Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, July 19, 2019

Cartoon of the Day: Jewish Voice for Peace's idea of US cops

Continuing my series of re-captioning single panel cartoons...

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Albawaba is a Jordanian based Arab news site that, in English, looks professional and youth oriented.

A media bias/fact check site found it to be unbiased.

In Arabic, though, things are a little different.

This article doesn't say anything new but it touches on all the standard Arab antisemitic thinking:

President Donald Trump considered Jerusalem as the capital of Israel based on a lie that Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish people. We know that Judaism is only a religion, but the Jewish religion is not national, which makes us deny the existence of a Jewish people. ... Is there any connection between the Jews of Israel and the Jews of the people of Moses peace be upon him? The Jews that are Khazars have nothing to do with the Jews of the time of Moses, peace be upon him, neither in form, in language. As well as the Jews of Yemen .. Falasha Jews .. They are residents of Abyssinia and did not know Palestine and did not visit them and have no relationship with the Jews in terms of form, race or language. There were also Jews in the Arabian Peninsula, the Jews of Khyber, Bani al-Nathir and Bani Qinqaa. They are Arabs who have nothing to do with Israel.

For Jews, there is no religion except Judaism. The Islamic and Christian holy sites do not matter to Israel, nor do they consider them to have any sanctity, in addition to their being unwelcome.

The Jews are known for lying and charging interest and fornication since ancient times. They are a people of terrorists, as described by the Torah, the Bible among the Jews, who robbed the Egyptians of gold and fled under the cover of darkness when they came out of Egypt with deceit. They invented an imaginary pretext and fled from Egypt under the cover of darkness. In the Sinai instead of the worship of God one of them crafted a calf of gold to him until the Jews worshiped it as stated in the Torah...

The Jews are a false and fraudulent people. We are puzzled by this crooked people. Their prophet orders them to steal and their Lord helps them. Their holy book tells us that theft and fraud are among the great ideals and values that they boast to the peoples of the world.

As a result of these qualities in the Jews, they were expelled from the European countries several times...

If the Jews read Jewish and Islamic history they'd see how the Arabs embraced them and treated them excellently, but they are like a snake after you take care of it, the fangs are planted with the deadly poison to those who hugged and warmed them.

The existence of such hate in a mainstream Arab publication is disgusting, but that isn't the worst part. The worst part is that there is absolutely zero criticism from any of the hundreds of millions of Arabs who are exposed to this type of article, even though they all swear they are not antisemitic at all.

In other words, this bile is not treated in the Arab world as opinion, but as fact.

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Yes, Israel should allow Tlaib and Omar to visit

Jewish Insider reports that both Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar plan to visit Israel and the PA-controlled territories next month.

The question is whether Israel should allow them to enter, given that they are both BDS supporters.

The Entry into Israel Law (Amendment No. 28), 2017, says that people who advocate BDS should not be allowed into Israel but exceptions can be made:

(d)A visa or residence permit of any kind will not be given to a non-Israeli citizen or a person who has an Israeli permanent residence permit if s/he, or his/her organization; or the body in which s/he works for has knowingly published a public call to boycott the State of Israel as defined in the Law for Prevention of Damage to the State of Israel through Boycott – 2011 (5771), or if this person has committed to participate in such a boycott.
(e) Despite what was mentioned in sub-section (d), the Minister of the Interior is entitled to grant the visa or residence permit mentioned in the aforementioned sub-section for special reasons which must be specified.

Haaretz reports that even though the law says that the Minister of the Interior can allow such an exception, given the sensitivity of the issue in this case the decision will be made by Benjamin Netanyahu himself.

Last year Israel tried to deny student Lara Alqasem entry to the country based on this law, and Israel's Supreme Court ruled that she should be allowed to enter.

When Israel tried to deport Human Rights Watch's Omar Shakir for his anti-Israel activities, the Supreme Court again ruled that he can stay while fighting the order. He's still in Israel and it is not clear when the ruling will come.

As Professor Eugene Kontorovich notes, “It’s very hard for the Israeli government to actually apply the law because, basically in practice, everybody who they try to bar immediately turns to the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court has barred the effective implementation of the law, and unfortunately, that results in a situation where Israel gets all of the criticism for applying it without the actual benefits of being able to exclude people. Omar is an American congressperson. That is a very strong reason for admitting her. But at the same time, I would expect Israel would seek the opinion of the United States government as to whether to admit her.”

