Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

11/26 Link Pt2: UK chief rabbi: What will be the fate of Jews if Labour ‘poison’ comes to power?; UK Jewish dad meets Muslim woman who defended his kids from anti-Semitic abuse

From Ian:

UK chief rabbi: What will be the fate of Jews if Labour ‘poison’ comes to power?

Mirvis described the last four years of having Labour repeatedly minimize and deny the rampant anti-Semitism in the party and the attacks, and even death threats, Jewish party members faced for speaking out about it, with many hounded out of the party.
Illustrative: People hold up placards and Union flags as they gather for a demonstration organized by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism outside the head office of the British opposition Labour Party in central London on April 8, 2018. (AFP/Tolga Akmen)

He noted Labour’s “quibbling and prevarication” over whether to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance‘s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, finally only doing so after adding an amendment that emphasized the right to “free speech” on Israel.

And he highlighted the party being formally investigated by the UK’s anti-racism watchdog.

“And all of this while in opposition. What should we expect of them in government?” Mirvis asked. “Therefore, with the heaviest of hearts, I call upon the citizens of our great country to study what has been unfolding before our very eyes.”

Mirvis dismissed Labour’s claims that it was doing everything possible to root out anti-Semitism as a “mendacious fiction.”

“According to the Jewish Labour Movement, there are at least 130 outstanding cases before the party, some dating back years, and thousands more have been reported but remain unresolved.

“The party leadership have never understood that their failure is not just one of procedure, which can be remedied with additional staff or new processes. It is a failure to see this as a human problem rather than a political one. It is a failure of culture. It is a failure of leadership. A new poison – sanctioned from the top – has taken root in the Labour Party,” he wrote.

Mirvis said given Labour’s record, it “can no longer claim to be the party of equality and anti-racism.”

UK Chief Rabbi Slams 'Poisonous' Labour Party

Less than two weeks before the contentious upcoming election, Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis slammed the head of the Labour party, saying “Jeremy Corbyn [is] not fit for high office.” In an opinion piece written for British daily The Times, Rabbi Mirvis wrote that “the overwhelming majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety” at the possibility of a Labour victory on December 12.

Church of England appears to back chief rabbi’s stand against Labour

The Church of England on Tuesday expressed support for the Jewish community amid worries of rising anti-Semitism, after the country’s chief rabbi took a stand against the Labour party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn ahead of next month’s general election.

A statement by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby on Tuesday warned of a “deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews.”

The statement was released hours after Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis accused Labour party chief Jeremy Corbyn of allowing the “poison” of anti-Semitism to take root in his party.

“None of us can afford to be complacent. Voicing words that commit to a stand against antisemitism requires a corresponding effort in visible action,” Welby’s statement said.

He did not mention Corbyn by name.

Welby’s statement came less than a week after the Church of England admitted in a major report that centuries of Christian anti-Semitism helped lead to the Holocaust.

Today’s front pages of British 📰, with unprecedented intervention by @chiefrabbi, over grave concerns about future of British Jewry from the ‘poison’ of #Antisemitism engulfing @UKLabour & @jeremycorbyn’s leadership.

What sad indictment it has come to this! #GeneralElection2019 pic.twitter.com/q67yuge5QV
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 26, 2019

Idea laundering and anti-Israel academia

Peter Boghossian at the Wall Street Journal writes ‘Idea Laundering’ in Academia about how academia pretty much makes things up while pretending that they are following some sort of scientific method.

I hate to publish the entire article which is behind a paywall, but it all hangs together:

You’ve almost certainly heard some of the following terms: cisgender, fat shaming, heteronormativity, intersectionality, patriarchy, rape culture and whiteness.

The reason you’ve heard them is that politically engaged academicians have been developing concepts like these for more than 30 years, and all that time they’ve been percolating. Only recently have they begun to emerge in mainstream culture. These academicians accomplish this by passing off their ideas as knowledge; that is, as if these terms describe facts about the world and social reality. And while some of these ideas may contain bits of truth, they aren’t scientific. By and large, they’re the musings of ideologues.

How did this happen? How have those working in what’s come to be called “grievance studies” managed to extend their ideas far beyond the academy, while convincing people that their jargon adds something meaningful to public discourse? Biologist Bret Weinstein, who was run out of Evergreen State College by a leftist mob in 2017, calls the process “idea laundering.”

It’s analogous to money laundering. Here’s how it works: First, various academics have strong moral impulses about something. For example, they perceive negative attitudes about obesity in society, and they want to stop people from making the obese feel bad about their condition. In other words, they convince themselves that the clinical concept of obesity (a medical term) is merely a story we tell ourselves about fat (a descriptive term); it’s not true or false—in this particular case, it’s a story that exists within a social power dynamic that unjustly ascribes authority to medical knowledge.

Second, academics who share these sentiments start a peer-reviewed periodical such as Fat Studies—an actual academic journal. They organize Fat Studies like every other academic journal, with a board of directors, a codified submission process, special editions with guest editors, a pool of credentialed “experts” to vet submissions, and so on. The journal’s founders, allies and collaborators then publish articles in Fat Studies and “grow” their journal. Soon, other academics with similar beliefs submit papers, which are accepted or rejected. Ideas and moral impulses go in, knowledge comes out. Voilà!

