Saturday, September 26, 2015

09/26 Links: Bassam Tawil: Palestinians: We Are the New Nazis; Seal Refutes Jewish History Deniers

From Ian:

Bassam Tawil: Palestinians: We Are the New Nazis

The campaign on social media against the singer and the TV show also provides proof of increasingly racist sentiments among our people. We automatically dismiss anyone wearing a kippa because we assume he is a "settler" who hates Arabs and Muslims. It is embarrassing to read many of the comments posted by Palestinian activists concerning the singer's religion and kippa.
With such attitudes, how can we ever make peace with Israel? If hosting a Jewish singer on a Palestinian TV talk show has drawn such fierce opposition and denunciations, what will happen the day any Palestinian leader signs a peace treaty with our Jewish neighbors?
How many times have Palestinians appeared in the Israeli media during the past few decades? Has anyone ever heard of such protests by Israeli Jews? Israeli media outlets have even been conducting interviews with some of Israel's worst enemies, including Palestinians who mercilessly killed innocent Jews. Still, we never saw disgusting and racist reactions like the ones posted on social media after the interview with the Jewish singer.
Over the years, we have taught our people to hate not only Israel, but Jews as well -- as is already cemented in the Hamas charter. We have done this through incitement in mosques, media outlets and public rhetoric. We have now reached the same stage as Germany's Nazis -- the same thing, ironically, we falsely accuse the Jews of being -- where our people consider the appearance of a Jew on a Palestinian TV show an act of "treason" and a "crime." In reality, it is we who are the New Nazis.
The case of the Jewish singer shows that the BDS and "anti-normalization" folks are nothing but a group of racist brown-shirts working to destroy any chance of peace and coexistence between Palestinians and Israel. Their hysterical reaction to the TV interview with Yehezkel proves that our people are continuing to march backward, toward more extremism, racism and Nazism.

David Collier: My Yom Kippur with Max Blumenthal

Having spent a July evening listening to Max Blumenthal at his book launch for his written account of last year’s conflict between Gaza and Israel, it then became a struggle to find an opportunity to read the book itself. I engage anything and everything on the Israel / Arab conflict and usually it is critical to do so with internet access close at hand as a way of gauging the veracity of source material.
Blumenthal is not an experienced historian or military or political commentator and having read the first few pages, the book appeared to be little more than the type of rabid anti-Zionist and unsupported opinion piece that can be found daily on any Islamic web site. So reading Blumenthal is a different type of challenge, and digesting his latest work could only be undertaken with no distractions. Yom Kippur provided the perfect opportunity, Max had my undivided attention; I became the perfect captive audience.
I had discussed Blumenthal’s tale of the cause of the conflict after the talk, so I won’t dwell on it here, and it is represented in the book in a haphazard fashion. Apparently, Israel simply wanted the war because it makes them a profit, shows off their latest weapons and keeps Gaza’s population down by killing children. In his desperation to blame the build-up itself on Israel, Blumenthal creates a scenario in which 2 terrorists spontaneously celebrate the absolute failure of a mission. I call it ‘Blumenlogic’. The entire tale is venomous nonsense.
But in the book, Blumenthal quickly blames Israel for the conflict and moves on, so apart from a single Dayan quote from 1956 that suits his purpose, there is no backdrop to the post 2005 conflicts. If Blumenthal knew history, he would understand Israel had offered to take Gaza and *all* its refugees in an attempt to solve the problem in 1949. He would know also that in 2005 Israel presented the Arabs all of Gaza as a first-step opportunity, and received a terror enclave in return. Gaza today is the result of the persistent Arab rejection of Israel’s existence.

Seal Refutes Jewish History Deniers

In this context the battle over archeology isn’t merely a scholarly debate but a vital part of the effort to deny the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders would be drawn. By trashing an area that was loaded with precious artifacts buried over 30 centuries, the Palestinians hope to convince the world that Jews have no claim to Jerusalem, let alone any part of Israel, including the areas inside the 1967 lines.
The significance of the seal is that it shows the level of activity that is consistent with it serving as the site of the capital of ancient Israel. Since denying the existence of David’s Kingdom might hurt the case for Zionism’s legitimacy, destroying evidence of that history is key to their agenda. That’s why they trashed the Temple Mount and also why the volunteers of the Temple Mount Sifting Project that is painstakingly going through the material they removed from the historical site is so important.
As with the startling archeological work at the City of David site just outside the current Old City walls that has been supported by New York philanthropists Daniel Mintz and Meredith Berkman, the stone seal refutes the deniers of Jewish history. Try as they might to call the Old City “traditionally Palestinian” or “Arab East Jerusalem,” all you need to do to confirm Jerusalem’s Jewish roots is to start digging.
The only just solution to the problem of the Temple Mount is to preserve the mosques and the right of Muslims to pray there (which is not in question) while also protecting the right of Jews to visit their sacred place. While Israel is falsely accused of undermining the fragile peace of Jerusalem by the United Nations, the only ones who are guilty of fomenting violence are those Palestinians that are engaged in an effort to deny Jewish history and Jewish rights.

