Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, March 09, 2019

Time to admit the obvious: Muslims get a pass on antisemitism (update)

The Ilhan Omar episode, where on at least three occasions she said clearly antisemitic statements and managed to emerge with more prestige than she had before, shows once again that Muslims do not have repercussions when they spout hate that would be fatal to the careers of people who are considered white by the "progressive" crowd.

Last month, MEMRI released a video where a Detroit imam was recorded preaching that Jews have prostituted their women throughout history to gain power, as well as other hateful statements towards Jews.

The media ignored the story.

Last week, MEMRI released another video with an antisemitic imam, this time in Philadelphia.

He said, among other things:

The Jews are the vilest people in terms of their moral values, their nature, and their violation of agreements.

If a Muslim lives somewhere [in the West], he is viewed according to the way the nefarious Jewish media portrays him – as an oppressive and predatory lion.

Remember Sabra and Shatila. Remember the wars of the past. Remember how [former Israeli PM] Menachem Begin, that Polish crook, would stand next to a pregnant woman, and would make bets whether it is a boy or a girl. He would make bets, while the woman was still alive! Then he would slut her belly open, while she was still alive, to see whether it is a boy or a girl. Just like that. This happened. This happened.

The propaganda and the media are controlled by them. They make you see things in an altered and inflated way. They make you think that power lies in castles, fortresses, and weapons – that power lies with 15 million people who own and control the riches of the world.

This is happening in mosques in major American cities, today! MEMRI can only find the hateful sermons that are proudly uploaded to social media - imagine what else is being taught to American Muslims that we have no idea about!

But the media will downplay or ignore these stories, because part of the "progressive" view of the world is that Muslims and others perceived as people of color are not held to the same standards as the responsible white people. It is a racist attitude that has become normalized in America.

The apologetics for Ilhan Omar were amazing to watch. She was infantilized as someone who is not fully mature enough to understand the subtle nuances of how her innocent words could be perceived by Jews - yet she is fully mature enough to represent thousands of people from Minnesota. The thought that her antisemitism might be a basic part of her worldview and her upbringing is not considered.

Muslims are expected to be Jew-hating bigots, and that is OK, according to the prevailing groupthink of the progressive crowd. See this tweet from a "roving journalist:"

Have received messages from journalists and others who are too intimidated to voice support for Omar because they fear it will damage their career prospects
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) March 8, 2019

If this is true, it shows that at least some journalists - who are overwhelmingly liberal - have no problem at all with Ilhan Omar's antisemitic statements, and they have a completely different standard for her than they would have for a white Republican man saying the exact same things.

The same applies to other people of color, as well. The horrendous attacks on Hasidic Jews in New York by people of color have been shown on TV because it is compelling video, but there is no outrage towards the perpetrators - because of their color.

If we want to ensure equal rights for all American citizens, that means we must expect equal responsibilities from all of them as well. This is not a difficult concept, but it is one that is very uncomfortable to those who want to elevate the people considered "intersectional" without regard to their actual actions or words.

UPDATE: See this story about how the media covered - and didn't cover - an antisemitic California imam.

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03/08 Links Pt2: Bret Stephens: Ilhan Omar Knows Exactly What She Is Doing; Every Democratic Excuse For Ilhan Omar's Anti-Semitism Is More Vile Than The Last; Academics Appropriate the Holocaust to Bash Israel

From Ian:

Bret Stephens (NYTs): Ilhan Omar Knows Exactly What She Is Doing

As the criticism of Omar mounts, it becomes that much easier for her to seem like the victim of a smear campaign, rather than the instigator of a smear. The secret of anti-Semitism has always rested, in part, on creating the perception that the anti-Semite is, in fact, the victim of the Jews and their allies. Just which powers-that-be are orchestrating that campaign? Why are they afraid of open debate? And what about all the bigotry on their side?

The goal is not to win the argument, at least not anytime soon. Yet merely by refusing to fold, Omar stands to shift the range of acceptable discussion — the so-called Overton window — sharply in her direction. Ideas once thought of as intellectually uncouth and morally repulsive have suddenly become merely controversial. It’s how anti-Zionism has abruptly become an acceptable point of view in reputable circles. It’s why anti-Semitism is just outside the frame, bidding to get in.

House Democrats are now wrangling over the text of a resolution that was initially intended as a condemnation of anti-Semitism, with Omar as its implicit target. At this writing it is mired in predictable controversy, as members of the party’s progressive wing and black caucus rally to Omar’s side in the first open challenge to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership. In the Senate, the presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Warren have weighed in with statements that painted Omar as a victim of Islamophobia — which she is — without mentioning that she’s also a purveyor of anti-Semitic bigotry — which she surely is as well.

It says something about the progressive movement today that it has no trouble denouncing Republican racism, real and alleged, every day of the week but has so much trouble calling out a naked anti-Semite in its own ranks. This is how progressivism becomes Corbynism. It’s how the left finds its own path toward legitimizing hate. It’s how self-declared anti-fascists develop their own forms of fascism.

