Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, September 16, 2018

Child killed in Gaza Friday definitely not shot by Israel

It is refreshing to see AP, at least, report that the unanimous reports on Friday of a child being shot dead by the IDF in Gaza are not so clear:

There are conflicting reports surrounding the death of a boy at a Gaza border rally that Palestinians initially blamed on Israel.
Israel's military said their evidence shows the 11-year-old was hit by a rock thrown by protesters. Two Gaza rights groups said he died after being struck "with a solid object."
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said Shady Abdel-al was killed by Israeli fire. A spokesman said Saturday he died from head wounds, without elaborating.
The ministry removed a baby from their official death toll in May after The Associated Press reported she died from a preexisting medical condition, not from Israeli tear gas as it had claimed.

PCHR notes that Shady Abdel-al was not hit with bullets, but with a "solid object" that fractured his skull.

Hamas' spokespeople are once again proven to be liars.

The only possibility that he was killed by Israel is if a tear gas canister hit him. (Israel drops the canisters from aircraft or lobs them over the fence.)

But such an object would almost have certainly hit him on the top of the head, not the side, and his injury is on the side of his head, as this screenshot from a video shows:

There was also an injury on the right side of his head, so apparently the stone that hit him had enough force to knock him down where his head hit the ground causing the other injury.

It seems highly likely that the IDF is correct and Abdel-Al was killed by a stone thrown by Gazans.

Of course, this doesn't stop the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to call for this to be investigated by the International Criminal Court.

Let them try.

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Islamic Jihad released this video showing their own masked terrorists launching balloons towards Israel and some of the fires they claim to have started.

Members of the "Baraq Unit" attached photos of their favorite terrorists - including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah - to balloons along with the burning materials meant to start fires in Israel.

Despite rumors of an agreement to stop these attacks, they continue and thousands of acres in Israel have burned.

A report by Israel's Parks and Nature Authority issued last week showed:

Some 32,000 dunams (7,900 acres) of Israeli fields, parks and other lands have been reduced to ash.
The report found that 12,086 dunams (2,987 acres) of national parks and nature reserves, 9,873 dunams (2,440 acres) of JNF-owned land, 4,237 dunams (1,047 acres) of agricultural fields and 6,085 dunams (1,504 acres) of open land have been burned. Since the arson terrorism began, 14% of all nature reserves in the region bordering the Gaza Strip have been lost to fire.
The worst-hit areas are the Be’eri Crater Nature Reserve, 78% of which has been burned, and the Kurkar Niram Nature Reserve, 77% of which has been burned. Fifty percent of the Karmiya Nature Reserve, 30% of the Reches Gvaram Reserve, 27% of Nahal Grar Park, and 21% of the Besor Nature Reserve have also been lost to the fires.

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09/15 Links: Mayor Nir Barkat at Algemeiner Gala: Jerusalem Is Thriving; Belgium ends funding for Palestinian schools over honoring of terrorist; The true history of the Battle of Cable Street

From Ian:

Algemeiner Reveals 5th Annual ‘J100’ List at Star-Studded Gala Featuring Sharon Stone and Nir Barkat

The Algemeiner unveiled its 5th annual “J100” list of the top 100 people “positively influencing Jewish life” on Thursday night, at a star-studded gala in New York City. Honorees in attendance included famed actress Sharon Stone and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

The event, held at Capitale, 130 Bowery, was attended by over 500 people, who gathered in support of The Algemeiner.

Both Stone and Barkat received The Algemeiner’s prestigious “Warrior for Truth” award, and the 2018 Algemeiner Honorees were philanthropists Richard and Monique Chera.

The evening’s Master of Ceremonies was Fox News host Arthel Neville, and Event Chairs were Neil and Sharon Book and Robert and Amy Book. Bernard-Henri Lévy served as Honorary Chairman, and News 12 anchor Emily Lorsch hosted the red carpet.
September 14, 2018 4:54 pm
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Iranian Regime Minister Says German Government-Funded Foundation Remains Committed to Joint Research Projects

Iran's official news agency reported on Friday that a cooperation agreement between a group of Iranian universities and a major German...

Other high-profile attendees at the event included TV star Siggy Flicker, Amb. Dani Dayan, artist Ron Agam, philanthropists Ira and Ingeborg Rennert and Howard Lorber, among many other notable community and industry leaders.

The crowd was moved by emotional remarks made by Keren Brosh, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll who was brutally murdered in her Paris apartment six months ago.

Past honorees and participants in the annual event have included media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, President Donald Trump, Czech President Miloš Zeman, artist Yaacov Agam, the late entertainer Joan Rivers, former British Justice Secretary Michael Gove and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, among others.

Mayor Nir Barkat at Algemeiner Gala: Jerusalem Is Thriving

Jerusalem is experiencing a cultural, spiritual and religious renaissance, the city’s mayor said on Thursday in remarks at The Algemeiner’s fifth annual “J100” Gala in New York City.

Accepting The Algemeiner’s prestigious “Warrior for Truth” award, Nir Barkat — who will soon wrap up a decade-long sting as the mayor of Israel’s capital — said, “Jerusalem is thriving, and all sectors feel part of the growth of the city…Jerusalem today is much more attractive for investors, for young people, for visitors, and Jerusalem is optimistic.”

