Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 09, 2019

10/09 Links: 2 shot dead, several injured as German synagogue targeted in Yom Kippur attack; Mossad's moment; Do Jews think differently?

From Ian:

2 killed, several injured in shooting at German synagogue on Yom Kippur

At least two people were shot dead on a street in the German city of Halle on Wednesday, police said, with witnesses saying that the gunmen tried to enter a synagogue as dozens of Jews marked Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.

A woman was said to have been killed near the synagogue, and a man was killed in a Turkish kebab shop, Halle police spokesperson told the BBC.

Several people were injured in the attack, with two people hospitalized in serious condition.

“We have two seriously injured people with gun wounds,” Jens Mueller, spokesman for the Halle university clinic, told AFP. “They are in surgery.”

Max Privorotzki, who heads the Jewish community in Halle, told Spiegel Online that the perpetrators had apparently sought to enter the synagogue in the Paulus district but security measures in place helped to “withstand the attack.”

He added that between 70 and 80 people were in the synagogue at the time.

One suspect was captured but with a manhunt ongoing for other perpetrators, security has been tightened in synagogues in other eastern German cities while Halle itself was in lockdown.

“Early indications show that two people were killed in Halle. Several shots were fired,” police said on Twitter, urging residents in the area to stay indoors.

Police said the “perpetrators fled in a car,” adding later that one suspect had been caught.

Policemen stand armed behind the monument commemorating the November 1938 pogrom night as they secure the area around the synagogue in Dresden on October 9, 2019

German synagogue shooter livestreamed deadly attack, including anti-Semitic rant

Livestreaming site Twitch said Wednesday that video of the deadly shooting attack in Germany targeting a synagogue on Yom Kippur was broadcast live on its platform by the suspected killer.

Twitch said in a statement it had “worked with urgency” to remove the content after the attack in which two people were killed in the eastern German town of Halle.

The company added that any account found to be posting or reposting “content of this abhorrent act” would be permanently suspended.

The SITE monitoring group said an attacker appeared to have posted a 35-minute long video showing his ammunition and saying in English that the “root of all problems are the Jews.”

In the video, the gunman is heard making far-right talking points and can be seen driving to the synagogue. He identified himself in the video as “Anon,” was alone, and driving a car loaded with weapons, a laptop and a camera, SITE’s director Rita Katz wrote on Twitter.

Silent streets, Jews on edge in German city after shooting

Silence gripped the abandoned streets of the eastern German city of Halle Wednesday as elite anti-terror forces carried out a manhunt after a deadly shooting at a synagogue and a Turkish restaurant.

Police ordered residents to stay inside and close all doors and windows after they apprehended one suspect and chased possible accomplices in the attack that killed two people and seriously wounded two others.

Officers in riot gear patrolled police lines near the scene of the crime where a woman was shot dead outside the Jewish house of worship and a man gunned down at a nearby kebab shop.

“We are carrying out an intensive search and ask the public to stay at home,” the Halle police force tweeted.

Normally busy city streets were closed to traffic, with the only vehicles circulating police cruisers and ambulances with flashing lights.

Dozens of German Jews had gathered in prayer at their synagogue in Halle on the high holiday of Yom Kippur when the gunfire outside began.

Max Privorozki, head of the Jewish community in the city, which traces its roots to the 10th century, said the temple’s security system had stopped what could have been a bloodbath.

“We saw through the camera of our synagogue that a heavily armed perpetrator wearing a steel helmet and rifle was trying to shoot open our door,” Privorozki told the daily Stuttgarter Zeitung.

“The man looked like he was from the special forces. But our doors held firm.”

PM: German synagogue attack is expression of rising anti-Semitism in Europe

Moments after the end of Yom Kippur, Israeli leaders expressed shock and outrage over the deadly attack Wednesday targeting a synagogue in the German city of Halle.

“The terror attack against the community in Halle, Germany, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day for our people, is another expression of the rising anti-Semitism in Europe,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, moments after the holy day ended in Israel (while it was still ongoing in Germany).

“In the name of the Israeli people I send condolences to the families of the victims and wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured,” he went on. “I call on the German authorities to continue to act determinedly against the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.”

President Reuven Rivlin said he was “stunned and pained by the terrible anti-Semitic murders in Germany” that were committed during the holiest and most important day of the year for all Jews around the world. He called on German leaders and the entire free world to bring the full force of law against anti-Semitism and its results.

“We will continue to campaign for education and remembrance in the fight against anti-Semitism which raises its head again and again in Europe and across the world, based on the clear understanding that it is not a problem of the Jews alone, but threatens to destroy us all,” the president said.

Leaders condemn Yom Kippur terrorist attack near German synagogue

Jewish groups and world leaders have reacted with shock following a shooting attack near a synagogue in Halle, Germany on Wednesday afternoon in which two people were reportedly killed.

