Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, September 11, 2017

09/11 Links Pt1: PA Governor lauds Martyrs’ perfumed blood; PA Arrests Peace Activist For Hosting MK Glick

From Ian:

PMW: PA Governor lauds Martyrs’ perfumed blood

District Governor of Ramallah Laila Ghannam has declared that the PA will stay faithful to the “path” of the “Martyrs.” During a visit to the “monument in memory of the Martyrs” on the Muslim holiday Eid Al-Adha together with representatives of the PA Security Forces, she glorified the Palestinian “Martyrs” - the majority of whom are terrorists killed during their attacks against Israelis - for “perfuming the ground with the scent of their blood,” which was “spilled for the epic of struggle whose title is Palestine”:
“She... emphasized that our Martyrs will always remain in our hearts and souls, and we will all remain loyal to their path until we are liberated from the occupation and realize everything for which they died as Martyrs... who are perfuming the ground with the scent of their blood that was spilled for the epic of struggle whose title is Palestine.”
[WAFA, official PA news agency, Sept. 1, 2017]
A few days earlier, while Ghannam was seeing families of “Martyrs” off to Mecca, she “asked that Allah have mercy on the souls of their sons who have saturated the land of Palestine with the fragrance of their blood...” and “mentioned the virtues of the Martyrs who gave their blood for the homeland." [Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, Aug. 27, 2017]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Ghannam is an avid supporter of terrorist murderers. On the morning after murderer Muhannad Halabi killed 2 Israelis in the Old City of Jerusalem in October 2015, and terrorist Fadi Alloun stabbed and wounded another Israeli - and both terrorists were killed by Israeli soldiers during their attacks - Ghannam posted the following praise for them as “Martyrs” on Facebook:
“Palestine’s morning
A morning fragranced by the blood of the Martyrs (Shahids)
The morning of wounded Jerusalem
Have a morning of pride and honor.”
[Facebook, "Friends of Dr. Laila Ghannam," Oct. 4, 2015]

Palestinian Authority Arrests Peace Activist For Hosting Israeli MK

Mohamed Jabir is a former member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization. He used to decorate his home in Hebron with photographs of Osama bin-Laden, and, at one point, considered becoming a suicide bomber. He had a change of heart, realized the evil of violence against innocents, and became a prominent peace activists. Yehuda Glick is an Israeli member of Knesset with the Likud party. He is an active promoter of the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, and is a survivor of an assassination attempt by Jabir’s former terror group. He is also a firm believer in peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews, and when the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha rolled in, Glick traveled to Hebron to pay his friend Jabir a visit.
The two men sat on the couch, enjoyed some fruit and sweet pastries and the company of Jabir’s sweet children. Later that day, Glick posted a few photos of the afternoon on his Facebook account. “Inshallah,” he wrote, “may we all live here in peace. Happy holiday.”
To anyone truly interested in peace, the post should’ve been a cause for celebration: Here are two men, a Jew and a Muslim, putting aside their differences, enjoying each other’s company, and suggesting that there’s hope yet for something like a normal life for Israelis and Palestinians who believe in peace and reconciliation. The Palestinian Authority, however, had other ideas: As soon as the photos were made public, it dispatched its secret police to Jabir’s home and arrested him.
Sadly, Abbas’s goons weren’t the only ones persecuting Jabir for having coffee with a Jew. The Palestinian’s family, too, was quick to denounce him, issuing a statement saying that they no longer considered Jabir their relative and that his actions were “a betrayal of the homeland.”

Palestinian Family Disowns Son, Calls Him ‘Cancer’ for Meeting with Israeli Lawmaker

A Palestinian family from Hebron has announced in Palestinian media that it has cut ties with one of its sons who insisted on meeting with Israelis, with the last straw being his meeting with Likud Knesset member Yehuda Glick.
The Jaber family from Hebron announced that it was cutting ties with their son, Muhammad, and that it was unconnected to Muhammad’s actions after photos were circulated online showing their son hosting Glick in his home during Eid ad-Adha, which ended last week. The photos were originally posted on Glick’s Twitter account.
Muhammad’s brother said in a conversation with the Al Quds network that he and his brothers were cutting ties with their sibling and that they were innocent of the “normalization meetings he used to hold, but we didn’t announce it publicly out of consideration of our sick mother. But after hosting Glick in his home, we announce that Muhammad is not our brother and we’re free of him.”
According to the brother, “Muhammad persisted for years in meeting with Israelis despite opposition from the family who considered these meetings as a betrayal of their homeland. The entire family gave up on him and all the family members will say this. Muhammad hosts Israelis every day and the last one was Yehuda Glick, who invades the al-Aqsa Mosque every day and is hostile to the Palestinians. We reject these meetings and we refuse to shake our brother’s hand because whoever has done this is a traitor.”