The 58-year-old Barkat called his time at the helm Jerusalem’s City Hall the “ten most exciting years of my life.”

“You have not seen the last of me yet,” he said. “I promise, whatever role I take on in the future, you will see me around, committed to the city of Jerusalem and the future of the Jewish people and the truth that we all support.”

09/14 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Demonizing Israel and the hijacking of language; Fatah mocks 9/11 in cartoon; David Collier: From boycotting Jews to attacking MPs, the bullying thuggery of BDS

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Demonizing Israel and the hijacking of language

Some may say this is merely to hijack the language in the opposite direction. Not so. This is using it to express truths backed by evidence rather than lies. To claim the Israelis are Nazis is an obscene lie; but Abbas really is a sympathizer with the would-be leader of the Nazi extermination program in the Middle East.

And truth and evidence cannot ever be said to be hijacking the language.

As a result, background verbal noise composed of truth would begin to permeate the collective Western brain in place of the current background verbal noise of lies.

The consequence would be that the verbal conditioning which is so essential to influencing the collective mind would produce a very different outcome. The falsehoods and distortions about Israel would begin to jar badly against the story implicitly understood by the term “Palestinian colonialists.”

Totalitarian regimes understand the connection between language and thinking. The Soviet communists repeated formulaic slogans over and over again.

In his book The Language of the Third Reich, Victor Klemperer wrote that the Nazis used language to indoctrinate virtually the entire population. Through their repeated use of particular words in propaganda, speeches and publications, they changed their meaning and context to serve their purposes.

Exactly the same tactics of language control and the hijacking of meaning are being used by today’s “progressive” cultural totalitarians against both Israel and the West – where words and phrases such as “liberal,” “social justice” or “equality” have been turned into their precise opposite.

Language and thinking are linked. The issue is whether that link is to be used to service truth or lies.

Words are being used to twist and enslave the Western mind and to empower the destroyers of the innocent. Language has to be reclaimed from its hijackers and restored to its real meaning if truth, justice and collective sanity are to be restored.

Melanie Phillips: Conversation with John Anderson: freedom under threat

Australia’s former deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, recently interviewed me in London as part of series of conversations he has conducted for his website.

Anderson is himself deeply concerned about the increasing eclipse of freedom. The “Great Financial Crisis”, he has written, has exposed the economic and social vulnerability of many seemingly strong and prosperous nations. “Even Australia, free of commonwealth debt and enjoying the benefits of its trade with China, rapidly lost its way”.

So we talked about the sources of political and personal liberty in Britain and the west, the current threats to that liberty and what can be done to preserve it. You can watch the interview here.

Nikki Haley Talks Syrian Red Lines And Punishing The Palestinian Leadership For Bad Behavior

On Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley appeared on Fox News to speak with anchor Bret Baier about "global hot spots."

While Haley touched on numerous such hot spots, two of her more pointed remarks came when speaking about the Palestinian leadership and Syria.

On the Palestinians (4:10):
BAIER: The Palestinian aid pulled back; the PLO kicked out of Washington. Is there still a hope that by doing the hard-stick approach with the Palestinians, that they’re somehow going to turn around?

HALEY: It’s totally up to the Palestinians at this point. If the leadership of the Palestinians came to the table, automatically, you’re gonna have a peace plan, negotiations are gonna happen. Neither side is gonna like it, but the Palestinians have more to gain than Israel ever will. And so all they have done is had their hand out asking for money, badmouthed the United States, not come to the table on the peace deal. Why would we have a PLO office? Why would we continue to fund the Palestinians?

This isn’t gonna stop our work on the peace deal – we’re moving forward, we’re gonna continue to push it, we’re gonna continue to hope that they see the error of what they’ve done and they come back to the table, and we’ll welcome them when they do.

PMW: Fatah mocks 9/11 in cartoon

On the 17th anniversary of the terror attack on 9/11, Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Movement posted the above cartoon, mocking the horrific attack in which nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered.

The cartoon shows US President Donald Trump about to fly a plane into a building shaped like the PA map of "Palestine" that presents all of Israel as "Palestine" together with the PA areas. The building is painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag and smoke is already rising from it.

Text on building: "The Palestinian cause"
Text on cartoon and in Facebook post: "[US President Donald] Trump's decision to eliminate the Palestinian cause"
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Sept. 11, 2018]

The cartoon follows the US Administration's recent decision to cut all US funding to UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). The US sees UNRWA as an organization that perpetuates the human tragedy for millions of refugee camp residents, by imposing on them the status of "refugees" and preventing them from moving on to a productive life. The PA and Fatah prefer to impose the status of refugees on millions of people so they will see themselves as victims of Israel, demanding to "return" to "Palestine."

Palestinian Media Watch has documented other Palestinian cartoons commenting on the terror attack on 9/11.

Another cartoon, published in the official PA daily, criticized Trump for being Israel's "puppet":

09/14 Links Pt1: Glick: Ending the Palestinians Exception; The real story behind the Jahalin Bedouin in Khan al Ahmar; Poll: Most Palestinians Reject Trump Peace Plan Without Seeing It

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Ending the Palestinians Exception

When Rosh Hashanah ended on Tuesday evening, Jews discovered that over the holiday, the Trump administration had enacted two policies – one foreign and one domestic – that on their face, don’t appear to be connected. But actually, they stem from the same rationale. And both together and separately, these two policies give Jews much to be thankful for.