The attack came as Jews were gathering in the city's synagogue to celebrate and commemorate Yom Kippur. Bild newspaper reported that a hand grenade was also thrown into a Jewish cemetery following the shooting.

Max Privorozki, Halle's Jewish community chairman, described how a gunman tried to shoot his way into the city's synagogue.
"We saw via the camera system at our synagogue that a heavily-armed perpetrator with a steel helmet and a gun tried to shoot open our doors," he told the Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper. "The man looked like he was from the special forces...But our doors held.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said his "thoughts are with the victims of the shooting in #Halle.

"Let’s stop the hate," he tweeted. "Let’s fight antisemitism. Let’s build an open and tolerant Europe."

Germany's ambassador to the US said the news of the attack was "shocking" and "heartbreaking.

"An attack on a synagogue," she tweeted. "On Yom Kippur. Germans mourn the victims of this infamous crime."

G'mar Chatima Tovah 5780 -- גמר חתימה טובה

This is an update my Yom Kippur message of previous years.

I unconditionally forgive anyone who may have wronged me during this year, and I ask forgiveness for anyone I may have wronged as well.

Specifically (as enumerated in previous years, based on the list from The Muqata a few years back):

-If you sent me email and I didn't reply, or didn't get back to you in a timely fashion -- I apologize.
-If you sent me a story and I decided not to publish it or worse, didn't give you a hat tip for the story -I'm sorry. I'm also sorry if I didn't acknowledge the tip. I sometimes get multiple tips for the same story and I usually credit the first one I saw, which is not always the earliest. And I cannot publish all the stories I am sent, although I try to place appropriate ones in the linkdumps, or tweet them.
-If you requested help from me and I wasn't able to provide it -- I'm sorry.
-I apologize if I posted without the proper attribution, with the wrong attribution, or without attribution at all.
-I'm sorry that I don't give hat tips on things I tweet.
-Subtweets are usually on purpose. Sorry.
-If I didn't thank you for a donation, I'm very, very sorry.
-I'm sorry if I didn't give the proper respect to my co-bloggers Ian, PoT, Vic, Varda, Daled Amos and Forest Rain. Also to people who send me tons of tips and help like Tomer, Irene, and Ibn Boutros.
-I'm sorry if any of my posts offended you personally.
-If I forgot to send you the perks for donating at Patreon - I'm sorry. If you really care, bug me!
- For all the initiatives I started and didn't complete - I'm sorry. I hope to do better next year.
- Please forgive me if I wrote disparaging things about you.
- I'm sorry for not always scrubbing spam from the comments as quickly as I would like.
- I'm sorry if things got published in the comments that violated my comments policy but that I missed.
- If I don't win the Nobel Peace Prize, sorry for getting your hopes up.

May this be a year of life, peace, prosperity, happiness and security.

I wish all of my readers who observe Yom Kippur an easy and meaningful fast.

I will not be posting until Wednesday night at least.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

10/08 Links Pt2: Incitement Against Jews Within BDS And Pro-Palestinian Facebook Groups; Schindler honored by children of those he saved — and a single survivor

From Ian:

MEMRI: Incitement Against Jews Within BDS And Pro-Palestinian Facebook Groups – Part II

The Facebook groups examined in this report are focused on promoting the Palestinian cause and Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. In this report we present posts that appeared in eight BDS groups between January 2016 and July 2019, with explicit and blatant antisemitic incitement against Jews and Judaism without any context linking them to Israel or its policies.

For the first part of this series, see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 1455, Incitement Against Jews By U.S.-Based Neo-Nazi And White Supremacist Members Of Pro-Palestinian And BDS Facebook Groups, May 16, 2019.

Groups Examined (see Appendix for details):
- Boycott Israel[1]: Public group with 10,000 members.
- BDS FIRST[2]: Public group with about 2,000 members.
- Stand with Palestine[3]: Public group with 60,000 members.
- ANTI ZIONIST – BOYCOTT ISRAEL[4]: Closed Facebook group with 4,000 members.
- A group for Palestine and its friends[5]: Closed group with 24,000 members.
- Boycott Israel.... Support the BDS[6]: Closed group with more than 35,000 members.
- Boycott Israel️. Free Palestine ANSWER ALL 3 QUESTIONS PLZ!![7]: Closed group with more than 11,000 members.
- BOYCOTT ISRAEL NEWS AND MEDIA.[8]: Closed group with 800 members.

This report focuses solely on posts[9] published in these groups (most of which are very active) that express explicit hatred and vilification of Jews and incite against them. Members of these groups represent a wide range of geographic locations, religious beliefs, and political ideologies.[10] Incitement against Jews is rampant in all these groups, demonstrating that antisemitism transcends geographic, political and religious divides. As of this writing, none of the posts mentioned in this report were deleted or criticized by group administrators or moderators. In fact, many of the posts were created by them. This report includes only a small sample of the anti-Jewish incitement spread in these groups. It nevertheless is an accurate reflection of attitudes towards Jews that are rampant in BDS groups.