Broadway musicals are frequently played and sung in our home, and (usually once a year) we skip rent and food for the month to actually buy tickets to a Tony-winning show.

Our two latest stage adventures were Hamilton (which we all saw in Chicago) and Dear Evan Hansen (which only some of us saw in New York). The former was definitely the more ground-breaking, a game-changing masterpiece that brought new urban musical forms to the stage in the same way West Side Story recreated Broadway via jazz and modern dance. But Hansen certainly earned this year’s Tony’s with its talented cast, memorable songs, and heart-rending story about a high-school senior trapped in his own lies over a classmate’s suicide.

When comparing the two shows, it dawned on me that the protagonists were about the same age when you first meet them. Hamilton grows up during the play (which continues through his death at 47), while Hansen is the same age throughout. But it’s interesting to note that by the time Hamilton had reached Hansen’s 17-18-year-old mark, he had already been in college for several years, penned two remarkable and important public pamphlets railing against British treatment of the colonies, and was one year away from fighting his first battles as an artillery Captain in the Revolutionary army.

In contrast, Evan Hansen has spent those same years anguishing about his lack of friends and purpose, writing letters to himself to buck up his ego (one of which is mistaken for a letter of friendship with the boy who killed himself), and set up a web page to maintain this fictional relationship.

This comparison is not designed to decry the youth of today, but rather to ask the question of how a society that has overcome so many of the terrors men like Hamilton had to face over two centuries ago (disease, want, slavery, invading imperial armies) today seems obsessed with the small and internal when so few obstacles are in the way of thinking and living for larger purpose. After all, if men like Hamilton were able to fight for independence with barely enough food to feed and army and build a country while contending with Yellow Fever and gout, shouldn’t we moderns be doing so much more with hideous diseases banished and food (and other needs of life) plentiful?

But what if such hardships were not impediments to living a serious life, but the inspiration to live one? In fact, might Evan Hansen’s existential angst (and the angst felt by so many of us these days) derive from having inherited all the default comforts derived from the society he lives in, rather than having created that society (or contributed to its ongoing creation)?

This contrast may help solve one of the world’s great riddles: why are Israelis again and again ranked among the happiest people on the face of the earth.

Such happiness seems lunatic, given the knife-edge existence of the Jewish state and everyone dwelling within it, not to mention the sacrifices people living in that state must make in terms of high taxes and military service (including near life-long duty as reservists). But if we think of these sacrifices as contributions each citizen is making to the nation they and their parents built, then being an Israeli is revealed as synonymous with having higher purpose, a reason for existence.

With purpose, one has room in the soul for genuine love and friendship, not the pretend friendships and unrequited high-school passions of Evan Hansen’s lost high-schooler, but the deep and profound connectedness between lovers, family members, and comrades-at-arms that marked the life of Hamilton.

With this Fall’s hurricanes bringing so much peril and damage to the United States, Jewish news sources have noted that today it is Israel that is sending aid to its American landsmen, reversing a decades-long dynamic in which Americans were the givers and Israelis the recipients of charity. While such material aid is enormously welcome, it’s worth noting that the Jewish state has been exporting something much more important over the last seventy years: a way of life that provides an antidote to the existential crisis facing us all.

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Palestinians ecstatic: Africa/Israel conference postponed

Yesterday I reported that the Arab League was placing the topic of canceling the planned upcoming Africa/Israel conference at the top of its agenda for its upcoming meeting.

That pressure has actually been unrelenting against Togo, the host of the conference, as this August 15 article shows:

Togo is set to invite all 54 countries on the continent to the event, which is scheduled for October 23-27 in the capital Lome. But the Palestinians, Morocco and South Africa are actively seeking to derail the gathering, African and Israeli sources told The Times of Israel.
“This is not taking place without contrary pressure,” Netanyahu said during Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting, referring to the Africa-Israel Summit. “Various pressures have been placed on the Togolese president to cancel the conference. These pressures are the best testimony to the success of our policy, of Israel’s presence in Africa.”