Moreover, Israeli law allowed the country to deny entry to people who are a danger to the State before this law.Anti-Israel activist Norman Finkelstein was deported and given a 10-year ban in 2008 and Noam Chomsky was denied entry in 2010, before Amendment No. 28.

It is the right of any country to bar anyone from entering, and the US and UK do it all the time, for example. The current law is not effective in the least, it allows the haters of Israel to engage in drawn out legal proceedings which grab headlines for weeks, it was not necessary to begin with and it has been an unmitigated public relations disaster for Israel.

Refusing entry to Tlaib and Omar would be exactly what they want. It will paint Israel in the media as cruel (for not allowing Tlaib to bring her kids to see her grandmother) and petty (for looking so insecure that it cannot handle the inevitable criticism that both members of Congress will bring up, no matter what they see in Israel.)

This is a PR war. Tlaib and Omar are very good at PR. Israel needs to be better, and barring their entry is the exact wrong decision.

Instead, Israel should make a very public show of welcoming them. It should recommend - and provide logistics - for them to visit the real Israel.

Not Yad Vashem. Not the Kotel. Not the usual destinations that Israel brings politicians.

Instead, Israel should invite them to see the Israel Museum, which carefully shows Jewish, Christian and Muslim history in the Land in equal measure.

They should be invited to see the Museum of Islamic Art, in Jerusalem.

They should be invited to the Mamilla Mall, or really any Jerusalem mall, where Arabs and Jews freely shop together without a second thought.

They should be invited to see Umayyad Muslim archaeological structures that were discovered and are being preserved by Israel in the Old City that we are being told is being "Judaized."

They should be invited to the Peres Center for Peace to see soccer games between Jewish and Arab youth.

They should be invited to see the high tech laboratories in Tel Aviv - and Nazareth.

They should be encouraged to speak to Arab workers at Rami Levy supermarkets (even in the "settlements") or at Sodastream.

The invitations should come not only from Likud officials but from the other parties as well.

All of these invitations should be very public and emphasize how Muslims and Arabs are truly treated in Israel, not how the media portrays it.

The Israel haters carefully choose where to bring their tourists to maximize hate for Israel - but they are the ones who are not allowing the tourists to talk to ordinary people.

To undermine their lies, Israel merely needs to show the reality. Even if that includes the Ethiopian Jewish protests.

They won't become Zionists. That isn't the point. This is a public relations war, a war that Israel still needs to do a better job at. Banning them, or even talking about banning them, makes Israel look like it is afraid of the truth. Making Tlaib and Omar refuse invitations by high level officials will reveal which side is secure and which is afraid of the truth.

And if they accept the invitations, then dozens of reporters will write a little more about what Israel is really like.

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07/18 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Trump's Tweetstorm Correctly Linked Anti-Americanism to Antisemitism; ABC (Australia) in ‘absolute denial’ over Hamas ‘wanting blood’

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Trump's Tweetstorm Correctly Linked Anti-Americanism to Antisemitism

President Donald Trump’s tweets on Sunday drew predictable condemnation. But aside from the partisan debate about whether they were racist, they contained an important truth: hatred of Jews and hatred of America are linked.

Trump told the so-called “squad” of radical Democrats — Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — they could leave the country if they hate it so much. He drew criticism because he said that they came from foreign countries; in fact, only Omar did.

But Trump also highlighted a basic fact about the nature of leftist ideology. Just as the Iranian regime views the United States and Israel as two sides of the same coin, with the ayatollahs dubbing the U.S. “the Great Satan” and Israel, “the Little Satan,” so the radical left views the U.S. and Israel – the most powerful democracy in the world and the only democracy in the Middle East – as states with no moral foundation for existing.

Although other presidents have spoken out against hatred of Jews and Israel on the one hand and hatred of America on the other, it is hard to think of another example of a U.S. leader making the case that the two hatreds are linked as Trump did this week.

