The Arab Liberation Army was set up by the Arab League in late 1947 specifically to fight the Jews in Palestine, before the British Mandate expired. It was staffed with volunteers.
Its first attack inside the boundaries of the Mandate was in January, 1948.
Given that its name was the Arab Liberation Army, one might think that the primary goal of the army was to set up an Arab state in liberated Palestine.
But its logo showed that the purpose was not to build a political entity - but to destroy one.
How much more obvious does it need to be?
Here is an armored vehicle used by the ALA that was captured by the Haganah, which has the logo:
Remember, this is before the State of Israel and its flag. While Zionist did use the Star of David, this representation of the dagger through the Star cannot be interpreted as anything but pure antisemitism.
Since then, nothing has changed, but it is not politically correct to point that out.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Tuesday that if he is re-elected, he will express Israeli sovereignty over all the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, starting with the Jordan Valley.
Netanyahu said the steps would be taken in coordination with the administration of US President Donald Trump. He revealed that Trump intends to announce his Middle East peace plan the day after the September 17 election.
“This is an historic opportunity that we may not have again,” Netanyahu said in his statement that he delivered at Ramat Gan’s Kfar Hamaccabiah Hotel.
Pointing to a map of the Jordan Valley, he said Israel could carry out the plan without annexing a single Palestinian and while ensuring that Palestinians maintain complete freedom of movement.
He warned that if he did not win the election, Blue and White leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid would not take such steps and would not be able to handle the Trump administration’s plan.
But both Gantz and Lapid have said in the past that they envision keeping the Jordan Valley forever.
Fatah, like all terror promoting organizations, needs a platform to turn its unknown terrorists into heroes and role models to emulate. Fatah has chosen Facebook as its prime tool, and through its Facebook page instantaneously promotes terror to its 224,000 Facebook followers.
PMW again demands that Facebook immediately close down Fatah’s official page before more innocent lives are lost to murderers who are inspired and drawn to terror by Fatah’s Facebook page.
In January 2019, Palestinian Media Watch sent a copy to Facebook officials of our comprehensive report on Fatah’s Facebook page documenting Fatah’s use of its official Facebook page to promote terror and glorify terrorists throughout 2018. PMW director Itamar Marcus spoke with the Director of Facebook’s Global Counterterrorism Policy Team, Brian Fishman, and described how Fatah’s use of Facebook for its terror promotion was both life threatening and in violation of Facebook's Community Standards.
Tragically, in spite of the clear documentation, Facebook has chosen to knowingly let Fatah continue.
Below is PMW's new report on Fatah’s use of Facebook from January to June 2019, which shows that Facebook still constitutes a central part of Fatah’s terror promotion mechanism. Facebook’s willingness to ignore all the evidence and keep the page open makes Facebook a willing and active partner in Fatah’s terror promotion. Whereas in 2018 Facebook was an unwitting accomplice in Fatah's terror promotion, in 2109, Facebook is a partner by choice.
Fatah says this 17-year old suicide bomber is “Magnificent” and is using @facebook to publicize its terror mission. Demand Facebook stop partnering with Palestinian terror promotion & close Fatah’s terror page. #CloseFatahFB
They were angered by a video she posted on social media of herself with the man she was soon to be engaged to. Her brother claimed she dishonored the family by showing the two of them together before they were married. The father called on the brother to beat Israa, and while trying to escape, Israa Ghrayeb fell from the second floor of their home, suffering serious spinal injuries. Then, while she was at the hospital, Ghrayeb was apparently attacked a second time and died.
The family claimed she died of a heart attack.
Another honor killing.
But this one was different.
The death of a young Palestinian woman in the West Bank has sparked widespread outrage across the Middle East amid accusations that it is nothing but another case of so-called honor killing.
The suspicious circumstances of 21-year-old Israa Ghareeb’s death in Bethlehem have also drawn attention to a practice increasingly seen as a stain on the conscience of Middle East societies.
...Soon afterwards, #WeAreAllIsraa began to trend on Arabic Twitter, with more than 50,000 tweets displaying the hashtag.
This anger is not only against the Palestinian government -- it is also against Jordan.
