Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 09, 2018

BDS and the Democratic Party’s Values (Noah Phillips)

The propagation of socialism in the Democratic party in this upcoming election cycle begs the question of why the millennial generation of voters acquiesces to a leftist political movement, largely comprised of inexperienced and untested candidates for office. The answer regularly doled out is that young people are fed up with the way things have been done, the inhumanity of the political world, and the disconnect between elected officials and constituents, and they demand a change. In 2018, socialists are there for the little guy and for justice—in all regards excepting support for Israel.

Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Omar, and the plethora of other socialist and staunch leftist candidates in the November elections express support for the BDS movement in order to fight some misconstrued oppressive regime in Israel. But for them, support for BDS and lack of support for Israel is inherently contradictory to the values of socialism which they’ve all been elected upon and supposedly continue to preach.

I am far from a socialist ideologue myself, but nonetheless, these candidates have committed themselves to support its founding principles and have failed miserably to do so.

On a pragmatic note, socialists believe in a universal health care system, which Israel has implemented and the United States has not. On this fact alone, American socialists should be citing Israel as a functional society in which universal health care is implemented and is relatively successful—like they do Switzerland and Norway and other states. Whether or not universal healthcare would be beneficial to America is not the question. Rather, the question is why Israel is the exception to socialist support for universal health care rather than a part of the larger rule?

The cornerstones of the socialist movement are freedom and equality and justice for all without implicit biases by metrics of race or other distinguishing factors. Everyone is considered equal, without preconditions.

Such values are exemplified by Israel, where the Arab MK bloc is one of the largest in the Knesset, an Arab justice presides on Israel’s highest court, and millions of citizens who are part of ethnic and religious minorities are just as Israeli as their Jewish counterparts. Israel is undisputedly a liberal democracy with a track record of support of LGBT rights that is second to none.

A political movement which advocates fervently against discrimination of any kind should surely support Israel’s societal values; however, the false narrative peddled that Israel acts in a racist manner towards Palestinians prohibits this.

Just in the past few months, we’ve seen the high-profile socialist candidate from Michigan, Rashida Tlaib, advocate for a unified state of Palestine in place of today’s Israel. We’ve seen Ilhan Omar and Ocasio-Cortez both refer to Israel as “an apartheid regime” and countless other instances of democratic socialist vitriol directed at Israel.

The narrative is without question false, and it’s elementary for anyone observing the situation impartially—unlike the socialist candidates—to take note of Israel’s daily humanitarian contributions to Gaza and Syria in the face of looming terrorist threats, and other evident examples of Israel’s compassion, even towards those who oppose Israel most.

And yet the image of a functional Palestinian state conveyed by socialist and Democratic rhetoric denies realities of Palestinian governance. First and foremost, LGBT rights are not protected in either the West Bank or Gaza. Under the thumb of Hamas, a military commander was executed in 2016 for allegations of gay sex. In the West Bank, dozens of gays have fled to Israel to eschew the regular harassment and discrimination endured under the Palestinian Authority. The treatment of women is no better: until March of 2018, the Palestinian Authority effectively legalized rape by permitting rapists to evade charges should they marry their victims. Women are also unable to request divorce in the absence of special circumstances, where they would forfeit any financial compensation and the dowry.

Realistically, the detestable treatment of the LGBT community and women in the Palestinian territories are extensions of the practices of surrounding Islamic theological states; and should Israel not exist, it’s probable that the already harsh treatment would be further escalated to match that of Iran and Turkey and Jordan and others.

Even still, socialists and select members of prominence in the Democratic party fully embrace the BDS movement to cripple Israel by any means necessary.

“[Palestinians have a right to] resistance by any means, including armed resistance. [Jews] aren’t indigenous just because you say you are….[Jews] are not a people…the UN’s principle of the right to self-determination applies only to colonized people who want to acquire their rights,” said BDS founder Omar Barghouti.

And other notable supporters of BDS have called for far more drastic measures to be taken against the Jews in Israel—namely acts of genocide and cataclysmic warfare in an already unhinged Middle East.

The movement, without question, has a basis in anti-Semitism and makes regular calls to violent action. So for an egalitarian and social-justice-oriented movement like socialism to buy into this hate speech is hypocritical and dangerous. It truly does counteract all of the morals of socialism by allowing for the specific targeting of a global religious minority, the Jews.

All this withstanding, why do socialists continuously promote violence by way of the BDS movement and denounce liberal societies like Israel? And for this question, there is no logical explanation because it is such a fundamentally illogical act. So the real question is, when are socialists going to recognize Israel as a haven of equality and tolerance?

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.

10/09 Links Pt1: Nikki Haley resigns as US ambassador to UN; How Iran Plans to Take Gaza; End Funding of Palestinian Terror; Fatah blames Israel for yesterday’s murder of 2 Israelis

From Ian:

In surprise move, Nikki Haley resigns as US ambassador to UN

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is tendering her resignation, marking the latest shake-up in the turbulent Trump administration just weeks before the midterm election.

US President Donald Trump met with Haley at the Oval Office in front of news cameras shortly after reports of her resignation Tuesday, saying the departure had been planned for several months.

Trump said she would leave at the end of the year.

He called Haley a “very special” person, adding that she told him six months ago that she might want to take some time off. Trump said that together, they had “solved a lot of problems.”

Speaking after Trump, Haley said serving as ambassador to the UN has “been an honor of a lifetime.”

She cited pushing back against the anti-Israel bias at the UN as one of the key accomplishments of her tenure. She praised Trump for moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Haley also pointed to her work with Jared Kushner, Trump’s special adviser and son-in-law, on the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.

“Looking at what we’ve done on the Middle East peace plan. It is so unbelievably well done,” she said. “Jared is such a hidden genius that no one understands.”

