Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 29, 2018

11/29 Links Pt2: Whitewash: PBS on Iranian Jews: They're Good To The Jews; The Holocaust, the Fiction of International Law, and the Necessity of a Self-Reliant Israel

From Ian:

Let’s give PBS Newshour’s Reza Sayah the benefit of the doubt concerning his feature report at the lives of Iran’s Jewish minority, the second largest in the Middle East outside of Israel.

Perhaps he was surprised when he heard from community representatives just how happy their lives are as Jews under the Islamic Republic as he tries to elicit more detailed answers from Siamak Morsadegh.

Sayah states that “Morsadegh is an elected member of Iran’s Parliament, proof, he says, that Jews here are a respected minority with religious rights.”

But then, what could Morsadegh be expected to say to a foreign journalist?

Sayah certainly extenuates the positives for the Iranian Jewish community and this is the overall direction of the report. He narrates:
Today, an estimated 15,000 Jews still live here. Most are in the capital, Tehran. There are five Jewish private schools here, several kosher restaurants. And Tehran’s oldest charity hospital was founded and is still run by Jews.

While this might paint a rosy picture, the reality is quite different. According to the Jewish Virtual Library:
Before the revolution, there were some 20 Jewish schools functioning throughout the country. In recent years, most of these have been closed down. In the remaining schools, Jewish principals have been replaced by Muslims. In Tehran there are still three schools in which Jewish pupils constitute a majority. The curriculum is Islamic, and Persian is forbidden as the language of instruction for Jewish studies.

While the US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report for 2017 says:
According to the Tehran Jewish Committee, five Jewish schools and two kindergartens continued to operate in Tehran, but authorities required their principals to be Muslim. The government reportedly continued to allow Hebrew language instruction but limited the distribution of Hebrew texts, particularly nonreligious texts, making it difficult to teach the language, according to the Jewish community. The government reportedly required Jewish schools to remain open on Saturdays, in violation of Jewish religious law, to conform to the schedule of other schools.

According to Sayah, “Iran’s Jews say they’re also free to travel to Israel, a trip the government bans for all other citizens.”

Yet, according to the JVL and unmentioned in the PBS report, Jews who apply for a passport to travel abroad must do so in a special bureau and are immediately put under surveillance. The government does not generally allow all members of a family to travel abroad at the same time to prevent Jewish emigration.

CNN Commentator Marc Lamont Hill's Long History Of Anti-Semitism

CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill, whose hatred of Israel was vehemently expressed on Wednesday when he implied to the United Nations that Israel should be destroyed, has a long history of anti-Semitism.

Most recently, in May 2018, Hill implied Israelis were murderers in the Huffington Post, writing of the Palestinians, “This is about the 70-year struggle of a people who have been expelled, murdered, robbed, imprisoned and occupied.” He defended Palestinians’ right to use violence against Israel but claimed Palestinians truly wanted peace, adding, “Occupied people have a legal and moral right to defend themselves. To ask them not to resist is to ask them to die quietly. Palestinians want peace.”

Hill continued by slamming Israel’s very right to exist: “By naturalizing the idea that nation-states have a ‘right to exist,’ we undermine our ability to offer a moral critique of Israel’s (or any settler-colony’s) origin story.” He continued with an outright lie, ignoring the fact that the Jewish state existed three thousand years ago, writing: “… the idea of nations and nationalism is relatively new.”

In May 2017, Hill ripped President Trump for calling on Palestinians to reject hatred and terrorism, tweeting, “Trump's position on Israel/Palestine is repugnant. His call for Palestine to ‘reject hatred and terrorism’ is offensive & counterproductive.”

CAIR Executive Director Calls for ‘Murderous’ Israeli Leadership to Be ‘Terminated’

The executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Los Angeles said in a tweet on Sunday that the "murderous regimes" of both Iran and Israel should be "terminated."

Hussam Ayloush linked to a story about Iranian President Hassan Rouhani calling Israel a "cancerous tumor" in the Middle East and wrote, "Iran's regime calling Israel a ‘cancerous tumor' is like the pot calling the kettle black. All the people of that region will be better off once both murderous regimes are terminated."

CAIR is a Muslim advocacy group with ties to extremist and terrorist groups such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Iran's regime calling Israel a "cancerous tumor" is like the pot calling the kettle black.
All the people of that region will be better off once both murderous regimes are terminated. https://t.co/3z1yQAGckv
— Hussam Ayloush (@HussamA) November 25, 2018

While Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism that continues to be monitored for severe human rights violations, Israel is a liberal democracy. Ayloush is a fierce critic of Israel who has compared its treatment of Palestinians to apartheid.

When criticized for his tweet by someone who claimed she was about to join CAIR, Ayloush didn't back off.

Canadian Arabic newspaper says Jews built the Titanic just to sink it and kill three businessmen

Ahram-Canada is a (mostly) Arabic news site that says it is a "platform advocating human rights, and is against racial discrimination in all its forms, colors and justifications. ...The newspaper is not limited to one thought but allows all to express freely and openly in the face of backward thought, but within the limits of love of others even different from us. "

It just published an antisemitic conspiracy theory that definitely wins points for originality.

Calling it the "smartest Jewish murder in history," Ahmed Zaki starts the theory off by saying:

The Jewish Freemasons built the giant Titanic ship and charged it with the fictional costs, only to kill three businessmen, who built it with a magnificent construction, to drag them on board, and then sink them into the ocean floor and bury the secret with them for ever. The [businessmen were against] the idea of creating the Federal Reserve! They loved to be rid of them in order to pave the way for the new world order.