This is important, because they are linked. The haters see both America and the Jews as all-powerful forces who use their power to bend the world to their nefarious, avaricious, greedy aims. They stereotype both Americans and pro-Israel and traditional Jews as vulgar and fascist.

Yisrael Medad: Arab-American Anti-Zionism Before Tlaib and Omar

The undermining of Zionism in America by Arabs and Muslims is not new.

As researched here, by Daniel Rickenbachert, there were early attempts and one of them was in January of 1930, when the Mufti-led Supreme Muslim Council (SMC) and the Arab Executive, sent two delegations to the US and to Britain to promote the Arab cause, this just after the murderous 1929 Riots.

As appears there, the delegation to the US consisted of the Syrian pan-Islamic activist Shakib Arslan, his brother Adel Arslan, Issa Bandak and three other members. In the US, the delegation met with the State Department, arguing that only the abolition of the Balfour Declaration could lead to a reconciliation between Jews and Arabs. The delegation also appealed to the Arab-Americans to “emulate the American Jews” by giving donations to the SMC. However, the undertaking was reportedly a financial disaster. This may explain why there were no further Arab delegations from Palestine during the next seven years.

But the first one to speak out against Zionism was an American-Lebanese, Amin Rihani who arrived in the US in 1898. That was in September 1917, two months before the Balfour Declaration, when he published an anti-Zionism piece. In his article,

ABC (Australia) in ‘absolute denial’ over Hamas ‘wanting blood’

Sky News host Andrew Bolt says there are people in Australia, helped by the ABC, in ‘absolute denial’ about Hamas wanting 'blood', and not wanting peace.

Latin Map of "The Holy Land or Promised Land (Formerly Palestine)," 1659

The Latin title of this 1659 map by Dutch cartographer Nicolaus Visscher translates to "The Holy Land or Promised Land (Formerly Palestine), Recently Depicted and Published."

It features a picture of the Jewish Holy Temple, surrounded by its various holy objects and utensils.

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Land Shows Objections To Jewish Control By Blooming, Flourishing Under Jewish Control (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Kibbutz Keturah, July 18 - The sacred Islamic land of Palestine has made clear its existential revulsion for Jews exercising sovereignty there over the last seven decades, demonstrating its disgust with the phenomenon via such unequivocal acts as producing agricultural and horticultural bounty unprecedented in such an arid climate and lending its previously infertile areas to successful, productive cultivation, but only while Jews govern it.

The land, which supported perhaps tens of thousands of people at a time during the centuries leading up to the Zionist usurpation of its precious soil, now only houses ten million, an unmistakable sign that Palestine cannot abide Jewish control of its natural resources. Another sure indication of its displeasure features in the country attaining the unique status of the only one in the world to achieve a net increase in the number of trees over the last century.

Experts call the land's expressions of distaste for Jewish control unmistakable. "It takes extreme situations for the soil of Palestine to react in such an extreme fashion," explained Yessir Amafart, a Palestine Liberation Organization official. "It didn't react this way for the Romans, Parthians, Byzantines, Rashidun Caliphs, Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatmids, Seljuks, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mameluks, Ottomans, or British. The land is telling us something clear, and we must act accordingly."

Arab residents of the land and neighboring areas have taken upon themselves to remedy the situation: from Gaza, daily volleys of bombs and incendiary devices travel via helium, wind, or drones travel over the border fence to set alight as much farmland and nature as possible. Arab vandals strike Jewish farms almost nightly, stealing livestock, damaging equipment, attempting to prevent the land from continuing its tantrum. In some locations, local Arabs cut down their own olive orchards and blame it on Jewish settlers, in an effort to both remedy the sacred land's corrupted output and put pressure on the instigators of that output to leave. And throughout the country and region, numerous activists fight to reduce the number of Jews provoking the land's abnormal activity, albeit with limited success.

In the one area Jews did leave, the Gaza Strip, activists have long worked to reverse the dangerous growth of Jewish-cultivated plants and produce. "When the Jews left in 2005 we destroyed the greenhouses they left behind," recalled local resident Qutnoz Sbaytfeis. "Some American do-gooder philanthropist thought we might want to continue working there and making a living, but we can't risk the land being fruitful for us after the Jews were here. It would be sacrilege."