There has never been a sovereign Palestinian state in what is now referred to as the "West Bank". Before Israel recaptured it in the Six Day War of 1967, the area was under Jordanian rule after it claimed it as its own during the 1948 War, the validity of which was recognized only by Great Britain and Pakistan.
The law that allows Palestinian men to kill female members of their family with relative impunity originates from Jordan.
Mohammad Abequa, a U.S. citizen born in Jordan, confessed Wednesday in an Amman courtroom that he strangled his estranged wife in her New Jersey apartment in July. Abequa, 46, said he killed his 40-year-old Turkish-born wife, Nihal, to protect his honor, an argument accepted by Jordanian courts as a reason for a reduced sentence. He is charged with murdering his wife, whose body was found July 4 in the apartment in the community of Parsippany Troy-Hills, as well as kidnapping his children, Lisa, 6, and Sami, 3. Abequa brought the children to Jordan after his wife's death. In what was seen as an effort to get a reduced sentence, Abequa told a crowded courtroom that he lost his temper when his wife told him that the man leaving her house as he arrived was her boyfriend. 'I asked her who the man was, and she told me it was her boyfriend and showed me a new tattoo on her thigh that he gave her,' Abequa said. [emphasis added]
At the time, the article contended that though Abequa could face the death penalty in Jordan if he was found guilty of murder, he might be able to avoid execution if he could convince the court that it was an 'honor killing.'
But judicial sources doubted Abequa would receive a reduced sentence because the highly publicized case has been the focus of U.S. interest and personal attention from Jordan's King Hussein.
It was troubling enough to the victim's family that Mohammad Abequa, who murdered his wife in New Jersey in 1994 and fled to Jordan with their two young children, was sentenced to only 15 years by a Jordanian court.
But then yesterday came the news that the confessed killer had been pardoned for his crime after serving five years in prison, and had been set free.
So how to begin to deal with this tragic injustice embedded in Jordanian law?
“We discovered that (Jordan) had taken this article from the Syrian penal code, which was taken from the French penal code,” Hassan explained. “So the basis for it was France: French law, not Islamic, nor Arabic.”
She noted: “Of course, France had abolished this article, and honor crimes were never again a problem the French legal system had to face.”
I realized how damaging colonization has been.
I felt a surprising sense of pain — but also hope — at this revelation. It made me realize just how damaging colonization has been for the Middle East.
Let's put aside the irony of the long history of the colonization by the Islamic expansionism that itself reached as far as France.
Is there a basis for Jordan blaming France?
Then how to explain how widespread honor killing is within the Arab world?
The Arab News article quoted above provides the following chart
Is the influence of France really that widespread?
Are these honor killings just another manifestation of the kind of abuse found the world over?
Are honor killings just another form of domestic violence?
Phyllis Chesler, an American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island, takes a closer look at the distinction between honor killings and domestic violence, noting that
The frequent argument made by Muslim advocacy organizations that honor killings have nothing to do with Islam and that it is discriminatory to differentiate between honor killings and domestic violence is wrong.
She demonstrates that there are differences, and that honor killings are in fact to an alarming degree an Islamic phenomenon. One key difference between domestic violence and Islamic honor killings is that unlike honor killers who tend not to be condemned by Muslim society
the batterer-murderer is seen as a criminal; no one defends him as a hero. Such men are often viewed as sociopaths, mentally ill, or evil.
Committed mainly by Muslims against Muslim girls/young adult women.
Committed by men of all faiths usually against adult women.
Committed mainly by fathers against their teenage daughters and daughters in their early twenties. Wives and older-age daughters may also be victims, but to a lesser extent.
Committed by an adult male spouse against an adult female spouse or intimate partner.
Carefully planned. Death threats are often used as a means of control.
The murder is often unplanned and spontaneous.
The planning and execution involve multiple family members and can include mothers, sisters, brothers, male cousins, uncles, grandfathers, etc. If the girl escapes, the extended family will continue to search for her to kill her.
The murder is carried out by one man with no family complicity.
The reason given for the honor killing is that the girl or young woman has "dishonored" the family.
The batterer-murderer does not claim any family concept of "honor." The reasons may range from a poorly cooked meal to suspected infidelity to the woman's trying to protect the children from his abuse or turning to the authorities for help.