An analysis of the personal Facebook pages of users quoted in this work shows that they are based in Western countries such as the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia, in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Pakistan, as well as in South Africa and India. They express diverse positions towards politically charged issues in the U.S., including abortion, immigration, and gun control. The religious identity of members is diverse as well, with many members indicating that they are practicing Muslims and Christians, while others are ardent atheists.

Conspiracy Theories, Jewish Warmongering, And Holocaust Denial
Members of BDS groups and pro-Palestinian Facebook groups often claim that Jews are nefariously behind various major global catastrophes throughout history. They claim that Jews regularly carry out "false-flag" attacks in order to implicate other groups (most recently Muslims) and to bring war and strife worldwide. They also claim that Jews falsify or stage attacks and persecution of their own people in order to gain sympathy and to further their plans for world domination. This can include accusing Jews of orchestrating their own persecution during World War II, and denying the veracity and/or extent of the Holocaust as well as of other modern antisemitic events.

Stand With Us: UCLA Student & StandWithUs Submit Title VI Complaint Against UCLA Alleging Inaction on Antisemitism

University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) student Shayna Lavi and the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Department have submitted a complaint against UCLA to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”). The complaint alleges that the university is in violation of its obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, due to the administration's inaction in response to antisemitism experienced by UCLA Jewish students.

Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs receiving federal financial assistance. According to OCR, Jewish students enjoy the protections of Title VI, including protection from antisemitic harassment that creates a hostile environment. Ms. Lavi’s experiences, as detailed in the complaint, fall squarely within OCR’s definition of antisemitism.

Ms. Lavi was subjected to ongoing antisemitic discrimination and harassment during the spring 2019 quarter. This began with a diatribe by a guest lecturer in one of her classes, "Anthropology M144P: Constructing Race." The lecturer, San Francisco State University Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, singled out Ms. Lavi and attacked a core component of her Jewish identity, such as by calling Zionists "white supremacists." After Ms. Lavi objected to this attack, Ms. Lavi’s professor, who had invited this guest lecturer, proceeded to target her with additional harassment in subsequent classes. When informed of this, UCLA failed to respond adequately or effectively.

In addition to Ms. Lavi’s experiences, the complaint describes a pattern of antisemitic incidents at UCLA dating to 2012, and the administration’s failure to address this hostile climate.

“StandWithUs is proud to support Ms. Lavi and commends her courageous willingness to confront antisemitism at UCLA. UCLA's Jewish community remains vibrant and resilient, with strong support from Hillel and other Jewish institutions on campus. At the same time, there is no excuse for the UCLA administration's disturbing indifference to years of well-documented abuse and harassment of Jewish students. It is time for OCR to hold UCLA's administration accountable and demand that it comply with its legal requirements under Title VI,” said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs.

Israel Advocacy Movement: SQUAD FAILS

The 'Squad' are complete hypocrites who:
🔸 Want to ban fossil fuels… take hundreds of flights
🔸 Claim the rich avoid taxes… don't pay their tax
🔸 Protest the 1%… are stinking rich

Share if you’re tired of AOC, Ilhan and Rashida's hypocrisy!

Anti-BDS group backed by Adelson heads to 6 countries outside US

A Jewish group founded and funded by the Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson to oppose the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on American campuses will be expanding its efforts to six countries outside the US in the next academic year.

From the start of the new academic year, the Maccabee Task Force will grow its presence to countries “in Europe and beyond,” where it plans to fund and assist pro-Israel campus groups facing boycott Israel campaigns, the organization’s executive director, David Brog, told The Times of Israel.

He would not reveal which countries the task force was heading to.

Established in 2015, the task force works with pro-Israel students on programs countering efforts to boycott or divest from Israel, sending representatives to campuses to solicit ideas from students and groups on campus, and then fund those it deems viable.

The idea, Brog said in an interview, was to be “a clearinghouse for good strategies that we could fund and then offer to our other campuses, and then we could enable the strategies by bringing the funding and the ideas.”

He explained the model of MTF as providing the financial resources to allow campus pro-Israel groups to counter BDS in whatever ways they deem most effective for their particular campus.

Some more on Palestinian identity

From The Sentinel, Thursday, May 05, 1977:

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

10/08 Links Pt1: On Yom Kippur War anniversary Fatah implicitly calls on Arab states to wage war against Israel; UNRWA must evolve or dissolve, says senior official at end of UNGA

From Ian:

PMW: On Yom Kippur War anniversary Fatah implicitly calls on Arab states to wage war against Israel

Fatah on its Facebook page justifies Arabs launching war on Israel, stating that the same "Israeli danger that the Arabs fought ...still exist"

- Israel "constitutes the central threat to the [Arab] nation, its interests, its future, and its holy sites"
- "The anniversary of [the Yom Kippur War] is a call to the Arab nation and its leaders to end this dark and bloody chapter that the nation is going through"

In 1973, Egypt and Syria simultaneously launched a surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement and the holiest day in Judaism. Over the next three weeks, Israel succeeded pushing the Arab forces back but suffered heavy losses with 2,688 fallen soldiers and thousands of wounded.

