Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 23, 2018

08/23 Links Pt2: IDF: Gaza terrorist worked for Doctors Without Borders; The grave danger of media bias; Dershowitz: 'Corbyn Is A Virulent Anti-Semite'

From Ian:

This past May, the Los Angeles Times ran the headline “A Baby Girl Dies in the Haze of Gaza,” which told a story about eight-month-old Palestinian Layla Ghandour, who was allegedly killed by inhaling tear gas used by Israeli defense forces. This story was tragic and upsetting. It was also untrue. The New York Times and other major outlets published similar stories, framing Israel and Israeli soldiers as child-killing villains, amplifying Hamas’s false narrative about Layla’s death.

Following this wave of coverage, Layla’s cousin admitted that Hamas paid his relatives to lie to the media about Layla’s cause of death. In reality, Layla died from a preexisting blood condition. Of course, the family of a deceased baby deserves any rational person’s sympathy, but when the media falls prey to Hamas propaganda that uses the death of an innocent baby to degrade Israel, no one, except for Hamas, wins. Even today, this story continues to be available for a wide audience to read and reference, without any disclaimer that it is based on falsified information.

Then, amid this summer’s Great March of Return protests, each one a violent attempts to cross into Israel’s borders and kill civilians, the LA Times reported on June 18 that “about 130 protesters have been killed by Israeli troops.” In fact, the group of “protesters” consisted of a significant number of armed and active Hamas combatants. The Times ignored this fact and the intent of this march, as prior to this coverage, a senior Hamas official had admitted that most of the Gazans who died in the protests were Hamas members, terrorist operatives with the intention of killing innocent Israeli men, women and children.

This misinformation matters because media outlets have great power. They shape the way we understand the world and, ultimately, drive our behavior. It is no exaggeration to say that their activity can have life-and-death implications. The pattern in coverage of the New York Times and LA Times is a case study that drives home a critical point for society.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the New York Times, Washington Post and other media outlets neglected their obligation to disseminate truth and remained virtually silent as Nazi Germany carried out the mass murder of Jews in Europe, relegating stories about Jewish genocide to short briefs on their back pages. While Jews starved in ghettos and concentration camps, watched their family members perish and were stripped of their humanity, they wondered where the world was. The press remained largely indifferent and the reluctance of editors of major outlets to report widely and consistently on these horrors contributed to consequences that the world will never forget. Newspapers and radio news broadcasts failed to fulfill their part in educating the American public about the horrific crimes committed by the Germans.

IDF: Gaza terrorist worked for Doctors Without Borders

Israel said on Thursday that a Palestinian gunman killed by its forces on the Gaza Strip border this week was a nurse working for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and that it was seeking an explanation from the international aid group.

Israel's liaison office for Gaza, Cogat, named the Palestinian as Hani Majdalawi and said he was shot dead on Monday after shooting and throwing a grenade at soldiers.

"We have reached out to Doctors without Borders for clarification regarding the matter," a Cogat spokesman said.

The organization did not immediately reply to phone and email queries by Reuters. Its website says that the group runs three burns and trauma centers in Gaza, whose Islamist Hamas rulers have fought three wars against Israel in the last decade.

Gaza authorities did not confirm Majdalawi's death, saying that would require having his body, which they believed was being held by Israel. The Israeli military said they could not immediately confirm this.

No armed Palestinian factions claimed Majdalawi as a member.

Responding to Israeli media reports on Majdalawi's killing, his brother, Osama, described the married 28-year-old on Facebook as a "martyr" who had "bought the weapon with his own money" and acted "completely independently".

The Facebook post said Hani Majdalawi had worked for Doctors Without Borders and that he had been "the most socially, psychologically and economically stable among his brothers". (h/t Yenta Press)

'Corbyn Is A Virulent Anti-Semite'

Last night’s Channel 4 News didn’t exactly go to plan. First they wrongly introduced Hillary supporting, Democrat voting, Harvard Law School Emeritus Professor Alan Dershowitz as an ‘adviser to Donald Trump’, before he demolished their holier than thou attitude towards the state of U.S. politics.

“Where is the moral backbone of Great Britain to have as the head of the Labour Party a virulent anti-Semite, a virulent hater of Jews and the nation state of the Jewish people.

Don’t lecture us about our political system as long as you have Jeremy Corbyn who may potentially become the next Prime Minister of England. Shame on Great Britain for allowing that to come to pass.”

You’ll want to watch this…

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri launched an attack on Hamas because of their attempts at reconciliation and dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

In a voice message, al-Zawahri criticized Hamas's declaration of principles and policies, in which it affirmed its commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state on the "1967 borders."

Hamas has made clear that it considers any such Palestinian state to be a stage to the total destruction of Israel.

The Sahab Foundation, one of al-Qaeda's media outlets, broadcast Zawahri's speech which was titled "Palestine does not support traitors."

He said Hamas tried to use two contradictory policies, one for the Muslims where it says, "We are against Oslo," and others to the West, where they say, "We are participants in the Oslo agreement." (As far as I know, Hamas has never said that, although when it was in the government with Fatah it said it would respect existing agreements. This is a long time ago.)

The last time Al Qaeda attacked Hamas, in 2008, it was for it attacking civilians!

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

There are 7.6 billion humans on this earth. 2.23 billion of them logged on to Facebook (the number counts “monthly active users”) during the second quarter of 2018.