It appears that the pressure has succeeded, at least partially, as a visit to the webpage of the conference shows:

JPost reports:

The first ever Israel-Africa Summit scheduled to take place in October has been called off in the aftermath of boycott threats by a number of countries and pressure against the event from Palestinians and Arab countries.

News of the summit's temporary cancellation come as Netanyahu is en route to make the first-ever visit by a sitting Israeli prime minister to Latin America.

In its statement to the press, the Foreign Ministry said that the event had been “postponed” but it did not provide an alternative date.
“At the request of the President of Togo and following a joint consultation with the Prime Minister, it was decided to postpone the convening of the Israel-Africa Summit, scheduled to take place in October in Lomé,” the Foreign Ministry said.
It added that an agreed upon date would be set later by both countries.
“In the near future, Israel will hold consultations in Africa, both on the bilateral level as well as in regional gatherings and fora on the continent in order to guarantee the full success of the summit,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Togolese President Faure Gnassingbé “thanked and praised the prime minister for his determination to strengthen the cooperation between his country and Israel, as well as for his personal engagement to guarantee the initiative to hold the summit,” the Foreign Ministry said.

The Palestinian foreign affairs ministry is taking full credit for its (increasingly rare) diplomatic victory.

However, it appears that a separate Palestinian group has exerted most of the pressure, and the PA foreign ministry jumped on the bandwagon afterwards. This group is actually opposed to the PA.

It looks like Israel will need to continue to be more private about its diplomatic efforts in Africa for the time being.

In the end, the African states will act in their own self interest, and the Palestinians have nothing to offer them except threats.

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Muslims upset at IDF spokesperson receiving Hajj gifts

From the Facebook page of Avichai Adraee, the IDF's Arabic-language spokesperson:

How wonderful to receive a gift from the holy hom!
With the return of the pilgrims of the house of God to their homes and families, the pilgrims honor their relatives and friends with gifts.
I also received a gift from a close friend who returned from the pilgrimage last week...

The gifts that Adraee received are Islamic prayer beads and, apparently, an Islamic cloak associated with the pilgrimage.

The idea that a Muslim might give gifts like this to a Jew is too much for some. Egypt's Youm7 has an article claiming that Adraee is lying, saying "In a continuation of the attempts at normalization and the lies of Avichai Adraee, an Israeli army spokesman in Arabic through social media sites, he published a picture carrying a rosary and a cloak claiming that one of the pilgrims had given it to him."

Because how could a Muslim possibly feel close enough to a Jew to give him gifts like this? .

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Breaking the Silence has no need to worry about terror attacks

Anti-Israel organization Breaking the Silence offers tours where their members routinely lie about alleged Israeli army atrocities.One covers the South Hebron Hills and the other one in Hebron itself.

In both of those tours, the organization's description mentions:

"The buses are not armored."

Of course, Jews who live in their ancestral homelands of Judea and Samaria must travel in armored buses in order to survive the daily stoning and Molotov cocktail and shooting attacks that they suffer.

But the people who go on Breaking the Silence tours have no such fears.

One must wonder why terrorists don't have a problem with people who claim to be working towards peace.

Maybe they understand the agenda of BtS better than most Westerners do.

(h/t Irene)

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09/10 Links: Iran secretly helped N. Korea with nuclear program; Behind ‘Antifa’s’ mask

From Ian:

Jerusalem eviction calumny spreads like wildfire

The story of the eviction of the Arab Shamasneh family from a house in Jerusalem’s Shimon Hatzaddik neighbourhood has spread like wildfire around the world (See here, here and here). The item was carried by countless Arab media and even the measured mainstream western press such as the Washington Post and the Times of London.
It’s a gift to the Palestinian propaganda machine: Israelis are being painted as heartless creatures who are throwing elderly Arabs out on the street. Even the Borneo Bulletin has transmitted this damning impression to its readers.
With one or two exceptions, even the Jewish and Israeli press are failing to state the full facts of the case.
Sixty-nine years ago, the Hubara family, a Jewish family living in Shimon Hatzaddik, were expelled when the British-led Arab legion invaded and occupied the city during the early stages of Israel’s War of Independence.
Called ‘Sheikh Jarrah’ by the city’s Arab population, Shimon Hatzaddik, the site of Simon the Just’s tomb and surrounding pilgrims’ residences, was owned by the Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities. It was emptied of its Jews in 1948, the Jews being the first refugees of the war. Their homes came under the jurisdiction of the Jordanian Custodian for Absentee Property who proceeded to rent the properties to local Arabs.
When the Israelis recaptured East Jerusalem in 1967, the former Jewish owners found themselves in a position to reclaim what had been theirs. Dozens of former owners have embarked on protracted legal struggles to recover their homes.
However, the Israeli courts have protected the Arab tenants’ rights. Only where they have failed to pay rent have the courts’ judgements gone against the Arab residents.
Of all the press reports of the Shamasneh case, only Ynet News and Arutz Sheva (and an early report in Haaretz) have reported that the Shamasnehs failed to pay rent. Few press have bothered even to mention the historical context of the Jewish expulsion from east Jerusalem in 1948. The motive attributed to the Jewish claimants has been to ‘judaise’ Jerusalem – ‘to throw out the Arabs and expand Jewish settlement.’
Ten years ago, the Hubaras sold their property rights on to Aryeh King of the Israel Land Fund. King declared that the Arab family ceased paying rent five years ago. “I don’t trust them anymore because they have a debt of 180,000 shekels [about $50,000] for rent, and damage of another 160,000 shekels.” King says he told them if they provide a cheque from a guarantor he could trust, he would consider letting them stay longer, but they refused. It’s unpleasant, he said, but “they did everything possible so [the eviction] would happen.”
As for reports that the elderly Arab parents are being turned out on the street, King told Haaretz: “The elderly parents have no reason whatsoever to remain in the street because their daughter lives right next door, and there is evidence they will receive housing aid from the European Union.”

Behind ‘Antifa’s’ mask

In the immediate aftermath of last month’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, several prominent figures – including a CNN anchor and the editor- in-chief of The Atlantic magazine – equated the left-wing “Antifa” activists with the thousands of Allied soldiers who stormed Normandy’s beaches to invade Hitler’s “Fortress Europe” on D-Day.
A more appropriate equation would be with the thousands of soldiers in the Red Army who marched toward Berlin with the intent to brutally establish Soviet hegemony in the so-called German Democratic Republic after defeating Hitler.
Despite antiseptic portrayals throughout American media, Antifa are more than “anti-fascists.” Antifa represent the chaos of Germany’s Weimar Republic and provide the violent complement to academic neo-Marxism. Like their philosophical comrades, Antifa seek to destroy the Western ideal of liberty under law and to impose a revival of one of history’s most repressive ideologies.
Bernd Langer, whose 80 Years of Anti-Fascist Action was published by Germany’s Association for the Promotion of Anti-Fascist Literature, succinctly defined the rhetorical subterfuge.
“Anti-fascism is a strategy rather than an ideology,” wrote Langer, a former Antifa member, for “an anti-capitalist form of struggle.”
Antifa – short for the German “Antifaschistische Aktion” – served as the paramilitary arm of the German Communist Party (KPD), which the Soviet Union funded. In other words, Antifa became the German Communists’ version of the Nazis’ brown-shirted SA.

Don't. pic.twitter.com/OUgauPwk4J
— Chloé Simone Valdary (@cvaldary) September 9, 2017

IsraellyCool: WATCH: Lauren Booth Blaming Islamic Terror On Drugs

The last time I posted about antisemite Lauren Booth on here was in June, when she claimed the cause of Islamic terror attacks was drugs and not an Islamic ideology.
I just came across the video of her comments now, and I cannot resist posting it, if not only for the look on fabulous British Colonel Richard Kemp‘s face.

Rogue feminist Camille Paglia - during her recent book tour promoting Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism - suggested that comments under blog posts represent a certain kind of art-form.

Given Paglia's semi-iconic status within the intellectual community that should give some of you the warm-fuzzies.

I do not know if it is true that blog-post commenting represents an art-form, but I definitely like the idea.

{Why the hell wouldn't I?}

On places like Facebook or Twitter or Youtube, or wherever, you get a sense of how particular groups feel on any given topic. I have no doubt that sociologists are having a great time exploring this material.

It is, after all, the grassroots/netroots... where the buses don't run. And that is just the kind of place for the curious-minded.

In a recent exchange concerning the Arab-Jewish conflict with a hard-left leaning San Francisco friend of mine, I wrote:

The fucked up thing is that the contemporary progressive-left wants to be racist and anti-racist both at the same time. It simply does not work that way. You do not get to pick and choose who it is OK to be racist towards.

In partial response to the larger conversation my correspondent wrote:

So demanding the state of Israel to treat Palestinians humanely is anti-Semitic? Is that where we're going?