Haley said she had no plans to run for the White House in 2020.

Danon thanks Haley for 'standing up for truth at the UN'

The Israeli mission to the United Nations responded Tuesday to the decision by US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley to step down from her position, lauding her work in the international body since assuming office in January 2017.

"Thank you, Nikki Haley,” Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said in a statement Tuesday.

“Thank you for standing with the truth without fear. Thank you for representing the values common to Israel and the United States.”

Danon praised Haley for her efforts in the UN to challenge anti-Israel bias and work to block resolutions targeting the Jewish state.

“Thank you for your support for the State of Israel, which helped lead to a change in Israel's status in the UN. Thank you for your close friendship and common paths. Wherever you are, you will continue to be a true friend of the State of Israel."

I am sad to learn that Ambassador Nikki Haley is resigning. Facing an assembly of dictatorships and their apologists, history will record that she stood up for truth, fairness and human rights, and that she did so with courage, eloquence and grace. I will miss her. pic.twitter.com/fwa6FwNAyk
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 9, 2018

Khaled Abu Toameh: How Iran Plans to Take Gaza

If anyone was hoping that removing Hamas from power in the Gaza Strip would improve the situation there and boost the chances of peace between Palestinians and Israel, they are in for a big disappointment. Hamas, which violently seized control over the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007, is not the only terrorist group in the coastal enclave, home to some two million Palestinians.

In addition to Hamas, these are several other Palestinian terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip.

The second-largest group after Hamas is Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), which has thousands of supporters and militiamen. If and when Hamas is ever removed from power, PIJ has the strongest chance of stepping in to fill the vacuum.

You remove Hamas from power, you will most likely end up having to deal with PIJ - not a more moderate group. While Hamas could only be considered "good," in some alternate reality, its replacement would not be any better. Islamist fundamentalism is enshrined in the hearts and minds of tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The two Islamist groups -- Hamas and PIJ -- are like two peas in a pod. The two do not recognize Israel's right to exist and continue to call for an armed struggle to "liberate all Palestine," from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

Like Hamas, the Iranian-funded PIJ also has an armed wing, called Saraya Al-Quds (Jerusalem Brigades). Founded in 1981 by PIJ leaders Fathi Shaqaqi and Abed Al-Aziz Awda in the Gaza Strip, the Jerusalem Brigades is responsible for hundreds of terrorist attacks against Israel, including suicide bombings. In recent years, the group has also been launching rockets and mortars at Israel.

ArtScroll is not generally considered to be a Zionist publisher.

They are known for their English translations of Jewish classic texts into English.
Their editions of siddurim are used all over.
The ArtScroll edition of the Talmud is indispensable.

But while their love of the people of Israel and the Land of Israel is clear, no one would consider ArtScroll to be in the forefront of Israel hasbara.

So it is striking how their Stone edition of the Chumash handles the verse in Genesis 40:15. After Joseph explains to Pharaoh's butler the meaning of his dream and asks the butler to mention him to Pharaoh, Joseph says:

For indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews: and here also have I done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon. [King James Version]

The ArtScroll Chumash explains what "land of the Hebrews" Joseph is referring to and why:

Not only is Joseph a "Hebrew" -- more than that, quoting the Ramban, Joseph comes from a territory, Hebron, where his family and his forefathers have lived for generations and to which Jews were closely associated. Hebron was not recognized by the Canaanites as a separate country, but it was their land where the Hebrews settled and lived.

Maarat HaMachpelah, Cave of the Patriarchs. Public Domain. Source: Wikipedia

And generations later, the Jews will leave Egypt and return to reconquer that land to which they have that connection.

Going a step further, the explanation of the ArtScroll Chumash is echoed by S. D. Goitein in his book Jews and Arabs. Goitein, an ethnographer, historian and Arabist, notes the Jewish presence in Bethel, Hebron and Beersheba and writes:

Israel's sojourn in the desert is described everywhere in the Bible as a short interval between prolonged residence in Egypt and the conquest (or reconquest) of Canaan... (p. 26. Parentheses are Goitein's; emphasis added)

The Jews were not just leaving Egypt to come to a promised land, but returning to a land where they already had roots.

Goitein examines the roots of the Jewish tie to the land and traces the basic migration based on the Book of Genesis. Abraham is described not only as the father of Isaac and Ishmael but also of Midian and others who were sent eastward while Abraham migrated with his family from Mesopotamia to Canaan -- and Hebron. Lot and Esau moved on to farmland to the east and south of Canaan, while Ishmael-tribes traveled into the Arabian Peninsula.

Goitein concludes:

We have, of course, no means whatsoever of determining the historical facts of this population movement. However, no other migrations would be compatible with the tradition preserved in the Bible; and they may well account for the astounding affinities between Israel and the Arabs, which are an indubitable fact.

But Goitein was writing this in 1955.
Today there is support for the unique migration of Jews from Mesopotamia to Canaan.