The conspiracy theory that the Titanic was not sunk by hitting an iceberg but was in fact sabotaged is not original to this newspaper, I found this article discussing the absurd theory. But the claim that Jews were behind it - namely, JP Morgan, who wasn't even Jewish - is a new Arab twist.

The editor of Ahram Canada is Medhat Oweida. He is also running for office.

Medhat Oweida Announces Campaign for Candidacy to Run in the Federal Conservative .Nomination for the Riding of Mississauga Streetsville .
Medhat Oweida declares his candidacy to run in the federal Conservative nomination for the riding of Mississauga Streetsville. Medhat is a proud resident of Mississauga Streetsville with a background in law, social work, media and human rights activist. He has served the community with a strong passion for great Canadian heritage. His passion to run in the federal Conservative nomination for the riding of Mississauga Streetsville is to implement core service values rooted in Andrew Scheer’s platform and vision for a Conservative Government in upcoming election.

The article very possibly violates hate speech laws in Canada, and the editor of the newspaper is running for office. Nice!

(h/t Alex)

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

I just googled “combating antisemitism” and got 7.5 million results. Apparently a lot of people are thinking about this. And well they should, given that Jew-hatred is rising sharply everywhere in the world, especially in the West. The old-style “paleo” antisemitism is going strong almost everywhere, Muslims have added some of the older European themes to their Koranic and anti-Israel narratives, and the Left is taking its obsessive anti-Zionism to new heights. Meanwhile, Right and Left are coming full circle to tell neo-Nazi stories about Rothschild and Soros (as if Soros is a friend of the Jews!)

So while all this is happening, everyone is in a tizzy about “combating” it. For example, the European Union has a basketful of programs to do so, led by a “coordinator on combating antisemitism,” and including a working definition, Holocaust remembrance observances, a program to monitor and report on it, special legislation making it illegal, and of course above all, education. At the same time they are pumping Euros into subversive NGOs in Israel and financing illegal Palestinian construction in Judea and Samaria, but that is another story.

Everybody wants to get into the act. The US Department of State (the one that still refuses to put “Israel” on the American passports of people born in Jerusalem) has a “Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism” to, er, monitor and combat it. Jewish federations, Hadassah, Chabad, B’nai B’rith, the Union for Reform Judaism, Germany, the UK Labour Party, and countless other rights organizations, religious groups, political parties, and national governments are doing it. Even some people at the UN have joined in.

How do you combat Jew-hatred? Most of those fighting it seem to think that the answer is education: the theory seems to be that if you teach people about the horrors of the Holocaust and the moral evil of bigotry, they will stop hating Jews. A great deal of resources are expended on doing this, but antisemitic incidents keep increasing.

Which is not surprising, since the theory is ridiculous. Jew-haters love to hear about the Holocaust. For one thing, it reinforces their beliefs to know that they are not alone. It gives them a warm feeling to think that a major nation led by a charismatic figure actually tried to carry out a genocide they would heartily approve of. Ridding the world of Jews isn’t just an impossible dream, they realize; someone almost succeeded! It also provides ammunition for demonstrations and Twitter campaigns: without Holocaust education, who would know to shout “Jews to the gas” at football/soccer games? And how better to exacerbate hatred of Jews than by accusing them of fabricating the Holocaust for financial gain?

Of course it is absolutely essential to preserve the historical memory of the Holocaust out of respect for the victims, as well as to teach Jews or other peoples threatened with genocide to take the threats seriously. But while Holocaust education is necessary for these reasons, it doesn’t reduce Jew-hatred – it facilitates it.

Telling people “not to hate,” and explaining that bigotry is wrong is of very marginal utility. Nobody in the West thinks that hating an ethnic group is morally good, but that doesn’t change their feelings. And in the Muslim world, hating Jews is an indispensable part of their culture. Even if people can be conditioned to reject prejudice against individuals, there seems to be no moral stricture against irrational hatred of the Jewish state, which is both a form of Jew-hatred itself and an excuse for other forms of it.

Probably the least helpful kind of “education” is that which lists the accomplishments of Jews: so many Nobel Prizes, great composers, performers, artists, scientists, writers. Look how good they have been for society, runs the argument. It should be clear that this simply feeds the envy of the Jew-hater, something that is almost always part of his psyche. It also is evidence (not that evidence is needed in the mind of the Jew-hater) for the correctness of the theory that there is an massive Jewish conspiracy, even a secret ruling class. Of course the Jews can control the world, they are so smart!

So how do we “combat antisemitism?” We can’t, directly. But we can combat antisemites. This is especially clear for the kind of Jew-hatred that expresses itself as hatred of Israel. Recently Israel allowed herself to be humiliated by Hamas, which burned thousands of acres of her fields and forests, and then launched the most intense rocket bombardment in Israel’s history. Our response, bombing unoccupied military targets, was tactically significant but psychologically impotent. The Jew-haters were gratified, because the Jews lived up to the stereotype: powerful and controlling, and yet at the same time weaklings who are afraid to fight.

Suppose Israel had mounted a massive, “disproportionate” response. Perhaps we would have had to deal with legal and diplomatic attacks, as we have after previous conflicts. Perhaps there would have been strategic concerns, such as the possibility of a multi-front war. But from the psychological point of view, it would be a victory. The Jew strikes back! The Jew-haters wouldn’t stop hating us, but they would be the losers. Jew-hatred would be less attractive, because nobody wants to be a loser.