I don’t know about you, but I found this astounding, considering that Facebook did not exist prior to 2004, and was not open to the general public until 2006. This single “platform” has arguably had a greater influence on human social and political behavior than anything since the invention of radio and television. It may turn out to be as disruptive of the social order as the widespread introduction of movable type in the 15^th century.

The sheer speed at which Facebook has spread through world cultures along with its constantly changing, hidden, proprietary algorithms mean that its effects are difficult to study. Unlike the decentralized publishing industry that grew out of the advances in printing technology, Facebook is tightly controlled by a single private company.

Yesterday Facebook announced that it had deleted some 652 accounts for “coordinate inauthentic behavior” – that is, they were “sock puppets” associated with Russia and Iran, accounts that pretended to belong to real people or legitimate news agencies, which posted “political content focused on the Middle East, as well as the UK, US, and Latin America” primarily in English and Arabic. Information on exactly what content was posted is sketchy, but it seems that it included the usual anti-Israel material, as well as propaganda intended to create internal division to destabilize the US and UK.

One of the well-known characteristics of Facebook is its encouragement of ideological bubbles. This is by design. The designers understand that the amount of time one spends on Facebook – and therefore the number of ads one sees – depends on the psychic gratification one receives from the content. It’s well-known that such gratification increases when the content includes ideas with which one agrees, while exposure to ideas that challenge one’s beliefs produces discomfort. So the algorithm that decides which posts a user will see chooses those which – according to an elaborate profile created by the user’s own posts and “likes” – it estimates that the user will find congenial.

This is benign in some ways – for example, it “knows” that I am interested in motorcycles, so I will see posts about motorcycles – but it also works as a political censor. In a triumph of artificial intelligence, it has learned to (most of the time) distinguish between pro- and anti-Israel posts, and show me the former and not the latter. If you have ever tried to program a computer to perform a similar task, you know that this is an order of magnitude harder than simply looking for texts that are about a particular subject, as it does for motorcycles.

The platform itself is structured to encourage its users to behave in ways which support its objective of providing a gratifying experience. For example, a user who posts a “status,” photo, or link, has control of the comments that other users can make about it. If another user posts a comment that the “owner” of the initial post disagrees with, the owner can delete it. As a result, Facebook etiquette has developed in which it is considered inappropriate to post a disagreement. “This is my page, and I won’t allow racism (or fascism, transphobia, etc.) on it,” a user will write, and delete the offending comment.

There is also the way Facebook users get “friends.” Friend suggestions are generated in various ways, such as number of common friends, but also by the platform’s evaluation of common interests, which also means ideological agreement. My personal experience illustrates this. I have been a member of Facebook since 2010, and by now have collected several hundred “friends.” After an initial period in which I befriended relatives and real-life friends, I almost never initiated a friend request. But on a regular basis I receive such requests. Some of them are people with whom I share non-political interests or who were my real-life friends in the past. A few are people that I have interacted with in the comments section. But the majority are people with whom I am not acquainted, but who appear (to Facebook) to have a similar ideological profile. In addition, over the years, many of my more liberal friends have unfriended me, mostly as a result of my posts about Barack Obama’s anti-Israel policies. So I am left in a bubble of pro-Israel, generally conservative folks with a few old friends and family members thrown in. I also get regular requests to join groups which are ideologically congenial.

So why is this bad? Of course it means that I won’t be exposed to ideas that I disagree with. That’s bad enough. But there is an even worse problem. It is that in an ideologically homogeneous group, a participant gets respect by reinforcing the ideology of the group. I can become a hero to my group of hawkish conservatives by being even more hawkish. Because there are no doves in my group, thanks to Facebook’s algorithm and natural selection, there is nothing to stop me from moving farther to the right. And the next person that wants to make his mark in the group will attack me from the right, moving the discourse as a whole along with him.

As a result, ideological groups develop which then move more and more away from the center. They emphasize different facts and even develop their own facts. They create their own dialects, with each side using words that the other side never uses. What we call “Judea and Samaria,” they call “occupied Palestinian territories.” Members of opposing groups would think each other’s ideas are crazy, but they will rarely see them.

Now, I admit that I like right-wing discourse, up to a point. But think about what is happening in a similar group of Palestinian Arabs who are inclined in a nationalist or Islamist direction. Their discourse, too, is moving, in the direction of hatred and confrontation. And while my right-wing friends may be (thanks to the algorithm) close to my age and therefore relatively harmless, that couldn’t have been said about Palestinian college student Omar al-Abed, who told his Facebook friends that his knife “answers the call of al-Aqsa,” hours before he walked into a Jewish home and murdered three members of a family with it.

Facebook often announces programs to try to distinguish real and fake news, and to remove posts that “violate its community standards,” whatever they are. It certainly does not want to provide a platform for incitement to murder, genocide, sexual violence, racism, or many other undesirable things. But it will never do anything that will significantly impact its primary objective, which is to get people to spend more time scrolling through it and encountering ads.

In short, the platform itself, which is designed to increase ad revenues for Facebook’s shareholders, has the undesired side effect of nurturing and amplifying extremism. Rather than bringing people together, it drives them apart and polarizes them. Unfortunately, this is built into the structure of the platform, and is essential to the attainment of its business objectives. It can’t be fixed with anything other than a wholesale change that would make it unrecognizable, and possibly destroy its ability to make a profit.