First, the administration announced it is closing the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington, DC.
US National Security Advisor John Bolton explained Monday that the administration decided to close the PLO office due to the PLO’s refusal to carry out substantive negotiations towards the achievement of a peace agreement with Israel. Then too, by working to prosecute Israeli nationals at the International Criminal Court, the PLO is violating the conditions Congress set as law for the continued operation of its Washington office.

Second, Kenneth Marcus, Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights determined that from now on, the US Department of Education will use the State Department’s definition of antisemitism in adjudicating all complaints regarding alleged acts of antisemitism in US educational institutions.

The State Department’s definition of antisemitism is based on the definition drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism explicitly states that anti-Israel activities which among other things reject Israel’s right to exist and the Jewish people’s right to self-determination; compare contemporary policies of the State of Israel to policies of Nazi Germany; and apply a standard for judging Israel’s policies and actions that is not applied to other nations and states, are all acts of antisemitism. As such, they are prohibited under the civil rights statutes that protect Americans against discrimination based on their group identity.

The common phenomenon both policies address can be referred to as “the Palestinian exception.”

The Palestinian exception was born with the Oslo process, whose 25th anniversary was marked on September 13. Ironically, the more the process failed, the more entrenched the Palestinian exception became.

The Palestinian exception involves giving the Palestinians and their supporters a pass for actions that would otherwise be illegal, simply because they are Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists.

David Singer: Trump Squeezes UNRWA, Checkmates PLO and Incentivises Jordan

President Trump has created a veritable diplomatic tsunami affecting the political fortunes of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Hamas and Jordan – with his decision to cease all future donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – currently US$360million per annum and comprising about 30 percent of UNRWA’s budget.

The numbers of UNRWA-registered Palestinian Arab refugees in Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza have been increasing in leaps and bounds annually because they include all the descendants of those Palestinian Arabs caught up in the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israel wars.

Currently:
2,175,000 live in Jordan – 370,000 of whom reside in 10 camps
810,000 live in the West Bank – 200,000 of whom reside in 19 camps
1,300,000 live in Gaza – 580,000 of whom reside in 8 camps

UNRWA only provides services to the camps. UNRWA does not administer or police the camps, as this is the responsibility of the host authorities.

Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza comprise 83 per cent of the territory of former Palestine.

For UNRWA to count as “refugees” people who are now living in Arab-controlled parts of the same country where their forebears once resided – is really an insult to one’s intelligence.

For UNRWA to tolerate a system of apartheid and segregation that allows those “refugees” to be divided into camp dwellers and non-camp dwellers makes a mockery of the humanitarian principles espoused by the United Nations and the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Struggling under an accumulated deficit of US$271 million before Trump’s hammer blow – UNRWA had already shut down or slated for closure many programs and laid off large numbers of employees – mainly Palestinian Arabs.

The further cuts UNRWA will now be forced to make following America’s defunding will be critical to the PLO, Hamas and Jordan – as “refugees” coming under their respective jurisdictions affected by substantial cuts to their well-established entitlements see others not similarly subjected.

Palestinian Activist at EU Parliament: Europe Should Cut BDS Funding Like Trump Cut That of UNRWA

Speaking at the EU Parliament in Brussels, the Jerusalem-based Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid criticized Europe for turning a blind eye, for centuries, on the economic plight of Gaza, saying that "dignity can be achieved only via economic prosperity." Accusing the BDS movement of "trying to use the Palestinians in order to gain power and money," Eid said that if Europe cut its funding, like Trump was cutting the funding of UNRWA, the BDS movement would cease to exist within six months. Europe should give the money directly to the Palestinians, he said, adding that the slogans uttered by BDS members that short-term suffering was necessary in order to gain long-term benefits were similar to slogans uttered by Arab leaders in 1948. He criticized the Palestinian Authority for preventing activists from participating in coexistence events. Eid's address was posted on his YouTube channel on September 5, 2018.

Chris Gunness' (other) Twitter account shows his hypocrisy

Sure, he wants to hear from you....as long as you agree with him completely.

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During the days running up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, practicing Jews say selichot, a selection of poems (piyyutim) and prayers, composed over the centuries, that are different every day.

One of the many poems said today was about Jerusalem. 25 verses, each that begin and end with the word "Yerushalayim," that discuss both the pain of losing the city to the Romans 2000 years ago and the hope that it will be rebuilt to its former glory.

Many stanzas extol the beauty and holiness of the city.

Other parts of selichot, repeated every day and many times on Yom Kippur, also implore God to remember Jerusalem.

As I took this photo of the piyyut, I realized that my talit bag it was on says "Yerushalayim" and includes a stylized picture of the holy city.

There are no historic liturgical poems about Jerusalem in Islamic history. The Islamic pretense of loving Jerusalem is literally less than a century old, started by the viciously antisemitic Mufti of Jerusalem. Before that it was ignored by the Muslim world.

