Even though the work was exposed as a forgery immediately after publication, it continues to be republished to this very day. A version available on Amazon from 1998 is getting reviews today, and there was another reprinting in 2012.