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07/18 Links Pt1: PA: The US is "racist" and helps Israel "Judaize" Jerusalem; Southern Syria, aka "Palestine"

From Ian:

PMW: PA: The US is "racist" and helps Israel "Judaize" Jerusalem

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, US Envoy Jason Greenblatt, and US Senator Lindsey Graham took part in the inauguration ceremony last month of the Pilgrimage Road subterranean archaeological site, located south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The excavated road was used by Jewish pilgrims visiting the Second Temple around the first century CE, and the Arab neighborhood of Silwan has since been built above it.

The PA called the opening of the ancient road an act of "Judaization," and PA Chairman Abbas repeated the PA libel that Israel works to "change Jerusalem's Arab characteristics":
"[PA] President Abbas explained to his Russian colleague [President Vladimir Putin] about the crisis in the relations with Israel, and also about the daily violations, the latest of which was the excavation of a tunnel in order to change Jerusalem's Arab characteristics" [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 13, 2019]

Senior PA officials used the opportunity to criticize and condemn the American officials present at the opening. Abbas' advisor on religious affairs and Islamic relations, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, accused Friedman and the other US officials of "piracy" and repeated the PA's denial of any Jewish historical presence ever in Jerusalem, claiming that it is "an Arab, Palestinian, and Islamic city":
"He [Al-Habbash] emphasized that [Friedman's] actions constitute piracy and a blatant attack against international law, which considers Jerusalem an occupied city and a purely Islamic heritage [site]... Al-Habbash said that the colonialist acts of Trump's administration and its representatives - led by settler Friedman - in Jerusalem... will not change the historical and religious truth regarding the city, as it is an Arab, Palestinian, and Islamic city - it was and will remain such until Allah inherits the earth and its inhabitants. He noted that the plots of the occupation state, and behind it the colonialist administration that controls the White House, will not succeed in Judaizing the city or changing its Islamic and Palestinian character." [WAFA, official PA news agency, June 30 2019]

Al-Habbash added that Friedman is like an extremist and racist settler:
"Friedman's activities are as far as possible from diplomacy, as he is behaving like an extremist settler who is controlled by racist ideas against all people, and not only against the Palestinian people."

From the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs: Examining the international community's long-standing double standard on refugees

Is it time for some tough-love for the Palestinian refugees? What role has the international community played in keeping the Palestinians as perpetual victims? If hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab lands can be resettled, why can't the Palestinians?

From the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs: Examining the international community's long-standing double standard on refugees, written by Natalie Hilderan, editor-at-large for the J'accuse Coalition for Justice.

The following steps, in particular, are necessary to make progress toward improving the status of Palestinian refugees:

1. ...UNRWA ought to be replaced by a program that promotes self-governance for Palestinians currently in the Palestinian Authority, and citizenship for Palestinians living in other Arab countries, rather than simply welfare for an ever-ballooning refugee population....

2. ...Arab governments hosting Palestinian refugees must embrace the benefits of integration, beginning with full citizenship....

3. ...In addition to pursuing economic prosperity for Palestinians, Arab governments must abandon culturally and/or religiously motivated retribution against Israel because such an attitude allows Palestinians to prioritize resistance ahead of reconciliation....
Read it all here

Yisrael Medad: Southern Syria, aka "Palestine"

I have blogged several times that, historically, a specific Palestinianism, that is, an Arab nationalism based on a country called Palestine and one distinct from other forms of Arab nationalisms, was quite late in developing.

Palestine was a region of Syria. It never was an independent country or state and its borders altered over centuries as did its internal administrative boundaries.

The idea to rejoin Palestine to Syria was a staple of their propaganda.

Into the mid-1920s, the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission was receiving such requests. This line continued years later.