At least half the time, the killings are carried out with barbaric ferocity. The female victim is often raped, burned alive, stoned or beaten to death, cut at the throat, decapitated, stabbed numerous times, suffocated slowly, etc.
While some men do beat a spouse to death, they often simply shoot or stab them.
The extended family and community valorize the honor killing. They do not condemn the perpetrators in the name of Islam. Mainly, honor killings are seen as normative.
The batterer-murderer is seen as a criminal; no one defends him as a hero. Such men are often viewed as sociopaths, mentally ill, or evil.
The murderer(s) do not show remorse. Instead, they experience themselves as "victims," defending themselves from the girl's actions and trying to restore their lost family honor.
Sometimes, remorse or regret is exhibited.
The difference is more than between the Arab world and the West. There is also a distinction between Islam and other religions:
Families that kill for honor will threaten girls and women if they refuse to cover their hair, their faces, or their bodies or act as their family's domestic servant; wear makeup or Western clothing; choose friends from another religion; date; seek to obtain an advanced education; refuse an arranged marriage; seek a divorce from a violent husband; marry against their parents' wishes; or behave in ways that are considered too independent, which might mean anything from driving a car to spending time or living away from home or family. Fundamentalists of many religions may expect their women to meet some but not all of these expectations. But when women refuse to do so, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists are far more likely to shun rather than murder them. Muslims, however, do kill for honor, as do, to a lesser extent, Hindus and Sikhs.
A year later, in an article describing a study that she did on Worldwide Trends in Honor Killings, Chesler dug deeper. She did a study of honor killings, analyzing 172 incidents and 230 honor-killing victims where 100 of the victims were murdered in the West and 130 additional victims were murdered in the Muslim world.
Her findings reflected the Arab News graph in how widespread honor killings are in the Muslim world.
The perpetrators and victims lived in 29 countries or territories: Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Gaza Strip, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and the West Bank.
The conclusion:
In this study, worldwide, 91 percent of perpetrators were Muslims. In North America, most killers (84 percent) were Muslims, with only a few Sikhs and even fewer Hindus perpetrating honor killings; in Europe, Muslims comprised an even larger majority at 96 percent while Sikhs were a tiny percentage. In Muslim countries, obviously almost all the perpetrators were Muslims. With only two exceptions, the victims were all members of the same religious group as their murderers.
You cannot pin this all on France.
Here is the Jordanian law in Article 340 again, this time with revisions made in 2010:
Now the law specifies that the killing has to be done "immediately," apparently to allow for this to be a crime of passion as opposed to being premeditated.
Also, in the spirit of evenhandedness, the woman is allowed to kill her husband as well, but without mentioning other relatives as is allowed to the man.
But the point of all this is not about nitpicking.
This is about dealing with the problem of honor killing by addressing the problem itself. Treating honor killings as just another manifestation of domestic abuse just avoids the issue and fails to understand this for what it is. That is why these public grassroots protests are an important step towards attacking the problem. There is more to be done than just applying a bandage to the existing law.
Now there are signs that people are beginning to realize that.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
One argument made by people on the Left - especially since Bari Weiss' book on antisemitism was released - is that there is no comparison between left wing "anti-Zionism" and right-wing antisemitism, because only the right-wing antisemites are violent.
The most insidious lie that @bariweiss tells us is that legal right wing antisemitism which has literally *killed* American Jews is *less dangerous* because “everyone agrees about it.”
I don't think Weiss says that at all, but this is a typical take - right wing antisemites have guns and have shown that they will kill Jews, while left-wingers only protest.
It is true that left-wing antisemites in America are not physically dangerous at this time. That is America, today. Many Palestinian terror groups that have killed many Jews over the years are are left-wing groups like the PFLP and DFLP, so the Left is not inoculated against antisemitic violence. we have also seen left-wing argument supporting Palestinian terror.
But is actual violence the only metric that matters? If Jews cannot feel comfortable walking though college campuses (or British subways) without being berated because they are presumed to be anti-Palestinian, is that not an issue that should be brought up? When Jews in college dorms are singled out for fake "eviction notices," is that not antsemitism?
Yes, right-wing antisemitism is dangerous. It is also, thankfully, rare. Most Jews walking on the street are not going to run into a violent right-wing antisemite. (Far more likely they would be attacked by a person of color, at least in New York.)