If Pelosi can’t muster a powerful and unequivocal resolution condemning anti-Semitism, then Omar will have secured her political future and won a critical battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. At that point, the days when American Jews can live comfortably within the Democratic fold will be numbered.

Ben Shapiro: Worst Defense Of Ilhan Omar's Anti-Semitism Yet

The Democratic Party Has Normalized Anti-Semitism

This week, the Democratic Party was unable to pass a watered-down, platitudinous resolution condemning anti-Semitism, due to “fierce backlash” from presidential candidates, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and the now-powerful progressive base. Rather than censuring Rep. Ilhan Omar, the intellectually frivolous, Hamas-supporting freshman representative from Minnesota, she was rewarded and inoculated from party criticism.

More consequently, the Democrats deemed Protocols of Zion-style attacks a legitimate form of debate. That’s because Omar, despite what you hear, has repeatedly attacked Jews, not only Israel supporters, and certainly not only specific Israeli policies.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who would finally bring an “All Lives Matter” resolution to the floor, told reporters she didn’t believe the congresswoman’s comments were “intentionally anti-Semitic.” No educated human believes Omar inadvertently accused “Benjamin”-grubbing Rootless Cosmopolitans of hypnotizing the world for their evil. These are long-standing, conspiratorial attacks on the Jewish people, used by anti-Semites on right and left, and popular throughout the Islamic world.

Even the Democratic Party activist groups that typically cover for the Israel-haters, like the Anti- Defamation League, have condemned Omar. Yet it was the lie that coursed through the Democratic Party’s defense of Omar.

Anti-Semitism part of wave of `depraved hatred', pope says

Pope Francis on Friday branded anti-Semitism part of a wave of "depraved hatred" sweeping some countries and urged everyone to be vigilant against it.

In comments to members of the American Jewish Committee during a visit to the Vatican, he also reiterated that it was sinful for Christians to hold anti-Semitic sentiments because they shared a heritage with Jews.

"A source of great concern to me is the spread, in many places, of a climate of wickedness and fury, in which an excessive and depraved hatred is taking root," Francis said. "I think especially of the outbreak of anti-Semitic attacks in various countries."

Francis did not name any of those countries, but government statistics released last month showed more than 500 anti-Semitic attacks occurred last year in France, which has Europe's biggest Jewish community. That was a 74 percent increase from 2017.

"I stress that for a Christian any form of anti-Semitism is a rejection of one's own origins, a complete contradiction," Francis said.

I was deeply moved by the messages from this room of Holocaust survivors’ for @SenSchumer and @SpeakerPelosi that ALL Americans need to hear:

Hold onto @IlhanMN and her antisemitism, lose us! pic.twitter.com/Bn49wbfaK2
— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) March 8, 2019

03/08 Links Pt1: Martin Sherman: “Palestine” - Time to say “No!”; PA TV uses International Women’s Day to glorify female terrorists; JEXODUS: Jewish Millennials Launch A ‘Liberation Movement’ From The Democratic Party

From Ian:

Dr. Martin Sherman: “Palestine” - Time to say “No!”

Ladies and gentlemen, when the Palestinians say "two states" they do not mean what we mean—Maj-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin , October 2018.

Failed in past, unfeasible in present, dangerous in future

Echoing precisely what two-state opponents have been insisting on for decades, he pronounced categorically: “There is no-one to agree with, there is nothing to agree on—and the implementation [of any two-state initiative] is dangerous”.

But then, astonishingly, rather than arrive at the rational conclusion that the pursuit of the two-state objective be abandoned and alternative approaches be explored—he did precisely the opposite!

He urged that Israel should undertake a policy, set out in the INSS “plan”, that assumes that there is—or rather that there might be—someone to agree with, and something to agree on—at some unspecified future date and as a result of some unspecified process that would somehow overcome his previously stipulated obstacles of “Palestinian divisiveness, political weakness and ideological extremism.”

Yadlin’s patently perverse and paradoxical position on the two-state doctrine—or rather dogma—underscores precisely why it must be renounced—unequivocally and irrevocably.

Indeed, its deadly detriments are so glaringly apparent that it is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile calls for a Palestinian state with genuine concern for the well-being of the Jewish nation-state.

The dinosaurs and the Palestinian state

You still hear serious people talking out loud about the two-state solution as a reasonable – even inevitable – possibility to the conflict between us and the Arabs of the region: dividing the good land and establishing an Arab state on the hills of Judea and Samaria, which could wind up connecting to the Hamas state in the Gaza Strip to the west and the state of Jordan to the east.

Exactly 100 years have passed since the division of the land was first suggested in the 1919 Faisal–Weizmann Agreement, after World War I. Eighteen years later, in 1937, the Peel Commission (convened to investigate the bloody events of 1936) proposed dividing the land, and a decade later, on Nov. 29, 1947, the U.N. voted in favor of the partition plan. The Arabs refused, and their response was war.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded before the "occupation" of the 1967 Six-Day War. Its goal was to "liberate all the land from the Zionists." Our country was then quite small in size, and still the organization's terrorists wanted it. The goal hasn't changed; it has sometimes been disguised to delude naïve, liberal, self-righteous Jews in the West.