Here are some abstracts from a PhD dissertation relating to the subject:
...In December 1918, Hitti and George Khairalla established the New Syria National League. The group lobbied for the establishment of a Greater Syria under American protection, reaching from the Sinai to the Euphrates.229 These groups intensified their activities in light of the upcoming peace conference in Paris. Shatara and Hitti reached out to John Huston Finley, the chief of the Red Cross Commission in Palestine, asking Finley not to detach Palestine from Greater Syria.230 During the conference, Hitti’s New Syria National League also sent a telegram to Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau advocating an American protectorate over Syria. 231 Abraham Mitrie Ribhany, the
author of ‘America save the Near East’ (cited above) and a member of both the Palestine Antizionism Society and the New Syria National League, attended the Paris conference. His presence allowed for direct lobbying with the American representatives in Paris and the members of the King-Crane commission. On March 15, he sent a petition on behalf of the New Syria National League to the Americans, which was also read by commission chief Henry C. King. The petition made the case for an American mandate over a Greater Syria.

A Twitter exchange with a genteel antisemite (whose opinion of Arabs isn't much better)

I was struck by this short exchange on Twitter between Honest reporting and Frank McDonald, a former editor of the Irish Times:

I noted, "A former editor of Irish Times justifies the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Iraq by saying that Arabs just can't help themselves. What a racist."

This exchange followed:

Frank McDonald
@frankmcdonald60
I never said that, and I'm not a racist in any way. What I wrote is the truth, much as you try to deny it. The fact is that Jews lived quite happily throughout the Middle East until 1948. Their expulsion from Iraq and elsewhere was a reaction to what happened in Palestine.

Elder Of Ziyon ҉
So would Arab Americans have been justified in attacking Jews in America in 1948? Can YOU attack Jews in Ireland TODAY because of, oh, Gaza or Nakba, or whatever? You are justifying Arab antisemitism by calling it "inevitable." Which means you are saying Arabs cannot help it.

Frank McDonald
Not at all. I never suggested that they should. Merely that the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries in the Middle East was a reaction to the Naqba in Palestine and that this was inevitable under the circumstances of the time. That's all.

Elder Of Ziyon ҉
People attacking Muslims after 9/11 was a reaction - but not "inevitable." It is only inevitable for bigots. Did you even bother to read the article? It highlighted the Farhud - the Iraqi pogrom against Jews in 1941. Sort of ruins your thesis of peaceful relations before 1948.

Frank McDonald
I know it was not always a bed of roses for Jewish communities in other countries, and that there were outbreaks of anit-Semitism from time to time. But Israel's dispossession & expulsion 750,000 indigenous Arabs was so outrageous that it's not surprising there was a reaction.

Elder Of Ziyon ҉
You are an object lesson in genteel bigotry, and you are completely clueless about it.

Frank McDonald
I am not a bigot, genteel or otherwise. Neither am I "clueless" about history. I suppose that we in Ireland, having been oppressed ourselves for centuries, tend to take the side of the oppressed, such as Palestinians. Others, such as you, take the side of the oppressor, Israel.

Elder Of Ziyon ҉
This thread shows otherwise. As far as your errors about Israel are concerned, if you want to be educated, you can read my blog (although we have seen you actually don't read beyond headlines) or engage with the @irlisrAlliance. Perhaps you can shake your prejudices.

Frank McDonald
I don't have "prejudices", but rather seek out & separate the truth from the miasma of mythology. I mentioned earlier that the Israeli military are currently censoring historical records about Jewish terrorist massacres during the Naqba, and hope you don't approve of that.

Elder Of Ziyon ҉
I could prove that nearly all you have said about Israel is wrong, but it is a waste of time arguing with someone who has shown little regard for truth here. For the record I am against the removal of archives from the public, and said so...after verifying the story was true.

Frank McDonald
The latter is good to hear. I'm well up on what really happened in 1948, having read David Hirst's great book, The Gun & the Olive Branch, before my first visit to Israel/Palestine in 1980, and many others since, including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappé.

Elder Of Ziyon ҉
Have you read Benny Morris, and his scathing critiques of Pappe? Or do you only choose to read history that conforms with your prejudices? I'll be writing up this exchange, and I'll add an analogy that has a 0.01% chance of getting through to you.

Frank McDonald
Likewise, I'm sure. You propagate Zionist mythology, in which right is left, black is white, up is down, etc. It is shameful that many Israelis are in the dark about their own history. At least in Ireland, we have a much more rounded view of our past, once we dispelled the myths.