09/25 Links Pt2: The ghost of the Grand Mufti lives on; When Israel Was One Large Refugee Camp

From Ian:

The ghost of the Grand Mufti lives on

The ghost of Haj Amin Al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who broadcast Nazi antisemitism into the Middle East from Germany during World War, II is alive and well. The ghost’s last known sighting was on a TV show hosted by Tamer Amin, a well-known and popular media personality in Egypt.
I'd use the word "journalist", but very few people are going to mistake Amin for a responsible journalist.
When an Egyptian woman was sexually assaulted at Cairo University and the event caught on video in March 2014, Amin told his audience that she asked for the assault by dressing provocatively. “She was dressed like a hooker,” Amin said, adding that while her attackers should be punished for violating Islamic law, he blamed the victim for the way she dressed and her parents for letting her out of the house dressed as she was.
If a television personality in the West talked like this, it would probably be the end of their career, but not for Amin, who hosts a show called Men Al Ahar (“From the Other,”) on Misreah Network in Egypt.
On September 5, 2015, Amin hosted a long interview with two commentators, one a former soldier and another an academic who spoke of a world-wide conspiracy of Jews who seek to oppress and conquer Egypt through the use of “fifth generation” technology that includes controlling the weather, causing earthquakes, floods and meteors from outer space to assault the land of the Nile.

Thomas Friedman’s Hectoring Yom Kippur Sermon

Friedman, whose teen-age summer romance with Israeli kibbutzim morphed into affiliation with the J Street antecedent organization Breira while he was a Brandeis undergraduate, seldom misses an opportunity to seize the opportunity to flagellate Israel. Especially, it now seems, on Yom Kippur. This time, however, it was merely a prelude to his warning against “the divisive, bigoted campaigns of Donald Trump and Ben Carson,” thereby enabling him to kill two Republican birds with the stone of Israeli extremism.
The day after Friedman committed his first journalistic sin for atonement next year, Times editors added their own epilogue to the Iran deal. They focused on “what America must do to reassure Israel and its American supporters that the agreement will not harm Israel’s security.” The obvious answer might be repeal. But the Times believes in soft power: “Increased cooperation between America and its regional partners, including the Arab gulf states as well as Israel.” Having found its mantra of linkage between Israel and the “Arab gulf states,” it twice repeated it. Linkage was crucial. The Times could not bring itself to support Israeli security alone – with, for example, the “dubious proposal” for a massive penetrator bomb that could damage Iran’s buried nuclear enrichment facility. That would be “provocative and dangerous.” It might even work.
For Times editors, “What’s most important for Israel’s security is the relationship with the United States,” which was “put at risk” by – guess what — Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to “polarize” the debate over the Iran deal. “A crucial sense of trust needs to be rebuilt.” That admonition expresses the determination of the Times to preserve its editorial embrace of the official American position on anything to do with Israel lest it be accused of divided loyalty.
Thomas Friedman found his true home, warning lest “a whole faith community [Islam] gets delegitimized,” while touting the cinematic delegitimization of rabbis, settlers and Prime Minister Netanyahu – by, of course, an Israeli filmmaker.

When Israeli volunteers help Syrian, Iraqi and Pakistani refugees

While IsraAID has plenty of experience in disaster relief and assistance in 31 countries — from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa — this mission presents a unique challenge: The beneficiaries come from countries that are traditionally hostile, or even officially still at war, with Israel.
But for Shaltiel, that’s unimportant.
“You are meeting fellow human beings,” she said. “You see agony and pain, you see a need, then what does it matter where the person is from.
“In the end you hope that the human contact will bring us forward,” added Shaltiel, who also volunteered for the IsraAID mission in South Sudan.
But she does acknowledge that for the Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis — who make up the vast majority of those arriving — having Israelis as a first contact in Europe can be unexpected and unnerving.

More UNRWA teachers promoting violence on Facebook (updated)

Khaled Abu Walid Kadous is an UNRWA teacher in Nablus.

Even though he lives in the area of British Mandate Palestine spends a lot of time posting about "return" to destroy Israel.

And he is not talking about a peaceful process, either.

He may be a wee bit biased. Which is supposedly grounds for disciplinary action by UNRWA, we are told.

Riiiight.

UPDATE: It turns out that he did not post these images but was tagged on them by someone else.

Kamal Zuhairi is an UNRWA teacher in Irbid, Jordan. He also likes to teach his kids to fight Israeli soldiers.

The caption calls for a third intifada.

This caption calls for bloody revenge.

These are UNRWA teachers, inciting violence under the UN name.

Amnesty says soldiers shouldn't shoot someone actively attacking them with a knife

A couple of days ago Israeli forces shot a woman at a checkpoint that they say was attacking them with a knife.

"The perpetrator approached the checkpoint and the metal detector was activated, alerting the troops' suspicion," an army spokesman said in an accompanying statement.

"Forces at the scene asked her to stop, at which point she approached the forces, disregarding the instructions and raising further suspicion.

"Forces called for her to halt, which she ignored, and she continued moving while also pulling out a knife. At this point, forces fired at the ground, then at her lower extremities in attempts to stop her advancement. The perpetrator continued and at this point, recognising a clear and present danger to their safety, the forces fired towards her."