Now, on the anniversary of the war, Fatah is telling Arab states that the same need to attack still exists:

Posted text: "The anniversary of the October War (i.e., the 1973 Yom Kippur War) is a call to the Arab nation and its leaders to end this dark and bloody chapter that the nation is going through; it is a call to remind [us] that the Israeli danger that the Arabs fought that war in order to confront still exists, and constitutes the central threat to the [Arab] nation, its interests, its future, and its holy sites."
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Oct. 6, 2019]

This text was posted by Fatah on its official Facebook page and written by Secretary of Fatah's Branch in Poland Khalil Nazzal.

UNRWA must evolve or dissolve, says senior agency official at end of General Assembly

“Direct pressure” by donors is the most likely way to induce the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to change, former UNRWA general counsel James Lindsay told JNS as the 74th session of the U.N. General Assembly came to a close last week in New York.

Speaking from Geneva, Lindsay—the only former senior UNRWA official ever to have written a thorough critique of the agency, which is tasked with serving 5.6 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, eastern Jerusalem, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan—told JNS that while the renewal of the agency’s mandate in the coming months was “pretty much a foregone conclusion,” donor countries can still have a very significant impact. (The agency’s mandate must be renewed every three years.)

Donors countries should be encouraged to do “the right thing,” he said, by “pressure and embarrassment,” if necessary.

As Palestinian and Jordanian ministers met on the sidelines of the General Assembly meeting to try to ensure a renewal of the agency’s mandate, Lindsay exposed various structural problems with UNRWA that go beyond alleged abuses of authority by senior agency officials. (UNRWA is currently under investigation by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres following accusations of ethical misconduct and corruption.)

Speaking at a side event at the 42nd session of the U.N. Human Rights Council on Sept. 23, Lindsay critiqued the notoriously anti-Israel agency, suggesting that it must evolve or dissolve. Lindsay detailed UNRWA’s undermining of its own mission as a “humanitarian and welfare organization focused on the immediate relief of people in distress.”

For example, he said, only 10 percent of the organization’s current budget goes to basic, immediate needs, while the rest goes to education and medical care, which he called “governmental responsibilities.”

“There is no reason why the United Nations should be providing that,” he said.

U.N. Pleads for Money as Finances Poised to Run Dry by Month's End

The United Nations is running a deficit of $230 million, Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday, and may run out of money by the end of October unless world governments immediately meet their financial obligations.

U.S. taxpayers would most likely be hardest hit by any immediate cash injection into the global organization.

The United States is by far the U.N.’s biggest financial contributor, providing 22 percent of its operating budget and funding 28 percent of peacekeeping missions, which currently cost $8 billion annually.

The next two major contributors are Germany and the U.K.

In a letter intended for the 37,000 employees at the U.N. secretariat and obtained by AFP, Guterres said unspecified, “additional stop-gap measures” would have to be taken to ensure salaries and entitilements are met.

These might include holding less meetings and cutting back on travel and associated entitlements.

“Member States have paid only 70 per cent of the total amount needed for our regular budget operations in 2019. This translates into a cash shortage of $230 million at the end of September. We run the risk of depleting our backup liquidity reserves by the end of the month,” he wrote.

Donald Trump has long pushed for reform of the U.N. and just last week warned the “future does not belong to globalists” in a warning to the organization’s leaders:

In December 2017 Nikki Haley, the then United States Ambassador to the organization, announced the federal government had reduced its contribution to the U.N.’s annual budget by $285 million, as Breitbart News reported.

As Ambassador of Mexico to UNESCO, Andres Roemer took a principled stand—costing him his job—when he refused to cast a vote for a resolution denying the Jewish people’s historic connection to Jerusalem and its Temple Mount. Now Israel's Ramat Gan has named a street in his honor. pic.twitter.com/QKb3VvFd9H
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 8, 2019

From PCHR's weekly report:

Israeli Settler Violence against Palestinian civilians and property

On Monday, 30 September 2019, hundreds of Israeli settlers raided al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City to celebrate the Jewish New Year. Israeli forces arrested a Palestinian young man and an elderly woman while present in al-Asbat Gate area. The Islamic Endowments (Awqaf) Department stated that around 416 settlers, including the Israeli Minister of Agriculture, Uri Ariel, and dozens of rabbis, raided al-Aqsa Mosque on 29 and 30 September 2019 to celebrate the Jewish New Year and perform prayers in al-Rahma, al-Qataneen and al-Selselah Gates, under Israeli forces and intelligence officers protection. The Islamic Endowments Department added that the Israeli forces were deployed in the al-Aqsa Mosque yards and gates, where they took photos of Palestinian worshipers.