Everyone, as bin Laden said, wants to bet on the strong horse. We need to be the strong horse. If that means that we can’t live up to the moral standards proposed by the “morally enlightened” Europeans (who themselves are even less able to live up to them), so be it. People like winners. The way to make people like us is not to try to be kind to our enemies – by sending food and fuel to Gaza while they incinerate the southern part of our country and make our children scuttle into shelters – but to crush them. Probably we can’t make them “like” us, no matter what we do. But we can make them fear and respect us.

I often write about the importance of maintaining respect and honor as a part of creating deterrence. They are important in fighting Jew-hatred as well, because they neutralize the contempt that is a key part of Jew-hatred. But let’s face it; the usual programs to “combat antisemitism” are useless at best, and either feed it or are used as cover by those (e.g., the UK Labour Party and the UN) who in truth don’t see antisemitism as a problem.

It’s easy to see what Israel’s strategy in the psychological struggle against Jew-hatred should be, if not the tactical means of implementing it. But for Jews in the diaspora, who are a small minority surrounded by a large non-Jewish population, a significant portion of which hates them, the difficulties are greater. The nature of diaspora existence is that the Jews are dependent on the good will of their hosts – a fact that strengthens the antisemitic stereotype of the parasitic Jew with great influence although physically weak, and makes an aggressive posture difficult.

One solution is aliyah. Short of that, it doesn’t hurt for diaspora Jews to align themselves with a strong, potent Israel. Standing up for your homeland makes you stronger, even outside of it. Hint: attacking Israel won’t make the Jew-haters like you any better.

Diaspora Jews can fight the stereotype by developing an image of self-reliance and self-protection, of physical power that must be respected. The Jewish Defense League had mixed results, but ultimately failed for various reasons, in particular its rejection by the self-appointed “responsible” (liberal) Jewish community. Perhaps a revitalized JDL could renew its appeal in today’s more dangerous climate? I don’t know if it’s possible, and I am sure liberal Jews would fight it tooth and nail.

But if I have one piece of advice for the diaspora, it’s this: be Harrison Ford, not Woody Allen.

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11/29 Links Pt1: ICC Takes Anti-Israel Bias to New Heights; CNN commentator calls for elimination of Israel, endorses violent Palestinian ‘resistance’

From Ian:

Evelyn Gordon: ICC Takes Anti-Israel Bias to New Heights

On November 15, the pretrial chamber of judges ordered the court’s prosecutor—for the second time—to reconsider her refusal to investigate Israel’s 2010 raid on a flotilla to Gaza. Demanding one reconsideration is rare. Demanding two is unheard of. No such option even exists in the ICC’s rulebook.

Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda appealed this ruling last week. But regardless of what the Appeals Chamber decides, it’s already too late to salvage the pretense that the court is an unbiased judicial institution and not a cesspool of anti-Israel prejudice.

To understand why, a review of the case is in order. In May 2010, a flotilla tried to break Israel’s legal blockade of Gaza. Israel intercepted most of the ships peacefully. But on one, according to the same UN inquiry that upheld the blockade’s legality, passengers attacked the soldiers with “fists, knives, chains, wooden clubs, iron rods, and slingshots,” seriously wounding nine. To protect themselves, the soldiers opened fire, killing ten people.

Comoros, whose flag that ship flew, filed a complaint against Israel over the incident in May 2013. In November 2014, Bensouda dismissed it. Despite concluding (wrongly) that the soldiers used excessive force, she said the fact that they opened fire only after being attacked and the low number of deaths made the incident insufficiently grave to warrant attention from a court created to prosecute major atrocities. But in July 2015, the pretrial chamber ordered her to reconsider—the first time it had ever overturned a prosecutor’s decision.

I dissected the judges’ egregious errors of both fact and law at the time, including their failure even to mention the passengers’ attack on the soldiers, which was central to Bensouda’s decision, and their astounding argument that the gravity of the case should be determined not by what happened, but by how much international “attention and concern” it attracted. Bensouda evidently found their ruling equally unpersuasive, since she appealed it. But after losing that appeal, she duly reconsidered.

In November 2017, she announced, unsurprisingly, that her opinion remained unchanged. That should have ended the story. After all, the same appellate judges who upheld the pretrial chamber’s demand for reconsideration also unequivocally authorized her to stick with her original conclusion if she still deemed it correct. Moreover, section 108(3) of the ICC’s own rules explicitly defines the prosecutor’s decision after reconsideration as a “final decision.”

But Comoros appealed again, and astoundingly, the pretrial judges once again ordered her to reconsider, saying her initial reconsideration hadn’t satisfied their requirements. The clear implication was that they would keep demanding reconsiderations until Bensouda produced the decision they wanted.

There are several glaring problems with this. First, of course, it ignores the plain meaning of section 108(3). Instead, the majority essentially argued that a “final decision” only becomes final once they approve the outcome.

CNN commentator calls for elimination of Israel, endorses violent Palestinian ‘resistance’

CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill, in a Wednesday speech to the United Nations, called for violent resistance against Israel and advocated expanding Palestine “from the river to the sea,” a phrase used by those who believe that Israel should be eliminated.

Hill, who has a long history of anti-Semitism, made the remarks at a U.N. event commemorating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. He said the international community should boycott Israel and allow Palestinians more space to engage in violence against the Jewish state, arguing that violence was also employed in the struggles of African Americans.