The Oslo Accords came into being after the PLO was on the mat after backing Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein during the First Persian Gulf War. The Palestinians supported any murderous dictator who served their purposes. In Oslo, the government under then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin put the dying organization on artificial life support and brought tens of thousands of terrorists whom we had armed into western Israel to force the division of the country and fulfill their dream of peace. If the Jews don't acknowledge their right to their own land and revive their sworn enemies from the ashes, we can expect nothing more from Europe or the U.S. That is how the organization of terrorists became the official, respectable representative of the supposed forthcoming Palestinian state.

Arab Religiosity and Support for the Palestinians

Palestinians—as well as Arab leaders and opponents of Israel in the U.S. and Europe—have often claimed that the Palestinian fate is a central concern, if not the central concern, of Arabs everywhere. Examining data from Google in various Arab countries, Hillel Frisch notes that the frequency of searches for such topics as “Palestinian resistance” decreases sharply the farther one goes from Gaza and the West Bank. Non-Palestinian Arabs, by contrast, are far and away more likely to search for “al-Aqsa mosque” than for information about the Palestinian resistance, and Palestinians’ own interest in al-Aqsa is similarly high. To Frisch, all of this makes clear that religion, far more than nationalism, motivates Arab attitudes regarding Israel:

[These data] underscore the importance of the religious dimension in the Arabic-speaking world, both within and without the Palestinian arena, in the Arab-Palestinian conflict. This is hardly new. Islam was a major if not dominant theme in the most tumultuous periods of strife between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land. In April 1920, attacks against Jews began during the religious Nabi Musa pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The 1921 riots began in Jaffa to protest the participation of immodestly clad Jewish women in the May Day demonstrations in Jaffa.

Seven years later, in 1928, Haj Amin al-Husseini coined the phrase “al-Aqsa in danger” in a pan-Islamic campaign against the Zionist movement that led to the most murderous onslaught against Jews to date in August 1929. This term has since been adopted by both Hamas and the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, which was banned by Israel in 2015.

During the second intifada, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah tried in vain to name the conflict the “independence intifada” in its struggle against a rising Hamas, which wanted to color the conflict with Israel in religious terms. Today, it is universally referred to in Arabic as the “al-Aqsa intifada,” even in Fatah and PA discourse. The same religious zeal regarding the Palestinian cause can be found in the Arab world.

PLO begs nations not to deal with US embassy in Jerusalem

Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the PLO Executive Committee, has issued another warning to the international community that no one will listen to.

He called on the world to ignore the US Embassy in Jerusalem, saying that working together with US diplomats "represents a step towards legitimizing this illegal procedure."

"The Trump administration closed the US consulate in Jerusalem officially, and ended the American diplomatic presence of 175 years in Palestine," Erekat wrote in a letter to the diplomatic representatives in Palestine on March 4. "The Trump administration closing the US consulate in Jerusalem is a blatant violation of the law."

I'm not sure what law that violates. Erekat didn't elaborate.

He continued, "As you know, the establishment of diplomatic representation of Israel in Jerusalem is a serious violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution No. 478, which is one of several Council resolutions condemning the annexation of East Jerusalem to Israel."

A plain reading of UNSC 478 indicates that the US should have closed the consulate in Jerusalem as well. It calls upon "Those States that have established diplomatic missions at Jerusalem to withdraw such missions from the Holy City."

No one talks about that.

"We appeal to all members of the diplomatic community in Palestine not to engage in any kind of formal relationship or to cooperate with the new entity created within the illegal US embassy, Any dealings with the illegal US embassy will be seen as a step toward legitimizing this illegal procedure," he concluded.

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Bigotry resolution fudges anti-Muslim FBI stats

I found these two sections of the much ballyhooed and ultimately worthless anti-bigotry resolution passed on Thursday to be interesting:

Whereas in 2017 the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported a 37 percent increase in hate crimes against Jews or Jewish institutions and found that attacks against Jews or Jewish institutions made up 58.1 percent of all religious-based hate crimes;

and

Whereas the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that hate crimes against Muslims or Muslim institutions in the United States increased by over 99 percent between 2014 and 2016;

Why are FBI stats for antisemitism only quoted for 2017, comparing to 2016, while the stats for anti-Muslim hate crimes are only quoted for 2016 compared to 2014?

Because anti-Muslim hate crimes actually went down in 2017, while antisemitic hate crimes soared! So the resolution authors cherry picked statistics.

In 2014, there were 609 anti-Jewish incidents and 154 anti-Muslim incidents.
In 2016, there were 684 anti-Jewish incidents and 307 anti-Muslim incidents.
In 2017, there were 938 anti-Jewish incidents and 273 anti-Muslim incidents.

But a 77% increase in anti-Muslim incidents from 2014 to 2017, bad as it is, doesn't sound nearly as bad as the 99% increase from 2014 to 2016. In raw numbers, the increase in antisemitic incidents in 2017 dwarfs the increase in every other kind of bias incident.

This is just is another data point that the resolution is about posturing and not about anyone actually caring about bigotry.