Eventually, after activist scholars petition university libraries to carry the journal, making it financially viable for a large publisher like Taylor & Francis, Fat Studies becomes established. Before long, there’s an extensive canon of academic work—ideas, prejudice, opinion and moral impulses—that has been laundered into “knowledge.”

They then have an answer when one asks the obvious question: “How could fat be just a narrative? There’s overwhelming medical evidence—A1Cs, the surge of type-2 diabetes, demonstrable risk factors—reliably indicating that excess fat is a health hazard. This has nothing to do with ‘stories we tell ourselves’ or ‘societal power structures,’ and instead directly corresponds to facts about the human body.”

In response, grievance scholars point to articles in the peer-reviewed journal Fat Studies: “Toward a Fat Pedagogy: A Study of Pedagogical Approaches Aimed at Challenging Obesity Discourse in Post-Secondary Education.” Not knowing any better, and seeing a veneer of scholarly rigor and scientific peer review, people reasonably assume that such articles are trustworthy sources of knowledge. (They assume this because it’s how the peer-reviewed process has traditionally worked: Academics try to disconfirm or falsify claims, as opposed to seeking support for them.) These articles tell us that obesity is but a narrative and there are other narratives, such as being healthy at every size, and there’s no reason to “privilege” one narrative over another.

It doesn’t stop there. Grievance scholars then use articles like those published in Fat Studies to credential themselves and receive promotion and tenure. They proceed—from the safety of professorships they’ll hold for life—to design courses around this literature. They test students on the material, marking answers right or wrong according to how closely they replicate the laundered ideas.

Within their academic ecosystems, grievance scholars hire new faculty members with similar moral commitments who’ve written for the same journals. Eventually, they institutionalize their ideas in the larger academic system. This process, which has been propagating laundered ideas for at least three decades, now has enough “scholarship” behind it to have a significant cultural impact.

Students leave the academy believing they know things they do not know. They bring this “knowledge” to their places of employment where, over time, laundered ideas and the terminology that accompanies them become normative—giving them even more unearned legitimacy. And this is why you’ve heard some of the terms we began with: cisgender, fat shaming, heteronormativity, intersectionality, patriarchy, rape culture, and whiteness. They’ve been laundered through the peer-reviewed literature by activist scholars, then widely taught for years, before being brought into the world.

Now, at least, you won’t mistake them for knowledge.

This is exactly the pattern done by anti-Israel academics. Someone makes up a concept like "settler colonialism" and within years it is a recognized field of study, where opinion is presented as fact and previous papers are treated as legitimate no matter how sloppy they are, as long as they agree with what the current author "feels" must be true. Ideas like "Israel is an apartheid state" or "Zionism is racism" or "violent resistance is legitimate" or "Israel engages in pinkwashing" are accepted as not only true, but proven, because of previous papers by Israel haters.Then the more adventurous academics try to extend this house of cards into new areas - if Zionism is racism, then maybe it is sexism, too! Can I define "Israeli apartheid" as a form of genocide?

Over time, just as the article notes, absurd concepts become accepted in academia, and then when the time is ripe, it starts spilling into the real world, where people who think they know something because they read some papers are free to spout their opinions in op-eds - which are eager to publish writings of "experts" as they present themselves.

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.

No, fighting racism nowadays has nothing to do with fighting antisemitism

Huffington Post UK has an article critical of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis' editorial about the Labour Party's antisemitism. While the author, Em Hilton, acknowledges that this antisemitism exists, she asserts that the Tory party is worse

Hilton engages in one of those progressive tropes that sound reasonable but in fact is not true at all:

If we truly want to root out ant-Semitism [sic], we must fight Islamophobia, xenophobia and all other forms of racism along with it. ...The best way to fight anti-Semitism is through building solidarity with those who are also on the frontline of fighting racism...

It sounds like it should be true, right? Bigotry is bad no matter whether the victims are Jewish, black, Muslim or women, and it stands to reason that they should be fought the same way.

It isn't true.

People who identify as people of color generally don't look at Jews as their fellow victims. They look at Jews as their oppressors. The only coin of the realm of identity politics and grievance studies is perceived victimhood, and all victims have oppressors. In the US at least, Jews do not have the obstacles that people of color or women have.

Unlike every other victim of bigotry, Jews are hated in modern times because they are perceived to have too much power.

Fighting racism and sexism is a struggle for gaining a fair share of power; fighting antisemitism is not. It is a fight against pure, illogical, unbridled hate often disguised as a fight for fairness and equality. The two types of bigotries are not only different - they can be perceived as contradictory.

Some 30% of blacks and Hispanics in America are antisemitic. How, exactly, can racism and antisemitism be tackled together when the victims of each consider the other to be the oppressors?