“Contrary to western mythology, black resistance to American apartheid did not come purely through Ghandi and nonviolence," Hill said (see video below.) "Rather, slave revolts and self-defense and tactics otherwise divergent from Dr. King or Mahatma Gandhi were equally important to preserving safety and attaining freedom. If we are to operate in true solidarity with the Palestinian people, we must allow the Palestinian people the same range of opportunity and political possibility. If we are standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people, we must recognize the right of an occupied people to defend itself. We must prioritize peace, but we must not romanticize or fetishize it. We must advocate and promote nonviolence at every opportunity, but we cannot endorse a narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in the face of state violence and ethnic cleansing."

He urged grassroots, local, and international action to "Give us what justice requires -- and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea."

The phrase “from the river to the sea” has been a rallying cry for Hamas and other terrorist groups seeking the elimination of Israel, as a Palestinian state stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea would mean that Israel would be wiped off the map.

Hill’s remarks are the latest example of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements.

Marc Lamont Hill at UN calls for "Free Palestine from the River to the Sea" to chorus of applause

Hamas "political" leader Ismail Haniyeh sent a letter to the UN against an American initiative to condemn the group for shooting rockets at Israeli civilians.

In the letter, Haniyeh claims that Hamas' terror is not only not prohibited, but a "right" under international law.

The letter says:

The rules of international humanitarian law have contributed to strengthening the legal status of the resistance and national liberation movements against the occupation, and to legitimizing their resistance activities to achieve their right to self-determination as mentioned in the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, in particular article 1 / paragraph 4,: "The situations referred to in the preceding paragraph include armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist régimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.”

The quote from the Additional Protocol refers to the idea that ALL armed groups must adhere to the international laws that protect civilian war victims (the preceding paragraph.) Meaning that it says that Hamas - if it is to be regarded as a freedom fighting group - is violating international law by shooting rockets to Israel, the exact opposite of what Haniyeh claims.

Hamas is a Palestinian national liberation movement that seeks by all means to defend its people in order to achieve their basic rights. This comes within the context of the legitimate defense and response to the continuous aggression against the Palestinian people. This right is guaranteed by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, which represents a solid basis for the legitimacy of the struggle of the Palestinian people, individually and collectively, for independence and self-determination.

Article 51 says "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security." Shooting rockets at civilians is not "self defense" in any universe.

He also quotes several non-binding General Assembly resolutions that from the early 1970s that say that people under colonial subjugation have the right to resist "by all necessary means," which never includes terrorism, except to Palestinians and their fans. Of course, Israel is not a colonialist state to begin with, but the idea that international law allows Hamas-style terror attacks is absurd.

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Sudanese writer against normalization with "Jews" because he says Israel doesn't care about human rights

Among all the news about Israel establishing relations with African and Arab countries, the idea that Sudan is one of them is not being greeted with the same joy as other African nations and Oman.

Sudan, after all, has been one of the worst human rights violators in history.

TOI gives some realpolitik reasons for Israel to be interested in such ties with Sudan that are not altogether convincing:

A senior Israeli official told Channel 10 that Déby’s visit was laying the groundwork for normalizing ties with Muslim-majority countries Sudan, Mali and Niger.

According to the report, Israel’s diplomatic push in Africa is driven in part by a desire to ease air travel to Latin America. Flying in the airspace of traditionally hostile African countries — namely Chad and Sudan — would allow airlines to offer faster, more direct flights between Israel and the continent.

Flying directly from Israel to Brazil over Sudan could shave some four hours off the average journey, which currently takes at least 17 hours, and requires a stopover in either Europe or North America.

Israel has long been wary of Sudan, which was traditionally seen as close to Iran. However, in early 2017, Khartoum joined Sunni Bahrain and Saudi Arabia in severing its ties with the Islamic Republic.

At the time, the country also appeared to make overtures toward Israel. Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour said in a 2016 interview that Sudan was open to the idea of normalizing ties with Israel in exchange for lifting US sanctions on Khartoum. According Hebrew-language media reports at the time, Israeli diplomats tried to drum up support for Sudan in the international community after it severed its ties to Tehran.

In 2009, the International Criminal Court also issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, relating to the bloody conflict in the western Darfur region.

Some lines should not be crossed.

But I saw an article from Sudan which didn't even try to hide its antisemitism behind "anti-Zionism" which opposed the rumored agreement - because Israel is such an awful violator of human rights!

We are not subject to slavery and tyranny of rulers who violate human rights and disbelieve in democracy and freedom of expression .. And normalization with the Jews by authoritarian force and oppression and imprisonment of violations of citizens' rights .. ...

It is the skill of the Jews to serve the cause of falsehood .. that Netanyahu visited the Prime Minister of the enemy Sultanate of Oman to serve the Iranian plot in Yemen and others .. Did Iran denounce the visit? Has Hezbollah, the ally of Iran, denounced the visit and was it mentioned by Hassan Nasrallah in his anti-Gulf speech? Has the Iranian-backed Houthi group, which raises the slogan of death to America and Israel, rebelled? No .. No .. No.

This is because the real, effective, historical and inevitable alliance includes Israel, Iran, and the Syrian government.

> But what will the Jewish occupation benefit from Sudan and what will Sudan benefit from? Do you have information.? Of course not. So the Sudanese government, people, opposition and rebellion can not offer one excuse to justify normalization with the dirtiest of God's creation at all .. With whom Allah has forbidden them to establish a state and rule with the testimony of their rabbis, they are like a sect that has no sovereignty over a land in this world. We knew this before the testimony of their rabbis.