Arabs are disputing the story, saying that she had no knife. Israeli police released a photo of the knife.

Amnesty researcher Jacob Burns tweeted this with a photo of the knife:

This pic claims to show knife Hadil Hashlamoun dropped after being shot. Unsourced but seems to match other pics. pic.twitter.com/FM9EM9oqHQ
— Jacob Burns (@JacobTBurns) September 23, 2015

But then he wrote this:

#PT source: http://t.co/2nMmGk78j3 Must stress that EVEN if she did have this knife, use of live fire is totally disproportionate+excessive
— Jacob Burns (@JacobTBurns) September 23, 2015

Really? People cannot defend themselves with a gun against someone coming at them with a knife?

Is this Amnesty's definition of proportionate - that only knives may be used against knives? Does every Israeli soldier and policeman need to be equipped with stones of various sizes, slingshots, knives, small caliber and large caliber weapons in order to assess everyone trying to kill them and respond with the "proportionate" weapon?

YKutner on Twitter asked Burns about this, and he pointed to the "Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials," a non-binding UN guideline for the use of firearms. But even that says:

9. Law enforcement officials shall not use firearms against persons except in self-defence or defence of others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury, to prevent the perpetration of a particularly serious crime involving grave threat to life, to arrest a person presenting such a danger and resisting their authority, or to prevent his or her escape, and only when less extreme means are insufficient to achieve these objectives. In any event, intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.

Someone approaching you with a knife who does not stop even when warning shots are fired is an imminent danger to life by any definition. But according to this Amnesty researcher, it is not.

What Burns is saying is that Israel is obligated to deploy only non-lethal means available at checkpoints, which is absurd - because checkpoints are a popular place for suicide bombs and shooting incidents. Security staff must have the proper weapons to defend their and other's lives, and neither tasers nor teargas would make sense.

Again, I am not arguing the details of what actually happened. (Amnesty of course interviewed "eyewitnesses" and issued their own condemnation (even though one of the witnesses admitted that she had a knife, but claims that no one saw it until after she was already shot in the leg and then she dropped it from under her niqab, an amazing coincidence that Israeli soldiers shot her at random without knowing she had a knife according to the "eyewitnesses!")

I am showing that an Amnesty researcher was willing to make up his own interpretation of international law against Israel before he had any actual evidence one way or the other, saying that live fire is "totally disproportionate+excessive" in the face of a knife wielding attacker.

This is not international law. This is not what "proportionate" means. Amnesty is once again making up rules as it goes along.

At least when it comes to Israel.

09/25 Links Pt1: UN marks 70 years of ineffectiveness; How’s That Iran Détente Working?

From Ian:

Patronage and paralysis: UN marks 70 years of ineffectiveness

The worsening war in Syria, allegations of child sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers and the mishandling of the Ebola epidemic cast a spotlight on the inadequacies of the United Nations in a globalized world, operating with a power structure that hasn’t changed since 1945.
With age, the organization has grown bloated, say many who know it well. It is also underfunded and overwhelmed by the tasks it faces.
The world body is trying to deal with almost 60 million global refugees, displaced people and asylum seekers — the greatest number since World War II. It is seeking to provide emergency supplies to keep 100 million people alive but has received less than 30 percent of the $20 billion it needs this year.
Beyond Syria, where more than 250,000 people have been killed since 2011, conflicts escalate from Yemen and Iraq to South Sudan and Mali, forcing tens of thousands to flee hoping for a better life in Europe.
Since the UN was born after World War II, it has grown from 51 members to 193.
As it celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, the UN is hobbled by bureaucracy, politics and an inability among its five most powerful members to agree on much, including how to end Syria’s conflict.

How’s That Iran Détente Working?

Abandoning all of the West’s previous positions and bribing Iran enabled Obama to get the Islamist regime to sign a nuclear accord. But Iran détente with hasn’t defeated ISIS or stopped the Iranians from doubling down on its efforts to threaten Israel from both the north and the south.
Hamas is already benefiting from Iran’s largesse as it uses desperately needed cash to prop up its bankrupt government in Gaza and to build new terror tunnels and other fortifications that will enable it renew hostilities against Israel. Yet the real danger to Israel is the possibility that Hamas and Hezbollah can act in concert to place intolerable pressure via rocket attacks that will place the entire Jewish state under fire. Iran’s adventure in Syria makes such a scenario even more possible.
Hezbollah’s goal in Syria is not just to do Iran’s bidding to help Assad. They seek to establish the ability to fire rockets from Syrian soil into Israel. Their reasoning is that shooting at the Jewish state from Lebanon will invite massive Israeli retaliation and undermine support there for Hezbollah’s activities. But if such fire is coming from Syrian territory it will make it harder for Israel to retaliate in such a way as to hurt Hezbollah politically.
The result of this activity is to show that from moderating Iran, the nuclear negotiations have only encouraged it to increase their already considerable backing for terror groups. Even if we assume that Iran will observe the terms of the deal that enable it to build a bomb once it expires, recent events show that in the meantime it will use its growing financial muscle to strengthen its grip on regional power. That is a recipe for more bloodshed in the region as well as a deadly threat to Israel. Détente with Iran never made much sense even if the discussion was limited to nuclear concerns. But the administration’s adamant refusal to bring the question of terrorism and threats to Israel into the negotiations has paid off for the ayatollahs. The regime is flexing its muscles in a way that has already vindicated Arab fears of Iran using the nuclear deal to pursue regional hegemony.