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03/07 Links Pt2: Noah Rothman: The Anti-Semitism Monster Democrats Can No Longer Control; Andrew Klavan: How The Left Rationalizes Anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: The Anti-Semitism Monster Democrats Can No Longer Control

Liberal partisans know exactly what Democrats are doing here. Indeed, they explained why generic condemnations of hatred in the face of discrete episodes of bigotry entirely missed the point amid the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. “All lives matter,” was the response from those who were discomfited by the movement’s focus on excessive uses of force by police against African-Americans. Of course, all lives do matter, those on the left observed, but to insist upon such language in the face of specific episodes of bias targeting distinct demographics is obtuse. The effort isn’t to restore common bonds, but to diminish the validity of the Black Lives Matter movement’s grievance.

Today, as Democratic House leadership calculates precisely how forcefully to condemn anti-Semitic sentiments within its ranks without alienating anti-Semites, a full-scale rebellion is brewing. Rep. Rashida Tlaib called the effort to condemn anti-Semitism “unprecedented” and questioned Pelosi’s judgment. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insisted that Pelosi’s resolution was “hurtful” and that there should be similar votes condemning all manner of bigotries ranging from xenophobia, to homophobia, to “anti-blackness.” Pelosi is a “typical white feminist upholding the patriarchy doing the dirty work of powerful white men,” wrote Women’s March co-chair Linda Sarsour. These are not nobodies. These are core figures in the Democratic coalition, individuals who are now or were only recently some of the party’s most visible new faces.

It isn’t just the activist wing that has effectively sided with Omar in this fight. The New York Times claimed that Omar’s attack on the Israeli lobbying group AIPAC raised important questions about the influence Zionists and Jews wield. The Washington Post suggested that Pelosi would invite a prolonged internecine debate over America’s policy toward Israel by unequivocally condemning anti-Jewish bigotry. These are not fringe institutions expressing the concerns of a marginal constituency.

It was only one month ago that the Democratic Party was united in disgust after Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam admitted to appearing in photographs as a younger man in blackface. Democrats, Nancy Pelosi among them, insisted that no apology would suffice. Northam had to go. Virginia’s governor did not consent to his own exile, but Democrats nonetheless established a standard. “It is essentially this,” I wrote at the time. “Any act of naked bigotry, even the bourgeois sort that stems from ignorance or social desirability biases, is unacceptable and unforgivable.” Confronted today with a kind of prejudice to which not all its members are entirely hostile, Democrats have revealed how hollow those condemnations really were. The battle for the future of the Democratic Party isn’t over yet, but, for now, Ilhan Omar is winning.

John Podhoretz: Democrats’ refusal to call out Ilhan Omar’s anti-semitism is just appalling

It’s really not hard to get to the bottom of this: When you say that Jews have magical hypnotic powers to control other people, you’re an anti-Semite. When you say Jews control other people through money, you’re an anti-Semite. When you say Jews have conspired to force you to apologize for saying anti-Semitic things, you’re an anti-Semite. Ilhan Omar is an anti-Semite.

Now what? Well, now nothing.

For a while this week there was a thought that the House of Representatives, where Omar serves as a freshman from Minnesota, might vote on a resolution condemning her anti-Semitism.

Then it was thought that maybe said resolution would come up for a vote but wouldn’t mention her name and instead condemn anti-Semitism generally.

Then it was thought that there would be a resolution that would condemn both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Now there’s no timetable for voting on anything.

What’s hard is bringing a resolution to the House floor condemning a representative’s bigotry when you don’t want to and you’re afraid of making people mad, even though what we’re talking about here is Jew-hatred. We’re talking about a member of Congress attacking a small minority group.

Andrew Klavan: How The Left Rationalizes Anti-Semitism

Listen to Chuck Todd here, you can see the argument played out [that both the left and right are to blame for anti-Semitism in America] and what's so wrong with it.

Chuck Todd: Omar opened the door for Republicans to point fingers and say ‘aha! The left has a problem with anti-Semitism!’ And you know what? It does. But unless you want to forget the chants of "Jews will not replace us’"by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, unless you want to forget President Trump saying there were good people on both sides of that debate, unless you want to forget the synagogue slaughter in Pittsburgh last year, unless you want to forget all of that you have to acknowledge that the right has a problem with anti-Semitism too. Both sides are doing a lot of finger-pointing and there's a lot to point to, that's sad. Anti-Semitism is on the rise on the left, it's on the rise on the right, it's on the rise in Europe and a lot of other places. So, let's not pretend it's on the rise in just the other political party.

Left and right are not political parties, they are political positions. And it is true on the far-left and on the far-right, or as they now call it the Alt-Right, which I think is more fair because it's an alternative to actual American conservatism, it's not American conservatism. But let's just divide the world into left and right. On the far left and on the far right there is anti-Semitism.