It is always interesting to see how Arab states have learned to hide their antisemitism over the years by pretending that they have nothing against Jews, but the more far-flung Islamic countries are not used to the Western pushback on open antisemitism so they haven't yet read the memo.

By the way, just to show how little the world cares about human rights when a Western country cannot be blamed, the Wikipedia article on Sudan's human rights issues has not been updated since 2009.

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The European Students' Union is holding a convention in Montenegro this week.

They just passed an anti-discrimination statement.

The statement on #Antidiscrimination just passed!🎉 This is such a big news for ESU as we are all in the same page working against these issues in #Europe. More info on this is yet to come in the upcoming days! 🔜 pic.twitter.com/pDPcHIBAna
— European Students' Union (@ESUtwt) November 29, 2018

I don't have the full text yet, but my sources tell me that this statement incorporates the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which includes as examples:

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

This is huge. Many Israel-haters reject the idea that they are antisemitic even though they do exactly what these examples point out. But applying double standards to the Jewish state and denying Jews the right to self-determination really is antisemitism dressed up as a political opinion.

For a major student union to adapt this definition is a big deal, and it will go a long way towards protecting Jewish students on campus in the 39 countries the ESU is represented.

(h/t Daled Amos)

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11/28 Links Pt2: Money Raised After Pittsburgh Shooting Went To An Islamic Center With Terror Ties; CNN pundit: Palestine from the river to the sea; Glick: While Airbnb Boycotts, Israel Builds Diplomatic Strength

From Ian:

WOW: Money Raised After Pittsburgh Shooting Went To An Islamic Center With Terror Ties

In late October, Robert Gregory Bowers, a vicious anti-Semite, walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and shot and killed 11 people. Several people were injured, four of which were police officers. It was tragic—but of course, everyone blamed President Trump for reasons only morons understand. There were protests when he visited the site. Everyone was creating controversy when there needed to be none. But now, we have another controversy that could be brewing that isn’t related to Trump. It centers on anti-Semite Linda Sarsour. The anti-Israel activist seems to have been exposed for cheating the Tree of Life synagogue from money fundraised after the tragic shooting.

Update: Update: Islamic Center claims it will send the $155k check to Tree of Life synagogue. As for remaining $83,634, it will go to vague "projects that help foster Muslim-Jewish collaboration, dialogue, and solidarity." So all that $ raised will simply vanish, it appears.
— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) November 27, 2018

Now, some money was given to Tree of Life, around $10,000, but that was part of an effort to repair Jewish cemetaries that were vandalized. Since the shooting, around $240,000 were raised, but it appears little, if any, has been sent to Tree of Life. Of that $240,000-figure, $155,000 went to the the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh.

Hen Mazzig of The Jerusalem Post initially said that $400,000 was raised for Tree of Life, but then offered a correction, noting that $160,000 was raised by Sarsour as part of an effort to fix Jewish cemeteries and $240,000 was raised after the shooting. The corrected tweet is in the thread above.

Tree of Life received just $10,000 from the cemetery campaign, but doesn't appear to have received a dime from the post-shooting fundraising effort, but now the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh says they will supposedly send its six-figure check ($155,000) to Tree of Life. According to Conservative Review’s Jordan Schactel, the other $83,634 will go “to vague ‘projects that help foster Muslim-Jewish collaboration, dialogue, and solidarity. Oh, and as for the money raised for Jewish cemeteries, several never received the funds that were promised.

CNN pundit: Palestine from the river to the sea

CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill addressed the opening meeting of the United Nations commemoration of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People Wednesday.

"This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Nakba," he said.

"The Israeli nation continues to restrict freedom," Hill stated. "There are more than 60 Israel laws that deny citizenship rights to Palestinians just because they are not Jewish."

He called the "Israeli criminal justice system" a "term I can only use with irony," as "Palestinians are routinely denied due process of law."

Hill further accused Israel of turning Gaza into "the world's largest open-air prison."

"As an American I’m embarrassed that my tax dollars contribute to this reality. No American president has taken a principled stand for Palestinian rights. I’m saddened though not surprised that Trump has further emboldened Israel’s behavior.

He called the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem as a "powerful provocation" and a"death knell" for the peace process.

Caroline Glick: While Airbnb Boycotts, Israel Builds Diplomatic Strength

Airbnb’s partial boycott of Israel last week came just as the Arab world, Africa, and Eastern Europe moved closer to the Jewish state. These two diametrically opposed developments – one negative and one positive — showed that a race is on between competing global movements to determine whether Israel will sink or swim in the international area.

On the negative side, on November 19, the Silicon Valley-based tourism behemoth Airbnb announced that it is delisting Jewish-owned properties located in “Israeli settlements in the West Bank” from its website. Airbnb chose not to delist properties in the so-called “West Bank” owned by non-Jews.

Airbnb’s decision to adopt a policy that is openly discriminatory towards Jews was the result of years of lobbying and pressure from the UN Human Rights Council, which the Trump administration left in June. The UN Human Rights Council was joined in its campaign by the European Union (EU), by EU member states, and by U.S.-based foundations ideologically aligned with the hard left.

These forces, which share an aversion to nationalism, and ascribe to post-nationalist globalism, have combined since at least 2001 to achieve the goal of delegitimizing the existence of the Jewish state while legitimizing terrorism and war against Israel.