I do not know why I continue to remain surprised at the automatic presumption of Jewish guilt in the conflict.

It is from this presumption that the conversation is apparently supposed to begin.

Despite the fact that the Jewish people lived as second and third-class non-citizens for thirteen centuries under the boot of Arab and Muslim imperial rule - from the seventh-century until the fall of the Ottoman Empire - it is the Jewish people who are automatically assumed guilty in the war against us by a far larger power.

The Jews of Israel are, from the get-go - before the discussion even begins - considered to be "inhumane."

So demanding the state of Israel to treat Palestinians humanely is anti-Semitic?

This is precisely the kind of loaded question that Jewish people throughout the world have been subject to generation upon generation.

We are expected to begin the conversation from back on our heels despite the fact that we are the minority population under judgment.

Why are Jews such horrible people?

Why did you kill Jesus?

Why did you invent secularism?

Why did you invent socialism?

Why did you invent capitalism?

Why did you invent communism?

Why do you promote homosexuality?

And, now, why are you so brutal to the "indigenous Palestinians"?

My interlocutor is coming to the discussion from a progressive-left ahistorical perspective that assumes an almost transcendental white-anglo guilt for the oppression of the non-white victim. The presumption is that "people of color" are nothing more than pawns in some Euro-centric geopolitical game of world dominance and the Jewish people, in the form of Israel, are among the agents of that aggression.

In response, I wrote:

It's good that you asked that question because this where we get to the crux of the matter on why the progressive-left tends to despise the Jewish state of Israel. You honestly believe that the Jews of Judea are inhumane.

I imagine that this response took him just a bit off-guard. Most well-meaning "soft" anti-Zionists don't expect push back because the progressive Jewish left is semi-anti-Zionist, itself. I am talking about Ha'aretz Jews. The kind of Jewish people who agree that Israel sucks, but if you kick us in the head hard enough we will try to do better.

The classic example is from now deceased Ha'aretz editor, David Landau, who suggested that Israel was in need of a good raping from the West... to keep us in line, apparently.

It is obvious that Jewish people who care about the well-being as a people are grappling with how to address the continual vitriol spit at us from the greater Muslim community, the European Union, the United Nations, the Democratic Party, and almost the entire western-left.

The place to start - if I may be so bold - is with insisting upon our indigeneity to our own ancestral lands.

I think that we owe indigenous rights activist Ryan Bellerose a certain debt of gratitude.

Bellerose's major contribution to the conversation is that the Jewish people are the only indigenous people in recorded human history to regain self-determination and self-defense on their ancestral homeland.

In a piece for Tablet entitled, Are Jews Indigenous to the Land of Israel?, Bellerose writes:

As an indigenous activist—I am a Métis from the Paddle Prairie Metis settlement in Alberta, Canada—there is one question I am most often asked by the public, one that can instantly divide a community due to its intense and arduous subject matter.

Yet, regardless of the scenario, each time I hear the words, “Are Jews the indigenous people of Israel?” I’m inclined to answer not only with my heart but with the brutal, honest truth, backed by indisputable, thousands-year-old historical and archaeological fact: yes.

Although I thank Ryan with my own heart, I must wonder how it is that a non-Jewish, Native-American, football-playing, giant Métis can get to the ideological crux of the matter when we cannot?

Any conversation with an anti-Zionist or anti-Israel person must always begin with the fact of Jewish indigenousness.

You cannot win the argument without it.

Thankfully it has the additional benefit of being historically accurate.

Let the other side have their narrative.

We have history.

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Lara Friedman is the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. Previously she was the director of policy and government relations at Americans for Peace Now.

Since she clearly love peace so much, you would think that she would be against anything that promotes violence.

But as with many Middle East topics, words like "peace" do not mean what you might think they mean.

Friedman wrote in The Nation last month:

[F]unding for families of those killed or imprisoned by Israel represents a critical social safety net. Removing it would amount to collective punishment, illegal under international law and viewed by most of the world as immoral.

Yes, Friedman is saying that demanding that the PA stop paying terrorist families is "collective punishment" and therefore illegal.

That is too stupid for words. To take away something that the families don't deserve to begin with is not punishment - it is basic justice.