Some countries have blocked Facebook. They are generally totalitarian states that want to prevent their citizens from learning about the outside world. Israel is not that kind of state and will not ban Facebook; but we should understand that its pleasant diversions come at a price.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

08/23 Links Pt1: PA Leaders Have Lost Interest in Institution-Building; ‘Fauda’ and the Two-State Solution; Hamas, Israel, And The Fantasy of the War of Attrition

From Ian:

PA Leaders Have Lost Interest in Institution-Building

The centrality of institution-building to the Palestinian leadership's approach toward Palestinian state-building has declined, aggravating serious political decay in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Oslo process led to the founding of the Palestinian Authority that built structures to administer Palestinian affairs. The PA ran everything from education, healthcare, and traffic, to the licensing of NGOs, even as it created the institutions of an eventual state, from police forces to a parliament. After Hamas took over control of Gaza in 2007, PA institution-building in the West Bank became the centerpiece of efforts by Palestinian leaders and their international backers to achieve statehood.

However, today, a quarter of a century since the first Oslo agreement made the PA possible, PA leaders no longer behave as if domestic institution-building is a critical part of the search for statehood. This is reflected in the greater emphasis on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas personally, with his photo prominently displayed throughout the PA. Official rhetoric stresses the PLO, the Palestinian National Council, Fatah, and the Palestinian "revolution" more than the PA.

PA structures actually serve as administrative afterthoughts that are no longer viewed as kernels of a statehood effort. Leading Palestinian institutions are sometimes bent to serve the interests of senior officials and repress opposition. Creeping authoritarianism, the personalization of authority, and disregard for legal and professional norms are all unmistakable signs of a leadership that has lost interest in good governance.

‘Fauda’ and the Two-State Solution

In the international hit Israeli TV series Fauda, the head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) security service is a fictional character named Abu Maher. Played by Qader Harini, an Arab actor from eastern Jerusalem, Abu Maher is reconciled to peace and co-existence, and therefore willing to cooperate with the Israelis to combat Islamist terror.

In an episode of the show’s second season (this is not a spoiler for the main plot line, so you can keep reading even if you haven’t watched the series), Abu Maher takes his son — a student who sympathizes with Hamas — to lunch on the Jaffa beach inside Israel. He tells the youngster to look at the skyscrapers of neighboring Tel Aviv. Those mighty buildings and the industry, creativity, power, and wealth they represent, he says, show the permanence of Israel. The Jews are interested in life rather than death, and since they can’t be defeated, Abu Maher believes that the Palestinians must choose peace.

I’m sure I’m far from the only audience member who saw that scene and pondered what life would be like if the actual head of the PA was someone like the fictional Abu Maher, instead of Mahmoud Abbas or the other real-life Fatah functionaries who are still fixated on the century-old war against Zionism, in which they have yet to admit defeat. With such a person leading the Palestinians, a two-state solution might indeed be possible.

Two Bombs in Yemen

On August 9, an airplane belonging to the Saudi-led coalition appears to have hit a school bus in Yemen, killing 40 boys between the ages of six and eleven. According to investigators, the bomb was American-made—not a surprise, as the U.S. has been supporting Saudi Arabia and its allies in their efforts to drive the Iran-backed Houthi rebels and al-Qaeda from Yemen. The civilian deaths again brought to the fore concerns about Washington’s role in this bloody civil war, which has dragged on for almost four years and precipitated a humanitarian crisis. Noah Rothman comments:

Elsewhere in Yemen, another American bomb is making headlines of a different sort. On Tuesday, American and Yemeni officials revealed that they have high confidence that a U.S. drone strike killed Ibrahim al-Asiri, who was described by Barack Obama’s former acting CIA director Michael Morell as “probably the most sophisticated bomb maker on the planet.” . . . Asiri is one of many al-Qaeda leaders and mid-level commanders dispatched by U.S. drone patrols in Yemen, and Americans are safer because of those operations. Those American bombs get less attention than the munitions the United States provides to Saudi Arabia and its allies around the world, but they are all part of the same campaign.

The bomb that killed 40 young boys on August 9 was part of a shipment to Saudi Arabia that was approved by the State Department in 2015, under President Barack Obama. That was not a particularly controversial move at the time. . . . The possible disruption of America’s anti-terror operations [against al-Qaeda] in this theater wasn’t the only peril posed by this new conflict.

After taking [the capital city of] Sana’a, the Houthis descended on the strategic port of Aden, which is situated on the vital Bab al-Mandab Strait. That tiny, two-mile-wide northbound shipping lane leads directly into the Suez Canal and provides every port on the Indian Ocean with access to the Mediterranean and Europe. If the Houthis captured it, Iran would be free to shut the strait by deploying mines or harassing shipping vessels. No American administration, Republican or Democratic, would tolerate such a threat to international trade and global security.

Here is an abstract of a paper given at the European Association of Social Anthropologists meeting in Stockholm last week, with my fact checks.

Shifting populations, permanent instability, suspended stay: contemporary mobilities in Palestine and Israel
Caitlin Procter (University of Oxford)
Nayrouz Abu Hatoum (Columbia University )
Branwen Spector (London School of Economics)

Contemporary Palestine and Israel are populated and shaped by groups with different mobilities and border realities. Restricted by continuing Israeli settler colonial expansion and military occupation, Palestinians are confined to small geographies.