You Won’t Believe The Latest Revelations About The Flaws In The Nuclear Agreement With Iran

Even if the administration should want to give in to Iran on this issue, there are serious obstacles that make such a concession unlikely.
The first obstacle is that in order to lift sanctions now, UNSC Resolution 2231 would have to be canceled, which is very unlikely. The second obstacle the administration would face is that Congress must OK sanction relief, something that is even more unlikely than the cancellation of UNSCR 2231.
No doubt the Iranians will come with new demands at the UNGA meeting, and immediate sanction relief is probably one of them. The Iranians always conduct negotiations in this way, and they will do so this time too because they know Obama sees this deal as the foreign policy achievement of his presidency, and because they want to buy time.
In a worst case scenario for President Obama, Khamenei will make good on his threat that there will be no agreement if the administration and the other negotiation partners do not cave in. In this respect, it is important to remember that the JCPOA has not yet been signed by Iran and a number of experts have already said that Iran won’t sign the deal at all. Among those experts are Michael Ledeen of Pajamas Media and Jennifer Dyer who writes for Liberty Unyielding.
Dyer told Western Journalism that Iran won’t announce that they will not sign the deal, but instead will come up with new demands. She said the reason for this behavior has to do with Israel.
“By keeping the negotiation process open-ended, Iran keeps Israel perpetually just short of being justified in taking decisive action. The sense is kept alive that the world is still waiting for a finite resolution on the Iran nuclear problem. The Western nations are allowed to perceive that they’re ‘making progress.’ But in fact, Iran is just buying time – which requires keeping alive that perception of the political problem still being unresolved,” Dyer said
“The day Iran signs something real, that game is over. Hence, all the incessant signals that the basis for a “sign-able” agreement doesn’t exist yet,” she added.

Sickening UNRWA trying to take lion's share of Syria refugee relief funds

The Guardian's Harriet Grant reported on September 6:

The UN’s humanitarian agencies are on the verge of bankruptcy and unable to meet the basic needs of millions of people because of the size of the refugee crisis in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, senior figures within the UN have told the Guardian.

The deteriorating conditions in Lebanon and Jordan, particularly the lack of food and healthcare, have become intolerable for many of the 4 million people who have fled Syria, driving fresh waves of refugees north-west towards Europe and aggravating the current crisis.

This article upset UNRWA's Chris Gunness:

Odd that @harrietgrant doesn't mention @UNRWA's cash crisis piece re refugee flows 2 Europe & need 2 fully fund cash-strapped UN agencies RT
— Chris Gunness (@ChrisGunness) September 7, 2015

So Gunness decided to do some serious research. On Twitter.

Do any colleagues in #UNHCR @LDUNHCR @melissarfleming or peeps know how many #Palestinians r among those arriving in Europe & elsewhere ? RT
— Chris Gunness (@ChrisGunness) September 11, 2015

He didn't get an answer. But he tweeted:

UNRWA's #Syria Appeal for US$ 415 million is just 37% funded. No wonder people are flocking 2 Europe RT pic.twitter.com/w3DVafEtmy
— Chris Gunness (@ChrisGunness) September 9, 2015

UNRWA #Syria Crisis Appeal just 34% funded. No wonder #refugees are pouring into #Europe RT pic.twitter.com/muB3E83aiK
— Chris Gunness (@ChrisGunness) September 22, 2015

I don't know how the funding went from 37% to 34% either.

But let's look at the numbers.

Before the Syrian war, there were about 500,000 Arabs of Palestinian ancestry in Syria, out of a population of about 23 million, or about 2%.

Of the 220,000 killed in the Syrian civil war, about 3000 are Palestinian, about 1.3%.

So of the 4 million who have fled Syria, how many are Palestinian? Even if every single Palestinian Arab left Syria that would only be 10% of the total!

But UNRWA is asking for $415 million, and trying to say that if only those tightwad Europeans would pay more to UNRWA, then they wouldn't have so many refugees beating on their doors!

By any math, this simply is a lie.

This is besides the fact that Gunness is claiming that the reasons Syrians are fleeing is because they don't have support. That may be part of it, but if barrel bombs are dropping on your town, you would flee away no matter how well-funded the local UNRWA program is.

There are scores of agencies raising money for victims of the Syrian war. UNRWA is trying to take the money that would go to help everyone and redirect it to its own operations which may be important but would barely make a dent in the larger set of fundraising for Syria.

In other words, UNRWA's Chris Gunness is cynically taking advantage of a true humanitarian crisis by inflating UNRWA's importance and acting like a baby when the media rightly doesn't place UNRWA on the top of its list of agencies helping Syrians, a list that is quite long:

Mufti of Kazakhstan prohibits Eid selfies with animals to be slaughtered

The Mufti of Kazakhstan issued a fatwa prohibiting people from taking "selfies" with with sacrificial animals they are about to eat.