"Progressive" spaces like the women's movement have their own problems with antisemitism, disguised as solidarity with Palestinians under the rubric of intersectionality, which consciously excludes Jews from its list of victims of bigotry. When a "progressive" group like Women's March excludes liberal Zionists but includes bigots from the Nation of Islam, it loses any claim to care about antisemitism.

Whether we like it or not, the tools and methods to fight antisemitism are completely different than those to fight other bigotries. And when the fight against other types of bigotry helps enable antisemitism, then the methodology being used is immoral.

When the methodology is victimhood, the implication is that every victim of bigotry has an oppressor who is immoral for doing that to them. When you look at the world through that lens, Jews - especially Zionist Jews - are always perceived to be the oppressors. As such, within the context of a grievance culture, Jews are deserving of punishment, and cannot ever be considered victims in their own right. The grievance and victimhood mentality subtly encourages antisemitism.

What is needed is an overhaul of how bigotry is fought. The yardstick cannot be victimhood, but equality. Everyone should treat everyone else with respect and judge them to the same standards as everyone else. There can no divide between victims and oppressors because the victims in one context can be oppressors in another. People need to concentrate on what they can do, not how they were wronged.

This would require a complete overhaul on how bigotry is fought. Then, and only then, can antisemitism be fought at the same time as racism, xenophobia, ageism, sexism and other bigotries.

Since the current cult of victimhood is not going away any time soon, antisemitism must be fought on a different playing field than other bigotries. No one is immune from the disease of Jew-hatred, including Jews themselves.

Claiming that antisemitism is just another bigotry ends up too often not only making Jews into the victims, but justifying it.

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.

11/26 Link Pt1: PA closes schools - tells children to participate in Day of Rage; Palestinian Refusal to Negotiate Dooms Peace Process; Lindsey Graham, Ron Dermer endorse US-Israel defense treaty

From Ian:

PMW: PA closes schools - tells children to participate in Day of Rage

Following US State Secretary Pompeo’s announcement that the US no longer views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as “inconsistent with international law,” Palestinian leaders called on their people to participate in a “Day of Rage” today and to continue Day of Rage activities to protest against the alleged “Zionist-American plots”:
“The [PLO] factions… called on their activists and our people to take part in these [Day of Rage] activities, which will begin during the week in order to express our people’s opposition to all of the Zionist-American plots against the Palestinian cause.” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 25, 2019]

Fatah official Jamal Muhaisen announced that the Day of Rage activities are part of “a comprehensive program of struggle,” and promised that it will end in terror – “a comprehensive intifada”:
“Fatah Movement Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen said that the day of rage is the start of a comprehensive program of struggle to deal with the American-Israeli steps, even to the point of a comprehensive intifada against the occupation’s crimes.”

To enable children to participate in the Day of Rage activities, the PA Ministry of Education closed all its schools for one hour in the middle of the day:
“The [PA] Ministry of Education emphasized… that it is necessary to participate in the activities, and that studies at the schools will be stopped from 11:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. so that there will be active participation in the mass marches and the activities that will be organized against these unfair decisions.” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 26, 2019]

Fatah official Muhaisen recently expressed his concurrence that violence and terror are effective Palestinian tools and instructed Palestinians to “benefit from” the previous terror waves, as Palestinian Media Watch reported last week.

The Palestinian 'Day of Rage' in the West Bank

Palestinian rioters hurled rocks at Israeli security forces on Tuesday, in part of the “Day of Rage” protest organized by Fatah party throughout cities in the West Bank, Hebrew-language outlet Walla News reported. Protests are being held in Tulkarem, Ramallah, Hebron and Nablus, among others. No casualties were reported thus far. The protests are aimed against “unjust US resolutions, which have violated international conventions and law. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's remarks on Israeli settlements are contrary to international law,” a Fatah statement read.

No, Israel Does Not Target Palestinian Children

The third way we know that accusing Israel of targeting Palestinian children crosses the line into antisemitism is the way in which, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it paints Israel as an evil entity that either specifically targets children, or doesn’t care if children get targeted.

Bernie Sanders’ surrogate Linda Sarsour tweeted as much recently when she said Israel has “stripped the Palestinians of their humanity to justify the indiscriminate killings including of children. Half of the population of Gaza ARE CHILDREN.”

In reality, Israel’s military goes to unprecedented levels to reduce casualties. The Israel Defense Forces emphasizes “purity of arms” and consistently works to avoid harm by distributing flyers and sending text messages to Gazans alerting them of impending airstrikes, even using non-explosive “roof-knocking” projectiles to warn residents who may not have vacated the area.

Col. Richard Kemp, national security expert and former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, has spoken at great length to this very point. So has former U.S. chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, who praised Israel’s measures to reduce civilian casualties. In the latest round of violence, these measures explain why adult males (considered by Israel to be combatants) constituted the vast majority of casualties.

So if accusations made by Patel, McCollum, Tlaib and others are so far from the truth, one has to wonder why they continue pushing this narrative. The simple answer is that such claims are modern incarnations of centuries-old blood libels, antisemitic slander that falsely accused Jews of killing Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals. Circulating throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, this formed the basis for countless anti-Jewish pogroms.