But left-wing antisemitism, disguised as anti-Zionism, is all over the place. They have rallies and demonstrations and "Israel Apartheid Week" displays all over. Jews do not feel comfortable expressing their views because of the intimidation and threats that the BDSers and friends use to shut down any pro-Israel speech.
To say that violent antisemitism is the only threat worth bothering to mention is like saying that women shouldn't complain about a work environment where men sneer at them and make jokes about their bodies - because they aren't actually getting raped.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs keeps track of deaths and injuries of Israelis and Palestinians in a biweekly report.
It shows that the number of Israelis injured in Palestinian terror attacks is significantly up this year compared to last, and the year still has over three months to go. (There were five injuries during the reporting period.)
Notice also the flip in where the attacks occur: in 2017, over 90% were in the territories, while this year some 75% of the injuries from terror attacks are within the Green Line.
Similarly, the number of those killed this year according to OCHA have been mostly within the Green Line as opposed to recent years:
The main reason for the increase in deaths and injuries within the Green Line is the barrage of 700 rockets shot in May from Gaza.
These statistics do not include IDF soldiers stabbed, run over and shot.
(h/t Irene)
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The double standards of the world are quite obvious when one compares what would be a career-ending gaffe by any Western politician to what mainstream, respected and "moderate" Palestinian politicians say all the time.
As we've seen, Bassam al-Sayeh was involved in the murder of a rabbi and his wife, in front of their children. (And Israel provided him with excellent medical care.)
This murderous subhuman is indeed a hero to Palestinians.
Erekat is supposedly a "moderate." He goes on TV often. He writes op-eds for major newspapers.
Yet no reporter calls him on his direct and explicit support for terror as seen here. No diplomat condemns his statements of support for a murderer.
An Israeli politician who would publicly praise a murderer would be vilified worldwide. He or she would be barred from entering most Western countries.
The baseline for how Palestinians are expected to act are slightly above that of animals. And they live up to their expectations.
Yet the desire of finding a "moderate" lover of terrorists is so great that someone like Saeb Erekat and Hanan Ashrawi can say and support the most disgusting, sickening positions and not worry a bit about any repercussions - the media and world politicians need them to prove the narrative that both sides are equally moral and equally guilty.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
The decisive factor in next week’s election — and the reason for Benjamin Netanyahu’s durability — is a repressed memory.
When trying to understand Israel’s election on Sept. 17, the second in the space of six months, you can easily get lost in the details — corruption charges, coalition wrangling, bickering between left and right. But the best explainer might be a small film that you’re unlikely to see about something that people here prefer not to discuss.
The opening scene of “Born in Jerusalem and Still Alive,” which just won the prize for best first feature at the Jerusalem Film Festival, catches the main character grimacing as he overhears a glib tour guide. When she describes downtown Jerusalem to her group as “beautiful,” the “center of night life and food for the young generation,” Ronen, an earnest man in his late 30s, interrupts.
“Don’t believe her,” he tells the tourists in Hebrew-accented English. “You see this market? Fifteen years ago it was a war zone. Next to my high school there was a terror attack. Next to the university there was a terror attack. First time I made sex — terror attack.” One of the tourists sidles over, interested. “Yes,” Ronen tells her, “we had to stop.”
No single episode has shaped Israel’s population and politics like the wave of suicide bombings perpetrated by Palestinians in the first years of the 21st century. Much of what you see here in 2019 is the aftermath of that time, and every election since has been held in its shadow. The attacks, which killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, ended hopes for a negotiated peace and destroyed the left, which was in power when the wave began. Any sympathy that the Israeli majority had toward Palestinians evaporated.