Airbnb’s move is a testament to the effectiveness of this campaign — as are the growing disenfranchisement and intimidation of pro-Israel students on college campuses; the boycotts of Israeli exports; and the mainstreaming of extremist politicians who refuse to accept the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism or Jewish self-determination.

Canary Mission - answering leftist allegations

In a series of recent exposes, prime funding sources of the anonymous Canary Mission, a controversial site that does pro-Israel people a service by listing thousands of anti-Semitic and disproportionately anti-Israel individuals, professors, and organizations, were revealed, inciting debate over the legitimacy of the organization. It was discovered that two of the benefactors of the organization are the Helen Diller Family Foundation and the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, both of whom have terminated their funding for the time being, persuaded by dissidents of Canary Mission.

The criticism of the organization has arisen overwhelmingly from left liberal progressives, proponents of BDS and staunch opponents of Israel, with claims of ‘McCarthyism,’ as well as laments about the expansiveness of the operation (over 2000 names are currently listed) being voiced. Others claim that Canary Mission punishes mere ‘criticizers of Israel,’ not deniers of Israel per se.

Canary Mission, however, maintains the integrity of its research ethic and its commitment to facts when listing information on anyone. The guidelines are explicit concerning their methodology, with the criteria for making ‘the list,’ so-to-speak, being as follows:

An anti-Semite is defined per the definition of the United States State Department, supporting terrorist organizations, violating the safety of Jews or Zionists, demonizing Jews or Zionists, or promoting the BDS movement. There is nothing controversial about these standards, unless of course, advocacy of terrorism, hate crimes, and violence are now morally grey areas.

Each individual profile is assembled through meticulous research of public domains--Twitter, Facebook, university profiles, etc. No name is published without sufficient material to corroborate an allegation of anti-Zionist rhetoric or action. This is paramount to the validity of Canary Mission as any and all claims are wholly substantiated such that any attempt to dispute the facts is inherently futile.

In a recent Facebook post linking to a petition in support of Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Linda Sarsour asserted the age-old anti-Semitic trope that American Jews remain loyal to Israel over the US (what she called "democratic values,") as well as asserting that these Jews “masquerade as progressives.” For Sarsour, her venture into explicitly antisemitic territory only reaffirms her antisemitic demagoguery. In past actions, Sarsour has espoused the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nation of Islam, both radical and virulently antisemitic organizations, in the process legitimizing the values of these two organizations and conflating them with those of her own secular organization, the Women’s March.

Her recent comments are a continuation of a troubling trend of figureheads of the left wing espousing antisemitism. Sarsour is far from the only figure against Jewish influence in America. She is joined by newly-elected congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) as well as newly-elected Attorney General of Minnesota and purported 2020 presidential candidate Keith Ellison. Previously, Omar has advanced the antisemitic conspiracy that Israelis hold the world in the palm of their hand by way of ‘hypnosis.’ Tlaib has forcefully denied the legitimacy of a Jewish state, while Ellison has strong ties to the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, who last month compared Jews to “termites” and referred to Jews as “anti-black.”

The growing ties of high-ranking Democrats and leftist figures to antisemitic beliefs has largely contributed to antisemitism becoming more mainstream and relatively commonplace. So why haven’t people wised up to the overt acts of bigotry committed against Jews by prominent political figures? The answer is largely the result of selective enforcement of values and groupthink of progressives.

The Women’s March is meant to achieve a noble goal: reinforcing the rights of women during a time in which women statistically are given fewer societal opportunities to succeed than men. The gender wage gap, fewer job opportunities afforded to women, and domestic violence are all real phenomena which can and should be fought by activists like Sarsour. But rather than commit to the issues pressing women today, Sarsour interjects her bigoted views against Israel and Jews into the work of her organization. Sarsour at one point stated that there was no room for Zionists in the feminist movement, a discriminatory statement which subversively seeks to alienate Jews from the progressive ideals of her movement. Just as well, Sarsour’s open association and fandom of Louis Farrakhan, much like that of cofounder of the Women’s March, Tamika Mallory, cements antisemitic sentiment at the crux of the organization and mainstream progressive values.

It’s a twisted logic that has guided Sarsour: as she strives for equality for all, she belittles and discounts Jews from her narrative of tolerance, in the process contradicting the values for which she allegedly stands. Jews are effectively at the bottom of the food chain of minority groups, indeed viewed more as the oppressors than the oppressed, making it socially acceptable to berate and demean the Jewish people(often under the name "Zionists.")

The receptiveness of the left-wing to Sarsour’s peddling of antisemitic ideology has lead to such demagoguery becoming increasingly popular among Democrats. Sarsour is an embodiment of progressive ideals: child of immigrants, self-described person of color, Muslim, woman, and she is only really controversial among certain Jewish and conservative circles--arguably making her more popular among Democrats. Progressives believe her and trust her for this reason, leading to somewhat of a groupthink effect with regards to Sarsour’s vile rhetoric on Jews and Zionists, and resulting in a common understanding among Democrats that pro-Israel Jews do not and cannot mesh with progressive values.

Sarsour’s conniving tactic to alienate Jews from progressives, has, unfortunately, succeeded to a large extent. In New York City, a place intrinsically tied with progressive values, over 50% of hate crimes were perpetrated against Jews this past year, with a rapid increase in antisemitic attacks in the run-up to the midterm elections as voter enthusiasm peaked. Nationally, similar statistics hold true, with Jews prevailing as the most persecuted religious group in major liberal cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Diego, despite Jews comprising a tiny part of the population.