Proportionately critiquing Israel’s military actions in the interest of reducing civilian casualties and the detention of Palestinian children is completely legitimate, if not encouraged.

Israel should — and I expect will — continue to take great measures to minimize collateral damage. However, to suggest that Israel purposefully and maliciously targets innocent children is plainly antisemitic. When espoused by elected officials no less, it impedes any genuine debate about how to reduce child suffering during conflict.

I've been watching Palestinian news sources for dramatic video of today's "Day of Rage" and so far haven't seen much beyond some city marches, tire fires, slingshots and tear gas.

Here is some of what is being broadcast.

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Terrorist Sami Abu Diak was sentenced to three life sentences for voluntary manslaughter and kidnapping.

He just died in Israeli prison of cancer - and Mahmoud Abbas is holding Israel responsible for his death.

His Palestinian Authority’s Prisoners Affairs Commission accused Israel of a "policy of deliberate and systematic clinical killings by the (Israel) Prison Services.”

No one even blinks at these absurd lies from a wannabe nation.

Since he was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2015, Abu Diak he underwent surgery to remove 83 cm of his large intestine. Afterwards he had four more surgeries, paid by Israel, to remove tumors from his intestine.

Five expensive surgeries in hospitals superior to any Abu Diak would have access to at home isn't exactly the most efficient way to kill someone with fast growing cancer.

Mahmoud Abbas and his government might be dysfunctional but they have raised the art of lying to levels rarely seen.

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.

Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis wrote an article in the Times UK about how bad a Jeremy Corbyn government would be for Jews.

Mirvis has never ventured into politics before. It is clear that he didn't want to write this but felt he had to.

He is now getting mercilessly attacked on Twitter by the very antisemites he is warning against.

The Times UK is paywalled. Here is the full text of his article from his Facebook account.

-------------------
Elections should be a celebration of democracy. However, just a few weeks before we go to the polls, the overwhelming majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety.

During the past few years, on my travels through the length and breadth of the UK and further afield, one concern has been expressed to me more than any other. Of course, the threats of the far right and violent jihadism never go away, but the question I am now most frequently asked is: What will become of Jews and Judaism in Britain if the Labour Party forms the next government?

This anxiety is understandable and justified.

Raising concerns about anti-Jewish racism in the context of a general election ranks amongst the most painful moments I have experienced since taking office. Convention dictates that the Chief Rabbi stays well away from party politics – and rightly so. However, challenging racism in all its forms is not a matter of politics, it goes well beyond that. Wherever there is evidence of it, including in any of our political parties, it must be swiftly rooted out. Hateful prejudice is always wrong, whoever the perpetrator, whoever the victim.

The Jewish community has endured the deep discomfort of being at the centre of national political attention for nearly four years. We have been treated by many as an irritant, as opposed to a minority community with genuine concerns. Some politicians have shown courage but too many have sat silent. We have learned the hard way that speaking out means that we will be demonised by faceless social media trolls and accused of being partisan or acting in bad faith by those who still think of this as an orchestrated political smear.

Yet, I ask myself: should the victims of racism be silenced by the fear of yet further vilification?

Therefore, with the heaviest of hearts, I call upon the citizens of our great country to study what has been unfolding before our very eyes.

We sit powerless, watching with incredulity as supporters of the Labour leadership have hounded parliamentarians, party members and even staff out of the party for facing down anti-Jewish racism. Even as they received unspeakable threats against themselves and their families, the response of the Labour Leadership was utterly inadequate.

We have endured quibbling and prevarication over whether the party should adopt the most widely accepted definition of antisemitism in the world. When the breakthrough came it was not without amendments, suggesting Labour knows more about antisemitism than Jewish people do.

Now, astonishingly, we await the outcome of a formal investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into whether discrimination by the party against Jews has become an institutional problem. And all of this whilst in opposition. What should we expect of them in government?

The way in which the leadership of the Labour Party has dealt with anti-Jewish racism is incompatible with the British values of which we are so proud – of dignity and respect for all people. It has left many decent Labour members and parliamentarians, both Jewish and non-Jewish, ashamed of what has transpired.

The claims by leadership figures in the Labour Party that it is “doing everything” it reasonably can to tackle the scourge of anti-Jewish racism and that it has “investigated every single case”, are a mendacious fiction. According to the Jewish Labour Movement, there are at least 130 outstanding cases currently before the party – some dating back years and thousands more have been reported but remain unresolved.

The party leadership have never understood that their failure is not just one of procedure, which can be remedied with additional staff or new processes. It is a failure to see this as a human problem rather than a political one. It is a failure of culture. It is a failure of leadership. A new poison – sanctioned from the very top – has taken root in the Labour Party.

Many members of the Jewish community can hardly believe that this is the same party that they proudly called their political home for more than a century. It can no longer claim to be the party of diversity, equality and anti-racism. This is the Labour Party in name only.

How far is too far? How complicit in prejudice would a leader of Her Majesty’s opposition have to be in order to be considered unfit for high office?