Jerusalem is part of the Jewish DNA. For purportedly Jewish organizations like J-Street to argue that the holy city should not be a part of the Jewish state, and moreover that it should be shared with people who want to destroy the Jewish presence in the Middle East, is a slap in the face of Judaism.

Jews advocating Palestinian Arab rule over the holy parts of Jerusalem are spitting in the face of their own grandparents and great-grandparents who grew up with the love of Jerusalem, a love and a longing that is simply part and parcel of Judaism itself.

Don't say "As a Jew, I believe Jerusalem must be shared." The second half of that sentence negates the first half. If you believe that Israel should give up Jerusalem, your claim to be Jewish is based on nothing more than a hereditary accident, and you have no claim whatsoever to speak for Jews.

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In 1951, UNRWA was not yet a tool of Palestinian Arabs and was still willing to say negative things about the people it had to deal with.

Current reports from UNRWA would never, ever admit what they freely admitted in the 1951 Interim Report:

13. An accurate statement of the number of genuine refugees resulting from the war in Palestine is unlikely to be provided now or in the future. In fact, it is almost impossible to define closely the word "refugee," as applied to the work of the Agency, without leaving certain groups of deserving people outside those accepted, or conversely, including groups who probably should not be in receipt of relief.
14. The Agency has steadfastly resisted persistent and persuasive efforts to have it become responsible for the care and feeding of citizens of the various countries who are merely needy or destitute as a result of the war in Palestine. It has taken the stand that its funds were not provided for that purpose and should be applied only to relief and works for genuine refugees. If the needy, assumed to number more than 150,000, were added to the Agency's burden, little money would be left to apply to works projects. Many of the needy are now actually in poorer circumstances than the average refugee because the latter receives food, medical care and some clothing, little of which is available to the non-refugee. Appeals have been made by the Agency to voluntary organizations to feed and clothe the needy who are not entitled to be classified as refugees.

UNRWA failed at this mission and ended up absorbing hundreds of thousands of non-refugees as refugees. Today it confidently says there are over 5 million "refugees" without any of the caveats about their status as mentioned in 1951.

DEFINITION OF A REFUGEE
15. For working purposes, the Agency has decided that a refugee is a needy person, who, as a result of the war in Palestine, has lost his home and his means of livelihood. A large measure of flexibility in the interpretation of the above definition is accorded to chief district officers to meet the many border-line cases which inevitably arise. In some circumstances, a family may have lost part or all of its land from which its living was secured, but it may still have a house to live in. Others may have lived on one side of the boundary but worked in what is now Israel most of the year. Others, such as Bedouins, normally moved from one area of the country to another, and some escaped with part or all of their goods but cannot return to the area where they formerly resided the greater part of the time. These examples give an idea of the varying conditions that must be met in administering the relief programme.

NUMBERS OF REFUGEES
16. The Agency has accepted as realistic the figures set forth in appendix B of the first interim report of the United Nations Economic Survey Mission, but recognizes that the numbers have increased in conformity with the extremely high birthrate of the refugees. There is reason to believe that births are always registered for ration purposes, but deaths are often, if not usually, concealed so that the family may continue to collect rations for the deceased. It also is evident that many of the 99,000 mentioned in the above report as "in gainful employment" are now on rations. It is unlikely that numbers will be reduced below 800,000, and it is possible that that number may be exceeded.
17. The Gaza area, having a highly concentrated refugee population housed mainly in camps and under military control by the Egyptian army, is probably the nearest to correct in its figures concerning the numbers of refugees. At 1 August 199,000 were registered. Syria, with the smallest number of refugees on rations, is next in accuracy, with 82,000 registered. The figures for Lebanon (128,000) are confused due to the fact that many Lebanese nationals along the Palestinian frontier habitually worked most of the year on the farms or in the citrus groves of Palestine. With the advent of war they came back across the border and claimed status as refugees. Only an exhaustive and expensive census, now under way although ardently opposed by those concerned, will divide worthy from false claimants.

The census never happened.

18. The former Trans-Jordan and the portion of Palestine remaining in Arab hands and now annexed to the Hashimite Kingdom of the Jordan received the greatest influx of refugees of any of the countries adjacent to Israel -- probably more than half of all the refugees. For various reasons, the largest number of fictitious names on the ration lists pertain to refugees in this area. All earlier attempts at a close census of those entitled to relief have been frustrated, but a comprehensive survey, now under way, is achieving worthwhile results in casting up names of dead people for which rations are still drawn, fraudulent claims regarding numbers of dependents (it is alleged that it is a common practice for refugees to hire children from other families at census time), and in eliminating duplications where families have two or more ration cards. The census, though stubbornly resisted, will eliminate many thousands from the lists of refugees now in receipt of rations. The number on lists in Jordan at 31 August was 485,000 with 430,000 rations distributed.

The census never happened.

26. Strangely enough the general morale of the refugees is higher than might be expected after spending more than two years in exile under most trying conditions. Real trouble-makers are confined to a very small proportion of the total number of refugees, and food strikes and work stoppages are generally considered to be the result of organized pressure groups. There is considerable evidence indicating that subversive effort is fairly widely diffused amongst the refugees. The Arab is, however, a confirmed individualist and does not offer the most fruitful type of field in which to extol the benefits of any form of government which might propose to alter his traditional mode of life. Otherwise, it is almost inevitable that the misery and suffering of the refugees would already have made them almost completely the tools of pressure groups wishing to exploit their misery for political or other reasons.