More than any other single development, that period explains the durability of Benjamin Netanyahu, which outsiders sometimes struggle to understand. Simply put, in the decade before Mr. Netanyahu came to power in 2009, the fear of death accompanied us in public places. There was a chance your child could be blown up on the bus home from school. In the decade since, that has ceased to be the case. Next to that fact, all other issues pale. Whatever credit the prime minister really deserves for the change, for many voters it’s a good enough reason to keep him in power on Sept. 17. (h/t Yerushalimey)
MK Ayman Odeh, Head of the Arab Joint List on official PA TV: "Bringing down this government together with Benjamin Netanyahu is a great [Palestinian] national goal." What do you think? https://t.co/mzhQ5QZ4Mcpic.twitter.com/EAvFFYBJbW
In order to be welcomed as a Jew in a growing number of progressive groups, you have to disavow a list of things that grows longer every day. Whereas once it was enough to criticize Israeli government policy, specifically its treatment of Palestinians, now Israel’s very existence must be denounced. Whereas once it was enough to forswear the Jewish Defense League, now the very idea of Jewish power must be abjured. Whereas once Jewish success had to be explained, now it has to be apologized for. Whereas once only Israel’s government was demonized, now it is the Jewish movement for self-determination itself.
This bargain, which is really an ultimatum, explains so much.
It is why Jewish leaders of the Women’s March were subjected to anti-Semitic attacks and exclusion by the movement’s other leaders.
It is why at the University of Virginia, Jewish student activists were barred from a minority-student coalition to fight white supremacy.
It is why Manny’s, a popular café and event space in San Francisco, is being regularly protested. Its owner – a gay, progressive Mizrahi Jew – is, according to the protesters, “a Zionist and a gentrifier.”
And just as those on the far right have an out when accused of anti-Semitism – we like Jews just fine so long as they self-deport to Israel and keep our country unsullied – those on the far left have an out as well. We like Jews just fine, they say, as long as they shed their stubborn particularism and adhere, without fail, to our ever-shifting ideas of justice and equality. Jews are welcome so long as they undertake a kind of secular conversion by disavowing many or most of the things that actually make them Jewish. Whereas Jews once had to convert to Christianity, now they have to renounce Jewish power and convert to anti-Zionism.
Of course, Judaism has always been uncool, going back to its origins as the planet’s only monotheism, featuring a bossy and unsexy invisible God. Uncoolness is pretty much Judaism’s brand, which is why cool people find it so threatening—and why Jews who are willing to become cool are absolutely necessary to Hanukkah-style anti-Semitism’s success. In the days of Antiochus, this type of anti-Semitism needed those boys who voluntarily underwent painful genital surgery to prove that Jews weren’t the problem—just the barbarity of Jewish law. During the Soviet era, it needed proud internationalists to prove that Jews weren’t the problem, just the repulsive chauvinism of Jewish national identity—including what we now call Zionism.
The Soviets actually went one better. In 1918, they created an entire branch of their government solely for cool Jews, whose paid job was to persecute the uncool ones. This was called the Yevsektsiya, or the Jewish Sections of the Communist Party, and in their brief and bloody lifespan, one finds the origins of today’s supposedly novel concept: Jews who are of course not anti-Semitic (how could they be? they’re Jews!), but simply anti-Zionist. In the course of not being anti-Semitic and being simply anti-Zionist, the Yevsektsiya managed to persecute, imprison, torture, and murder thousands of Jews, until their leaders were themselves purged.
Yevsektsiya-style anti-Semitism, or Hannukah-style anti-Semitism, always promises Jews a kind of nobility, offering them the opportunity to cleanse themselves of whatever the people around them happen to find revolting. The Jewish traits designated as repulsive vary by country and time period, but they invariably contradict the specific values that the surrounding culture has embraced as “universal.”
The reason for this is clear: There is actually nothing “universal” about those particular values, except the insecurity of the societies hoping to enforce them. Not everyone feels it is critical to a well-lived life to play sports in the nude; not everyone believes that Jesus is the son of God; not everyone agrees that authoritarian central planning is the solution to the world’s ills; not everyone thinks that denouncing one’s ties to an ancestral homeland is a sign of virtue. Jewish particularity exposes the arrogance of a society’s self-righteous leaders along with their profound insecurity, their deep fear of any suggestion that there are other ways to be. Those insecure leaders then enlist the help of Jews by promising them a merit badge of universal righteousness. Thanks to Judaism’s inherent uncoolness, there will never be a shortage of Jews willing to comply.
Last month I reported on a play performed in Egypt called "Sobibor" that was set during the Holocaust. Egyptians complained that a play that sympathized with Jewish Holocaust victims was "Zionist" and angry op-eds were written against the play.
The writer and director of the play has now said that he wrote the play not to sympathize with Jews but to show how evil Israeli Jews are.