In their article, The Gene Wars, discussing the genetic basis for comparing Israeli Jews with Palestinian Arabs, Diana Muir Appelbaum and Paul S. Appelbaum note a 2001 study, The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East, a study that compared together:

o Jews: Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Kurdish
o Arabs: Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese, and Bedouin
o Transcaucasians: Muslim Kurds, Armenians, and Turks
o Eastern Europeans: Russians, Byelorussians, and Poles

The Muirs write that the results of the genetic testing not only echoes the movements of the Jews described in the Torah, it also points to Palestinian Arabs as relative newcomers to the land, coming from Arabia:

Although all of the Middle Eastern populations bore some similarities to each other (a fairly robust finding confirmed in other works), “Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors.” For some, this will evoke the biblical account of Abraham’s origins in Ur of the Chaldees, and raise the possibility that the story contains echoes of an ancient population movement. Alternatively, Jews, Kurds, Armenians, and Anatolian Turks may all carry the genetic markers of ancient indigenous populations of the Fertile Crescent, while Palestinian Arabs and Bedouin may largely descend from the Arab conquerors, with their distinctive genetic signifiers. All these hypotheses are highly tentative until confirmed or disproved by further genetic data. [emphasis added]

The actual report itself also points out the commonality between Ashkenazic and Sephardic -- and Kurdish -- Jews:

It is believed that the majority of contemporary Jews descended from the ancient Israelites that had lived in the historic land of Israel until ?2000 years ago. Many of the Jewish diaspora communities were separated from each other for hundreds of years. Therefore, some divergence due to genetic drift and/or admixture could be expected. However, although Ashkenazi Jews were found to differ slightly from Sephardic and Kurdish Jews, it is noteworthy that there is, overall, a high degree of genetic affinity among the three Jewish communities. [emphasis added]

Similarly, despite genetic similarities between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, the differences support Goiteins outline of the migration:

In a report published elsewhere, we recently showed that Jews and Palestinian Arabs share a large portion of their Y chromosomes, suggesting a common ancestry (Nebel et al. 2000). Surprisingly, in the present study, Jews were found to be even closer to populations in the northern part of the Middle East than to several Arab populations...These findings are consistent with known cultural links that existed among populations in the Fertile Crescent in early history. [emphasis added]

As for the Palestinian Arabs themselves -- what does the genetic testing indicate?

Palestinian Arabs and Bedouin differed from the other Middle Eastern populations studied here, mainly in specific high-frequency Eu 10 haplotypes not found in the non-Arab groups. These chromosomes might have been introduced through migrations from the Arabian Peninsula during the last two millennia. [emphasis added]

Besides the genetic evidence against the claim that Palestinian Arabs are descended from Canaanites, there is the curious fact that as Erich and Jean Isaac note in "Whose Palestine?":

Ironically, the only surviving “Canaanite” culture is that of the Jews, who everywhere still pray, and in Israel also speak, in a Canaanite language.

(Not to mention the history, culture, literature and religious ties that bind Jews to Israel in the same way that Arab history, culture, literature and religion bind them to Arabia)

As for the Arabs, they are no more indigenous to "Palestine" than they are to the other countries they invaded - as listed by Bernard Lewis in "What Went Wrong" (p.4ff):

o Syria (then under Christendom)
o Egypt (then under Christendom)
o North Africa (then under Christendom)
o Spain
o Portugal
o France
o Sicily
o Sacking Rome
o Russia (under the Tartars)
o Anatolia
o Capturing Constantinople
o Invading the Balkan peninsula
o Reaching Vienna
o And of course Palestine (then under Christendom)

An honest approach to addressing the conflict could start by admitting the long history of Arab colonization.

But at a time that the media cannot even admit in its headlines that Palestinian Arabs are killing Jews -- what are the chances of that happening?

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 Haaretz:

The unexpected revelation that Jews have taken over a Palestinian house in Jerusalem's Old City has sparked a flood of theories and accusations in the Palestinian media as to who exactly sold the house to them.

Previously the house, which abuts the Temple Mount, belonged to one of the best known and distinguished Palestinian families in the city, the Joudeh family, which has kinship ties with the aristocratic Husseini family. The head of the family is Adeeb Joudeh al-Husseini al-Ghodayya, a well-known figure in the Old City, who – by virtue of his family heritage – is keeper of the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

According to reports in the last week, the Joudeh family has wanted to sell the property for some time. About two years ago they agreed to sell it to a man named Fadi al-Salamin, a Palestinian political activist who lives in the United States and is considered to be a crony of Mohammed Dahlan, a bitter rival of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Salamin is also highly critical of the Palestinian Authority headed by Abbas.

Palestinian sources claim that the PA torpedoed the sale of the house to Salamin, which prompted the Joudeh family to hire a broker named Khaled Atari, who reportedly has ties to senior people in the PA. According to Israel's Land Registry, Atari purchased the house last April – and on the same day, transferred its ownership to a company registered in the Caribbean, named Daho Holdings.

Six months later, Jews moved into the house and it emerged that dwelling had apparently been acquired by the Israeli right-wing nonprofit Ateret Cohanim. A Palestinian source in Jerusalem claims that Atari received $17 million for the house.

The fact that Jews moved into a house that once belonged to a respected Palestinian family, which is located so close to the sometimes-volatile Temple Mount, has now whipped up an uproar in the Palestinian press and social media. Sources close to Dahlan are charging the PA with thwarting the original deal with Fadi al-Salamin to facilitate the sale to Jewish settlers.

Adeeb Joudeh and Atari have both published ads in the Palestinian media rejecting allegations that they knew of or had been involved in the transferral of the house to Jews, but their messages have done little to assuage the Palestinian street.

In the last week the accusations have become shriller and new names of PA people who may have been involved in the debacle were cited, among them Majid Faraj, head of Palestinian intelligence, and Adnan Husseini, governor of Jerusalem on behalf of the PA.

Faraj has been mentioned as a possible successor to Abbas as PA chairman; his association with this affair arose because Atari is considered to be one of the intelligence chief's cronies. As for Husseini, by virtue of his position, he should have given his approval for the transaction. In a tape making the rounds recently, Husseini is heard calling Atari a “reliable person.”

Meanwhile, Sheikh Ikrima Sa’id Sabri, imam of the Temple Mount's Al-Aqsa Mosque, renewed the fatwa forbidding the sale of assets to Jews, and threatening “anyone who furtively transfers an asset to Jews” with excommunication. Upon death, the fatwa elaborates, the body of such an individual “may not be washed, wrapped in a shroud, prayed over or buried in a Muslim cemetery,” according to the 0202 East Jerusalem news website.