It is unclear if this is naivete on UNRWA's part at the time. Clearly the "leaders" of the Palestinians were not interested in reintegrating them among Arab nations, and neither were Arab leaders. UNRWA caved to this.

(h/t Joe in Australia)

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09/13 Links Pt2: Do Zionists Have Civil Rights?; NY Times Attacks an Opponent of Anti-Semitism; Jeremy Corbyn and the Socialism of Fools; Operation Finale: Evil in the Dock

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: Do Zionists Have Civil Rights?

When then-presidential candidate Donald Trump famously declared his intention to be a “neutral” arbiter of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian territories and put the onus for resolving the conflict on Jerusalem, few observers could have predicted that Trump would run one of the most pro-Israel administrations in American history.

This year, the Trump administration began relocating the U.S. embassy in Israel to the nation’s capital city, fulfilling a promise that began in 1995 with the passage of a law mandating this precise course of action. The administration also declined to blame Israel for defending its Gaza border against a Hamas-led attack. Last week, the administration shuttered the PLO’s offices in Washington.

The Trump administration’s commitment to shedding the contradictions and moral equivalencies that have plagued past administrations has exposed anti-Zionism for what its critics so often alleged it to be.

This week, Department of Education Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Kenneth Marcus announced his intention to vacate an Obama-era decision that dismissed an alleged act of anti-Semitism at Rutgers University. Marcus’s decision to reopen that particularly deserving case has led the New York Times to publish an article by Erica L. Green full of misconceptions, myths, and dissimulations about the nature of the anti-Israel groups in question and the essential characteristics of anti-Semitism itself.

In reporting on Marcus’s move, Green declared the education activist and opponent of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement a “longtime opponent of Palestinian rights causes,” a designation the paper’s editor felt fine printing without any substantiating evidence. You could be forgiven for thinking that BDS itself constituted a cause of “Palestinian rights” and not an international effort to stigmatize and harm both Israel and its supporters. If you kept reading beyond that second paragraph, your suspicions were confirmed.

Green contended that Marcus’s decision has paved the way for the Education Department to adopt a “hotly contested definition of anti-Semitism” that includes: denying Jews “the right to self-determination,” claiming that the state of Israel is a “racist endeavor,” and applying a double standard to Israel not “expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” As Jerusalem Post reporter and COMMENTARY contributor Lahav Harkov observed, this allegedly “hotly contested definition” is precisely the same definition used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. In 2010, the IHRA’s working definition was adopted almost in total by Barack Obama’s State Department.

Antisemitism definition sparks backlash on U.S. Left

Washington - A debate over the definition of antisemitism that has paralyzed Britain’s Labour Party made its way across the Atlantic this week, amid news that the Trump administration would apply a similar standard on discrimination toward Jews under scrutiny there at the US Department of Education.

The matter in question is whether opposing Jewish self-determination in the ancestral Jewish homeland of Israel, a political movement known as Zionism, should be considered antisemitic. Several Western government agencies, including the foreign and justice ministries of the US, Britain and Germany, have policies that deem anti-Zionism a discriminatory practice that uniquely denies Jews the right to govern themselves.

But the Trump administration is now applying that standard in America’s schools, where anti-Israelism has raged in recent years in the form of the BDS movement meant to delegitimize the Jewish state in advancement of the Palestinian cause.

A policy paper released last month by Kenneth Marcus, the assistant secretary of education for civil rights, announced that department would adopt the US State Department definition of antisemitism that applies a test of “three Ds” to determine Jewish discrimination: Delegitimization of Israel, demonization of Israel, and the subjection of Israel to double standards.

That definition classifies opposition to Israel’s existence as a form of antisemitism, according to former officials from the Obama administration, which adopted the definition.

The Senate has advanced legislation in recent months which supports the application of this standard at the education department.

Marcus also announced the reopening of a years-old case involving anti-Israelism, directed toward Jewish students at Rutgers University, in which the department would repackage its argument based on the new policy.

For Jewish New Year, NY Times Attacks an Opponent of Anti-Semitism

Over the two-day Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) holiday, the New York Times greeted its Jewish readers with a one-two punch of news stories that strayed from fact-based reporting to attack supporters of the Jewish state and denigrate a widely accepted definition of anti-Semitism.

The first article, appearing on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, was entitled “A Harsh Diplomatic View, Even Where His Boss Sees Hope” and provided a colored and dismissive rendering of US National Security Advisor John Bolton’s first major public remarks about US foreign policy.

The newspaper’s offering for the second day of the Jewish New Year was even worse: a brazenly partisan, opinion-laden characterization of Kenneth L. Marcus, the assistant secretary of education for civil rights, as “a longtime opponent of Palestinian rights causes” who had pressured campuses “to squelch anti-Israel speech and activities.”
An Attack on an Opponent of Anti-Semitism

The Times makes a show of promising reporting “without fear or favor,” and yet the article, “U.S. Revives Rutgers Bias Case In New Tack on Anti-Semitism,” by Erica Green, clearly favors—worse, embraces—the antagonistic judgments of radical anti-Israel activist groups, which often slur anyone supportive of Israel as “anti-Palestinian.”