It does appear to be a thing:

In Pakistan, they actually have fashion shows where models do the catwalk with animals about to be slaughtered!:

Too bad the mufti isn't concerned with the animal cruelty that goes along with the slaughter.

British Board of Film Classification decides EoZ is not an adult site

Several weeks ago a couple of people told me that they could not reach the EoZ site on British cellular network EE. And from others I heard that a number of pro-Israel websites were blocked as well, such as Israellycool, Sultan Knish and Israel Matzav, Edgar Davidson wrote about it last month.

No anti-Israel site was blocked.

After some research I found out that they were using filtering software from a phone network called O2, and I complained to them, without much success. My mobile site seemed to be OK but not my full website.

It looks like I've been declared kosher enough for children by the people who stare at movies to look for too much skin.

From TheJC:

Telecommunications company O2 has removed blocks on two pro-Israel websites.

The company had denied access to israellycool.com and elderofziyon.blogspot.com to users aged under 18.

The sites feature a range of pro-Israel content and reports on antisemitism.

O2 made the decision following a ruling by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), which oversees web content.

O2 press officer John Maley said in a statement: "The BBFC have confirmed to us that they have recently assessed the two websites and have overruled the grading service where these sites were classified as 18-plus content.

"As a result of the BBFC's decision, we will be removing the restriction for both sites."

O2 uses Symantec Rulespace, a company that classifies online content, and which Catherine Anderson, head of communications at the BBFC, said was "not a perfect science".

She added: "It's automatic filtering, so sometimes things which are borderline will get blocked and a person needs to look at it on a contextual basis. Sometimes keywords are flagged and it's blocked as a result."

Both sites include examples of antisemitic content on their pages in order to highlight and condemn its existence elsewhere online.

One JC reader, who had raised concerns about the block, pointed out that similar pro-Palestinian sites were freely accessible on the O2 network.

It does not seem likely that this site was blocked because of my quoting antisemitic Arab websites. It is not as if I use slurs or other words that would trigger a filter (Talmudic? Settler? Banks?)

The real issue is almost certainly that Israel haters complain regularly to the mobile providers, just as they complain to YouTube and Facebook about Israel-advocacy sites, and the people or software decide that they have validity if more than X number of people complain, triggering the filter. That is what needs to be uncovered. It is absurd that haters can get a site blocked with little effort but it takes weeks of work to get the sites declared OK.

So now I have a mental picture of a bunch of people in a room scanning my site and looking for adult content.

Anti-Zionist Chicago synagogue says Jacob needs forgiveness from Esau

Recently, to some celebration among Jewish Israel-haters, a new synagogue opened up in Chicago called Tzedek Chicago. (Tzedek means justice, a keyword for destroying Israel.) Even Max Blumenthal enthusiastically spoke at their services on Yom Kippur..

The rabbi is well-known Israel hater Brant Rosen. On his blog he has lots of material about how he and his congregation thinks, which invariably has little to do with Judaism. For those for whom Judaism is important, reading his writings induces nausea.

The guest lecturer on the night of Yom Kippur said this:

A good structure means little without substance. We need not to only identify injustice but also work to correct it. We need to do our part. We need to take Yom Kippur seriously; we need to take the project of teshuvah seriously.

Again, we face obstacles. Traditionally, the Yom Kippur liturgy dances between two problematic theologies of an authoritarian deity: one, a strict adherent of reward and punishment, and the other, a completely arbitrary megalomaniac. How can we reconcile our knowledge of justice with these concepts of the Divine?

So we are doing liturgy differently at Tzedek. Tomorrow, we will not read from the passage in Leviticus which describes the ancient practice of transferring our sins onto goats and arbitrarily killing one and sending the other away. We know we cannot make teshuvah by putting our sins onto any scapegoat. Instead, we will read the passage in Genesis about Jacob’s reconciliation with Esau. With themes of generosity, transformation, and moving forward from wrongs done without revising or denying past harms, this text reflects the kind of teshuvah we wish to do. It provides hope for intractable conflicts to be resolved justly. We will read about a moment so transformative it turned Jacob from a conniving person into a gentle one. We want that for ourselves. Why is this Yom Kippur different from all other days? Because we can find an example of teshuvah in our text we wish to emulate.

...In tomorrow’s text, we identify with both twins. Jacob victimized Esau. He erred when he stole Esau’s birthright. But we root for Jacob in this reconciliation – not because of lineage but because we know a deep truth. God is the ally of those who seek forgiveness. The story makes us more inclined to forgive and to believe we can be forgiven.

Normally I wouldn't bother to spend time showing how utterly condescending and wrong the "Torah" of this pseudo-temple is. But it just so happens that I used the Yom Kippur Machzor (prayer book) of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and he discussed this very episode. If you want to see the difference between false political interpretations of the Torah , and a real interpretation, read on.

There are moments that change the world: 1439 when Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press (though the Chinese had developed it four centuries before), or 1821 when Faraday invented the electric motor, or 1990 when Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web. There is such a moment... when Joseph finally revealed his identity to his brothers. While they were silent and in a state of shock, he went on to say these words:

“I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.” (Gen. 45: 4-8)
This is the first recorded moment in history in which one human being forgives another.