There is very little actual settlement expansion, practically no new settlements, and the areas taken up by Jewish communities has remained virtually the same since the 1990s.

Palestinian refugees, resident in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), are unable to return to their own lands but forced to remain in camps often mere kilometres from their places of origin.

No one is forcing them to remain in camps. They are allowed to buy and build land in Areas A and B. They choose to remain in camps because they get free housing, paid for by the world. This is a lie.

Also, they aren't "mere kilometres" from their place of "origin." The ones who lived in the West Bank in the 1940s aren't considered refugees. And most Palestinians do not originate in the boundaries of British Mandate ("historic") Palestine but moved there from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt in response to Jewish economic growth in the late 1800s/early 1900s. The Arab population of Palestine remained pretty small and steady for centuries before Zionism.

The idea that Palestinians must be able to return to specific "lands" in Israel that their ancestors lives in for a time and cannot be permanent residents in other areas of Palestine is a completely fictional construct, and actually discriminatory against them, implying that they are somehow less "Palestinian" than others and don't belong in areas under Palestinian rule.

Israelis, are, however able to mobilise and settle the remaining of the West Bank.

No, they can't. Virtually no new settlements have been approved. Any new building must be on public land, not on land privately owned by Arabs. Obviously all of Areas A and B are completely off limits, but at least 95% of Area C is also not allowed for Jewish settlement either. This is a complete lie.

Settlements offer upward mobility for Jewish Israelis, impacting a catastrophic downturn in social mobility in the surrounding Palestinian spaces.

Virtually no Israelis move to the territories for "upward mobility" except for the haredim who live in border communities. Most of the growth in population comes from natural growth and ideological immigrants.

The Palestinian landscape is continuously being militarized, walled, and destroyed by a colonizing state, resulting in gross land loss and displacement.

Again, the amount of new displacement is vanishingly small, mostly for illegal structures in Area C where only about 2-3% of Palestinians live. There is no "gross land loss." And Israel reimburses those who are displaced.

The Wall and the military checkpoint matrix in the oPt render Palestinian bodies as incarcerated.

This is hyperbole, and not suitable for a paper that is supposedly based on an academic field. It is also completely false. Palestinians can travel, a hundred thousand of them voluntarily go to Israel every day to work.

This panel examines how, in Palestine and Israel, populations and spaces simultaneously and differently stay, move, and settle and the effect these dynamics have on their lives, bodies, environments and nationalist political imaginations. It asks the following: What does it mean to fight for staying put, and steadfast on the land resisting government displacement, relocation or land confiscation? What are the dwelling practices utilized by those who are forced to relocate, or those who choose to move? What are the processes of meaning-making that people generate to speak of the transforming landscape (urban, village, border, historical, visual)? Finally, how do changing mobilities speak to a shift away from (historical) nationalist narratives and a discourse of state formation?

When the assumptions are false, the paper is worthless.

(h/t Irene)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Did the UN just say that a Jew cannot kill the 17 year old who is stabbing him?

Acheadline and lede for an AP article :

The UN political chief called on Israel Wednesday to ensure that urgently needed humanitarian supplies for the Gaza Strip are not “held hostage to political and security developments.”
Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo told the Security Council its meeting was taking place “in the wake of yet another series of violent escalations that threatened to plunge Gaza into war.”

In her actual speech, DiCarlo is careful to say that Israel has a right to defend itself:

While Israel has a duty to protect its citizens, it must exercise maximum restraint in the use of live fire, and refrain from using lethal force, except as a last resort.

So what can Israel do? It cannot use live fire against violent people, it cannot pressure them by closing a crossing.

Apparently, it cannot even kill a 17 year old in self defense:

Children should never be targeted or instrumentalized in any way.
On 26 July, in the West Bank settlement of Adam, a 17-year-old Palestinian stabbed an Israeli civilian to death and injured two others. He was shot and killed by one of the victims.

The terrorists that sent the teen to kill Jews were wrong - but it seems so was the guy being stabbed for shooting him!

Once again, the all-wise UN is very keen on saying that Israel can defend itself, but it denounces every single thing Israel can possibly do to defend itself.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Ahed Tamimi, who spent 8 months in Israeli prison for slapping a soldier and espousing violence, has sent a message to Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah on Lebanese TV.

Al Jadeed TV broadcast a fawning video, complete with romantic footage of Tamimi's shouting at amused soldiers when she was younger.

In the video, Tamimi thanks Nasrallah for his support of her while in prison, and says that his support of the Palestinian cause raises the morale of many Palestinians.

Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy that has obtained hundreds of thousands of missiles and other weapons specifically to destroy Israel altogether, not to "fight the occupation."

Tamimi is saying that she shares that goal, as do many of her fellow Palestinian Arabs.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

08/22 Links Pt2: When a Nazi comparison makes sense: The BDS movement against Israel; Democratic Assemblyman: Thank you, President Trump; What if Jeremy Corbyn became prime minister?

From Ian:

When a Nazi comparison makes sense: The BDS movement against Israel

In a remarkable finding in their May report, intelligence officials of the German state of Baden Württemberg wrote that propaganda from the neo-Nazi party Der Dritte Weg (The Third Way) calling to boycott Israeli products “roughly recalls similar measures against German Jews by the National Socialists, for example, on April 1, 1933 (the slogan: 'Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews!')"