So far, the thread shows a typical anti-Israel bigot who has zero ability to think critically about any accusation against Israel, repeating mantras and clueless about how he ha justified antisemitism (and how his opinion of Iraq's antisemitism as an inevitable reaction to Zionism mirrors exactly the thinking of Islamic terror groups who always say that their attacks on civilians are a "natural reaction" to whatever Israeli "crime" is the flavor of the week.

But he also commented on my tweet yesterday about the antisemitic statements of Niall Collins:

So McDonald justifies Arab antisemitism, defends Irish antisemitism and (elsewhere) defends Jeremy Corbyn as well.

Hmmm.

It is generally pointless to try to defend Israel in these sorts of exchanges because the other side will keep repeating the mantras of "apartheid" and "racism" and cherry pick examples, real or imagined. Any other facts are discarded.

Anyway, to this point, I mentioned an analogy to his biased way of looking at Israel that has a tiny chance of getting through to him.

In 2010, this same Frank McDonald was arrested for hitting a woman at a hotel for "smirking" when he complained about the noise in the nightclub which was disturbing his sleep. Someone sent me this information as a "gotcha" for my debate. I don't do stuff like that, since it is irrelevant and out of context.

Now, imagine that every single article about McDonald mentions this incident. Imagine there are demonstrations outside his house every day for his history of hitting women. Imagine that his name is associated with woman beating and the very name McDonald becomes toxic, that every time he speaks at an event there are op-eds against his being treated like a human being.

That's what it is like being Israeli in the circles he inhabits.

Most of the libels against Israel are trumped up or false or out of context. But there are sometimes things that Israel does that isn't right, like every state on Earth. The haters of Israel will harp on those, and try to take away all oxygen from any other story about Israel. They compare Israel against a mythical ideal, not against other countries that do worse - and most of them are far worse.

I have one question for McDonald. He was the Environment Editor for the Irish Times. Israel is by any measure a world leader in environmental issues, such as water recycling, desalination and re-forestation.

Has he ever once written a positive article about Israel in that area? And if so, did he manage to do it without mentioning something negative?

If not, I think it proves everything I am saying about him.

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On September 26, UNRWA's American friends will lobby Congress to support the organization.

Here's their blurb:

On Thursday, September 26, the relay runners [from another promotion] will be joined by UNRWA alumni, people who attended UNRWA schools and now live in the United States, for our first-ever Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill, including meetings with key lawmakers and their staff to educate them on how UNRWA's work represents a good humanitarian investment that also supports the national security interests of our country.

How, exactly, does donating to UNRWA support the USA's national interests?

They provide free housing, medical care and schooling to descendants of refugees from 1948. UNRWA-USA says that if those free services are discontinued, there will be threats to the US. The clear implication is that if Palestinian "refugees" don't continue to receive their free benefits, they will turn violent and attack US interests.

UNHCR doesn't beg for money by claiming that the refugees they help (who get a tiny fraction of the services UNRWA provides) will turn violent without it. No one says that the US should start to give free services to the poor of sub-Saharan Africa or other impoverished regions for national security reasons.

No, only Palestinians must be funded, forever, at the implied risk of them attacking Western targets if not.

Of all the people who need help in the world, only Palestinians are assumed to be naturally violent.

Besides the fact that this is quite racist, it brings up the question: If Palestinians are assumed to turn violent when they don't get what they want, is that a reason to fund them - or an excellent reason not to fund them?

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H.Res.496 introduced by Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib is an attempt to sanction antisemitism under the guise of "free speech."

The most offensive part is its comparison of boycotting Israel with boycotting Nazi goods:

Whereas Americans of conscience have a proud history of participating in boycotts to advocate for human rights abroad, including—
(2) boycotting Nazi Germany from March 1933 to October 1941 in response to the dehumanization of the Jewish people in the lead-up to the Holocaust;

This is Holocaust inversion and it is one of the examples of antisemitism under the IHRA definition, "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis."

Yes, US Congress now has a resolution that will be debated that includes antisemitism.

But perhaps the most insidious part of the resolution is saying that it is only supporting "boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights."

You see, boycotts are just another word for discrimination. Every boycott says that the boycotter will choose one provider of goods and services over another based on reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the product.

The exact same logic that protects boycotts of Israelis applies to bigots boycotting businesses owned by blacks or gays or immigrants or women.