Listen to who he compares, this is a congresswoman! This is a woman in the halls of American power, and so are all these other people, Farrakhan lovers hanging out with them. He's comparing them to the guys with tiki-torches marching in the streets, these white supremacist garbage heads. He’s comparing a congresswoman to the guy who shot up a synagogue. Really? That's the right and the left? Our right-wing anti-Semites are the outsiders of the outsiders of the outsiders, the furthest away from the people in power. Is there any relationship between Mitch McConnell and the guy who shot up that synagogue? No, of course, there's not. And their guys are in Congress! Their guys are arguing there. Their guys are at The New York Times writing front-page stories about whether the Jews are too powerful. That's a ridiculous comparison.

He throws in that canard about Trump saying there are good people on both sides — Trump was obviously talking about the statue controversy. It was a stupid, tone-deaf comment, but it was not anti-Semitic and it was not supporting white supremacy, that is just crap. If it were supporting it, somebody would have asked him, “Do you mean that?” But nobody has ever asked him does he mean it, because that's not obviously what he was talking about. It is ridiculous, and they're doing it to run interference for a Democrat Party and a left-wing philosophy that has become by nature infested with anti-Semitism.

J-Street tweeted this:

No to anti-Semitism. No to efforts to silence legitimate debate about #Israel. Strong statements from 2020 contenders @BernieSanders @KamalaHarris @ewarren

__
statements via @aterkel & @danielmarans pic.twitter.com/u56GKDtjW1
— J Street (@jstreetdotorg) March 7, 2019

Here's what the candidates said:

Elizabeth Warren:We have a moral duty to combat hateful ideologies in our own country and around the wortd--and that includes both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. In a democracy, we can and should have an open, respectful debate about the Middle East that focuses on policy. Branding criticism of Israel as automatically anti-Semitic has a chilling effect on our public discourse and makes it harder to achieve a peaceful solution between Israelis and Palestinians. Threats of violence -- like those made against Rep. Omar -- are never acceptable.

Bernie Sanders:“Anti-Semitism is a hateful and dangerous ideology which must be vigorously opposed in the United States and around the world. We must not, however, equate anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of the right-wing, Netanyahu government in Israel. Rather, we must develop an even-handed Middle East policy which brings Israelis and Palestinians together for a lasting peace. What I fear is going on in the House now is an effort to target Congresswoman Omar as a way of stifling that debate. That's wrong.”

Kamala Harris:We all have a responsibility to speak out against anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and all forms of hatred and bigotry, especially as we see a spike in hate crimes in America. But like some of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, | am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk. We should be having a sound, respectful discussion about policy. You can both support Israel and be loyal to our country. I also believe there is a difference between criticism of policy or political leaders, and anti-Semitism. At the end of the day, we need a two-state solution and a commitment to peace, human rights, and democracy by all leaders in the region -- and a commitment by our country to help achieve that.

As far as I can tell, there is no Jew or Zionist that suggests that all criticism of Israel is antisemitic, the way that J-Street and these candidates are saying or implying.

Even the most right-wing Zionists accept the IHRA Working Definition of antisemitism. from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. It was adopted by the US State Department. It says this about criticism of Israel:

Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.

...Contemporary examples of antisemitism could include:

Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.

Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

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.

The IHRA defines legitimate criticism of Israel as the type that would be leveled at any other country. This is quite fair.

The question is, who would oppose this definition?

Who wants to say that singling out Israel for special criticism when other countries are worse is not a form of antisemitism? Who wants to defend an Electronic Intifada/Mondoweiss worldview where obsessive focus on Israel out of proportion to its actions is considered legitimate debate? Who wants to claim that boycotting Israel, and only Israel, is not antisemitic in practice?

Who wants to say that accusations of dual loyalty is not antisemitism?

Who wants to say that equating Jewish self-determination with racism is not antisemitism?

Either these candidates accept the definition set here, or they don't. If they don't, they should explain the exact problematic part of the definition that they believe is not true - and be prepared to defend that.

No one, and I mean no one, is shutting down debate over Israel when the criticism is legitimate according to this definition. Which means that these candidates, and J-Street, have a completely different definition of what "legitimate criticism" than the IHRA.

What is it?

When politicians talk about how much they are against antisemitism, they aren't saying what that means to them. If the IHRA definition is not to their liking, they must explain what specifically they disagree with.

The Democratic Party can make all this mess go away by adopting the eminently reasonable standard that the IHRA created. And if they did, it is obvious that Ilhan Omar really did spout Jew-hatred and must be censured.

If they don't want to do that, then it is their responsibility to come up with their own definition - and to defend it.

The IHRA should be the baseline for the discussion. It would add clarity to everyone's positions. And that is exactly why the Democratic Party will stay away from it - because it would expose a small but vocal minority of their members as engaging in antisemitic speech, and the party is too frightened to do anything to rein them in.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Balagan: chaos, total disorder, huge mess. Borrowed from Russian.

The incendiary and explosive balloons continue to be sent across our southern border, and the Hamas special “night unit” continues to burn tires and throw explosives over the fence, as well as to cross over into Israel, attack soldiers, and try to get at civilians. We continue to “respond” by bombing or shelling empty installations.