The language wouldn’t be out of place, for example, on the website of the so-called US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, an advocacy group opposed to Israel’s right to exist. Indeed, that group has used virtually the same wording about Marcus: “This is bad. Trump has nominated Kenneth Marcus – a sworn opponent of Palestinian rights – for Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the Department of Education,” the anti-Israel group asserted in a piece entitled, “The Trumpocalypse is coming to campus BDS, and YOUR senator can stop it.”

Likewise, the Times language mirrors a headline on Electronic Intifada, a virulently anti-Israel propaganda site: “Trump taps head of anti-Palestinian group as top civil rights enforcer.”

When I started blogging about BDS back in the 19th century, I tended to focus on the BDS failures, highlighting how little impact the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions “movement” was having on the exploding Israeli economy, pointing out the triviality of BDS claimed “victories,” and noting how many of their alleged “wins” were actually hoaxes, or the result of bullying or trickery.

Over the years, others have taken up the #BDSFail meme with gusto, while I’ve tended to focus on strategy and tactics for fighting anti-Israel campaigns more generally. But a recent event, one in which BDS might have played a role in sending hundreds of millions of dollars into the Israeli treasury, seemed worth noting as potentially the greatest BDSFail of all time.

By now, most readers are probably aware of PepsiCo’s acquisition of the Israeli company SodaStream for $3.2 billion. This purchase, in and of itself, represents a stunning illustration of how little the business world takes boycott treats and bullying seriously. In addition to being one of the largest M&A deals in Israeli history, the sale also demonstrates how the Israeli economy no longer relies on just high-tech hiding inside other branded devices, but that Israeli brands (in commercial goods, no less) are playing and winning on the world stage.

The fact that the purchaser was Pepsi also demonstrates Israel’s success on other fronts. For during the heyday of the Arab boycott, Pepsi was one of the brands that was willing to sacrifice the small Israeli market for the larger Arab one. But with this purchase of Sodastream, Pepsi has demonstrated that good relations with the Jewish state may be more important than what the nations surrounding Israel say or do.

Given how much effort the BDSers have put into tarring SodaStream’s name over the years, one might think this multi-billion-dollar transaction just represents a monumental example of the boycotters being ignored. But might BDS have actually played a role in creating an environment that facilitated the sale of SodaStream for billions?

To understand this thesis (which I’ll admit is speculative), you must understand the company’s CEO Daniel Birnbaum who, in addition to creating a company that took on the world’s largest beverage manufacturers and won, also worked doggedly to keep Shimon Peres’ notion of a New Middle East – where economic cooperation would supplant political enmity – alive.

When Sodastream was operating its Mishor Adumin factory in disputed territories, Birnbaum insisted that Jewish and Arab workers be paid and treated equally in any factory his company ran. And, lest you think such behavior was just for show, when he and some of his Jewish and Palestinian co-workers visited Israel to celebrate the company’s success and the Palestinians were required to undergo a strip search, Birnbaum insisted he go through one himself in solidarity.

This is the behavior not of a money-grubbing plutocrat, but of someone willing to sacrifice certain business advantages to support a non-economic cause (in this case, the notion that Jews and Arabs can live and work in peace and friendship). And for his efforts, BDSers around the globe insisted that Birnbaum was running a slave labor camp that should be condemned and shunned.

If you, like Birnbaum, are actually altruistic as well as capitalistic, if you’ve made sacrifices – financial and personal – over the years to create a successful, growing company and then used that success to improve the lives of Israelis and Arabs that other Israelis and Arabs say can never be reconciled, how are you supposed to respond to accusations by unproductive cretins like Omar Barghouti that all the good you’ve tried to do amounts to little more than Apartheid?

One thing you can do is to start making decisions based more on economics vs. politics, especially if sacrificing economics to politics has led to nothing but propaganda being directed against the company you built. For example, shutting down the Mishor Adumin and moving operations to a larger facility in the Negev, a move supported by economic subsidies, allowed Sodastream to expand while remaining profitable. And profitable growth is the key factor a suitor is looking at when deciding what premium to pay for an acquisition.

In fact, it was just a few years after this relocation/consolidation took place that Pepsico decided to pay not one, not two, but more than three billion dollars for the company (seven times sales and more than a hundred times profit, based on its 2016 financial numbers). And while Israel does not tax foreign investors when they cash out on a sale like Pepsi’s purchase of Sodastream, Israeli investors do need to include the money they made as part of their taxable income. Which means that tens of millions of the proceeds from the sale of Sodastream will soon find their way into the coffers of the Israeli government.

This is not to say that the behavior of the boycotters played a direct role in Sodastream’s successful sale. As is usually the case in business, product, positioning and profits play more of a role than politics. But if the BDSholes made it easier for the company to stop sacrificing the bottom line for a political cause that was punished, rather than rewarded, then I think every Sodastream shareholder and Israeli tax official owes Omar Barghouti a great big hug.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Hating Jews is a big topic of discussion these days. They’re talking about it in the UK, where Jeremy Corbyn can’t understand why so many are making such a big deal about what he sees as merely a principle of his proposed foreign policy. And they are talking about it in the USA, where 21% of American voters said they had at least a “somewhat favorable” impression of Louis Farrakhan (that was in March, and I would be surprised if the percentage wasn’t greater today).