Would associations with those who have openly incited hatred against Jews be enough? Would support for a racist mural, depicting powerful hook-nosed Jews supposedly getting rich at the expense of the weak and downtrodden be enough? Would describing as “friends” those who endorse and even perpetrate the murder of Jews be enough? It seems not. What we do know from history is that what starts with the Jews, never ends with the Jews.

It is not my place to tell any person how they should vote. I regret being in this situation at all. I simply pose the following question: What will the result of this election say about the moral compass of our country?

When December 12th arrives, I ask every person to vote with their conscience.

Be in no doubt – the very soul of our nation is at stake.

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Terror group Hamas fully supports Human Rights Watch. (The feeling is mutual.)

After Israel decided not to renew the work permit of Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch because of his support for boycotts of Israel, Hamas decided to issue a statement of full support for Shakir and HRW.

Hamas condemns the Israeli occupation’s deportation of the director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Palestine Omar Shaker as an act against humanitarian work and human rights. Indeed, the Israeli occupation is unable to see its crimes and violations being documented by such organisations.

This Israeli demeanor aims to block reality and hide its daily violations, including killing and targeting Palestinians, in order to evade accountability.

The Israeli practices should prompt the international community to defend the rights of the Palestinian people and hold the Israeli occupation accountable for the crimes committed against Palestinians.

Hamas spokesperson

Fawzi Barhoum

It's a two way street. Hamas supports HRW because HRW excuses Hamas war crimes.

From a thread I wrote on Twitter on Monday:

It is worth reminding everyone that @HRW doesn't only have a bizarre obsession with demonizing Israel, but that its obsession spills over into excusing Hamas war crimes.

Here's one example.

The @ICRC definition of "human shields" is "the intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives."

ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/…

Plainly speaking, it means that Hamas or Islamic Jihad placing rockets or bases or weapons caches in civilian neighborhoods makes them guilty of the war crime of human shielding.

During the 2014 war, @KenRoth consistently absolved Hamas of that crime.

HRW and Ken Roth made their own, more restrictive definition for Hamas, saying that Hamas must FORCE civilians to stay in the area.

Although that definition is not consistent even within @HRW.

They've said that fighters joining a wedding march would violate that law.

What's the difference between putting military targets in a civilian neighborhood or in a wedding procession? Yet HRW consistently DEFENDED Hamas for placing arms in civilian neighborhoods.

Then, the news came out that Hamas actually instructed civilians to ignore Israeli warnings to evacuate to safer places.

Here's the memo from the Gaza Interior Ministry.

بيان هام: الداخلية تدعو المواطنين لعدم التعاطي مع رسائل الاحتلالhttps://web.archive.org/web/20140806094734/https://moi.gov.ps/news/67887/%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%86-%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%85-%D8%B5%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%B1-%D8%B9%D9%86-%D9%88%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%AE%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%88%D8%B7%D9%86%D9%8A

So now there is an element of coercion, but STILL @HRW excused Hamas saying that they still weren't guilty of the crime of human shields.

What kind of a human rights org goes out of their way to excuse war crimes?

But only when the criminals are fighting Israel.

Amazing, no?

During that war, Hamas kept civilians in an UNRWA shelter even after Israel warned them to leave. It warned Fatah members not to leave their homes under threat of being shot.

These are war crimes even according to HRW's more restrictive definition. But HRW never admitted it.

There is only one possible reason for this "human rights organization" to excuse and deny Hamas war crimes against civilians. Because HRW wants to paint Israel as the truly evil party, and mentioning Hamas war crimes dilutes that goal.

This is inexcusable.

This is HRW. Postscript: @HRW wrote its own factsheet on the Gaza war where their definition of shielding is accurate, yet @kenroth kept insisting that Hamas wasn't guilty. hrw.org/news/2014/08/0…

From my post at the time (Ken Roth tweets in italics:)

August 4 Do you want to know what "human shields" really are beyond ritualistic sloganeering? Read @HRW's Q&A on the law: http://trib.al/l8wdv4t

Truth: This is sort of amazing. Here are Roth's previous tweets defining human shields:

Jul 19 Much confusion about "human shields" which generally require coercion. Different from unnecessarily endangering civilians, tho both illegal.
Jul 24 #Hamas is putting civilians at risk but "no evidence" it forces them to stay--definition of human shields: @NYTimes. http://trib.al/61iwSoM
Jul 25 Hamas must as feasible not fight in populated areas http://trib.al/CA94avT but no human shield unless coerced to stay http://trib.al/YQwIIau

Yet when you read the official HRW Q&A that Roth tweeted here, you see a completely different definition - one that is actually accurate!

Forces deployed in populated areas must avoid locating military objectives – including fighters, ammunition and weapons -- in or near densely populated areas, and endeavor to remove civilians from the vicinity of military objectives. Belligerents are prohibited from using civilians to shield military objectives or operations from attack. "Shielding" refers to purposefully using the presence of civilians to render military forces or areas immune from attack.

There is nothing here about coercion.

HRW's definition is completely at odds with the definition their own executive director gave three separate times! The HRW definition simply says that using civilians to shield military objectives is what makes one a human shield.