Friedman tries to justify her position by claiming that so many Palestinians have been imprisoned, so therefore these payments are really more like social programs than rewarding terror:

It is a fact that Israeli military forces detain an extraordinary number of Palestinians, often for long periods without any due process. Many are convicted in military courts that have nearly a 100 percent conviction rate. According to Palestinian sources, Israel has arrested 40 percent of the male Palestinian population since 1967. This is in addition to Palestinians killed while attacking, or accused of attacking, Israeli targets.

First of all, her sources for "40 percent" of male Palestinians being arrested is a complete and utter lie that Addameer has been pushing for years. They have absolutely no polls, studies or statistics to support this lie. It is pure lying propaganda.

Secondly, the Palestinian payments are for families of current prisoners - of which there are only around 6000 - plus the families of "martyrs" who have been killed while trying to kill Israelis. In addition they pay salaries to prisoners who have been released.

When the US, EU and Israel oppose payments to families of prisoners, they are speaking about a small percentage of the total Palestinian population, not the 40% she pretends. And we know this because we know how many families get the benefits. And she only embraces the 40% number in order to make it look like the program is more like a social security program than a program to pay for people convicted of terror related activities.

Indeed, the Palestinian law to pay salaries to families of prisoners defines prisoners as "anyone incarcerated in the occupation’s prisons for his participation in the struggle against the occupation." They aren't claiming that these prisoners are imprisoned for no reason, as Friedman implies in her article. They are proud of their "struggle," which is a code word for "terrorism."

Friedman's arguments are fundamentally pro-terror. Which is a curious position for someone who pretends to be pro-peace to take. But when anti-Israel activists pretend to be pro-peace, they are really saying they support Palestinians only - and they therefore support and defend a sick and perverted Palestinian society where murderers are at the top of the social pyramid.

Lara Friedman is not pro-peace. She is a fraud who tacitly condones enabling and praising the murderers of Jews.

(h/t Noah Pollak via Ian)

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Ma'an (Arabic) reports:

The Palestinian issue and its developments occupy a prominent place on the agenda of the Arab League Council ministers' meeting scheduled to be held next Tuesday, especially ways to counter Israeli infiltration in Africa, according to the Assistant Secretary-General for Palestine and the occupied Arab territories of the Arab League, Ambassador Said Abu Ali....

"The Arab League Council will discuss ways to continue strengthening the elements of steadfastness and struggle for the Palestinian people at all levels," Abu Ali told reporters before the start of the 148th Session of the Arab League Council on Sunday.

He stressed that the meeting of the Council of the League, whether at the ministerial level or delegates, is an ordinary meeting, but it is particularly important in the context of the circumstance experienced by the Palestinian issue and the situation in general on the Arab arena.
...

Abu Ali stressed that the Council will work through the discussions and draft resolutions to address and confront the Israeli infiltration in the African continent, and to address the ongoing Israeli attempts and preparations for an African-Israeli summit.

It's one level of hate to not recognize Israel. But it is a whole other level to try to convince other states not to have anything to do with Israel either - even though they obviously want to, for their own self-interest.

All this does is prove, as if we needed further proof, that peace is not the objective for the Arab League states - hurting Israel is.

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09/09 Links: Phillips: The fascists of the left; Collier: When ‘progressives’ excuse Nazi ideology

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The fascists of the left

So-called “progressive” Jews think that the major threat to the Jews and humanity in general comes from a few thousand neo-Nazis and white supremacists, while all who organise against them are by definition on the same side as the Jewish people, anti-racism and civilised values.
Really?
As William Jacobson reports here, the antifa are joining up with Israel-haters to defame Zionists as Nazis and Israel as a “white supremacist” country. This despite the fact that some three quarters of Israeli citizens are not of Caucasian origin; more than half of Israeli Jews are not of Caucasian origin either since their families fled to Israel from Arab countries where Jews had lived for thousands of years but from where they were ethnically cleansed after 1948.
According to the SJP, “There is no room for fascists, white supremacists, or Zionists at UIUC.”
The antifa and SJC are thus helping further incite bigotry, intimidation and thuggery against Jewish students on campus.
Antifa+Students for Justice for Palestine = ~~antifascist~~neo-fascist alliance.