Apparently, Jews peacefully walking around and praying is considered a violation of human rights to this respected Palestinian NGO.

Preventing Jews from practicing their religion in their most sacred site would be a fulfillment of human rights, it seems.

It's 1984 in the territories every day.

Similarly, Masralarabia reported "Shocking figures reveal the brutality of the occupation .. 2408 settlers stormed the Aqsa in September."

Brutal!

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

From Hezbollah's Al Manar:

🔶 Hundreds of Zionist settlers storm Al-Aqsa Mosque for the so-called "Yom Kippur" holiday
— Almanarnews English (@AlmanarEnglish) October 8, 2019

"So-called"?

From Hamas' English Twitter account:

Thousands of fanatic Israeli settlers broke into al-Aqsa compound in occupied #Jerusalem last night and desecrated al-Buraq Wall. pic.twitter.com/kglcRm9GWX
— Hamas Movement (@HamasInfoEn) October 8, 2019

These people are praying at the Kotel, which - as I pointed out yesterday- is considered by Muslims to be just as off limits to Jews as the Al Aqsa Mosque.

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.

What anti-Zionists need to beg forgiveness for

I have had a series of tweets to IfNotNow asking them to repent for their sins before Yom Kippur, although these apply to any anti-Zionists who self-righteously tell Zionists that we are the guilty ones (a particularly disgusting example is here.)

Hey @IfNotNowOrg , since you like to tie your tweets to the Jewish calendar, perhaps you should consider doing teshuva now for the many sins you have done against the Jewish people.

It's not too late.
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) October 2, 2019

Hey @IfNotNowOrg, it's now the fourth day of the Aseret Y'mei Teshuva. You still have time to repent for, among other things, being a massive chilul Hashem, telling the world that your fringe opinions hating Israel are mainstream for Jews.

Do teshuva. If not now...when?
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) October 3, 2019

Hey @IfNotNowOrg, I see you tweet often about "courage."

If you had courage, you would tweet something entirely good about Israel once in a while. Not backhanded but wholehearted.

But you won't, because you are cowards and fear the anger of your bigoted followers.

Cowards.
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) October 3, 2019

For those"progressives" who remain blind. pic.twitter.com/j59QGGEGE1
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) October 4, 2019

Hey @IfNotNowOrg, it is the fifth day of the Aseret Y'Mei Teshuva.

The Jews in the desert were punished to wander for 40 years because they listened to the false report of the spies about the Land - the sin called "Diba" in the Torah.

This is another sin you need to repent for.
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) October 4, 2019

Hey @IfNotNowOrg, as we continue with the Aseret Y'mei Teshuva, repent for the sin of "lifnei iver" - misleading people. Your lies about Israel amount to teaching people falsehoods and leading them to make decisions based on false information.

Tell the truth, and repent.
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) October 6, 2019

Hey @IfNotNowOrg , it is Erev Yom Kippur. You have spent lots of time pointing out supposed Israeli Jewish "sins" but have not shown any awareness of your own sinat chinam, attacks on Jewish achdut, and loshon hara.

In the coming year may you wake up and repent.
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) October 8, 2019

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

10/07 Links Pt2: The Zionist Movement Did Not Seek to Dispossess the Palestinian Arabs; Interior minister moves to deport Palestinian BDS founder; Yom Kippur 1967: The Return to the Western Wall

From Ian:

Efraim Karsh (WSJ): The Zionist Movement Did Not Seek to Dispossess the Palestinian Arabs

David Ben-Gurion's stature as Israel's founding father would seem to be eminently secure, given his crucial, perhaps indispensable, role in salvaging the Jewish people from political oblivion and reinstating it in its ancestral homeland. Tom Segev's A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion is an effort to tarnish his reputation and reinterpret Israel's founding period.

On May 14, 1948, Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, becoming its first prime minister and defense minister, posts he held until 1963 (with a brief retirement from office in 1953-55). Segev casts Israel's founding father as the destroyer of Palestinian Arab society - deeply implicated in what Segev and his fellow revisionists see as the "original sin" of Israel's creation: the supposedly deliberate and aggressive dispossession of the native Arab population.

The truth is that, far from seeking to dispossess the Palestinian Arabs as claimed by Segev, the Zionist movement had always been amenable to the existence of a substantial Arab minority in the prospective Jewish state.

No less than Ze'ev Jabotinsky, founder of the faction that was the forebear of today's Likud Party, voiced his readiness (in a famous 1923 essay) "to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try to eject anyone." And if this was the position of the more "militant" faction of the Jewish national movement, small wonder that mainstream Zionism took for granted the full equality of the Arab minority in the prospective Jewish state.