...Forgiveness does not appear in every culture. It is not a human universal, nor is it a biological imperative. We know this from a fascinating study by American classicist David Konstan, Before Forgiveness: the origins of a moral idea (2010). In it he argues that there was no concept of forgiveness in the literature of the ancient Greeks. There was something else, often mistaken for forgiveness. There is appeasement of anger.
When someone does harm to someone else, the victim is angry and seeks revenge. This is clearly dangerous for the perpetrator and he or she may try to get the victim to calm down and move on. They may make excuses: It wasn’t me, it was someone else. Or, it was me but I couldn’t help it. Or, it was me but it was a small wrong, and I have done you much good in the past, so on balance you should let it pass.

Alternatively, or in conjunction with these other strategies, the perpetrator may beg, plead, and perform some ritual of abasement or humiliation. This is a way of saying to the victim, “I am not really a threat.” The Greek word sugnome, sometimes translated as forgiveness, really means, says Konstan, exculpation or absolution. It is not that I forgive you for what you did, but that I understand why you did it – you could not really help it, you were caught up in circumstances beyond your control – or, alternatively, I do not need to take revenge because you have now shown by your deference to me that you hold me in proper respect. My dignity has been restored.

There is a classic example of appeasement in the Torah: Jacob’s behaviour toward Esau when they meet again after a long separation. Jacob had fled home after Rebekah overheard Esau resolving to kill him after Isaac’s death (Gen. 27: 41). Prior to the meeting Jacob sends him a huge gift of cattle, saying “I will appease him with the present that goes before me, and afterward I will see his face; perhaps he will accept me.” (Gen. 32: 21). When the brothers meet, Jacob bows down to Esau seven times, a classic abasement ritual. The brothers meet, kiss, embrace and go their separate ways, but not because Esau has forgiven Jacob but because either he has forgotten or he has been placated.

...There are forms of appeasement and peacemaking that are pre-moral and have existed since the birth of humanity. Forgiveness has not. Konstan argues that its first appearance is in the Hebrew Bible and he cites the case of Joseph. What he does not make clear is why Joseph forgives, and why the idea and institution are born specifically within Judaism.

The answer is that within Judaism a new form of morality was born. Judaism is (primarily) an ethic of guilt, as opposed to most other systems, which are ethics of shame. One of the fundamental differences between them is that shame attaches to the person. Guilt attaches to the act. In shame cultures when a person does wrong he or she is, as it were, stained, marked, defiled. In guilt cultures what is wrong is not the doer but the deed, not the sinner but the sin. The person retains his or her fundamental worth (“the soul you gave me is pure,” as we say in our prayers). It is the act that has somehow to be put right. That is why in guilt cultures there are processes of repentance, atonement and forgiveness.

That is the explanation for Joseph’s behaviour from the moment the brothers appear before him in Egypt for the first time to the point where, in this week’s parsha, he announces his identity and forgives his brothers. It is a textbook case of putting the brothers through a course in atonement, the first in literature. Joseph is thus teaching them, and the Torah is teaching us, what it is to earn forgiveness....

The entire essay is worth reading. And this portion is worth publishing here because it shows the stark difference between the pseudo-Jews of Chicago and real Judaism.

Rosen has bought into the honor/shame culture of the Arab world. He believes that Arabs have been shamed and only Arabs can demand justice, with Arabs acting as judge and jury to ultimately deny Jews any rights. Jacob stole from Esau and must make amends by abasement and groveling, and only Esau can decide whether Jacob meets his own criteria of justice - when his shame disappears. There was no request for forgiveness nor was there any given.

In this case he was appeased, but in the case of the Arab world, nothing would appease them short of the destruction of the Jewish state - a goal that Rosen shares.

Rabbi Sacks, on the other hand, describes the guilt culture as morally superior to shame culture and indeed it is the basis for today's Judeo-Christian morality.

We owe to anthropologists like Ruth Benedict the distinction between shame cultures and guilt cultures. Shame is a social phenomenon. It is what we feel when our wrongdoing is exposed to others. It may even be something we feel when we merely imagine other people knowing or seeing what we have done. Shame is the feeling of being found out, and our first instinct is to hide. That is what Adam and Eve did in the garden of Eden after they had eaten the forbidden fruit. They were ashamed of their nakedness and they hid.

Guilt is a personal phenomenon. It has nothing to do with what others might say if they knew what we have done, and everything to do with what we say to ourselves. Guilt is the voice of conscience, and it is inescapable. You may be able to avoid shame by hiding or not being found out, but you cannot avoid guilt. Guilt is self-knowledge.

There is another difference, which explains why Judaism is overwhelmingly a guilt rather than a shame culture. Shame attaches to the person. Guilt attaches to the act. It is almost impossible to remove shame once you have been publicly disgraced....

Guilt makes a clear distinction between the act of wrongdoing and the person of the wrongdoer. The act was wrong, but the agent remains, in principle, intact. That is why guilt can be removed, “atoned for,” by confession, remorse and restitution. “Hate not the sinner but the sin,” is the basic axiom of a guilt culture.