The historical significance of the parallel between contemporary calls to boycott Israeli products and the Hitler movement’s economic warfare against German Jewish businesses should not be ignored.

The Nazi efforts to strangle Jewish companies in order to isolate and dehumanize German Jews was a nascent phase of the Holocaust. Hence the boycott campaign against Israel is just another dangerous recurrence of history in a new form.

Fast forward to 2005: According to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement’s declaration targeting the Jewish state, a key demand is the return of all “Palestinian refugees” to Israel. The “return” of the alleged millions of Palestinians refugees—based on a bogus definition of refugee status—would spell dissolution of the Jewish state. Anti-Semitism at its core is about discrimination against Jews.

The proliferation of pro-BDS activities in Germany prompted Felix Klein, the German government commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism, to write in the daily Die Welt in August that “the BDS movement is antisemitic in its methods and goals.” He added that BDS’s “Don’t buy!” stickers on products from the Jewish state are “methods from the Nazi period.”

Daily News Editorial Board: Thanks, Mr. President: A Queens Nazi is being deported thanks to the persistence of Donald Trump and Ambassador Ric Grenell

Thank you, President Trump, for doing what Democrats and Republicans before have failed to do for years: Deport a Nazi war criminal from Queens back to Europe. And thank you, Ric Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, for faithfully carrying out the President’s directive to get Jakiw Palij the hell out of this country.

Palij, who turned 95 last Thursday, is not just an old man. He is an old Nazi death camp guard, a volunteer in the SS who aided the Holocaust in occupied Poland, where millions of Jews were killed, and then who lied about his SS service to gain entry to this country after the war.

Discovered by the Department of Justice, he was stripped of his ill-gotten U.S. citizenship in 2003 and ordered deported the next year.

But the Bush administration failed to get Germany to take him. So did the Obama administration, for all eight years. Berlin objected, and the U.S. State Department didn’t want to push too hard, and that was that. As former Department of Justice Nazi hunter Neal Sher wrote in these pages in April, cowardice carried the day.

But not Trump. In office only a few months and alerted by this newspaper to a Nazi living in his home borough in spring 2017, he told Grenell, his choice for envoy to Berlin, to get the Nazi out.

Grenell did it. From the time he took up his post this May, he made it a priority. Finally, after more than a decade of dilly-dallying, the Germans got the message.

Great credit must go to Rabbi Zev Friedman, head of Rambam Mesivta, a boys’ yeshiva high school on Long Island. He and his students for years protested Palij’s presence.

Democratic Assemblyman: Thank you, President Trump

New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind thanked US President Donald Trump for deporting Jakiw Palij, a former SS guard at the Nazis’ Trawnicki concentration camp in Poland.

"You can talk, and talk is cheap," Hikind said in an interview with Fox News. "Getting things done is what President Trump just did."

He called on his fellow Democrats not to make a political issue out of the deportation of a Nazi.

"When the president does something huge like getting rid of the last Nazi from Queens, New York, say 'thank you, Mr. President, for doing an amazing thing."

President Trump noted the rare praise he received from a Democratic politician.

"Thank you to Democrat Assemblyman Dov Hikind of New York for your very gracious remarks on @foxandfriends for our deporting a longtime resident Nazi back to Germany! Others worked on this for decades," Trump tweeted.

.@HikindDov: “When the president does something huge, like getting rid of the last Nazi from Queens, New York, say ‘thank you Mr. President.’” pic.twitter.com/NvbLD3um1l
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 22, 2018

14 years of promises from others... But was delighted to wake up to a call from DOJ with great news... Ambassador @RichardGrenell at the direction of President @RealDonaldTrump DELIVERED JUSTICE!

THANK YOU FOR MAKING AMERICA NAZI-FREE AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/56Dl2rxVgk
— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) August 22, 2018

Holocaust survivors join together to thank @potus @realdonaldtrump for ridding America of its last Nazi. pic.twitter.com/JL38qXkeBR
— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) August 22, 2018

Is there such a thing as “legitimate criticism” of Israel? Should the identity of the critic have an impact on how we view the criticism? Or is criticizing Israel always, inevitably, antisemitic?

Let’s examine the phrase “legitimate criticism.” Those who engage in criticism of Israel often affix the label of “legitimate criticism” as a fig leaf. A good example is this excerpt from an April 2018 letter to the Guardian signed by several members of the British Labour Party:

We are dismayed by unbalanced media reporting ahead of the local elections of allegations of antisemitism against Jeremy. We believe this partly results from his legitimate criticism of Israel’s cruel and racist treatment towards its Palestinian and Bedouin populations. This is because one definition of antisemitism includes criticism of the Israeli state as racist. We reject that definition. Indeed, many Israelis criticise actions of their state.

By now, revelations regarding Corbyn consorting with terrorists and the Labour Party’s connections to antisemitism in general, are numerous and legendary. They are the last people in the world who might credibly bring “legitimate criticism” of Israel. The letter, in fact, cites no factual evidence of Israel’s “cruel and racist” behavior because none exists.