David Collier: When ‘progressives’ excuse Nazi ideology: The case of Bella Caledonia

Just over a month ago, my report into hard-core antisemitism in the SPSC was published. Following its release, condemnation of the SPSC crossed the political divide, and was swift. Given what was uncovered, it seemed an obvious and natural response. Nobody wanted to be seen protecting hard-core Nazi ideology.
After all, what had been uncovered was indefensible. It was shown that almost every time SPSC activists ran a stall or held a demonstration, 40-50% of those present had previously shared material that circulated in far-right white supremacy websites. At one demonstration alone, ten of the attendees had shared material on their social media pages denying the Holocaust.
Consider this for a moment. Imagine a stall run by a right wing party. Then imagine that 40-50% of those people running it, shared *EXACTLY* the same material as the SPSC activists. How would civil rights campaigners view such a group? What excuses would be considered acceptable? As I said, indefensible.
What also spoke volumes was the relative silence from the SPSC. Little in the way of apology, regret and introspection. The SPSC shrugged their shoulders, denied all responsibility, and chose to respond by calling me names. Their silent reaction spoke volumes.

Douglas Murray: Political intolerance is again becoming normal in Europe

Four years ago, I pointed out here that today’s anti-fascists appeared to be getting rather fascistic. The occasion for that observation then was a group of ‘anti-fascists’ surrounding a man in Scotland and screaming at him to go back to where he came from. For some reason that action was deemed ‘anti-fascist’ rather than ‘fascist’ because the target was Nigel Farage and the mob proclaimed themselves to be ‘anti-fascists.’ To which one might add that North Korea is officially titled ‘The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’.
Anyway, I pointed out back in 2013 that the left appeared to be priming itself to extend their definitions of ‘fascism’ because they hope to be able to win a political battle and recognise that attacking everyone they disagree with as ‘fascist’ might bring some short-term political gain. Though, as I also warned at the time, one long-term effect of all this might be that the public decides that if everybody is a fascist then nobody is. A conclusion that could have its own unpleasant consequences.
I rake up this piece of not very ancient history because of events in Holland. I was in the country last month and whilst there did a couple of interviews with the Dutch media. In one of them (whose publication seems to have been inexplicably delayed), I mentioned how struck I was that the head of the Forum for Democracy party, Thierry Baudet, appeared to be receiving what one might call the ‘Pim Fortuyn treatment’ from the country’s media. Readers will remember that as the libertarian Marxist Fortuyn was transforming the political landscape of his country, fifteen years ago, the Dutch political and media class decided to throw everything they had at preventing him from reaching power. They called him a racist and a fascist and a Nazi and the new Hitler and all that sort of thing and eventually a left-wing environmentalist decided Fortuyn must be all these things, and who wouldn’t kill Hitler if they could travel back in a time machine? So Volkert van der Graaf got a gun and shot Fortuyn repeatedly in the head, spending just over a decade in prison for this murder. He was released in 2014 and today, still only in his forties, apparently lives a happy life in the centre of the country whose future he changed so completely.

09/08 Links Pt2: The Jewish (and Not-So-Jewish) History of the Word "Palestine"; PodCast Tuvia Tenenbom

From Ian:

The Jewish (and Not-So-Jewish) History of the Word "Palestine"

My previous column dealt with linguistic evidence for Israelite sailors’ having reached India from Palestine in the time of King Solomon. About it, Anson Laytner writes:
In Solomon’s day there was no Palestine, so the trip would have been impossible! Seriously, though, if Mosaic’s own team misuses terminology, what about the rest of us? Perhaps it is time for you to write something on the geographical names Judah, Israel, Judaea, Palestine, etc.
Seriously, this is a subject that I have written on—and more than once during my years as a Jewish-language columnist. And yet, although I dislike having to repeat myself, perhaps Anson Laytner is right that it deserves to be written about again. Few place names these days arouse quite as much passion as does “Palestine,” nearly all of it directed against Israel. To any Jew who was old enough to read at the time the state of Israel was created, this can only seem grimly ironic, because “Palestine” was once a Jewish word, too. I can’t watch a news clip of anti-Israel demonstrators chanting “Palestine will be free/ From the river to the sea!” without remembering the blue-and-white Jewish National Fund collection box that stood in the kitchen of my parents’ New York apartment in 1947-48, when I was a boy of eight or nine. On it, across a map of the Jewish homeland, was written in flowing letters: “Fight for a Free Palestine!”
There was nothing exceptional about this. English and French “Palestine,” German Palästina, Polish Palestyna, Russian Палестина: this was the standard word in European languages, used by Jews no less than by others, for the country whose greater part was renamed Israel after 1948. It had been the standard word since the early 19th century, when it gradually replaced the term “the Holy Land” that had been in use in the Christian world in medieval and early modern times. When, in 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, it proclaimed, “His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” Jews, unless they were anti-Zionist, were exultant over this wording. It was the Arabs who weren’t.
It is true that in speaking or writing Jewish languages like Yiddish, Hebrew, or Ladino, 19th- and early-20th-century Jews did not generally use “Palestine.” Their own term, current since early rabbinic times, was “Erets-Yisra’el,” the Land of Israel.
It is also true that when, after putting down the Bar-Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, the Romans officially renamed their administrative province of Judea, which included much of the Land of Israel, as Syria Palaestina, their motives were anti-Jewish. Palaestina was the Pleshet of the Hebrew Bible, the land of the Plishtim or Philistines, the archenemies of the biblical Israelites. By giving the name “Palestinian Syria” to the country that had been unsuccessfully fought for by the Jewish people in two bitter rebellions, the Romans were seeking to deny the Jewish connection to it. Moreover, whereas biblical Pleshet had signified the Philistines’ stronghold of the country’s coastal plain, the name was now extended to the traditionally Israelite hill country that the Philistines had never occupied.