To give an idea of the reactions, Archbishop of Jerusalem Michael Sabah called the sale of a single building to Jews a "moral and national disaster."

The idea that Jews cannot buy houses in their own capital, in their holiest city, next to their holiest site, is not outrageous or antisemitic or even strange to the world.

The Joudeh family is yet another prominent Palestinian Muslim family who ar not indigenous. They come from the Hashemites and were in Mecca in Mohammed's time.

The Jews that bought the house for an exorbitant price are more indigenous to the area than the Arab colonizers they bought it from.

(I have yet to find a single Palestinian Muslim family who did not come to Palestine after the time of Mohammed. There are some Christian families who trace back to Roman times, but there seems to be a fair chance that they are Jewish converts from after the fall of Jerusalem.)

This story, of Arabs selling houses to Jews but trying to hide that fact, has been told many times over the past 90 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.

Recently it was reported that outgoing mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat intended to take over UNRWA camp and facilities in the city and replace them with licensed schools and medical centers.

While the idea is wonderful, it appears that this is legally problematic.

Ma'an Arabic reports that a Jerusalem municipality official was stopped from entering an UNRWA health facility in the Old City on Monday.

The official Arabic spokesman of UNRWA, Sami Masha'sa, said on Monday that UNRWA would not allow Israel to violate its immunity and privileges.

Masha'sa said this was based on the immunity and privileges enjoyed by UNRWA as an international institution.

He may be right.

Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations (1946) and the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the Specialized Agencies (1947) both say that "The premises of the United Nations (of the specialized agencies) shall be inviolable. The property and assets of the United Nations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of interference, whether by executive, administrative, judicial or legislative action."

Moreover, Israel has a specific agreement with UNRWA written in 1967 "to ensure the protection and security of the personnel, installations and property of UNRWA."

Unfortunately, it looks like Israel would need to get UNRWA to agree to transition its facilities to the municipality. And that will never happen, because UNRWA wants to increase Palestinian dependence on the agency, not wean them off as was originally intended.

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.

10/08 Links Pt2: Why All the Outrage over Israel's Nation-State Law?; Qatari Foundation Influences Anti-Israel Propaganda in US Schools; ‘Vogue’ Can’t Glamorize Palestinian Terror

From Ian:

Moshe Koppel and Eugene Kontorovich: Why All the Outrage over Israel's Nation-State Law?

VI. A Seminal Moment

Basic Law: Nation-State gives constitutional force to the fundamental principles of Zionism. It does so without imposing duties on or denying rights to any individuals. It is consistent with similar provisions found in other Western nation-states. The need for anchoring these principles in a basic law has grown ever more urgent as Israel’s Supreme Court has slowly but surely endeavored to erode Israel’s Jewish character, an endeavor abetted in part by the absence of just such a basic law.

The need for this law is made further manifest by the continuing opposition to the very idea of a Jewish nation-state. We have in mind not those advocates of national self-determination for everyone on earth—first and foremost the Palestinians—with the single exception of the Jews; bigotry of this order deserves no response. Rather, we have in mind those, in Israel and in the diaspora, who call themselves Zionists, and for whom the content of this law would have been entirely consensual less than a generation ago, but who now find themselves bothered by it for reasons they appear to have trouble articulating—hence the frenetic and sometimes self-contradictory striking out at one thing after another.

Indeed, many of the very same members of the Knesset who co-sponsored a more robust version of this bill in 2011 suddenly claim to be horrified by its weaker version. One such co-sponsor, MK Hamed Amar, is now petitioning the Supreme Court to strike the new law down. One could get the impression that those not engaged in cynical political opportunism have been swept up in the tides of elite anti-nationalist sentiment and now simply find this law “too Jewish” for their taste.

Basic Law: Nation-State was written, promoted, and passed by those who remain firm in their commitment to a Jewish nation-state and to individual freedom. We believe their resolve will not go unrewarded. A decade or two from now, when the political dust has settled, the passage of Basic Law: Nation-State will be regarded as a seminal moment in Israel’s maturation both as the national home of the Jewish people and as a beacon of liberty.

NYTs: A New Wave of Democrats Tests the Party’s Blanket Support for Israel

One Democratic House candidate has pledged that she will vote against bills that include aid to Israel, denouncing what she saw as the “injustice” of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Another wrote that “Israel has hypnotized the world” with its “evil doings.”

Still another helped write a scathing book on relations between the United States and Israel, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive political star expected to win a House seat in New York, condemned the “occupation of Palestine.”

A cluster of activist Democrats — most of them young, most of them cruising toward House seats this fall — has dared to breach what has been an almost inviolable orthodoxy in both political parties, strong support for Israel, raising the specter of a crack in the Democratic Party that Republicans could use to attract Jewish supporters.

Surging support for the Palestinian cause has already strained relations between liberal parties and Jewish voters in Europe. In Britain, the Labour Party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been accused of anti-Semitism for a pro-Palestinian stand that has veered into statements that many see as outright bigotry. Across the United States, movements to force colleges and universities to boycott, divest investments from and place sanctions on Israel have divided some progressive students from their Jewish peers.

Now some Democrats are testing the boundaries of what has been the politically acceptable position on Israel in the mainstream parties. They include Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American Muslim running for an open House seat in Minneapolis; Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American Muslim running in Detroit; Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, running in a heavily Democratic district in the Bronx and Queens; and Leslie Cockburn, co-author of “Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship,” who is running in a Republican-leaning district in Virginia. None of them would comment for this article.

Is the New Israel Fund Violating US Non-Profit Policy?