In order to forestall the free speech protection of boycotts against people who fall on the positive side of intersectionality pseudo-science, Omar and Tlaib are characterizing BDS not as a product of bigotry and antisemitism but as "pursuit of civil and human rights."

Even if this resolution gets defeated, their underlying logic that implies that Israel is a violator of human rights on par with Nazi Germany will be debated in Congress and enshrined in the proceedings of Congress forever. As I have recently noted, the debate itself is what BDS is after, not the boycott - they want to normalize anti-Zionism and its antisemitic components as a mainstream opinion.

As I have noted in the past, BDS is explicitly antisemitic. The call to boycott "Israeli" goods does not extend to good created by Arab Israelis. The call to boycott "settlement" goods only applies to goods created by Israeli Jews, not Israeli Arabs. A look through the businesses in industrial parks in Mishor Adumim, Barkan, Atarot and other "settlements" show quite a few with Arab names, like Radwan Brothers Refrigeration and Air Conditioning or Khaled Ali Metals or the Shweiki Glass Factory.

None of them are on the lists of "Israeli" companies to boycott. Because they are not owned by Jews.

So, yes, BDS is antisemitic and Omar and Tlaib are defending antisemitic boycotts under the pretense not only of "free speech" but of "protecting human and civil rights." This is a very serious line being crossed.

(For a comprehensive list of legal arguments that show that there is nothing at all wrong with anti-BDS laws, see David Bernstein here and here.)

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Odeh Bisharat is an Arab novelist, political writer and activist, who is also – quite painfully for him – a citizen of the Jewish state of Israel. He recently published an op-ed in that flagship of Jewish shame, Ha’aretz, in which he describes the display at Arab schools of the flag of the state of Israel, the very Jewish magen david, as “an act of sadism:”

After all, the national flag … is related to the Arabs’ tragedies from 1948 to the present. It provokes considerable sadness, bitterness and even revulsion. It was under this flag that most of the Arab villages were captured in 1948, and later their residents were expelled under this flag, and in the shadow of this flag all those villages were destroyed. …

The Arabs don’t object to the flag because of what it symbolizes for the Jews — a state and independence — but because of what it symbolizes for the Arabs: expulsion and destruction.

I understand. After all, Jews were forced to stand in view of all kinds of flags, from the Roman standards that symbolized the destruction of our holy Temple and expulsion from our homeland of Judea, to the Christian cross of persecution, and even the twisted cross of Nazi Germany.

But painful or not, there is an important lesson conveyed by the flag of the state of Israel to its Arab residents, a lesson that Bisharat rejects with his “sadness, bitterness and even revulsion.” That lesson, which the editors of Ha’aretz also would prefer not to learn, is that the Jews won their War of Independence in 1948, a war that was forced upon them by the refusal of the Arab residents of the land and their Arab neighbors to accept any Jewish state, no matter how small.

It was a vicious war, in which the Arab armies eliminated any trace of Jewish presence in the areas they controlled, expelling or murdering the people and destroying synagogues and even cemeteries. The Arab nakba was nothing compared to the “war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades,” in the words of the Arab League’s Abdel Rahman Azzam, that would have occurred had the Arabs won.

But note: they didn’t win. A Jewish state was created, one which does not insist on ethnic purity within its borders; and Odeh Bisharat lives and works in it, received a university education in it, can vote and hold political office in it, and is not punished – indeed, he is paid – for vilely speaking out against it as he does.

Nevertheless, he should be aware that the Jews didn’t go through the trials of blood required to create their state to turn it into a “state of its citizens” or a binational state. It is and will be a Jewish state with a Jewish flag, other Jewish symbols, a right of return for Jews only, and even a Nation-State Law that asserts those propositions.

Bisharat does not like to be reminded – it is a “sadistic” torture – of the fact that a Jewish state was established on land that he believes should belong to Arabs. I am sure that if it were pointed out to him that there are 21 explicitly Arab states in the world and only this one Jewish state, he would say that there is only one Palestine, and that it should belong to the “Palestinian people.”