We are careful not to kill them, because we are told that if we kill them, their honor will require that they kill us in return; this will lead to an escalation. They want that, we are told, because there is humanitarian crisis in Gaza, primarily because their rivals in the Palestinian Authority have been cutting salary payments to PA officials in Gaza who either work for Hamas or don’t do anything. If there is an escalation, the crisis will get worse and the UN or other outside forces will step in and give them money, which they will spend on weapons or tunnels anyway.

Until recently, Israel has allowed Qatar to send millions in cash to Hamas, because nothing makes them madder than running out of money.

If there is an escalation, Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, and even Iranian forces in Syria will coordinate their efforts, there will be a two- or three- front war, and we would suffer a lot of casualties although we would “win.” That would be giving them what they want, we are told.

There is a news report that is emblematic of the insanity surrounding our relations with our Palestinian Arab enemies. It seems that the Israel Prison Service has been unable to stop the smuggling of cellular phones into facilities where Hamas terrorists have been imprisoned, so they are installing jamming devices. But – get ready for this – the IDF has asked them to suspend the work because of “its possible impact on the situation in the territories.”

At the same time the Iranian regime is trying to upgrade Hezbollah’s rockets with precision guidance kits. We are acting against it, insofar as the Russians allow, but likely we are simply slowing it down, not stopping it. Iran is also working to establish Shiite militia forces in Syria and Iraq, and of course proceeding with its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. We are certainly taking action, overt and covert, in these areas too, but again these operations are only capable of slowing the process, not stopping it.

Meanwhile, here at home the waqf and radical Muslims are trying to further erode the remains of our sovereignty on the Temple Mount. We proved to them last year that we were not prepared to defend it, when they forced Israel to back down from installing metal detectors and cameras at the entrances to the Mount in order to prevent any more of our policemen from being murdered. My prediction is that we will back down over this latest provocation too.

And then there is the illegal Bedouin encampment of Khan al-Ahmar, which even the Supreme Court says should be removed, which Bibi has solemnly promised to remove, but which we apparently can’t demolish because the Europeans wouldn’t like it.

Is your head spinning? Mine is. One wonders if we have a plan, or if we only react. One thing stands out in all of this: Israel, supposedly the eighth-strongest power in the world, militarily and economically (after the US, Russia, China, Germany, UK, France, and Japan), acts like she has no better option than to lie down and take it. Little by little, her sovereignty and security erodes. We don’t seem to have the will to confront these problems when they are manageable, and they only grow more intractable with time.

There are a number of reasons for this. For one thing, there’s the normal human propensity to put off trouble. Dealing with the root of the problems today would be disagreeable, more disagreeable than accepting their manifestations. Of course, tomorrow it will be worse, but tomorrow is not today and maybe something will change before then (someone more cynical than I might say, “it will be someone else’s responsibility, tomorrow.”)

Our Prime Ministers and their cabinets and generals are not supposed to think this way. They are supposed to think like good chess players, carefully laying the groundwork for their future actions, while systematically evaluating all the paths that the enemy might take, and developing contingency plans for them. Last week I played chess with my 9-year old grandson, and I relieved him of his queen because he was concentrating too hard on what he was about to do to me. By the time he becomes Prime Minister, I hope he will know better.

We can’t just blame our leaders. They are operating in a political system that pits an Attorney General and Supreme Court with undefined and arbitrarily broad powers against the PM and his government. So when they try to do something like make a deal with private companies to exploit newly-found and highly strategic natural gas reservoirs, suddenly the Court can stick its nose in and upset everything, as happened in 2016. Or they are stymied when they try to find some solution to deal with an illegal influx of tens of thousands of migrants, as happened in 2014 (most of them are still here, having children whose first language is Hebrew).

But while the legal establishment still hasn’t intervened directly in strategic military matters, the Attorney General, State Prosecutors’ Office, and police have driven the Prime Minister crazy with criminal investigations for pretty much the past 4 years (he was interrogated by police for several hours at a time at least 12 times in connection with various accusations against him and his wife). The charges have ranged from stupidly trivial to serious, but the overall impression is that they are out to get him on something, anything. Even apart from the political aspects of the legal assault – the Attorney General announced his intention to hold a pre-indictment hearing last week, a month before the election – it’s hard to believe that the PM has had much time to ponder his next moves in the multiple geostrategic games he is playing with Hamas, Iran, and others.

Then there is the perennial problem that minor parties that happen to hold the balance of power in the coalition can paralyze or even bring down a government because of one rabbi who is angry over something.

Other pressing matters, like the massively funded European campaign to intervene in our politics and policies, and to help the Palestinian Arabs create facts on the ground in Judea and Samaria, have proven difficult to deal with decisively, possibly because too many Knesset members benefit directly or indirectly from the influx of Euros.

One thing that we do not seem to have to deal with today is the pressure from an American administration for more and more concessions to the Palestinians, for the sake of an impossible peace. This could change after our election in April, when the Trump megadeal will be revealed. But I don’t think so – my feeling is that the Trump Administration is far more sympathetic to Israel than the last few, and will not try to impose a solution that we can’t live with.