Here's what these letter writers did: they expressed hatred, labeled it “legitimate” and used their party affiliations to make it all sound authoritative. You either believe them or you don’t. (If you repeat the lies and are challenged, you can always say, “Well, several member of the Labour Party said it! They wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t true.”)

The label “legitimate," in this case is just cover for hatred—something that cannot be freely expressed, because all humans know that hatred is wrong. The prime task of haters then, is to persuade themselves and others of the moral rightness of their hate. This is accomplished by making the sort of ugly and baseless assertions seen in the Guardian letter. Because if Israel is “cruel and racist,” it becomes not only acceptable to hate Israel but a moral imperative.

By combining groundless accusations that Israel is “cruel and racist” with the phrase “legitimate criticism” the haters achieve dispensation for their hate. The word “legitimate” lends the illusion that the criticism is both proper and correct. The resultant false veil of legitimacy erases the stench of antisemitic hatred, allowing the haters to say whatever it is they want to say. (Which is nothing good and everything bad.)

Not everyone who engages in "legitimate" criticism of Israel is an antisemite. There are those who love Israel but believe it is important to raise awareness of and address genuine issues within the Jewish State. These critics have good intentions. But are they right to speak out?

It's debatable.

For some of us, criticizing Israel is like criticizing a family member. It’s okay for you to criticize your Mom, but woe to anyone outside the family who does so. It’s just wrong.

But when it comes to criticizing Israel, it gets a little tricky. Who exactly is a family member? Who is the one who gets to criticize Mom, or in this case, Israel??

Some feel that only Jews can criticize the Jewish State. Others say that only Jews who live in Israel can criticize the Jewish State. A third group believes that only Jews who have lived in Israel for a significant period of time have the right to criticize the state, no newbies allowed.

No matter your personal definition of what constitutes family—a person who gets to criticize Israel—you’re going to bristle when the wrong person does it.

And of course, audience matters, too. It’s one thing to trash talk Mom to Sis, quite another to tell all to a neighbor. Are you criticizing the State of Israel to other Israelis or to a mixed audience on social media? (Some things are private.)

Then again, even if you have all the right in the world to “legitimately” criticize Israel, and the right audience, too, it’s bound to be viewed with suspicion if you rarely (or never) say anything nice about the Jewish State. One might even use how often a person speaks well of Israel as a sort of litmus test for that person's credibility. The person may even have valid criticisms of Israel, but his/her motives will always be suspicious. Why only say bad things about Israel? Or only find meaningless fluff to say when relating the good (tasty falafel!)

It suggests you have an agenda.

No matter this critic's protestations that s/he does it—criticizes Israel—for love of country, or to be true to Jewish ethics, you just know there’s something else going on. And that something isn't nice, no matter how much s/he protests.

Because Israel can't be all bad (and there's so much good to see and share).

In many ways, this is a problem of perspective. Rabbi Yissocher Frand citing Rabbi Nisson Alpert Ohev yamim lirot tov (Loving days; seeing the good.) Living a long life means seeing the good and maintaining a positive attitude. If you have a positive outlook on life, you'll be less inclined to err with your tongue and lips. You’ll never speak deceit.

Rav Nisson Alpert, ZT"L

says that the answer to the question of “Who desires life?” begins with the phrase,

It’s about trying to see the good in everything, which would include the Jewish State.

It's human to think that refraining from gossip is about the mouth. What we don't realize is that it’s every bit as much about the eyes. It’s how we see and perceive people and things and the world around us. And there are so many different ways to see.

Look at the world with a jaundiced eye and you'll inevitably fall into slander. But see the world in a positive light—Ohev yamim lirot tov—and you'll never have anything bad to say.

The spies were sentenced to 40 years of wandering in the wilderness after giving over a negative report on the Land of Israel. It’s a shocking sentence, a 40-year punishment for failing a 40-day mission: a year for each day. [Numbers 14:34]. One might reasonably question the fairness of the sentence. After all, if the bad behavior occurred over days, why is the punishment extended over a time period of years?

But it’s not about the few hours the spies presenting their evil report. The issue is that the spies perceived Eretz Yisrael in a negative light for the entire 40 days of their mission. And that was due to their negative attitude. They failed to be positive people, Ohev yamim lirot tov.

They failed to see the good.

James Tissot [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Rabbi Frand explains that interpretation is everything. The Jewish sages tell us that the spies called Eretz Yisrael, as a “land which consumes its inhabitants” because wherever they went, they saw funerals; people burying their dead. If you have a negative view of the world, you might conclude from this that Israel is a terrible land, with people dropping like flies.

But if the spies had been positive people they might have instead thought, "Everyone is too busy with their burials to distract us from our mission. God did us a great favor in easing our path so that we might accomplish what we set out to do without disruptions. Such Divine Intervention!”

The same facts, but two vastly different ways of looking at things. Which proves that slander is about the eyes, about our perception of things, and not about the mouth, tongue, and lips.

If you have a positive outlook, you will see the good in Israel, and this is what you will speak about.

And there is so much good to be said about Israel: the way we begged the Arabs to stay in ’48; the olive branch of autonomy to Arab villages in Judea and Samaria; the equality of our society and the way we offer freedom of religion to all; the warmth of the people and the sun; the aura of holiness that abounds throughout the land; the good food; the high moral standards of the IDF; the aid we give to the Arab people in Gaza and Syria; the field hospitals we set up in foreign hospitals after a disaster; our technological innovations. The list goes on and on.