Excuse me, but this is rubbish. “Palestinians” didn’t even self-identify as such until the mid-1960s, when the KGB suggested that this would be a good strategy. Palestinian Arabs are mostly descended from 19^th and 20^th century migrants from various countries in the Arab world, and their culture reflects that. Unlike the Jewish people, they do not have a unique language, religion, or place of origin. What is specifically “Palestinian” about their culture is its ultra-violent hatred and rejection of Jewish sovereignty; as well as airline hijacking, suicide bombing, and stabbing random Jews in the street. What else is “Palestinian?”

Odeh Bisharat does not have a deed to this land. If the Arabs of Palestine had any claim to justice, it was blown away by the hundredth exploding bus or pizza restaurant. His “revulsion” is misdirected: it should be aimed at the real architects of the nakba, the Arab states that tried to wipe out the Jews and then put the Arab refugees of 1948 in camps instead of resettling them, as Israel did for the Jews fleeing Arab countries. It should be aimed at Haj Amin al-Husseini, who incited pogroms against Jews and then went to Germany to work with Hitler to create a Middle Eastern edition of the Holocaust. It should be aimed at Yasser Arafat, who made himself fabulously wealthy by stealing aid intended for Palestinian Arabs, while masterminding international terrorism and creating an educational system that has been successfully breeding murderers since 1993.

Arab citizens of Israel need to think regularly about these things. They would rather not. It’s more comfortable to see themselves as victims or resistance fighters. But if they want to live here, to enjoy the benefits of a relatively uncorrupt and highly developed modern society, they will have to understand that here they will always be Arabs living in a Jewish state. If displaying the flag on every school, Arab or Jewish, will help make that clear to everyone, it’s worth Bisharat’s discomfort.

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07/17 Links Pt2: Jews are routinely being attacked in the streets of New York City; “Intersectionality” has become “a toxic mixture of racial and identity politics where anti-Zionism is the unifying feature”

From Ian:

Everybody Knows

According to the New York City Police Department, the city has seen nineteen violent anti-Semitic attacks in the first half of this year and 33 in 2018, compared with only seventeen in the previous year. There is reason to believe many more unreported incidents have taken place. Overwhelmingly, the victims are Orthodox Jews in the ḥasidic Brooklyn neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Borough Park, and Williamsburg. Armin Rosen, examining this phenomenon, notes that no discernible pattern can be identified among the perpetrators, who have no links to anti-Israel groups, Islamists, the alt-right, or any known anti-Semitic ideology:

One popular explanation both within and beyond the affected communities is that Jews are being blamed for gentrification. . . But if rising housing prices really are causing the anti-Semitism surge, then it means New York’s harassers and attackers are little different from Jew-haters of centuries past, who have always blamed their Jewish neighbors for whatever the current evils happen to be—whether it’s bubonic plague or the arrival of wealthy newcomers. Nor is there a public record showing dozens of random attacks against gentrifying white hipsters in the same neighborhoods. . . .

Another explanation for the spike is that there is no spike: Orthodox Jews have always been attacked and harassed in New York. The perception of a rise in anti-Semitism may therefore be a function of heightened vigilance and reporting, social media, and omnipresent security cameras in Jewish neighborhoods.

Whatever the explanation, Rosen continues, the official response has been lackluster:

There is scant evidence that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration or local politicians have made stopping physical attacks on Jews in New York City a priority. After [he was nearly strangled to death outside of his synagogue in Crown Heights in 2018], recalls Menachem Moskowitz, “not one politician came to me to find out what happened or comforted me.”

“Intersectionality” has become “a toxic mixture of racial and identity politics where anti-Zionism is the unifying feature”

On July 15, 2019, I spoke at the Department of Justice Summit on Combatting Anti-Semitism, on a panel regarding Anti-Semitism on Campus. My presentation was on “Intersectionality.”

Attorney General William Barr, in his opening statement to the Summit, specifically noted the importance of intersectional anti-Semitism:
Another panel will focus on the problem of anti-Semitism on campus. On college campuses today, Jewish students who support Israel are frequently targeted for harassment, Jewish student organizations are marginalized, and progressive Jewish students are told they must denounce their beliefs and their heritage in order be part of “intersectional” causes. We must ensure – for the future of our country and our society – that college campuses remain open to ideological diversity and respectful of people of all faiths.”