The New Israel Fund (NIF) openly backs groups that have endorsed the boycott of Israel and it has long engaged in a wide variety of activities which we consider to be most harmful to the State of Israel. But the organization — a US-based non-profit which funds a number of different initiatives — may now have crossed another line by openly supporting political campaigning, which is in clear violation of the US tax code for charitable organizations.

As such, we have recently filed a complaint with the IRS demanding that the NIF’s tax-exempt status be revoked (we have yet to receive a response).

Shatil, the Israel-based “operative arm” of the NIF has embarked on a project it calls “Free Cities.” Local iterations of the project include “Free Ramat Hasharon,” “Free Givatayim,” and “Free Petach Tikvah.”

The goal of “Free Cities” is to unite a number of groups and organizations to fight against “religionization.” The New Israel Fund’s logo is prominently displayed on Shatil’s website and Shatil, in turn, hosts the “Free Cities” website on its domain. The coordinator for the project is listed as a member of staff on Shatil’s website and the administrators of the “Free Cities” Facebook group also both work for Shatil.

Hence, there can be no question of the New Israel Fund’s ties to the political activity.

Here are some of the details:
“Successes” listed by the organization’s “Free Ramat Hasharon” group include the passing of legislation to allow businesses to remain open on Shabbat. The group also announced it was running for municipal elections.
The group’s “Free Givatayim” branch similarly announced on its Facebook page that it’s running for the municipal elections.
Their “Free Petach Tikvah” branch openly supports Rami Greenberg for mayor of the city.

One of the great frustrations when dealing with BDS propagandists is the difficulty getting them (or anyone else) to acknowledge the yawning chasm between their zeal to fight for “Justice for Palestine” when said Palestinians come under Israeli jurisdiction and their complete indifference to the suffering of those same Palestinians (or anyone else) at the hands of non-Israelis.

“Syria is that way!” taunted the Israeli Prime Minister a few years back when a crop of Flotillists tried to break the quarantine of Gaza with their pretend load of “humanitarian aid,” summing up the question many of us ask regarding why those who storm the streets the second the Jews shoot back can’t bring themselves to even run a pancake-breakfast fundraiser for the hundreds of thousands dead in Syria’s civil war – especially since that number includes more Palestinian casualties than were generated in 60+ years of war with Israel.

As always, if you confront a BDSer with this seeming inconsistency/hypocrisy, they will simply ignore you in favor of continuing to spew their own propaganda messaging, regardless of what you have to say. But if they get backed into a corner, one of their most frequently used counter-moves is to attack their opponent for practicing “whataboutism” (also pronounced “whadaboudism” – preferably with a Sylvester Stalone accent).

Unlike “Pinkwashing” – a fake phenomenon the Israeli haters baked up in order to have something else to talk about whenever the gap between gay rights in Israel vs. the Arab world is pointed out – whataboutism is an actual argument, which means there is a surface logic to the BDSers using it to defend their own glaring inconsistency with regard to human rights concerns.

The term describes a fallacy which assumes if you support one cause then you are being inconsistent (or even hypocritical or neglectful) by not applying the reasoning behind that support to all similar (especially similar but far worse) cases with equal or greater verve. As an example, claiming that someone fighting for civil rights of African Americans is a hypocrite if they don’t put even more energy into fighting for black lives in Sudan’s Civil War is a clear example of “whataboutism.”

The reason this is a fallacy is that it assumes everyone is obliged to be perfectly consistent regarding what they choose to care about, and that not applying their energies based on the rank order of need translates to indifference to that suffering. But here on earth, we all make choices that prioritize some goods vs. others. If you support your local Boy Scout troop or help create a community farm, are you a good citizen or an uncaring monster for not putting that energy into “worthier” causes such as rescuing orphan boys in far-off civil wars or feeding the starving (vs. well-fed locavores)? And if you claim to fight for general principles like “human rights,” there is always someone worse off than the particular group you have chosen to be the recipient of your support.

This is why there is a certain logic for a supporter of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions directed at Israel to claim that someone asking them why they don’t BDS China or Sudan might be practicing whataboutism since, in those instances, China and Sudan are distinct issues (even if they all fall into the general category of human rights abuse cases).

The reason I described this as “surface logic” earlier is that the crude: “You can’t fight for Palestine if you don’t also fight for Tibet” argument is not really what critics are saying when they ask for consistency with regard to places like Gaza, Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East. For human rights abuses in those places are not peripheral to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but central to it.

Take Gaza where Hamas came to power by killing off their Fatah rivals, stay in power through terror directed at their own population, and trigger repeated wars with Israel after securing their own safety in tunnels built below hospitals, schools and mosques while forcing the civilian population to stay above ground to serve as cannon fodder for the propaganda component of their ongoing war effort. Given this, pointing out the BDSers indifference to Palestinian suffering in Gaza is not peripheral but central to the question of whether they really stand for human rights at all (vs. shielding their militancy behind a human-rights vocabulary).

Syria is another example where asking why such “human rights supporters” don’t seems to give a damn about the hundreds of thousands of people killed there since the start of the Syrian Civil War is central vs. tangential to any discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict. For Syria is and has always been a key player in that conflict, having participated in conventional wars, terror wars, and proxy wars against the Jewish state, not to mention participating in nearly a century of economic warfare (Damascus was HQ for the Arab League’s boycott office for decades, for example). So highlighting that this progenitor for the BDS movement is currently killing more Palestinians than Israel ever has is not a distraction but a perfectly valid question that the BDSers simply would prefer to not have to answer.