In December 1947, shortly after Palestinian Arabs had unleashed wholesale violence to subvert the newly passed UN partition resolution, Ben-Gurion told his Labor Party that "in our state there will be non-Jews as well" and all of them will be equal citizens; equal in everything without any exception; that is: the state will be their state as well."

The Haganah's operational plan - adopted in March 1948 to reverse then-current Palestinian Arab aggression and rebuff the anticipated invasion by the Arab states - was predicated, in the explicit instructions of the Haganah's commander in chief, on the "acknowledgment of the full rights, needs, and freedom of the Arabs in the Hebrew state without any discrimination, and a desire for coexistence on the basis of mutual freedom and dignity."

To the Arab World, Jewish Sovereignty Is a Rebellion against Islam Itself

Arab anti-Zionism, Shmuel Trigano argues, has little to do with land, the fate of the Palestinians, or Palestinian self-determination—and everything to do with religion. Citing the historical status of non-Muslims in the Islamic Middle East, he points in particular to two concepts: that of the ummah, a nation of all Muslim believers that transcends ethnic and political boundaries, and that of the dhimmi, protected religious minorities who are allowed to live in Muslim society with legal disabilities:

The concept of the ummah inspired the Arabs to rebel against the [European] colonial powers: not so much for their colonial nature (the colonial yoke of the Ottomans was by and large tolerated), but for their Christianity. A decisive turning point was the rise of nationalism: while the ummah dissolved into nation-states, the pan-Arabism that emerged in its wake provided indirect continuity.

To this situation, . . . an additional factor came to the fore: the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine, under the British Mandate, as provided by the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The problem derived not from the emergence of a new political force in the midst of the Arab countries, but from its Jewish character: as sacrilegious to the Islamic conscience as the Christian colonial powers had been. . . . In these terms, Jewish sovereignty is understood as nothing short of a rebellion against Islam.

Thus, Trigano argues, the conflict between Israel and its neighbors can be understood in relation to the gradual and long-ongoing destruction of the Jewish communities of the Middle East and, more broadly, to the destruction of Christian and other non-Muslim communities. The latter began not recently, with the rise of Islamic State, but with the bloody anti-Armenian pogroms of the 1890s:

The Armenians . . . committed an act of rebellion against [their status as] dhimmi by fighting for national autonomy. . . . A violent response ensued: several massacres were carried out by the Ottomans in 1894-5. . . . Often overlooked is the jihadist nature of these massacres: not only in their motivation and their legitimation, but also in the nature of the acts themselves and the fact that the surviving women and children (some 150,000) were forcibly converted to Islam. The same pattern was to reappear in the second wave of massacres, this time instigated by the Young Turks [in 1915].

Michael Lumish: The White Jew

When I was growing up to be a "white" person meant to be a person of European descent. This is no longer the case.

To be "white," today, means to be a "bad" person, particularly if you tend to be of the manly persuasion.

In contemporary political parlance, "whiteness" is a signifier of racism, oppression, colonialism, imperialism, privilege, sexism, Islamophobia, transphobia, capitalism, and, most particularly, racism.

The irony is delicious.

"Progressives" -- throughout politics and the academe and, even, corporate America -- consider "white" to be a category of ethnic guilt. In the name of "social justice" they are condemning innocent young kids, particularly boys, of some sort of original sin.

They are, in fact, damaging your children and most of you are A-OK with it.

In this way, the "progressive" movement is deeply religious and increasingly medieval. The movement used to be about open-mindedness. Today it is about hysterical dogma. Mario Savio would not recognize it.

It used to be about social libertarianism and freedom of expression. Today it is about ideological conformity and a Puritanical patrolling of the borders of acceptable thought.

Molly Crabapple - a respected leftist artist who was enamored with a Neo-Nazi

Recently, another set of the usual Jewish leftist academics and no-name students signed a petition against Trump's handling providing funds to Duke/UNC after it had an anti-Israel conference.

This is no big deal. But +972 Magazine's coverage of the story mentioned some prominent names that signed the petition:

The open letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose signatories include renowned scholar Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, and artist Molly Crabapple, condemns the Education Department’s recent investigation of the consortium and subsequent ultimatum...

Who is Molly Crabapple, whom +972 puts on the same pedestal as the discredited Judith Butler and Noam Chomsky?

Well, although she has tried to erase her many tweets about the topic, Crabapple was a huge fan of a neo-Nazi known as "Weev."

Here is Weev:

As documented in this Medium article about Crabapple's relationship with Weev:

Weev is a self-professed admirer of Hitler, and currently serves as the webmaster/IT guy for The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website. He has bragged about faxing threats to kill Jewish children to synagogues. (There are 28 total mentions of the alias “Weev” on The Southern Poverty Law Center’s website, filled under the sections “Hatewatch” and “Extremist Profile.”) He waged a targeted harassment campaign against a prominent woman programmer, taunting her and her family with rape and violence threats until she was scared to go out in public. He tried to organize people to crash the funeral of Heather Heyer. He has a large swastika tattoo on his chest.