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Islamic Cleric: Jews Judaizing Judaism (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Cairo, November 28 - A prominent Muslim preacher sounded an alarm this week that Jews are attempting to make their foundational documents, beliefs, and practices seem Jewish, a development that continues what he called an ongoing Jewish effort to appropriate ideas, places, and resources.

Sheikh Mahuj Dambut of the Jasqil Demal Mosque in the Egyptian capital downtown area warned during a sermon broadcast on national radio Tuesday that Jews have not been content to restrict their nefarious activities to the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in the ancient Jewish homeland despite Muslim objections - they have also spent thousands of years trying to make everyone think the ancient set of books recording Jewish history, prophecy, and wisdom, as well as the practices that flow from them, are somehow Jewish.

"These parasite usurpers will stop at nothing," he declared. "If they succeed in the evil project of convincing the world the Jewish Scriptures are Jewish, what will follow? We cannot allow this travesty of truth to continue. All Muslims must fight those who associate Jews with so-called Jewish heritage; who make the spurious connection between the culture of the Hebrew Bible and the culture of those who follow its teachings; and who have demonstrated time and time again that they care nothing for the sensibilities of the vast majority of humanity who would rather see them under someone else's boot, and defined by the wearers of the boot."

Sheikh Dambut admonished his listeners and followers not to fall prey to Jewish ruses. "The Jews would have you believe their faith is Jewish," he proclaimed. "But they lie. Do not fall for the trickery that is Jewish adherence to Judaism. It is all just a sordid attempt to create artificial legitimacy for themselves, as if they have some sort of tradition that goes back thousands of years, to a place called Judah. I tell you, Allah hates the Jews, because they try to assert they are Jews. We will not accept such perfidy."

Some listeners believe the sheikh did not go far enough. "It's not just Judaism the Jews are trying to make Jewish," insisted a man listening to the broadcast in a barber shop, who gave his name as Muhammad. "There are famous people, both living and dead, that Jews are trying to make everyone think are, or were, Jewish. Albert Einstein. The Marx Brothers. Senator Joseph Lieberman. King David. Hillel the Elder. Maimonides. Spinoza. Moses Mendelssohn. It's cultural appropriation of the highest order, and we have to do something about it."

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11/28 Links Pt1: Palestinian dream: To liberate "Palestine" from the River to the Sea; Palestinian arrested in Italy for plotting to poison town’s water supply; Abbas having coffee with terrorists and their families

From Ian:

PMW: The great Palestinian dream: To liberate "Palestine" from the River to the Sea

Palestinian children are still being taught that “Palestine” includes all of Israel. Decades after the Oslo Accords, the PA and Fatah still don’t recognize Israel's existence.

The photo above is a prime example of this. The Palestinian Authority Presidential Guards posted this image of a young boy making the “V” symbol for “victory” while holding a Palestinian flag. Behind him is the PA map clearly named “Palestine” that includes all of Israel and the PA areas.

The names of the following Israeli cities and regions are written in the colors of the Palestinian flag on and around the map: “Haifa,” “Jerusalem,” “Safed,” “Nazareth,” “Jaffa,” “Tal Al-Rabia (i.e., Tel Aviv, see note below),” “Tiberias,” “Be’er Sheva,” “Ramle,” “Ashkelon,” “the Negev,” “Lod,” “Acre,” and “Beit Shean.” “Gaza” is also marked. The text on the image, states that Palestinians will “return”:

Posted text: “#Good_morning #The_Palestinian_Presidential_Guards”
Text on image: “Palestine We will surely return”
[Official Facebook page of the PA Presidential Guards, Nov. 25, 2018]

Another Palestinian way of saying that all of the State of Israel is “Palestine” is to describe it as stretching “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” This is one of the PA's popular slogans. Recently it was repeated by a university lecturer who described the “great Palestinian dream”:

The great Palestinian dream: To liberate "Palestine" from the River to the Sea

Read more about this here: https://t.co/hEyUUMgmkj pic.twitter.com/PJNtxOPlP9
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) November 27, 2018

Gil Troy: Wanted: Responsible adultism at the UN against Hamas’s ‘kitetifada’

Last Friday, Adele Raemer, a 63-year-old teacher from Kibbutz Nirim, and two other Israelis testified in Geneva at another UN “Human Rights Council” anti-Israel farce whose name reveals its bias: The “Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Israel’s government won’t cooperate, justifiably. Why legitimize the latest UN lynch mob, targeting the alleged “military assaults on the large-scale civilian protests that began on 30 March 2018.” But these brave Israelis touchingly described how Israelis – and Palestinians – have suffered since Israel’s 2005 Disengagement-for-Peace from Gaza, what the UN falsely calls “the occupied Gaza Strip.”

“It’s a misnomer to call these ‘protests.’ They were violent attacks,” Raemer exclaimed in Geneva. Testifying for four and a half hours, she explained how Hamas bombs and burns her progressive paradise in the Negev – in undisputed, within-the-Green-Line-Israel. Asked, repeatedly, “Why do you stay?” she answers poignantly, patriotically, “It’s my home. Why should I leave?”

Resenting Israel’s impotence, she says, “I don’t remember voting for Hamas, but they – not my government – run my life. They decide when I go into my safe room – or not. They decide when school is open for me to teach – or not.” Adele, and her children, grandchildren, students, and neighbors, are held hostage by 30,000 thugs harassing the Jewish State instead of building the Palestinian state they claim to desire.