But can you really live like that, seeing only the good? Does that mean we can’t, for example, complain about Israeli bus service, or the heat in summer?

It would seem so.

Rabbi Mordechai Elyahu once wrote that a Jew is forbidden to complain about the heat of Eretz

Rav Mordechai Elyahu, ZT"L

Yisrael, citing Ketubot 112b, in which R. Ami and R. Assi made sure they’d always be in shade in summer, and sun in winter. Rashi explains they did so to avoid complaining about the living conditions in Eretz Yisrael. Rabbi Chanina (112a) used to smooth out bumpy roads so no one would speak badly about the quality of the roads of Eretz Yisrael.

Yes, these are sages, not everyday people. But it is from the sages that we learn how to live; how to comport ourselves as we navigate this world. And the sages did the utmost to see and represent the Land in a positive light.

From a personal standpoint, it just feels wrong to criticize Israel in public for any reason whatsoever when there is so much good one can say. Israel has many detractors and few defenders. Why should I help those who malign the Jewish State? Why would I offer them grist for their hate mill?

In private conversations at home with family, it may be okay to get into the nitty gritty of Israeli politicians, parties, and policies. Especially if this helps us understand how we might better society. But in public, we must think of ourselves as lawyers, hired to believe in and defend our client Israel, no matter what.

What can we do when we see strong voices engaging in constant Israel-bashing under the guise of "legitimate" criticism? We can counter with blogs and social media posts. A petition that is fair, but not inflammatory, could also be an acceptable response, provided it addresses the issue with accurate and credible information.

In the murky waters of Israeli advocacy, here is one truth on which we can all depend: a true Israel advocate will always speak well of the Jewish State, showing the Land in its best possible light.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

From Palestine Today:

The deputy head of the Islamic Movement in the occupied Palestinian territories Sheikh Kamal al-Khatib said that Jerusalem and its holy mosque are being subjected to the most serious attacks of Judaism since the occupation of Jerusalem in June 1967.

Al-Khatib pointed out that the attacks increased after the US administration's decision to declare Jerusalem as the united capital of Israel and transferred its embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem.

"The United States announced Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and transferred its embassy to occupied Jerusalem, which opened the door to attacks on its residents, especially with regard to settlements and incursions that did not stop even for a moment."

He stressed that the occupation is trying to impose a policy of Judaization in collusion with the Arab regimes, saying, "Unfortunately, the UAE and Saudis are involved in the selling of land and houses of Jerusalem to the Israelis."

He added: It is known to us in numbers, documents and names that the Arab countries aim to align the Jerusalemites with the convictions of those countries that want to end the conflict in favor of the Israeli occupation and accept the "deal of the century."

"The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have made serious statements about Jerusalem that are in line with the American and Israeli vision in the occupied city, and tens of millions of dollars are being spent on this," he said. "But we try as much as possible to enlighten the Jerusalemites of the seriousness of the UAE and Saudi role in Jerusalem."

"The occupation is trying to dominate the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The excavations under the mosque are only known by the Israelis themselves, but what is happening is very worrying and the indicators clearly indicate the seriousness of what is going on underneath the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

He also pointed out that the Israeli military establishment has begun to promote a new and more dangerous proposition than the temporal and spatial division of the mosque of the Muslims and the Dome of the Rock to the Jews, with the Jews rebuilding their alleged temple at the Dome of the Rock mosque.

The Islamic Movement in Israel has been in the forefront of inciting Muslims against Jews with lies and antisemitism like this for years.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

08/22 Links Pt1: Trump Anoints Jordan to Replace PLO in Negotiations with Israel; Trump: Israel will pay ‘higher price’ in peace talks after embassy move

From Ian:

MEMRI: Fatah And Palestinian Authority Headed By Mahmoud 'Abbas Praise Terrorists And Their Families, Provide Housing For Families Of Martyrs

In the past few months, Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah officials, headed by PA President Mahmoud 'Abbas, have continued to hold events and receptions honoring terrorists who carried out attacks, including against Israeli civilians, primarily during the period of the Second Intifada. These activities have included meetings with released prisoners, awards and decorations for prisoners' and martyrs' families, praise for the mothers of terrorists and martyrs, condolence calls to the families of terrorists, participation in ceremonies in memory of martyrs, and more.

This report will present examples from the recent months of PA and Fatah support, both institutional and moral, for terrorists and for the armed struggle against Israel.

'Abbas: The Martyrs And Prisoners Are 'Stars In The Sky Of The Palestinian People's Struggle'; We Will Continue To Compensate Their Families

In recent months, PA President Mahmoud 'Abbas frequently participated in events at which he expressed support for prisoners and martyrs. On July 23, 2018, at a Ramallah ceremony honoring Palestinian prisoners and martyrs, during which he awarded medals to the families of the martyred prisoners and to released prisoners, he referred to the martyrs and prisoners as "pioneers" and "stars in the sky of the Palestinian people's struggle" who "have a top priority in everything," and stated that the payments to them and to their families would continue. He said: "We will neither reduce nor withhold the allowances of the families of martyrs, prisoners, and released prisoners, as some want [us to do]; if we had only a single penny left, we would pay it to families of the martyrs and prisoners."[1] Fatah Central Committee Secretary-General Jibril Rajoub described the prisoners as the sector "that has been the most important and vital in confronting the occupation for the past 51 years."[2]