I should note that I’m trying to stop using the word “antisemitism,” a word invented by 19^th century German Jew-hater Wilhelm Marr to make his Judenhass more scientific-sounding. Marr also wanted to express his idea that the problem with Jews was more than just a religious, economic, or national issue: it was biological, racial. Of course this implies that Jewishness cannot be fixed. Even if a Jew got himself baptized, stopped being a money-lender, had German citizenship, or served with distinction in the German army, he was still corrupt and dangerous. We all know where this idea led.

Not using “antisemitism” also has the advantage of forestalling what I’ve called The World’s Stupidest Argument, the one that goes “Arabs can’t be antisemites because they are Semites.” No need to elaborate further on this one.

Jonathan Haidt, in his very illuminating book The Righteous Mind, tells us that the mind is like a rational rider on an emotional elephant. The rider has the ability to use linguistic reasoning to come to conclusions about the best way to proceed, and can nudge the elephant in his chosen direction. But ultimately, the elephant will go where he wants. Haidt argues that in most cases our emotions determine the positions we will take on moral, political, or religious issues, and that we try to justify them after the fact by logical reasoning. This is borne out by a consideration of Jew-hatred, which has had a mind-bendingly long line of pseudo-rational arguments adduced in its favor – everything from our failure to accept the true religion (anything but Judaism), to “racial” characteristics, to the countless Jewish conspiracy theories – but which seems to be at bottom irreducibly irrational.

Jew-hatred is found on all parts of the political spectrum, both right and left, although it is especially fecund at the extremes, where conspiratorial thinking is rife. Jews are seen as weak, cowardly, and corrupt, while at the same time enormously powerful. They are simultaneously held in contempt and feared. The accusation that Jews control the weather, which seems from the outside about as reasonable as the idea that the earth is flat, makes perfect sense to those who live inside the Jew-hating conceptual scheme.

What is most interesting about it is the way it seems to have a life of its own, mutating as societies and cultures change. During the Middle Ages in Europe, the religious aspect, blood libels, and various conspiracy theories about Jewish responsibility for plagues predominated. Later, when the causes of economic cycles proved to be as mysterious as the vector of the Black Plague, the Jews were accused of conspiring to manipulate them. Darwin’s discoveries were pressed into service as support for pseudo-scientific racial Jew-hatred, which enabled it to propagate even in “enlightened” cultures where religion was not an important factor. Jews have been accused of being behind every large-scale catastrophe, from world wars to 9/11.

The Holocaust interfered with the life cycle of the “organism” that is Jew-hatred. Although there were and are many who fully approved of Hitler’s project, and even wish that he had been able to complete it and rid the world of the Jewish menace at last, the sheer horror of the industrial techniques employed by the Nazis had a stunning impact. Certainly the emotional power of Jew-hatred was great, but opposed to it were images of piles of murdered babies, living skeletons, and piles of eyeglasses, hair, and gold teeth taken from humans that had been turned into smoke.

As a result, a strong counter-force against Jew-hatred came into being. In the West, at least, it became taboo to speak explicitly of hating Jews (or indeed any distinct group) or to advocate any kind of discrimination against them, because – well, because everyone knows where that leads. This doesn’t mean that nobody still harbored the old feelings, that Jews were economic parasites, sexual predators, conspirators, and even Christ-killers, but it was considered unacceptable to publically express these thoughts or to act on them.

But as always, the organism began to mutate. If it was no longer possible to express hatred for individuals, hating a country was still allowed (indeed, many governments encouraged hatred of rival countries). And unsurprisingly, one particular country has become the target for a hatred as popular, vicious and irrational as pre-Holocaust century Jew-hatred.

The pathological anti-Zionist, like the Jew-hater, will invent history and current events so as to “establish” that the Jewish state is illegitimate, evil, and should be extirpated from the land, which anti-Zionists believe was stolen from saintly Arabs by conniving, conspiratorial Je— er, Zionists. Like Jew-haters, who could be convinced that Jews committed ritual murder just on someone’s say-so, the Israel-haters have no trouble believing that IDF soldiers deliberately shoot at Arab children for fun, despite a total lack of evidence. The most ridiculous motives and impossible crimes are routinely attributed to Israel’s government and army, and are automatically believed by the legions of obsessive anti-Zionists.

Double standards for legitimacy, conformance to international law, treatment of minorities, and proportionality of actions taken in self-defense, are applied shamelessly by pathological anti-Zionists. Crimes like genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing are falsely attributed to Israel, when these are precisely what would be done to Israel’s Jewish population if the remedies (like the “return” of Arab “refugees”) espoused by the anti-Zionists were adopted. The ideals of human rights and self-determination are strictly upheld for Palestinian Arabs, but ignored for Israel’s Jews. Any behavior is excused if it is called “resistance to occupation,” but Israel is held to the highest possible standards in self-defense.