In fact, one could make the case that the entire Arab war against Israel represents whataboutism on an industrial scale never before seen in human history. For – as is playing out today in a Middle East aflame – the problems of the region have always been about the dysfunctional government, fanatical politics and instability that characterizes virtually every nation in the Middle East save Israel, embodied in states which are by any measure the world’s worst human rights abusers.

But bring any of this up and you’re sure to be met with a photo of a dead Gaza child (or, just as likely, a photo of a dead Syrian being laundered as a Palestinian) or loud demands that we talk about the latest bathroom addition to an apartment in Gilo – anything but the human rights catastrophe that characterizes those nations that have been at the forefront – and are thus the de facto partners – of the propaganda war current traveling under the name of BDS.

Going further, the transformation of the United Nations and virtually every organization and entity created for fight for human rights across the planet into weapons directed at the Jewish state is meant to ensure that whataboutism never needs to be invoked by Israel’s foes since a refusal to look at the vast crimes of Israel’s enemies is now hard wired into the system.

Back in the 1980s, someone toted up million+ people killed in the Middle East since 1948 who died in wars and other violent acts that had zero to do with Israel’s existence or continuation. And it would not surprise me if contemporary calculations brought that number well above the two-million mark. Which leaves us at the question anyone genuinely interested in human rights should be asking: whataboutthem?

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Rafael Levengrond: stepping into the gap, for Kim (Forest Rain)

Rafael Levengrond: stepping into the gap, for Kim

Kim Levengrond Yehezkel’s Facebook page is full of her wedding pictures and pictures of her baby, Kai. Her posts are obvious displays of her love towards her husband and their son.

Now the posts have comments of crying icons, people describing how beautiful, wonderful and kind she was.

And Facebook added that one little word to the profile title: Remembering.

What a small word to explain something so horrific.

How do you explain to a baby that the mother who dropped him off in nursery school will never come back? When will he learn that a terrorist tied her up before he executed her? That a man who worked with her, murdered her simply because she was a Jew?

Even if they don’t grow up as friends, little Kai will always be connected to the three children of Ziv Hajbi. Their father was murdered by the same terrorist, alongside Kim.

Thanks to TICP - The Israeli Cartoon Project and Elhanan Ben Uri
for this touching image of Kim and Ziv, may their memories be a blessing.

Ziv and Kim worked in a factory that granted equal opportunity employment to Arabs from the Palestinian Authority. The wages paid are significantly larger than what they could earn working in a business in the PA and they receive full social benefits according to Israeli law.

The excellent employment opportunity was not enough to stave off hate for the terrorist. He preferred to murder Jews than to continue working there. The Palestinian Authority will pay him handsomely for the blood of Kim and Ziv.

A lot of the media attention has been on Kim because she was young, beautiful and the mother of a baby. The memory that I will retain from this horrific attack will be that of Kim’s father, Rafi, speaking at the site of her grave:

https://www.facebook.com/reshet.tv/videos/545488489207197/

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there, by your side. Because you know that I was always with you and by your side and no one could ever hurt you when I am by your side. There could never be a situation that someone could lift a finger against you when you are near me.”

“To my sorrow, I didn’t manage to get there in time although I did get there and I saw what was done to you. I promise you that I will take care of them [her husband Guy and their son Kai] the way I took care of you all, all the time. I will continue on the same path. You can rest in peace. I am taking care [of it for] you.”

Heartbroken, but with a strength that is unending, this man could have let himself shatter to pieces, with his broken heart. Instead he decided to step up and fill the gap left behind by his daughter’s murder.

Will he let his tears fall later? Maybe. Now, he is on duty and it’s a job for life – until the end of his life and for Kim’s life.

Something tells me that he will forever be angry at himself that he was not there to protect his daughter, his princess. That he would have gladly died so that she could live.

Rafael Levengrond embodies that strength of Israel. Many do not recognize our pain, seeing only our strength, not understanding that it a strength full of pain and grief driven by the knowledge that giving up is a privilege we do not have.

When Ari Fuld was murdered many of us declared that now we must be Ari, step up, fill the gap, pick up and carry forward the burden that he carried. That is exactly what Rafael is doing for Kim, with a broken heart and strength that cannot end because that luxury doesn’t exist.

You can post a message of condolences on Kim’s page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000270780711

You can post a message of condolences on Ziv’s page: https://www.facebook.com/ziv.hagbi.1

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10/08 Links Pt1: Incitement breeds a despicable murderer; We Celebrate Life. They celebrate death; Gaza children deliberately transported to war zones

From Ian:

Incitement breeds a despicable murderer

It wasn't lack of progress in peace talks, the situation of the Palestinians of Gaza, unemployment, lack of Israeli deterrence, or the nation-state law that influenced the loathsome murderer who brutally killed Kim Levengrond Yehezkel and Ziv Hajbi on Sunday morning. These explanations, which the Israeli Left churns out after terrorist attacks and incidents in Gaza and Judea and Samaria have nothing to do with reality.

The terrorist who killed his former colleagues was influenced by years of incitement against Jews and Israelis and by the sense that killing Jews will give him status in Palestinian society and that becoming a martyr will sanctify him and pave his way to the Muslim Paradise. This murderous narrative is spearheaded by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, his fellow PA leaders, and preachers in the mosques, who are the successors to former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini and PLO leader Yasser Arafat. The narrative is a violent one that reminds the victims' bereft families of the respectable monthly stipends paid to the killers and their relatives and the cycle of their homes being demolished by the IDF and then rebuilt. The money for the terrorists' salaries comes from European countries, where naiveté mixes with hatred of Israel and Jews.

It's very difficult to deter a society built on radical, inhumane foundations, including legitimacy for honor killings. It is frustrating and complicated to confront a society in which mothers long for their children to die as martyrs. Western society, which is based on human rationalism and the desire to live, has not yet found appropriate tactics to use against radical Islam, which places no value whatsoever on human life. In the standoff between Western rationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, the West is at an inherent disadvantage.