A few years ago, Quinn Norton lost her job at the New York Times partially because of her friendship with Weev. But for some reason, Molly Crabapple's friendship with him hasn't turned the Left - or Leftist Jews - against her.

Crabapple wrote an article about his trial where he was accused of hacking AT&T. The merits of the case are not so clear; he really didn't hack AT&T. But Crabapple's care about Weev went way beyond her support for his civil rights and to her admiration of him as a person, as she wrote in an article for Vice:

On the morning of March 18, I was sitting with friends at the Federal Courthouse in Newark, waiting to hear how long Weev would spend in jail.

I didn't go there to write an article. I went because his conviction was wrong, and my friends and I cared for him. I meant to be another body filling the courtroom, to provide whatever support that's good for.

...While he's instantly likeable in person, he's done things that have offended.

...One after the other, his friends embraced him, warm and hard. Official internet asshole or not, Weev inspires ride-or-die love.

Four hours earlier, we'd been downing whiskey to celebrate Weev's last night of freedom.

...Weev tried to touch his tablet. Suddenly, giants in hoodies pounced on him. Weev is small. Their huge backs walled him off. They pounded his head into the table, cuffed him, and dragged him from the room. Weev's friends sprang to their feet. This is the cruel trick of seeing a loved one handcuffed. You want to protect them. You can't. A black-haired girl from last night's party balled up in tears.

...Weev returned in shackles, grinning.

Molly Crabapple was practically in love with a proud neo-Nazi with a swastika tattooed on his chest.

And today she is considered a leading light of the Left, to the extent that she is name-checked by +972 to be in the same category as Butler and Chomsky.

Since people started pointing out Crabapple's entirely inappropriate love for her Nazi friend, she had been furiously removing all her loving tweets to Weev, and now claims that she never liked him. But she can't erase this love-letter to the bigot and misogynist.

Crabapple has signed other anti-Israel and pro-BDS petitions. Jewish Voice for Peace happily gets her signature when they need it. She reliably shows up when anti-Israel groups ask her to.

The question is, why the Left is so quick to excuse one of their own who embraced a far-right asshole?

(h/t Kweansmom)

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, I tweeted an old satirical poster I had made of a mythical organization called "Muslim Voice for Peace." In response, Zach Lewis pointed me to a Facebook page, by an anonymous individual, called Palestinian Voice for Peace.

That's where I found the story about the Arab plumbers who refused to charge a Holocaust survivor I posted yesterday. It has gathered thousands of views.

Here is another heartwarming video also posted at that page. It shows an Arab nurse leading an early Rosh Hashanah kiddush for residents of a nursing home. He starts off by calling for the coming year to be a year of peace, of hope, of love, and of health. He then reads the kiddush - inexpertly but with feeling.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

10/07 Links Pt1: Whatever Happened to the Palestinian ‘Diplomatic Tsunami’?; FM confirms initiative to sign ‘historic’ non-aggression pact with Arab states; Fatah attempts to hide its terror promotion from Facebook

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Whatever Happened to the Palestinian ‘Diplomatic Tsunami’?

At the United Nations, where once-hardened ex-generals like Barak quaked about the prospect of the world uniting to force Israel to accept a Palestinian state, the situation for the Jewish state’s foes is particularly dismal. It’s true that many UN agencies, like its Human Rights Council, are still cesspools of antisemitism and hypocrisy, focusing almost exclusively on bogus attacks on Israel while ignoring real human-rights catastrophes in countries around the world.

But as is the case elsewhere, the diplomatic isolation that Barak and so many others feared never happened. Indeed, as Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon recently wrote, the world body is no longer the “home court” for those who oppose Israel. The majority of member states joined the United States and Israel in condemning Hamas terrorism in the past year. In a variety of steps, both large and small, Israel’s presence there has become normalized.

At the same time, the Palestinians have become more of an afterthought. It’s probably better for Abbas that even the Palestinians’ usual cheerleaders on the left paid no attention to his recent address at the UN General Assembly, where he spoke of his devotion to democracy and his plans to hold an election. Abbas is so devoted to democracy that he is currently serving the 15th year of a four-year term as president of the PA, to which he was elected in 2005. No one takes his talk of finally holding another vote seriously, since there is no way he would risk being defeated by his more radical Islamist rivals in Hamas, who currently rule Gaza.

The Arab and Muslim worlds may still be hotbeds of antisemitism and may have successfully exported their Jew-hatred to the West in the form of the BDS movement. However, Arab states have effectively dropped the Palestinian cause as a priority and instead are increasingly looking to Israel as an ally against Iran. Though they still pay some lip service to the Palestinian cause, the governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt have little interest in creating another failed and unstable Arab state for the Palestinians.

To note these facts is not to deny that the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians is not going away and remains a serious problem. But as long as both the PA and Hamas are stuck in the mindset of their century-long war on Zionism, peace will have to wait until the Palestinians are ready to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state.