Roth's tweet, by invoking "ritualistic sloganeering," of his critics, gave the impression that HRW's definition was agreeing with his multiple tweets, but amazingly it proves him wrong.

Roth never corrected his earlier tweets, though, nor did he acknowledge that his critics were correct all along.

Of course Hamas is a supporter of Human Rights Watch. HRW actively tries to make Hamas look as good as a genocidal terror group can possibly look.

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.

11/25 Links Pt2: HRW’s Failed #WhoisNext Social Media Campaign; The Blindspot in Bernie Sanders’ Anti-Semitism Manifesto; Oberlin College Students Erect Memorial to Palestinian Islamic Jihad Terrorists

From Ian:

The Blindspot in Bernie Sanders’ Anti-Semitism Manifesto

Bernie Sanders’ curious little manifesto on anti-Semitism in Jewish Currents on Nov. 11 reminds me why I could not possibly support the man—and why I sometimes feel a stab of regret about it. There is an impulsively decent quality in him that erupts now and then in rebellious outbursts of unexpected political principle, typically in ways that might offend his ideologically more cartoonish followers, but that render him pleasing, in my own eyes. And the mini-manifesto in Jewish Currents—the piece that Yair Rosenberg discussed in Tablet some days ago—offers an example.

It comes halfway through when Bernie recalls that, back in 1963, he lived the kibbutznik life in Israel. He was able to see and experience what he describes as “many of the progressive values upon which Israel was founded.” And he says: “I think it is very important for everyone, but particularly for progressives, to acknowledge the enormous achievement of establishing a democratic homeland for the Jewish people after centuries of displacement and persecution.”

The striking phrase is, of course, “particularly for progressives.” Most Americans do acknowledge the enormous achievement. But, as everyone has noticed, a noisy percentage of the people who suppose themselves to be progressives believe, on the contrary, that Israel ought to be regarded as a white supremacist settler colonialist state, or an imperialist excrescence, or a center of world racism, and ought to be erased from the map—which are positions that sometimes award themselves the polite name of honest criticism.

But Bernie in Jewish Currents, with a knack for nuance, rightly says, “It is true that some criticism of Israel can cross the line into anti-Semitism, especially when it denies the right of self-determination to Jews, or when it plays into conspiracy theories about outsized Jewish power.” He declares: “I will always call out anti-Semitism when I see it. My ancestors would expect no less of me.” His statement is good, then. It is solid. It is non-Jeremy Corbyn-like.

But everything else in the mini-manifesto is a disaster. Oh, maybe not everything. It has been said that Bernie makes a mistake in calling for the United States to return to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, on the grounds that anti-Israel manias and sympathy for outrageous tyrants long ago rendered the council a lost cause. But wouldn’t it be better to debate than to sulk? Hillel Neuer’s independent committee, UN Watch, participates in the Human Rights Council events, and strikes many a blow for common sense, and there is reason to suppose that a sufficiently feisty United States delegate seated at the table would be able to do the same, except more virally.

NGO Monitor: HRW’s Failed #WhoisNext Social Media Campaign

On November 5, 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Human Rights Watch (HRW) “Israel and Palestine Country Director” Omar Shakir had 20 days to leave the country. Shakir and his employer had asked the court to overturn a decision of the Israeli Ministry of Interior, which had already been approved by the Jerusalem District Court, not to renew Shakir’s work visa due to his BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) activities.

In the ten days leading up to Shakir’s departure, HRW launched a social media campaign under the hashtag “#WhoIsNext.” The campaign attempted to make a slippery slope argument, that if Shakir is deported, many other activists would be at risk. In reality, Israel has a vibrant and diverse civil society made up of thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As the Supreme Court found, Shakir, specifically, met the criteria in the Israeli law.

NGO Monitor analyzed the limited reach of HRW’s #WhoIsNext campaign, noting that it was primarily used in a self-promotional manner. The vast majority of Twitter users employing the hashtag were, in fact, employees of HRW; 71 of 100 (71%) uses of the hashtag originated with HRW-linked accounts. Tellingly, most of the non-HRW uses came from pro-BDS activists and NGOs.

David Collier: Perdition and Margaret Corvid, the Labour councillor from Plymouth

Margaret Corvid is a Labour Party Councillor in Plymouth. She is extremely active and appears to play an important part of Luke Pollard’s re-election campaign. Margaret’s Facebook and Twitter are full of pro-Corbyn material and she is always on the street canvassing. She made over 400 tweets / retweets in just the last few weeks:

Corvid is a solid Corbynite, joining the party after Corbyn took control in 2015. She describes herself as a Marxist and ‘proud entryist‘. Corvid does a lot of writing. Her name appears in the Guardian, Independent, Metro, Novara Media and New Statesman. Much of her writing is about the sex trade. Corvid makes her living as a dominatrix.

Oddly, Corvid’s Facebook friends list includes high profile players in the antisemitism row such as Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker. Interestingly Mick Napier, the head of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign is in there too. Why would a local councillor in Plymouth be associated with a vile antisemitic group in Scotland?