The truth is that pathological anti-Zionism – as Fred Maroun, an Arab, says – “is a hatred worse than traditional anti-Semitism – it rivals Nazi-level anti-Semitism.”

Maroun argues, and I agree, that the question of whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism is not important. Analytically, they are different things, although very often the same people who fit one description also fit the other. But pathological anti-Zionism is a form of irrational bigotry that is no less evil and reprehensible than Jew-hatred, racism, homophobia, misogyny, or any similar moral aberration.

But it’s only “criticism of Israel,” say those like Jeremy Corbyn, who is as thoroughly suffused with the illness as the Munich terrorists that he honored with a wreath.

No. It’s simple to tell the difference. The easy acceptance of the false accusations, the double standards, the dehumanization of Israelis, and the association with those who express their hatred by acts of terrorism leave little room for error. It’s not criticism. Like old-fashioned Jew-hatred, it resembles demonic possession.

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09/13 Links Pt1: Haley: All the Palestinians Have Ever Done Is Ask for Money and Badmouth the U.S.; UNRWA perpetuates the refugee problem; Oslo Accords: 25 years of naivete

From Ian:

Haley: All the Palestinians Have Ever Done Is Ask for Money and Badmouth the U.S.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Wednesday justified the US State Department’s closure of the Washington mission of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, saying all the Palestinians have ever done is ask for money and badmouth the US.

She also said that Washington is still waiting for them to come to the negotiating table.

“All they’ve done is have their hand out asking for money, badmouth the United States, not come to the table on the peace deal — why would we have a PLO office?” she in an interview with Fox News. “Why would we continue to fund the Palestinians?”

Asked if she thought President Donald Trump’s strong-arm tactics would change the policies of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has shunned American officials since Washington recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December, she said it was “totally up to the Palestinians.”

Haley said that the US was ready to negotiate a peace deal as soon as Abbas was prepared to join the discussions.

“If the leadership of the Palestinians came to the table, automatically you’re going to have a peace plan. Negotiations are going to happen. Neither side is going to like it,” she said. “But the Palestinians have more to gain than Israel ever will.”

Haley said that the Trump administration was continuing to work on its long-awaited peace plan, even though Abbas has washed his hands of it.

CAMERA Op-Ed The Inconvenient Truth About Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Terrorism

Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the entity that rules the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) has been appointed to lead a terrorist organization. Although the press has frequently called Abbas, who also leads the Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a “moderate” and the PA a “peace partner,” not a single major U.S. news outlet has reported the PA chief’s new job.

According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization that monitors Arab media in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, on Aug. 2, 2018 the official newspaper of the PA reported that Abbas was now “the one responsible for the Palestinian National Fund.”

Israel’s defense ministry designated the PNF a terrorist organization in March 2017, noting: “The fund has a crucial role in the financial support for Palestinian terrorist operatives imprisoned in Israel, and it is used as the most significant route for transferring money.”

Times of Israel reporters Judah Ari Gross and Eric Cortellessa have noted that although the PNF “is said to contain billions of dollars from wealthy Arab donors and profits from various investments,” nonetheless “there is little transparency or oversight in the management and use of funds.”

Abbas’s appointment should be newsworthy. As PMW pointed out, the PA president is now in violation of Israel’s Counter Terrorism Law 2016-5776, which stipulates that “one who heads a terrorist organization or manages it or takes part in directing the terror organization in general, directly or indirectly” faces “25 years imprisonment.” In other words, a nominal U.S. ally is now leading a terrorist organization.

IsraellyCool: Re Boot

Columnist Max Boot argues in the Washington Post that the Trump administration’s pro-Israel moves (like closing of the PLO mission in Washington and defunding UNRWA) are big mistakes, opening the door to radicals. One part of his argument is thus:

They also don’t understand that the Palestinian Authority, for all its problems, is vastly preferable to any conceivable alternative. Yes, it is corrupt and undemocratic and, yes, it engages in anti-Israel propaganda. But, far from sponsoring terrorism against Israel, the Palestinian Authority is working closely with Israel to squelch terror. In May, after the U.S. Embassy relocation, thousands of Gaza residents tried to storm the Israeli border fence, resulting in 62 fatalities. There were no such attacks in the West Bank, because the Palestinian Authority worked there to prevent them. By gratuitously insulting and defunding the most moderate Palestinian faction, Trump is opening the door to the radicals. That’s a Rosh Hashanah present Israel could do without

Yet the very same Max Boot had this to say only a couple of years ago, in a post now flushed down the memory hole (thank you Google cache!):

Predictably, Obama is even more scathing when it comes to Israel, which, unlike Saudi Arabia, is a democratic country that respects human rights. It will surprise no one who has followed closely this administration’s foreign policy that Obama blames Prime Minister Netanyahu for the failure to achieve a peace treaty, giving a pass to the leaders of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority who refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state or even to condemn terrorism against Israel. According to Goldberg: “Obama has long believed that Netanyahu could bring about a two-state solution that would protect Israel’s status as a Jewish-majority democracy, but is too fearful and politically paralyzed to do so.” If Obama has stern words for Mahmoud Abbas and the leaders of Hamas — who are the actual obstacles to peace — Goldberg does not record them.

Does Mr Boot really think the PA has changed its tune in just two years?