Mohammed Zaki wrote on his Facebook page that the entire point of the play is being missed by critics. He now says that he wrote it to show how Israelis have adopted Nazi methods against Palestinians, and to ask how something like this was possible.
Zaki says that the play is "a reminder to the present and future generations of Arab youth of the bloody Nazi experience that the alleged Zionist state has reproduced on the land of Palestine."
In other words, Zaki is reassuring his fellow Egyptians that he has not reduced his Jew hatred one bit.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Last week, the BDS “movement” suffered another in a string
of defeats within academic associations when the American
Political Science Association rejected efforts to start the ball rolling on
a boycott of Israeli scholars.
This defeat took place at an early stage in the BDS playbook
during which partisans within the association organized “discussions” of
boycotting the Jewish state in an attempt to set the stage for an actual
boycott vote at subsequent meetings.
Historically, these one-sided propaganda exercises (announced
as “conversations”) take place outside public view, and given how few people
are aware that groups like the American Political Science Organization even
exist (and how few members participate in annual meetings), infiltrating a
committee is often the best way to get BDS on the agenda unnoticed. Unfortunately (for the boycotters) their
efforts to subvert academic associations over the last several years has put
their once-furtive efforts on the opposition’s radar.
The BDSers generally focus on one category of target for
several years before moving on, and given the number of eggs they’ve placed in
the academic boycotts basket over the last five years, it’s safe to say this
continues to be their priority. Their
optimism with regard to academic associations is based on having gotten the American
Studies Association to come on board several years ago which triggered hope
that academic boycotts would go mainstream.
As noted here,
however, no major group has followed ASA’s lead: not the American Historical
Association, not the American Anthropological Association, not the Modern
Language Association (which actually voted to stop the boycott propaganda
activity that had been forced on the group year after year after year).
One can look at this week’s victory for our side in different
ways.
If you’re inclined towards the half empty, you could point
out that exercises in academic boycotts are simply a feint, designed to
inject anti-Israel poison into academic discourse, regardless of whether a
boycott gets voted on or not.
If you’re more of a glass-is-more-than-half-full kind of
person, you could describe this string of BDS fails as the result of the Jewish
community rousing itself to fight back through groups like the Academic Engagement Network (AEN)
which has responded to attacks and helped rally members of targeted
associations to reject attempts to politicize their disciplines.
While I tend to favor the optimistic latter vs. pessimistic
former interpretation, I believe what we are seeing might represent another
example of a branch of civil society immunizing itself against the BDS
virus.
As just mentioned, BDSers tend to run to wherever they think
they can find success, often anchoring years of effort in one victory within a
category of institution. For example,
many years ago a single food coop in Olympia Washington (fondly referred to as
“Oly”)
announced that it had decided to boycott Israeli products which led to efforts by
Israel haters across the country to get other food coops to follow suit.
But even as the boycotters were fanning out to demand other
coops follow Olympia’s lead, chaos was breaking out back at Oly as members
revolted against a pollical move that had been made without their knowledge
(much less involvement or consent) in the dead of night behind closed
doors. The mayhem that ensued, which has
gone on ever since, sent a powerful message that countered BDSers’ claim that
joining a boycott was a simple, uncontroversial idea aligned with the (usually
progressive) ethos of the coop movement.
One coop, which actually held their debate on the issue in
the light of day, also performed research that convinced them such a boycott
would run counter to the very principles
the coop movement was founded upon.
With “Oly” as an example of what can happen when anti-Israel politics
gets injected into a community, and more and more coops justifying rejection of
boycotts on well-thought-out grounds provided by those who had previously rejected
BDS, the entire food coop movement eventually became immunized from further BDS
infection. And thus a category of civic
groups the BDSers placed their hopes on for nearly a decade translated to years
of wasted effort.
One can look at the American Studies Association playing a
similar role within the category of academic associations that Olympia played
for food coops. In the years since the ASA
boycott was passed, some members resigned, others sued, and many began to
question the wisdom of allowing the organization to fall into disrepute, just to
allow a handful of partisans to attack the academic freedom of fellow
scholars. To make matters even worse,
the ASA boycott call was never acted upon with the number of American Studies
departments at universities implementing the boycott standing at zero six years
later, meaning all the damage was caused so that a few partisans could pretend
a boycott was in place.