On the other hand, the American election is not so far off, and the Democratic Party in the US is less friendly toward Israel today than even in the days of Obama. If Trump is not re-elected and the next administration is headed by a left-wing Democrat, the Obama period will look like a picnic in comparison. We’d best end the balagan while we can.

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03/07 Links Pt1: How Influential Is AIPAC? Less Than Beer Sellers, Public Accountants, and Toyota; PA warns: 'Without terrorist salaries we will nix Paris Protocol'; Debating pay-to-slay at the UN

From Ian:

How Influential Is AIPAC? Less Than Beer Sellers, Public Accountants, and Toyota

AIPAC has a somewhat unique model that a simple dollar comparison might miss. AIPAC-linked activists often begin donating to future members of Congress early in their political careers, thus encouraging other pro-Israel donors to fund and otherwise support candidates with long-term promise. Pro-Israel activists are a political force, but the reasons apparently go beyond sheer spending power or the influence of AIPAC-linked networks. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, pro-Israel donors were’ the 34th largest-giving interest group to members of Congress in 2018, slightly behind the nonprofit sector and slightly ahead of building-trades unions, neither of which are generally thought of as the invisible hand guiding American policy.

Even a large and impactful donor network is fairly useless without a Washington operation that can translate its priorities into actual legislation. The way AIPAC is talked about, you’d think they’d be a lobbying juggernaut, surely one of the largest in the nation’s capital.

Wrong again: For the period between 1998 and 2018, AIPAC didn’t make a dent in the Center for Responsive Politics’ list of the top-spending lobbying groups. The US Chamber of Commerce spent $1.5 billion during that span, with the National Association of Realtors coming in a distant second, at $534 million. In 2018, top spenders included Google parent company Alphabet, which spent $21.7 million in Washington, and Facebook, which shelled out over $12 million to lobbyists that year. The third-largest spender of 2018 was the Open Society Policy Center, a project of the notably Israel-critical billionaire George Soros, which ran up a $31.5 million tab in its attempts to influence the federal government. That nearly doubled the organization’s $16 million in spending in 2017, another year that AIPAC failed to crack the top 50, unlike such notorious civic menaces as American Amusements and AARP.

In 2018, total pro-Israel lobbying spending was around $5 million, of which AIPAC accounted for $3.5 million. In contrast, Native American casinos spent around $22 million that year. By Tablet’s count, AIPAC was the 147th highest-ranked entity in terms of lobbying spending in 2018. Their expenditures were about the same as International Paper, a company which is seldom tweet-stormed or even written about. The American Association of Airport Executives and Association of American Railroads outspent AIPAC by nearly a million dollars each—sensible, given the rivalry between the respective modes of transportation whose interests they represent. It’s $2 million behind both American Airlines and the Recording Industry Association of America, entities whose malign influence has gone regrettably underexamined over the years.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Arresting, Torturing Journalists

Under both the PA and Hamas, Palestinian journalists are expected to serve as faithful soldiers and mouthpieces for both their leaders and their people. In the world of the Palestinians, a journalist who dares to criticize his leaders is typically denounced as a "traitor" or "Zionist agent." That is undoubtedly the reason Palestinian journalists living under the PA and Hamas are afraid to report anything that would reflect negatively on Palestinian leaders.

In the world of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the only "good" journalists are those who report negatively about Israel. Independent journalists therefore find themselves forced to seek work in non-Palestinian media organizations, including some in Israel. Even then, these journalists, especially those who live under the PA and Hamas, engage in massive self-censorship.

The PA and Hamas crackdown on journalists is not a new practice and does not come as a surprise. On the contrary, the surprise would be the day we see a Palestinian journalist living in Ramallah open his or her mouth concerning Abbas or any of his top officials.

What is hard to understand are the continued closed mouths of the international community and media towards this ongoing assault on the freedom of the media in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Had Nasser and Abu Arafeh been arrested by the Israeli authorities, their "plight" would have been splashed over headlines across the globe.

What Declassified Vatican Archives Might Reveal about the Church and World War II

On Monday, Pope Francis announced his intention to open in their entirety the Vatican archives of Pius XII, who served in the papacy from 1939 to 1958. Even after the publication of thousands of documents in the 1960s and 1970s, Pius’s wartime activities have remained the subject of intense controversy, with one author dubbing him “Hitler’s pope” while others have argued that he saved hundreds, if not thousands, of Jewish lives. David Kertzer, a scholar of the wartime church, explains why the archives matter:

Less noticed in initial accounts of the announcement is the fact that Francis’s opening of the Pius XII archives makes available not only the seventeen million pages of documents in the central Vatican archives, but many other materials in other Church archives. Not least of these are the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition) and the central archives of the Jesuit order. They, too, are likely to have much that is new to tell us. . . .

In an effort to respond to critics, the Holy See commissioned four Jesuits to plow through the archives and publish a selection of documents shedding light on the controversy. The result, over a sixteen-year period beginning in 1965, was twelve thick volumes containing thousands of documents. Although skeptics suspected the Jesuit editors of selecting out documents unflattering to the Church, the volumes are far from a simple whitewash of this troubled history. . . .