U.S. envoys: A terrorist shattered Israeli-Palestinian co-existence

When right-wing politicians and settler leaders want to show visiting diplomats, including European parliamentarians and United States congressmen, that an alternative reality is possible, they bring them to Barkan Industrial Park to meet the Israelis and Palestinians who are not afraid to work together.

US envoy Jason Greenblatt and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said that Sunday’s terror shooting by a Palestinian employee at a factory run by the Alon Group, which killed two, was an attack against the co-existence in that West Bank park.

“The Barkan industrial center is a beacon for coexistence and a model for the future. Today's terror attack is reprehensible and should be universally condemned. Join me in praying for the wounded and sending comfort to the families of the victims,” Greenblatt tweeted.

Friedman tweeted that Barkan “has been a model of Israeli–Palestinian coexistence since 1982, with thousands working and prospering together. Today a terrorist shattered that harmony by brutally murdering two Israelis at work. Our deepest condolences [go to] to the families of the victims.”

Set on a hilltop, the park is one of the jewels of the Samaria region and a symbol for its residents of the economic peace they hope to have with the Palestinians.

It is home to 164 factories and employs 7,200 workers, including 4,200 Palestinians and 3,000 Israelis, according to the Samaria Regional Council that has jurisdiction over the park.

The path to peace begins in the classroom

With the United Nations General Assembly meeting this week, they are keen to bring to the attention of the world the education that is being provided in UNRWA schools. We believe that the hate-filled education that has been provided to young Palestinians over the last three generations is a leading cause of the failure to achieve peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Our message is simple: The education of Palestinian school children must change drastically if there is ever to be a lasting negotiated peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Why? Because these schools have been inciting three generations of young Palestinians to hate and kill Jews, and the only means of conflict resolution that these students have been exposed to is one of violence.

For children all over the world, the new school year is filled with promise and excitement, affording them the opportunity for personal development so that one day they may become productive citizens of their respective communities. The same cannot be said for Palestinian children.

UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) and the Palestinian leadership have manipulated their education system to serve a different purpose. Rather than an education that strives to better the children, this system exploits their impressionable minds, indoctrinating them into a culture of hate, and thereby perpetuating the conflict, rather than resolving it. Until their education changes, the region is at least a generation away from a true, sustainable peace.

Crazy anti-Israel academic paper of the day: "The Transnational Palestinian Self: Toward Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Thought"

Since the "Sokal Squared" hoax of nonsensical academic papers being published in respected journals in the social sciences, I've been looking up papers about Israel and Palestinians in similar journals to see how the subject matter is treated. I wrote about one last week, but there are so, so many more.

If you think media bias is bad, academia is a hundred times worse.

Here is the abstract for a paper entitled "The Transnational Palestinian Self: Toward Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Thought," by Stephen Sheehi, the Sultan Qaboos bin Said Chair of Middle East Studies at the College of William and Mary, in the journal Psychoanalytic Perspectives.

This discussion considers Palestinian subjectivity in a perpetual state of doubleness, commuting between a number of transnational political and cultural contexts and positions. Engaging Lama Khouri’s “Through Trump’s Looking Glass into Alice’s Wonderland: On Meeting the House Palestinian,” this paper reveals how, on one hand, Zionism is intricately and inextricably linked with and haunted by a Palestinian identity, which it fundamentally works to negate; on the other hand, it also engages the ideological aspects of Palestinian Arab identity when it is transplanted to the United States, interpolating all identities through its racialized social and class hierarchy. In examining the structures of these binary identity systems, I gesture toward a decolonializing psychoanalysis that adopts psychoanalytic tools to understand how alienating two-ness can become a productive mode of confronting and dismantling Zionist objectification and radicalized othering.

No, Stephen, Zionism isn't linked to Palestinian identity. It is utterly indifferent to Palestinian identity, which didn't exist in any serious way until Zionism was at least 70 years old. It is Palestinianism that is deeply engaged in negating Jewish nationalism and to deny the right to Jewish self-determination.

But Sheehi has come up with a way to use "decolonializing psychoanalysis" to dismantle "Zionist objectification and radicalized othering," which really sounds evil - and to the readers of these journals. it clearly is.

The paper he refers to, "Through Trump’s Looking Glass into Alice’s Wonderland: On Meeting the House Palestinian," by Lama Z. Khouri, was published in the same issue, and doesn't even pretend to be scholarly:

In this article, I explore—as a woman of color, a theorist, and a clinician—what it means to be a subject with conscious and unconscious relations to power and domination. To do so, I limn a psychic space I encountered through the Trump looking glass, where my understanding of the world around me was turned on its head and where newly found sociopolitical realities and discourse feel bizarre and nonsensical. There, like Alice in Wonderland, I realized that I did not know who I was and felt my identity morphing into different shapes and sizes: Through Trump’s rhetoric I became viscerally aware of multiple interpellated selves (interpellation is described in the paper), within which a hidden traumatic narrative led me to enact such interpellations. I use earlier clinical and personal experiences to demarcate these selves and identities, which I did not know I knew, by revisiting a talk I gave at a conference on immigration 3 years prior to Trump’s inauguration. I also attempt to uncover how my identities came to be by studying those sociopolitical and cultural factors, I believe led to such interpellations. I propose that such experiences are probably universal.

I don't understand what traumatic experiences she had in the wake of Trump's election "as a woman of color, a theorist, and a clinician" but why bother doing research to see if her experiences are universal - just propose it! It saves a great deal of time to make up theories than it does to test them. Science and the scientific method is all part of the patriarchy, after all.