With this “shining example” of what happens to an academic
association that embraces BDS so vivid, groups like AEN, allied with scholars
who don’t want to see their field politicized for the aggrandizement of a few
radical hacks, have the vaccine they need: arguments that highlight that
boycotts damage not Israel, but the organizations that participate in them.
It’s too early to say whether BDS is dead within academic
associations since, as the head of AEN pointed out, the boycotters will be back
given that they are always the last to realize how much they overplayed their
hand.
But even with this victory, we need to keep in mind that
academic boycotts, like BDS as a whole, is simply the propaganda wing of a
wider war against the Jewish state. This
means boycott and divestment tactics will never disappear until those who
started that war call it off. Since
that’s not us, we will continue to have to man the walls until those who believe
another century of warfare is worth it change their minds.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Traces of uranium were found in samples taken by United Nations nuclear inspectors from a Tehran facility alleged by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be a “secret atomic warehouse,” according to a report Sunday.
Iran has not provided an explanation for why uranium was found at the site to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which is investigating the facility in the Iranian capital, Reuters reported.
In a speech last year at the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu revealed the existence of the warehouse in Tehran, which he said held “massive amounts” of equipment and material that were part of a secret Iranian nuclear program.
Netanyahu called for the IAEA to inspect the facility and, in July, Israeli television reported that soil samples from the warehouse turned up “traces of radioactive material,” without specifying the type.
Citing two unnamed diplomats, Reuters reported that the material found at the site was determined to be uranium. One of the diplomats, however, said the uranium was not enriched enough to be used for a nuclear bomb.
“There are lots of possible explanations” for why uranium traces were found there, the diplomat said.
The IAEA has been seeking answers from Tehran for two months, a senior diplomat said, with no success.
New images showing the extent of the Iranian regime's efforts to cover up its use of a storage facility for nuclear materials has been released exclusively to i24NEWS.
The images show massive cement blocks used to hide radioactive material from being discovered at the site, just outside Tehran.
The new evidence ostensibly provides verification of claims made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year at the UN General Assembly.
Netanyahu's remarks were made months after an Israeli clandestine operation obtained a trove of highly sensitive documentation from the Islamic republic outlining parts of its opaque atomic program, supposedly shelved after world powers and Iran signed the 2015 nuclear accords.
On Sunday, the UN's nuclear watchdog found traces of uranium at the facility Netanyahu once described as a 'secret atomic warehouse,' Reuters reported Sunday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is investigating the origin of the nuclear materials and asked Tehran to explain the samples, diplomats told Reuters.
EXCLUSIVE: Images on Iran's Efforts to Cover Nuclear Facility
New images showing the extent of the Iranian regime's efforts to cover up its use of a storage facility for nuclear materials has been released exclusively to i24NEWS.
The UN’s nuclear watchdog confirmed Monday that Iran was installing advanced centrifuges as the troubled 2015 deal with world powers over Tehran’s nuclear program threatens to fall apart.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement that on September 7 it had “verified that the following centrifuges were either installed or being installed…: 22 IR-4, one IR-5, 30 IR-6 and three IR-6s.”
The IAEA’s confirmation comes a day after Tehran hit out at European powers, saying they had left Iran little option but to scale back its commitments under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The IAEA added in its statement that the centrifuges had been installed at Iran’s Natanz facility and said “all of the installed centrifuges had been prepared for testing with UF6 (uranium hexafluoride), although none of them were being tested with UF6 on 7 and 8 September 2019.”
“In addition, in a letter to the Agency dated 8 September, Iran informed the Agency that it would reinstall the piping at two R&D lines to accommodate a cascade of 164 IR-4 centrifuges and a cascade of 164 IR-2m centrifuges,” the agency’s statement said.
Iran has said that notwithstanding its reduction of commitments under the JCPOA, it will continue to allow access to IAEA inspectors who monitor its nuclear program.
After the IAEA assessment was released on Monday, Foreign Minister Israel Katz called on the remaining signatories of the 2015 deal to follow the US example by abandoning the accord and re-imposing sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
David Hazony and Adam Scott Bellos have written a thought-provoking essay in the Jerusalem Post titled "The Aliyah of the Mind."