[In 1999], the Vatican announced the creation of an unusual interreligious historical commission, composed of three Catholic and three Jewish scholars, tasked with shedding light on the role played by the Vatican as the Holocaust unfolded. After examining the twelve volumes of documents that had earlier been published, its members concluded that they could not draw any adequate historical conclusions without access to the archives themselves. When the Vatican refused to grant their request, the members decided to suspend their work, a decision that generated both embarrassment and polemics. . . .

Why does anyone take the idiot hypocrite Ariel Elyse Gold seriously?

Code Pink leader and anti-Israel activist Ariel Elyse Gold was on i24News yesterday defending Ilhan Omar's antisemitism.

But why does anyone take this idiot hypocrite seriously enough to even put her on the news?

Yesterday she proudly disrupted a press conference by former Muslim women who are now pro-Israel. Obviously those women must be silenced. Only some women have the right to free speech, according to this idiot.

She published an article yesterday entitled "Enjoy Your High, But Not at the Expense of Palestinian Human Rights" which is breathtaking in how little it makes sense. She claims that Israel's booming medical cannabis industry is a cover to whitewash Israeli crimes because ...some of the people involved were probably in the IDF. Like nearly very Jew in Israel.

Here's a section:

The company Together Pharma lists Guy Atia, an “expert in the security field,” as co-director and controlling shareholder, and retired Brigadier General Meir Ben Yishai as being in charge of “defense and security.” While it isn’t clear exactly what roles these two men play in the company, usually in Israel, the terms “defense” and “security” have some link to Israel’s military occupation and settlement economy.

Something bad is going on - she just knows it!

Is there any indication that buying Israeli medical marijuana products helps Israel's "occupation?" Not the slightest. And Gold doesn't bring any. She just reports "links" between people and their IDF activities because that is prima facie evidence that every Israeli industry is evil.

But links only go one way. Here she is at Representative Rashida Tlaib's office supporting Ilhan Omar:

Behind her we can see members of Neturei Karta, the fringe anti-Israel Jewish group.

Who are also anti-gay.

Gold is in solidarity with the most anti-liberal group one can imagine. She has links with an anti-gay organization - and by her logic in the cannabis article, that makes her anti-gay!

If she was "progressive" she would never agree to be linked to NK. But since NK is anti-Israel, then she is proud to be associated with them, no matter their own politics. (Miko Peled was also there.)

To Gold, wanting the destruction of the Jewish state is more important than any other so-called "progressive" principle. That is the basis of her intersectionality.

Which proves that she is not progressive at all - just a publicity hungry airhead.

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Yesterday I "stormed Al Aqsa" and "performed Talmudic rituals"

Yesterday, my wife and I were privileged to visit the Temple Mount, on a personal tour by Rabbi Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute.

I hope to make a video about the visit where you can hear what Rabbi Richman has to say about the holiest place in Judaism.

We were in a group of perhaps 20 Jews, men and women and even an infant, along with a number of police. Most of the group listened to a charismatic barefooted Israeli who described the Temple and the importance of the site in Hebrew.

At one point, though, we were able to pray the afternoon Mincha service - with a minyan, a quorum - facing the place of the Holy of Holies, from the east. Answering "Amen" to a Kaddish prayer that has a different wording when said on this holy spot.

Yes, I was one of the "settlers" who performed a "Talmudic ritual" while "storming Al Aqsa," as the Arab media likes to characterize this.

The prayers were mostly silent, but there is no way that the Muslim Waqf guards were not aware of what we were doing. After all, in years past, people would be warned and harassed for just moving their lips, pretending to be on the phone - anything that looked like prayer. And here we were, openly praying, for nearly five minutes, quietly and with utmost respect for the holy site.

Certain parts of the Amida have a lot more meaning when praying at that spot!

I'm not saying anything new that isn't already known. I posted a video of people praying only a few weeks ago from that same spot, published on an Arab site.

By the way, those stones visible in the lower picture are debris from previous building activities by Muslims on the site, and if one has time to spend (which the guards don't let one have) you can see that some are clearly parts of columns that were carved - possibly from the Second Temple itself.

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In its hatchet job on Israel released last week, the UN Human Rights Council wrote:

Some activities, such as the launching of incendiary kites, cutting barbed wire or tyre burning, began to be organized by self-declared “units”, some of them through their own Facebook pages. The commission found no evidence to suggest that they were directed or coordinated by armed groups.

The document later on referred to incendiary balloons as well, but only said that they were launched by "demonstrators" - which means civilians to them - and with no reference to such attacks being launched by armed groups.

The only problem is that Gaza terror groups happily brag about being the organizers of units to launch firebombs on balloons.

I already posted one video by Islamic Jihad about their balloon firebomb unit. They just posted another one, seemingly to mock the UNHRC report that effectively exonerated them.

The video also shows Islamic Jihad members engaging in the "demonstrations" making it very clear that from their perspective, these border riots are purely military.

The UNHRC bent over backwards to ignore any evidence that the demonstrations had a military component because then the rules that apply to them are the laws of armed conflict, quite different from the laws that govern police actions towards civilians.

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