(Khouri also wrote a paper about how her own psychoanalysis with a therapist who is the child of Holocaust survivors didn't work out because, apparently, she was trying to equate the "Nakba" with the Holocaust and the shrink couldn't deal with someone with such a tenuous grip on reality.)

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Senior Hamas official Ahmad Yousef wants the terror organization to reach out to anti-Zionist Jews of the world - and he has identified the Reform Jews of America as a prime target for his message.

Writing in Al Watan Voice, Yousef says that there were a significant number of anti-Zionist Jews in Europe before World War II who were targets of German security services in the 1920s and their names are now lost in the alleged Holocaust.

He then looks at America:

During the years of my stay in America for nearly two decades, I felt that there were great differences between the Jews of America when it came to the Palestinian issue. Yes, there are supporters of Israel who have been drinking the Zionist ideology and living and defending it through lobbies and political pressure groups such as AIPAC, , But there are also among the Reform Jews others, and they had positions in which they resisted the Zionist thought with its religious dimensions and inhuman practice.

Yousef says that Zionists brainwashed most Jews and it is time for Hamas to set the record straight.

He briefly goes through a litany of Arab lies, like saying that the only reason Jews emigrated from Arab countries to Israel was because Israel sent agents to incite acts of violence against them, and their Arab hosts had no animosity towards them.

Yousef admits that the "land of Palestine" is the historic incubator of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but says that "anyone who reads history and anthropology knows that this land was Arab for five thousand years" beforehand.

"It is time to remove the bluff from the eyes of millions of Jews in Europe and America, and to get them out from under of the yoke of the Zionist fictions. The Palestinians are looking forward to a decent life in the land of parents and grandparents, and they see them in ending this conflict to restore rights to their people and openness to everything that constitutes security and stability and prosperity for all citizens of this blessed land, in formulations addressed by the ideas and proposals of Palestinian elites, such as a single state or a binational state," the Hamas official says.

And he sees a way to get the help Hamas wants towards the goal of a single Palestinian state with a Jewish minority, since Hamas can't do it directly, as it is still recognized as a terror group in the West.

"There are many international and human rights organizations in the West that can play the role of mediator to break the barrier of suspicion and enter into a line of communication with the Jews of the world," Yousef writes.

Hamas literally plans to use "human rights groups" to help destroy Israel. After all, they are already so antagonistic towards the Jewish state while their criticisms of Palestinian terror are muted at best. Of course Hamas sees them as allies. And he knows that liberal American Jews are ignorant enough to listen to these anti-Israel NGOs as a step towards pushing for a Palestinian state that would treat Jews exactly as well as every other Arab state has treated its Jews.

Notice also that Hamas' stated goal of dividing Jews in America exactly mirrors that of J-Street.

The Hamas strategy is similar to that of Fatah and other pro-terror, anti-Israel groups. This is the more "pragmatic" face of Hamas, pretending to care about human rights - as long as those rights don't extend to actual Jews and Jewish self-determination.

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From Ma'an Arabic:

The European Union Representative Office is directing the efforts of more than 300 Palestinian students in East Jerusalem to clean streets surrounding their schools in various locations throughout Jerusalem.

This initiative, entitled "Let's Clean Jerusalem", comes ahead of a broader activity that will be launched later in October as "Our Green City".

The waste has been collected in eco-friendly bags, while the recyclable materials will be used in an upcoming event to create green artwork by the students who have collected it.

"I do not usually find a trash can nearby, so I end up dumping garbage in the street, but I think I'll start by paying more attention and keeping it with me until I find a trash can," said a St. George schoolteacher.

EU Representative Ralph Tarraf, who joined the students in Wadi al-Joz, said, "I am thrilled to be here today and I am witnessing these small hands cleaning the streets around their schools because they have the right to clean sidewalks and corridors. They need a healthy and balanced environment to realize their potential. We affirm our full support for them reaching their rights."

Tarraf pointed out that the placement of waste in East Jerusalem, especially around schools, is alarming, as the EU and its member states reaffirm their position on the two-state solution, where East Jerusalem is the capital of a future Palestinian state. This capital needs to include high-quality and well-suited health measures for the emerging generation that hopes for lasting peace.

The European Union insists on supporting such initiatives in East Jerusalem to strengthen the steadfastness of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and to preserve the Palestinian character of the city. Furthermore, through this initiative, the European Union supports the residents of East Jerusalem in expressing their right to clean streets and green areas.

Can you imagine a similar EU initiative in a poor Haredi section of Jerusalem? For that matter, could you imagine a Jewish section of Jerusalem where schoolteachers, of all people, simply throw garbage on the streets?

Even if the Jerusalem municipality doesn't provide adequate sanitation services for parts of the city, the question must be asked:

If Palestinians love Jerusalem so much and regard it as their capital and as the third holiest city in Islam - why do they allow it to become a garbage dump to begin with? Why do they need Christian Europeans to help them clean up where they live?

Where is their own sense of pride of living in Jerusalem?

The last paragraph is quite accurate. The EU allocated €14.9 million this year for activities in East Jerusalem with a few goals in mind, the first of which is "to preserve the Palestinian character of the city." But again, if Arabs loved the city as much as they tell the world they do, then where are the Arab initiatives to do the same thing? I've seen only rare examples - and the most prominent Palestinian I ever saw who tirelessly tried to improve Jerusalem was murdered for his efforts and his death ignored by the Palestinian media and government.

But this isn't the PLO or a Palestinian NGO or the Arab League or Saudi Arabia putting money into cleaning up Jerusalem. It is the EU. And this shows that Arabs and Muslims, despite their rhetoric, don't care about Jerusalem - except to take it away from non-Muslims.

Which has been the Muslim attitude towards Jerusalem since the dawn of Islam.

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