It describes what must be done for world Jewry to understand and engage actively in Zionism.
The article discusses the commonalities of the many diverse types of Zionism in the first part of the 20th century:
The troubles of the Jews stemmed not just from external threats, but from what they had become after centuries of exile. They survived unthinkable turmoil, but also lost the spine, dignity and inner fire that free peoples depend on to command their collective destiny.
They were cut off from the qualities of character that produced the immense achievements of ancient times – qualities that would be needed again to survive the coming horror.
This reminded me of something that happened earlier this year.
Mrs. Elder and I, along with many other Israel advocates, went to Israel to attend the Digitell19 program. After it ended, there was an semi-official get together at a nearby Tel Aviv bar where we could all talk and enjoy listening to Young Gravy rap about Zionism.
Given that this wasn't an official event from the conference, the organizers who chose the bar didn't bother to find one that was kosher. This didn't bother me, I just wouldn't eat anything. But Forest Rain and her partner were quite upset that the bar was serving cheeseburgers.
Forest Rain and her man aren't religious. My wife and I are. Yet they were more upset over the obviously non-kosher food than I was. Forest Rain explained that this is Israel and Judaism should be part of the fabric of how things work, so things that are blatantly non-kosher should not be tolerated, especially for an event like this that someone from the government arranged, even if informally.
I was puzzled for about a minute as to why she felt so strongly about this, and as to why I didn't. Then it hit me, and I told her: I still have a galut (diaspora) mentality. I don't want to make waves in my normal environment. Deep down, I think of myself as a guest in the USA who is here through the graciousness of the Americans rather than a full citizen with full rights. I don't expect anyone to accommodate my religious needs unless there is blatant discrimination.
I brought this mentality to Israel for my visit. But in Israel, Jews are (or should be) proud to be who they are, and they stand up for each other and for themselves. They are responsible in every sense.
This mentality of the diaspora is what needs to be shed to be a true Zionist. This doesn't mean to impose Orthodox Judaism on every Israeli but it also means that Judaism is a core value of Zionism and must be respected.
Jews who are proud of themselves and of their Zionism will be respected wherever they are, and in fact this pride is one critical way for Diaspora Judaism itself to survive.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
I've looked at the statistics of Palestinian prisoner deaths recently and showed that the number is significantly lower than what one would expect from the usual death rates among the Palestinian population outside of prison. In other words, the medical care that Palestinians receive in prison is far superior to that of Palestinians in general.
The PLO, and Hanan Ashrawi, are lying.
The fact that she is tweeting this to the UN Human Rights chief and the International Criminal Court shows that, to Palestinians, everything must be politicized and weaponized against Israel.
And look who she is defending: Bassam al-Sayeh was convicted for his involvement of the murders of Eitam and Na'ama Henkin, shot by Hamas while driving with their children.
Moreover, al-Sayeh was suffering from leukemia, bone cancer and heart problems for years before the murder of the Henkins. During his illness - his first diagnosis of cancer was in 2011 - his priority was not to keep himself alive but to kill Jews.
Not only did Israel no mistreat him, but Israel transferred him to a civilian hospital last month as his condition worsened.
This murderer is the poster child of Hanan Ashrawi, a hero to Palestinians and an excuse to bash Israel rather than to look at the bloodlust that Palestinians are taught from birth and in schools.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
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Weekend long read
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1) At the Misgav Institute, Arsen Ostrovsky explains ‘The Law Of Exploding
Pagers’. “Last week the world watched as the terrorist army Hezbollah was...
T...
Weekend long read
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1) At the Misgav Institute, Arsen Ostrovsky explains ‘The Law Of Exploding
Pagers’. “Last week the world watched as the terrorist army Hezbollah was...
T...
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The transparent mob attack on the Jewish Chronicle
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Make no mistake, the Jewish Chronicle made a huge error in trusting a
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One Choice: Fight to Win
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Yesterday Israel preempted a potentially disastrous attack by Hezbollah on
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destr...
Yom Hashoah 5784 – 2024
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Israel’s Yom Hashoah began at sundown this evening with the annual ceremony
at Yad Vashem with torches lit in memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of
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Closing Jews Down Under Website
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With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
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‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
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Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
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the govern...
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