It’s a long way from the Grand Concourse in the Bronx to Geneva via the Negev, but this Bronx-born kibbutznik-turned-activist feels compelled to defend her home. Immediately after she finished Young Judea’s 1972-1973 yearlong course, the Yom Kippur War erupted. Adele returned to Israel to make her life with her people. Inspired by 1970s-style communal Zionism, she eventually settled on Kibbutz Nirim, today a farming community of 372, smack on Gaza’s border.

Back then, three decades after Egypt nearly overran the plucky, two-year-old kibbutz in 1948, Nirim was a Zionist cliché in living color, an egalitarian community making the desert bloom. These farmer-idealists weren’t limousine liberals but true progressives. Most supported a Palestinian state. They happily cooperated with their Palestinian neighbors.

Then, Hamas happened.

Palestinian arrested in Italy for plotting to poison town’s water supply

A Palestinian man with links to the Islamic State group was arrested in Italy Wednesday on suspicion that he was planning a terror attack on the island of Sardinia, according to a state prosecutor.

State anti-terror prosecutor Federico Cafiero de Raho said the suspect planned to poison the water supply in the central island town of Macomer as well as a nearby military base, with ricin and anthrax.

The suspect was identified by the Il Fatto Quotidiano daily as Alaji Aminun, a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon, who moved to Macomer.

The arrest came two months after Lebanese authorities arrested another Palestinian refugee on suspicion of plotting to poison the water supply of a military barracks there. At the time, officials said the suspect had been linked to the Islamic State and had worked with another man, apparently Aminun, to “carry out a mass poisoning in a foreign country” through “poisoning food during a public holiday,” without specifying the location.

While The Forward praises Muslim charities, it asks for help to dig up dirt on Jewish charities. Plus, a quick look at the Forward's own non-profit paperwork. (It isn't pretty.)

Earlier this week The Forward had an article talking about how much Muslim charity CelebrateMercy raised for Jewish causes in the wake of antisemitic attacks over the past year.

Thee is no skepticism about what the head of the charity is saying about how the funds are being distributed; not all the funds raised have been disbursed but the plans being made are reported without any independent research. No digging into IRS forms, for example.

Compare that with how The Forward reports on Jewish charities:

The Forward is asking readers to help us review the tax filings of thousands of American Jewish charities. We’ll teach you how to dig into a charity’s finances. Then, we’ll assign our reporters to follow up on what you find.

All you need to help is some time, and maybe a cup of coffee.

The American Jewish community has an extraordinary abundance of nonprofit institutions. Many of them are doing good, important work. But it’s difficult to know which ones are living up to the responsibility of spending tax-exempt donations wisely.

At the Forward, we spend a lot of time looking at the financial information that the federal government requires charities to make public. We’ve found some really big stories there.

But we usually focus on just the fifty or so largest charities in the American Jewish landscape. There are more than two thousand Jewish charities that file tax returns.

If we work together, we can do some serious watchdog reporting on these groups, which handle billions of dollars in tax-exempt donations.

Given previous reporting from that reporter, Josh Nathan-Kazis, we know that he will scrutinize and report on every piece of dirt, real or imagined.

To the Forward, Jewish charities are suspect while Muslim charities are assumed righteous.

Interestingly, The Forward itself is a non-profit. And it's own records show some interesting things that donors might want to know about that organization.

For example, in 2016, the Forward Association lost some $7.6 million according to its NY State CHAR500 filing. That's a lot of money, more than double what it lost in 2015.

But its president, Sam Norich, had $462,000 in compensation - an $80,000 raise over 2015.

Is this the best use of charitable funds for The Forward Association?

(Norwich apparently had a lifetime salary but they decided in 2014 to pro-rate his salary for the next few years over his expected lifespan. Maybe other non-profits give sweetheart deals to their executives, but that is hardly a responsible use of non-profit funds.)

It gets worse.

The Forward Association spent $539,000 on fundraising, but (when you subtract the money automatically transferred over from The Forward Fund (which requires no fundraising) the total amount raised was $1.4 million, meaning fundraising was an astounding 38% of the total amount raised, a percentage that would raise eyebrows for any auditor of a charity.

Speaking of auditors, the 2016 return was audited and found to have a ton of mistakes, the sort of thing that Nathan-Kazis would crucify any other Jewish organization for.

The mission of the organization according to these filings is "TO PROMOTE AND STRENGTHEN JEWISH PEOPLEHOOD YIDDISH CULTURE AND SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE. IT PURSUES THESE GOALS THROUGH ITS PUBLICATIONS AND PHILANTHROPIC GRANTS AND THROUGH COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS WITH OTHER LIKEMINDED ORGANIZATIONS." Yet it has not made a single grant in the past two years on record.

This is all from a small amount of checking, mostly a single year's records.

You can find previous years' 990 forms here if you want to take a crack at it.

If the Forward was so fearless in its reporting as it pretends, then when will we find its analysis of its own non-profit paperwork, which upon a cursory glance seems at least as problematic as many of their "scoops" on Jewish charities that actually do something positive for the community rather than demonize large portions of the Jewish community as The Forward does, every day.

UPDATE:

The @jdforward reported on a number of financial scandals of Jewish charities that used Loeb & Tropper as accountants.

Guess who else hired Loeb & Tropper AFTER these stories? Yup, the non-profit that runs The Forward. pic.twitter.com/8rlZtulj2D
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) November 28, 2018

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