It is because Margaret Corvid has not been using that name for long.

I could find no active record for Margaret Corvid before 2013. She admits in an article it is her ‘professional name‘. What I did find was a political activist in Scotland named Esther Sassaman. Here is one of her tweets:

Sassaman first appears in early 2003 with a blog about an upcoming visit to ‘Palestine’. She is American, defines herself as ‘ethnically Jewish but drawn to the black Baptist Christians’. She joined their Gospel Choir. It seems as if she was an anti-Israel ‘fanatic’ before she ever stepped foot there (she described herself as a ‘fanatic’ – Rachel Corrie was her inspiration).

Upon her return she continued with political activism. She even meets and interviews George Galloway during his visit to the States in 2005. Coincidence or not, within 7 months, Sassaman would surface as an activist in Galloway’s home town of Dundee.

Sassaman appears to have platformed with former Guantanamo Bay resident Moazzim Begg in 2006. At that point she was described as an ‘American’ resident in Scotland.

This afternoon Labour Party will be launching its Arts for All policy with Ken Loach.

According to him antisemitism in the Labour Party is ‘mischief’ and the Holocaust is up for discussion.

Why is Jeremy Corbyn sharing a stage with this man? pic.twitter.com/OZ3jicGCkq
— Jewish Labour Movement (@JewishLabour) November 24, 2019

As Israel gets closer to not just energy independence but to becoming an actual energy exporter, I’m reminded of a move the BDSers took once Israel entered the energy game to try to generate interest in a new phrase: “Apartheid Oil.”

Might this refer to the Apartheid policies towards women, gays and religious minorities in the Arab petro-states? Or the cover those wealthy oil states provided countries like Sudan as they murdered millions of black Africans? Or the robust oil-for-gold trade between the real Apartheid South Africa and the Gulf states?

Heavens no! For the champions of human rights and justice have suddenly got religion on oil politics once Israel was on the verge of having some.

Discoveries of shale and natural gas in Israel (coupled with recently developed extraction techniques) are what has led the nation to reach beyond energy independence over the last few years. And while such finds present environmental concerns (not to mention the risk of the oil curse), these are not the issues critics of “Apartheid Oil” are really troubled about (although they occasionally hide behind them).

No, their problem is not that oil and gas is being extracted from the earth (with all the upside and downside that brings) but who gets to benefit from it. When it was simply Qatar or Iran using oil money to fund police forces dedicated to beating women for exposing their foreheads or exporting Islamist ideology around the world (or Saudi Arabia, before they become a less dependable BDS ally), they could live with that. But now that it is Israel that may finally get a piece of the action, suddenly the link between oil wealth and human rights rockets up their priority list.

The use of the term “Apartheid Oil” is particularly rich, given that the BDS movement itself is the inheritor of investments made in the 1970s and ‘80s by the very petroleum tyrannies who maintained massive trade with Apartheid South Africa during all the years they were falsely claiming to partake in an energy embargo of the country.

After all, one of the few mineral resources South Africa lacked was oil. Yet somehow they managed to maintain a modern, oil-driven economy during the Apartheid years. And as far as I know, Saudi Arabia is distinctly lacking in gold mines. And yet they had (and have) shopping malls dedicated solely to the sale of gold (including South African gold) during the Apartheid era.

And while this oil-for-gold alchemy was going on, these same Middle East states used their wealth and power to condemn Israel for its (far more minimal) trade ties with South Africa, going so far as to get the United Nations to condemn Zionism as a form of racism during debates over Apartheid.

The African nations that were asked to line up behind the Arab states on these condemnatory UN votes were none too pleased that their own concerns about banning trade with South Africa were being ignored, with the Kenyan Daily news summing things up nicely when it pointed out: “Arabs are buying South African gold like hotcakes, thus helping to sustain that country’s abominable practice of Apartheid.”

Even now when South Africa’s Apartheid system is just a memory, with truth and reconciliation hearings come and gone, the fact that Apartheid stayed afloat on a sea of Middle East oil remains a topic beyond discussion within the BDS community. And yet, this same BDS community exists as the inheritor of the propaganda campaigns, the UN condemnations, and the corruption of the human rights community and vocabulary bought with blood gold traded for with genuine (not imagined) “Apartheid Oil.”

Confront a BDSer with these facts and (just as they do when confronted with any genuine human rights issue) they will simply ignore you and move onto their next accusation against Israel. But the next time you see them marching in the streets comparing Israel to South Africa, keep in mind that it is BDS, not the Jewish state, that exists because of the legacy of Apartheid economics.

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.

Lebanese singer with 4.8M followers tweets that Elders of Zion myth is true

In 2016, Lebanese singer and UN goodwill ambassador Majida El Roumi gave an interview where she said, in part:

.If you ask yourself what is going, and why we are subjected to all this worldwide, especially in the Arab world... What's going on? Personally – and I take full responsibility for what I am saying – I always believe that it is connected with something I read at my parents' home when I was little. My late father brought home The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and said to us: 'Read this book, and to the day you die, never forget what you've read.' So I read that global Zionism has a plan to fragment the Arab world in its entirety. They have in their heads a plan for a united government for the entire world, and they believe that we all exist on this planet to serve them.