Fatah, Headed By Mahmoud 'Abbas, Fetes Released Prisoners, Including One Responsible For Shootings, Suicide Attack During Second Intifada

On April 23, 2018 'Abbas met with a group of released prisoners who had been incarcerated in Israeli prisons for 15 years or more. One of them was Rafat Al-Jawabra, a former commander in Fatah's military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, in Bethlehem, who was responsible for a series of shootings and for a suicide attack in the Jewish settlement of Efrat during the Second Intifada. Al-Jawabra was jailed in 2002, and was released in late 2017 after serving a 15-year sentence. Following his release, Mahmoud 'Abbas and Fatah held a festive reception for Al-Jawabra who, while still in prison, was elected to head the local council of the West Bank village of Al-Doha.[3] During the reception, 'Abbas congratulated the released prisoners, saying that "the problem of the prisoners is the problem of the entire Palestinian people... The subject of the prisoners is a top priority for the Palestinian leadership, which invests every possible effort with international organizations and institutions and with the international community in order to ensure their release from the prisons of the Israeli occupation so that they will participate in the building of the independent Palestinian state whose capital is East Jerusalem."[4]

PMW: New Head of PLO Commission of Prisoners visits notorious Terror–Mom

The new PLO Commissioner of Prisoners' Affairs, Qadri Abu Bakr, is following in the footsteps of his predecessor.

The head of the commission is directly responsible to ensure that the terrorist prisoners and released prisoners receive the monthly salaries prescribed by the 2004 PA Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners and the ensuing regulations.

According to the Facebook post, while visiting released prisoners, Abu Baker said:
"[T]he Palestinian leadership - led by [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas and [PA] Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah - will make every effort for the prisoners, the released prisoners, and their families... we must not give in to the American and Israeli pressure on all that is connected to the salaries of the Martyrs and the prisoners."
[Facebook page of the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs, Aug. 19, 2018]

The post also mentioned that Abu Bakr paid a special visit to infamous Terror-Mom Latifa Abu Hmeid.

Abu Hmeid has 6 terrorist sons currently in prison. 4 of her sons were convicted of multiple counts of murder and each are serving several life sentences. A fifth son was recently arrested and indicted for the murder of Staff Sergeant Ronen Lyubarski. The sixth son is being held in administrative detention. In addition, a seventh son of Abu Hmeid was killed in an attempt to arrest him after he murdered an Israeli.

Official PA media is not free and is part of the "struggle"

JCPA: The Jews Are the "Kurds" of the Palestinians

The struggle in Syria is between two all-embracing outlooks - the pan-Arab one and the pan-Islamic one. Pan-Arabism is represented by the ruling Baath party headed by Bashar al-Assad, while pan-Islamism is represented by the groups fighting in the name of Islam. These are two absolute ideological positions; they inherently reject compromise and engage in total war while thoroughly negating the other.
The pan-Arab stance in Syria could not accept Kurdish nationalism. The Kurds had either to be Arabs or not be at all. Because they insisted on not being Arabs, their Syrian citizenship was revoked.

Seen in this light, the Jews are the "Kurds" of the Palestinians. The Palestinian attitude toward the Jews is one of total rejection. That is why they are not prepared to recognize Jewish nationalism, deny that we have any connection to Jerusalem, assert that the Temple did not exist and was never built, and proclaim that Jesus was a Palestinian. The Palestinians see themselves as part of pan-Arabism and their role is to liberate their sector as part of the overall pan-Arab struggle.

The current Palestinian demand for recognition as an independent state is inauthentic. The Palestinian National Charter does not include a single article calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The first article states: "Palestine is...an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation."

The struggle between Fatah and Hamas, which is grounded in the Muslim Brotherhood movement, is simply part of the struggle between pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism.

Nasser Laham, editor-in-chief of the Ma'an news agency, which represents the mainstream of the Palestinian Authority, said in January: "It is forbidden for us to make the slightest concession, we want all of Palestine....We will fight until America is defeated, until Israel is defeated." Laham is not expressing an extreme position but the mainstream Palestinian position.

Do European anthropologists really support BDS?

A tweet:

#EASA2018 in full motion against cooperation with segregatory Israeli institutions established in occupied West Bank: 160+ vote in favor! Victory! pic.twitter.com/0Pjidh5Zct
— Allegra Lab (@allegra_lab) August 16, 2018

The BDS movement tweeted this as a victory.

But according to the tweet the European Association of Social Anthropologists, all they agreed upon was to not cooperate with "Israeli institutions established in occupied West Bank" - not an academic boycott of Israel, as BDS insists upon.

Which means that practically it is a boycott of a single Israeli university, Ariel University, which indeed has a sociology and anthropology department.

But is Ariel University "segregatory?" Not at all. It has Arab Israeli students and it would welcome Palestinian Arab students as well - but the PA forbids them to go there.

I couldn't find the exact text of the motion, so I can't say much more about it. But I think it is far less than the BDSers are pretending it is. Not that it is horrific for any academic group to knowingly institute a boycott on any university, violating all academic principles and standards on freedom of expression.

There are 14 Israeli members of the EASA. And one person who identifies as Palestinian, who may have Israeli citizenship.

(h/t Andrew)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.