But for the Arab honor/same culture, and Brant Rosen, "hate the one who shamed you" is the (one-way) rule for the Middle East. Jews are the original sinners for winning wars with Arabs who regarded them as weak, the ultimate source of Arab shame.

That can never be erased, no matter how abjectly Jews like Rosen and his congregants attempt to abase and debase themselves with them.

(In interests of completeness, Rabbi Sacks actually writes that Esau was wronged by Jacob from his own perspective, and he also says that in any peace agreement Israel should respect the Arab honor-shame culture, but not surrender to it.

(And last year I did write about the same topic after Yom Kippur. )

09/24 Links Pt2: The BDS Movement’s Very Bad Month; Time to Dismantle the UNHRC

From Ian:

The BDS Movement’s Very Bad Month

The one saving grace about anti-Semites is that, contrary to Barack Obama’s famous claim, they generally are irrational and, therefore, they often overreach. The anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement has been doing exactly that recently. In the past month alone, it has suffered three resounding and damaging failures.
The first, of course, was its “success” in pressuring a Spanish reggae festival to disinvite American Jewish singer Matisyahu unless he issued a statement backing a Palestinian state. Matisyahu, to his credit, didn’t merely refuse; he also made sure the world knew why he wouldn’t be appearing as scheduled. The subsequent public outcry not only made the festival hurriedly backtrack and reinstate Matisyahu in his original slot, but also exposed the truth of the BDS movement’s anti-Semitism, which it has long tried to hide. After all, Matisyahu isn’t Israeli; he was asked to issue that statement, alone of all the artists at the festival, simply because he was Jewish.
Next came last week’s decision to boycott Israel by the mighty municipality of Reykjavik (population about 120,000). Having naively expected applause for this display of moral indignation, the municipality was stunned to be met instead by an outpouring of condemnation, including from Iceland’s own prime minister, and quickly reversed course. But the damage, as Haaretz journalist Asher Schechter lamented, was already done: Reykjavik had provided further proof that the BDS movement, contrary to the widespread belief that it merely targets “the occupation,” is simply anti-Israel.
Then there’s my personal favorite, which occurred this week: the BDS protest against a Pharrell Williams concert in South Africa. When I first read about the planned protest, I couldn’t believe BDS was serious. A black American singer goes to South Africa to perform for black South Africans, and BDS wants to ruin the audience’s fun? Just because Williams’ corporate sponsor is a Jewish-owned retailer (Woolworths) that already boycotts produce from “the occupied territories”? But BDS evidently couldn’t see how bad this looked. It rashly promised some 40,000 demonstrators, “the largest protest event in South African history against any musician or artist.” And it wound up with a measly 500, as many South Africans suddenly discovered that BDS might not be their best guide to international morality. (h/t messy57)

Israel is an insignificant country

I woke up this morning and I suddenly realized that Israel was an insignificant country.
Watching the heart-breaking images of the Syrian refugees in Europe, it dawned on me that Israel had absolutely nothing to do with it. In terms of cause and effect, it had no role whatsoever in creating the problem. Indeed, Israel had no responsibility for the civil war taking place in Syria.
If Israel had not existed, the civil war in Syria and the consequent refugee problem besetting Europe at present would have occurred anyway.
Glancing more widely into the region, I then became aware that in terms of cause and effect, Israel was not the motive of the cruel and destabilizing events that have occurred in the Middle East in the last four years.
I became despondent as I realized that the emergence of the Islamic State had nothing to do with Israel; that if Israel had not existed, al-Qaida and the Islamic State would nevertheless have emerged and wreaked havoc in the region.
Further, I then understood that the civil war in Libya, prior and subsequent to Muammar Gaddafi’s fall, would have taken place no matter what Israel did or said.
Turning eastward, I saw the light as I realized that the evolution of the political landscape in Egypt would not have changed a bit if Israel had not existed. (h/t L_King)

Time to Dismantle the UN Human Rights Council

Like it or not, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is a big flop. It does not care a fig for what it is supposed to do: promote and protect human rights in general, and freedom of association, assembly, expression, belief and religion, sexual preference and women's rights and the rights of racial and ethnic minorities in particular.
The past record of the UNHRC shows it has overlooked rights violations in a large part of the world in general and the Middle East in particular. The UNHRC has notoriously been obsessed with inventing rights violations by Israel, the Middle East's only democracy, where women and minorities -- the most oppressed sections in most of the nations in the world -- enjoy equality in law and practice both. Since March 2006, when the UN General Assembly brought the UNHRC into existence, it has condemned Israel 61 times, compared to just 55 condemnations of all other nations in the world combined.
How many times has the UNHRC condemned states such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, which oppress their own citizens -- women and minorities in particular -- and inspire many states to follow them?
What makes the UNHRC ignore such rights violations? The answer is simple: most of the member states of the Council are themselves the worst violators of the rights of their own citizens, and they are trying to save each other through a conspiracy of corruption.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor shows that is it just a front for anti-Israel activities with their latest press release:

Israeli authorities deported 227 Palestinians and detained 225 others during January-August. In addition, 7,200 settlers accompanied by Israeli officers and soldiers stormed the Al-Aqsa compound during the same period.