Yesterday, another popular Lebanese singer Carole Samaha, who has over 4.8 million Twitter followers, tweeted part of the El Roumi interview and commented, "Very true Words !!! And I wish everyone is able to see the picture from afar, and the greatest danger that is coming, yes, the ship needs a captain !!"

🔴 كلام كتير صحيح !!!
و يا ريت الكل قادر يشوف الصورة من بعيد، والخطر الأكبر اللي جايي!
وإيه..نعم..السفينة بحاجة لقبطان!! @majidaelroumi pic.twitter.com/C1Z1CzdoET
— CAROLE SAMAHA🔴 (@CAROLE_SAMAHA) November 24, 2019

Samaha's is the sixth most popular Twitter account in Lebanon.

Antisemitism is a part and parcel of everyday life in Lebanon.

(h/t WC)

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.

11/25 Links Pt1: Israeli Settlements Are a Political, Not a Legal Issue; PMW: PA policy is to routinely deny the entire Jewish history in the Land of Israel.

From Ian:

Douglas J. Feith: Israeli Settlements Are a Political, Not a Legal Issue

In his statement about the legality of Israel's West Bank settlements, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made four main points.
- First, the settlements are not "inherently illegal."
- Second, the West Bank's fate should be determined through negotiations.
- Third, international law "does not compel a particular outcome" in favor of Israel or the Palestinians.
- Fourth, the issue is political in nature, not legal, and attacking the settlements' legality "hasn't advanced the cause of peace."

For 35 years U.S. administrations refrained from repeating President Carter's criticism of Israeli settlements as illegal, Pompeo recounted, but President Obama broke with this policy by taking the Carter position at the UN. President Reagan, who followed Carter, had rejected Carter's view.

President Carter had a strained relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and condemnation of Israeli settlements as illegal was supported by a five-page letter dated April 21, 1978, by State Department legal adviser Herbert Hansell.

That letter ignored entirely the rights of Jews under the 1922 Palestine Mandate, which called for "close settlement by Jews on the land." From ancient times until 1949, Jews could lawfully live in the West Bank. Hansell didn't explain when that right was terminated.

As a Middle East specialist on the National Security Council staff, I was asked for a short note on the subject for President Reagan. I said, "The issue is properly a political question, not a legal question." The sovereignty issue "is open and will not be closed until the actual parties to the conflict formally consent to a peace agreement." In the meantime, "there is no law that bars Jews from settling on the West Bank" and no one should be excluded from living there "simply on account of his nationality or religion."

What fuels the conflict is the notion that Israel is a vulnerable, alien presence that lacks roots, legitimacy, and moral confidence. Israel's enemies know that asserting that the Jews have no right to live in the West Bank - an important part of the Jewish homeland - calls into question the Jews' right to have created Israel in the first place.

PMW: The Jews came as "invaders 70 years ago," no evidence of Jews before then

Palestinian Authority policy is to routinely deny the entire Jewish history in the Land of Israel. Jews were never here, the PA says, until they came and “occupied” Palestine in 1948. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA habitually refutes the authenticity of the numerous archeological artifacts and non-Biblical sources that testify to the Jewish presence and nationhood thousands of years ago. The following are three recent examples of this Palestinian denial of Jewish presence and history, showing that the PA’s political message passed on by Palestinian leaders for decades has been successfully adopted and is being repeated even by Palestinian academics.

Riyad Al-Aileh, a Palestinian political science lecturer from Al-Azhar University, stated that Jews only came as ”invaders 70 years ago”:
"The Jews claim that they were in Palestine 2,000 years ago. If we look at the history we will see that they were not in Palestine in the past, but rather only as invaders less than 70 years ago. For these 70 years they have been invaders, like the Hyksos, the Byzantines, the Persians, and [British] colonialism. The Canaanite Palestinian people has since succeeded in defeating those invaders and continue [to live] in this land." [Official PA TV, The Supreme Authority, Nov. 6, 2019]

Echoing this claim, Abir Zayyad, an archaeologist and member of Fatah’s Jerusalem branch, wrongly asserted that “no archaeological evidence” of Jews in Palestine has been found:
“We have no archaeological evidence of the presence of the children of Israel in Palestine in this historical period 3,000 years ago, neither in Jerusalem, nor in all of Palestine.” [Official PA TV, Jerusalem: The Scent of History, Nov. 7, 2019]

PA policy is to routinely deny the entire Jewish history in the Land of Israel.

Palestinian university lecturer: The Jews were never in Palestine, but came as “invaders 70 years ago.”

Read more about this here: https://t.co/52crDAETKF pic.twitter.com/N0SjEu7kE2
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) November 25, 2019

Palestinian archeologist: No archaeological evidence of the presence of the children of Israel in Palestine 3,000 years ago. pic.twitter.com/cnBIhIt2UG
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) November 25, 2019