The fact that the “tsunami” that so many Jews feared has fizzled into the BDS flop that can only intimidate someone like Lovato demonstrates that the conventional wisdom peddled by Israel’s noisy critics shouldn’t be taken seriously. Those who listen to the counsels of despair in 2011 have turned out to be as confused as a second-tier pop star.

FM confirms initiative to sign ‘historic’ non-aggression pact with Arab states

Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Sunday confirmed that he has been advancing non-aggression treaties with several Arab countries in the Gulf, a “historic” démarche he said could end the conflict between Jerusalem and those states.

“Recently I have been promoting, with the backing of the prime minister, a diplomatic initiative to sign ‘non-aggression agreements’ with the Arab Gulf states,” Katz wrote on Twitter.

“It’s a historic move that will end the conflict and enable civilian cooperation until the signing of peace agreements,” he said, in what appeared to be a tacit acknowledgement that no Arab country is currently willing to establish full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state as long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved.

Katz further confirmed that he presented his plan to several Arab foreign ministers during his visit to New York last week at the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. He also discussed the proposal with the US administration’s outgoing special envoy for the peace process, Jason Greenblatt, Katz said.

“I will continue to work to strengthen Israel’s standing in the region and around the world,” he pledged.

Katz’s tweet included a link to a report aired Saturday night by Channel 12, which first revealed the existence of the potentially groundbreaking initiative.

PMW: Fatah attempts to hide its terror promotion from Facebook

In fact PMW's reports show that Fatah does all of that and worse on its Facebook page, and PMW has pointed this out to Facebook more than once. Yet Facebook continues to leave the platform open for Fatah's terror promotion.

Fishman further explained that Facebook finds that governments and academics are acting too slow in terms of designating who are "terrorist actors" and therefore designates such themselves:
"We [Facebook] designate terrorist actors ourselves. This is pretty unique, but the reason we do this is because although there are a variety of lists of terrorist organizations in the world that are maintained by academics, that are maintained by governments, we find that academics and governments act too slowly. They don't actually maintain comprehensive lists in real time, and the expectation on us by our users and by the community globally is that we are able to respond to these things in near real time."

One can only marvel at the speed with which Facebook claims that it responds to terror promotion when looking at its inaction in the face of PMW’s thorough documentation. Nine months ago Facebook was supplied by PMW with explicit evidence that Fatah’s mission includes terror and violence. Yet in its statement to the Jerusalem Post last week Facebook said:
"We have received reports about potentially violating content on this page and, as we do with all such reports, are in the process of reviewing that content to determine whether it violates our policies."

Facebook boasting would be laughable, if its behavior was not life-threatening. Facebook claims to have a policy according to which “there may be no praise, support, or representation of a terrorist organization, a terrorist actor, a terrorist event,” and boasts ‘we are able to respond to these things in near real time.”

In the case of Fatah, Facebook has failed repeatedly to deal with the terror promotion on its platform. Despite being provided with the evidence, Facebook did nothing to remove Fatah’s terror glorifying and promoting posts. While their actions were no more than piece-meal, it appears that even Fatah accepted PMW’s claim that many of their posts contained terror glorification and promotion and decided to take them down.

Facebook removes terror promotion in “real time,” except when the murder of Israelis is being celebrated and promoted. For Israelis a full nine months is necessary and Facebook is still “in the process of reviewing that content,” that clearly celebrates and promotes terror.

While Facebook is bragging about fighting terror, Palestinian terror is being embedded in the hearts and minds of the next generation of potential terrorists, thanks to Facebook.

PA wipes peace agreements from schoolbooks, encourages incitement and intolerance

The Palestinian Authority has removed any mention of past agreements with Israel from their school textbooks, with the exception of the Oslo Accords, which are mentioned in far less detail than in previous editions of the schoolbooks, according to a new report by Yedioth Aharonot.

The new curriculum, which has been progressively implemented throughout the past three years, and the textbooks in particular, are studied between 1st and 12th grades in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and refugee camps. They, unlike their previous editions, make no mention of the historical Jewish presence in Israel, and speak about every quarter in Jerusalem's Old City – except the Jewish Quarter.

The portions of the textbooks that do mention the Oslo Accords portray Israel in a negative light, claiming that "the Zionist occupation was forced to recognize the PLO after the First Intifada in 1987."

In addition, the old textbooks contained the full contents of the letter written in 1993 by then-PA chairman Yasser Arafat to then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, which detailed the values of peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

The new textbooks, however, censor the part in which Arafat writes that the declaration of principles "is the beginning of an era of coexistence in peace without violence and any action that may risk the peace."

The few times in which Israel is mentioned throughout the rest of the textbooks are in parentheses, a habit typically taken on to claim the illegitimacy of the state by extremist organizations such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, according to Mako.