In 2014, nearly 11,000 Jews stormed the Al-Aqsa compound during the year (a number that is 28 percent higher than during 2013, and almost double that of 2012).

This year, April witnessed the highest percentage of violations; 1,412 settlers accompanied by 93 officers and soldiers stormed the Al-Aqsa compound.

Among the provocative acts documented by Euro-Med researchers against Palestinians in Jerusalem were performance of Talmudic prayers near Muslim worshippers, beating, throwing rubbish, cursing, death threats and preventing worshippers from reaching the mosque.

We've previously seen that this "human rights" group had counted terrorists as "children" in their list of victims of Israeli "war crimes." It has blamed Israel for Gaza men beating their wives. It has illustrated one of its biased reports with an antisemitic cartoon. It employs people who actively support terrorism.

But the wording of this press release, which mirrors that of every Arab critic of Jewish human rights, proves that the EuroMed Human Rights Monitor is simply an Israel-bashing NGO run by Arabs with a "human rights" face. (In fact, the report they reference is not available in English or French as of this writing, but it is available in Arabic, indicating the language it is originally written in.)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

When you see a thief you fall in with him, and throw in your lot with adulterers; you devote your mouth to evil, and yoke your tongue to deceit; you are busy maligning your brother, defaming the son of your mother. – Psalm 50

I’m writing this the day before Yom Kippur, so I’m thinking about my mistakes, some of which are even sins. But my thoughts keep wandering. Is it worse to commit many sins and repent for them, or to sin less but insist that you don’t sin at all? What about committing few sins but admitting to ones that you didn’t commit?

That sounds insane, but characterizes the Jewish people, or at least elements therein. Since the Zionist enterprise created – at massive cost and against great odds – what in many ways may be the best modern state on the planet earth, Jews have been repenting for their success.

How is it possible, says the little devil that sits on the shoulder of writers like Ari Shavit or Peter Beinart and whispers in their ears, that Jews should have all this, Jews that were despised in the civilized world for at least 2000 years and whom many important people today still despise?

They don’t deserve it, says the devil. They must have stolen it. They must have committed massacres and ethnically cleansed the indigenous people from their land. Because, as Mahmoud Abbas, a proud ‘Palestinian’, says, Jews have filthy feet that defile the land. You never hear Mahmoud Abbas admitting his sins, or indeed the sins of any ‘Palestinian’, unless of course it is an Arab that has challenged his authority as the dictator of the Palestinian kleptocracy.

They can’t prove that the massacres and ethnic cleansing happened, but they know in their hearts that it had to happen, because otherwise the Jews would still be living the kind of life they truly deserve, paying jizya to Muslim rulers or eating dirt in the ghettos of Europe in between Easter-time pogroms like my grandparents did.

We fought wars and like all wars not every bullet fired was perfectly just. We made mistakes. But we weren’t Nazis, we weren’t Arabs and we weren’t even Americans or British. We fought in self-defense and we did what was necessary to survive.

Amira Hass, a Jewish woman and writer for the Ha’aretz newspaper, famously said that “throwing stones is the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule.” Hass doesn’t agree with me that the Jewish people has a birthright, the same as any indigenous people, and that it is the land of Israel, and that even the Jew-despising nations recognized this in international law, and that there is no ‘foreign’ rule here. But getting stoned to death is a long tradition among Jews (it’s even mentioned in the Yom Kippur liturgy), and for Amira Hass it’s what we deserve. The Jewish people cheated their ordained fate, and it’s the Arabs’ duty to punish them.

Even the President of the State of Israel doesn’t feel comfortable with his ‘Jewish privilege.’ The morning after an ugly crime in which three Arabs were burned to death, when the police investigation had barely begun, he announced that “Jewish terrorists” were responsible for the crime. Now it’s almost two months later and the Jewish terrorists are still not in hand, despite assurances from various government officials that they know who did it, “in principle,” (the words of Moshe Ya’alon) anyway. But it had to be Jews, because we know that Jews, especially right-wing extremists, are guilty of everything. To be a Jew is to be guilty.
So why are we surprised when the non-Jewish world expects us to sit down with representatives of the PLO, still a criminal terrorist gang, and offer up our land in return for promises (which nobody in their right mind expects that they will keep)? When the Arabs said that we massacred them, ethnically cleansed them, burned them, stole their land, were descended from Khazars, and never even had a Temple on the Mount where we put our “filthy feet,” did we object? Only a little. Mostly we said that we suffered a lot in the Holocaust, both sides have made mistakes and our security is important to us.

What we did not say was that we are the indigenous people of the land of Israel, we have a biblical, historical moral, and legal right to the land – recognized in the Mandate – and it isn’t a sin to defend ourselves, our history and our rights.

It isn’t a moral policy – or a particularly effective one – to try to ingratiate ourselves with those who hate us by accepting guilt for crimes that we didn’t commit. Self-flagellation engenders contempt, not respect. And it isn’t moral or effective to be silent and fail to demand the justice that we truly deserve.

Something to think about on Yom Kippur. May we all be blessed with a peaceful year.