Norway gets refund in Palestinian terror episode, US lawmakers hail action as precedent

Members of Congress and Jewish leaders are urging the U.S. to follow in Norway’s footsteps, after Oslo secured the return of funds it gave to a Palestinian women’s center that was named in honor of a terrorist.
Earlier this year, Palestinian Media Watch and NGO Monitor revealed that the Norwegian government helped finance a Palestinian Authority (PA)-affiliated women’s center in the town of Burqa, which had been named after Dalal Mughrabi, the leader of a notorious terrorist attack in 1978.
In response, Norwegian officials said they would demand the return of the funds and the removal of the Norwegian flag from the banner in front of the center. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry this week for the first time confirmed it has received the refund. Spokesperson Gur Solberg told JNS.org, “The logo was removed immediately and the Norwegian support of $10,000 has been returned to the Norwegian Representative Office (NRO).” The NRO is Norway’s liaison to the PA.
Palestinian Media Watch Director Itamar Marcus called Norway’s action “a major breakthrough” that may signal “the beginning of a new European attitude towards the PA. For years, PMW has been showing European leaders what the PA was doing with their money to glorify terror and the Europeans tried to excuse it. I hope this is ending now.”
Olga Deutsch, director of NGO Monitor’s Europe Desk, praised the Norwegian government for “insisting that its funds be returned, and that its monies not be used to glorify a mass-murderer.” She said the incident “can serve to increase awareness among donors” of the danger of funds intended for humanitarian purposes being used to “promote extremism and radicalization.”
‘Jihad is needed’
Norwegian political figures are applauding their government’s move, and urging it to take action in a similar case that has just come to light.

PodCast: Author Tuvia Tenenbom: One part de Toqueville, one part Borat

Why do climate science deniers oppose gun control and Obamacare and support Israel? • Was the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally a surprise? • How are conditions for Muslim refugees in Europe? • Host Steve Ganot speaks with gonzo journalist Tuvia Tenenbom.
Journalist Tuvia Tenenbom has been compared some of the most provocative, humorous and observant social critics, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Mark Twain, Michael Moore, and Sacha Baron Cohen's iconic satirical character, Borat.
In this episode of Israel Hayom Insider, Opinion Editor Steve Ganot speaks with Tenenbom about political correctness, intersectionality and hypocrisy on the Left and Right; racism and anti-Semitism in the United States; and the gonzo style of journalism that he employed in his bestselling books "I Sleep in Hitler's Room," "Catch the Jew!" and "The Lies They Tell," and that he now brings to bear on the influx of Muslim migrants to Europe in his latest book, "Hello, Refugees!"

Before putting on her hijab, Linda Sarsour admits she was white. Now she claims to be a "person of color." Neat trick! @lsarsour pic.twitter.com/4km7rs0sjj
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 4, 2017

Linda Sarsour does it again. "At the end of the day it's self-identification. I'm Palestinian, if I want to say 'I'm Black,' - I'm Black!" pic.twitter.com/zKrxGhIXnk
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 8, 2017

The West has forgotten: Mahmoud Abbas was responsible for financing 1972 Olympics massacre https://t.co/k8xPU4Jyq5 pic.twitter.com/Bddynegxyn
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 5, 2017

A handy guide to understand how "progressives" view race. pic.twitter.com/Cufbs46Ztq
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 4, 2017

How predictable was this? pic.twitter.com/TTQA1zHp9K
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 4, 2017

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