Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 20, 2020

01/20 Links Pt1: How can the Middle East change?; Shin Bet: We thwarted 560 terror attacks this year; The British soldier who won't stop defending Israel

From Ian:

The two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still widely supported by the international community, despite the fact that neither Israel nor the Palestinians are moving any closer to that solution.

It is unfortunate that the international community is so attached to current borders, even if those borders are unjustly drawn up against the popular will of the people.

Indeed, most of the borders in the Middle East, not to mention Africa, some of Asia and the Americas, were established by the former colonial powers of Europe with little regard for the native inhabitants. People of different ethnicities and religions were forcibly incorporated into new countries like Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

It is also ironic that the European powers imposed most of the Middle East’s current borders without taking into consideration the ethnic and religious makeup of the region, because in Europe itself, following the World War I, they were doing the exact opposite.

After the war ended, the victorious Allied powers decided that there would no longer be multinational empires ruling the continent. Hence, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up and its territory was divided into separate states based on nationality. This is how the current states of Hungary and Austria were born, as well as the former states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

Michael Lumish: An Alternative Solution

What I am considering is more along the lines of Caroline Glick and Martin Sherman. It is one possible answer to Enno's question. Annex Judea - Samaria, up to the Jordan River. Those hillsides above Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are traditional Jewish land. The Arabs, along with others, conquered it, but the Jews are the only extant indigenous people to that land. That is our land and we should not respect the rights of conquerors to steal it from us, particularly within living memory of the Holocaust (Shoah).

There are two major fears concerning the Jewish annexation of Jewish land. The first is demographic and the second is international reaction. What I propose -- with some modesty, thank you -- is that Israel annex Judea - Samaria up to the Jordan. The demographic problem need not be a problem if it is dealt with in a straightforward manner. A reasonable percentage of non-Israelis who live on that land would need to be interviewed. Those who despise Jews would need to move elsewhere. Those who do not express any such hatred would need, just like Jewish citizens of Israel, to do a few years of national service. Those who complete that service with good report should be offered Israeli citizenship.

The international reaction to a Jewish annexation of Jewish land is more complex. Western-Europe, the European Union, the United Nations, and the Democratic Party leadership essentially despise the Jewish people and our state. If Israel were to annex our own land they would throw a fit. But if we fail to do so in coming years than we will never be able to do so and we will remain forever back on our feet. We will always be at the mercy of Europeans who think that persecuting Jews is a matter of "social justice" and Arabs and Muslims who simply want us dead or gone from our own historical homeland.

But if there was any a moment in recent Jewish history to claim our land, now is probably the time. Not only do we have an ally in the White House, but we have greater economic, technological, medical, scientific, and diplomatic reach than in any time in Jewish history.

What I would suggest to my friend, Enno, despite the fact that I am sitting in my perch in northern California, is that perhaps now is the time for bold action.

Shin Bet chief Argaman: We thwarted 560 terror attacks this year

Shin Bet director Nadav Argaman said on Monday that his agency thwarted 560 significant violent attacks this past year, more than 300 of them shooting attacks.

Argaman was speaking at a ceremony to give prizes to top performers in the country's intelligence agencies.

He gave credit to the entire Shin Bet and other agencies for their efforts in nabbing terrorists before they could kill Israeli civilians.
Operatives who participated in six key operations were given awards.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also spoke at the ceremony, emphasizing that Iran remains the country's main threat.

He said that Iran threatens Israel using conventional warfare, and is a potential nuclear threat in the future and via proxy terror groups.
Netanyahu thanked the intelligence agencies for both keeping the Israeli public safe and giving them a relative sense of safety in the midst of a dangerous region.

Tarek Khoury, a member of Jordan's parliament, wrote a Facebook post where he complained about how the US is stopping countries, including Jordan, from trading with Syria. Even countries that have trade agreements with Syria are being pressured not to honor them.

But then he adds a thought about the deal where Jordan is buying natural gas from Israel, saying, "As for the Gas Agreement, all the arguments [against it] come to us from the people of our flesh ...

"Our scourge with the Jews of the inside is more severe than the Jews of the outside."

Khoury seems to be saying that since real Jordanians are all against the gas agreement, the only way it has gone through must be from "Jews on the inside," the people who facilitated it, who are even worse than "Jews on the outside" - in Israel and worldwide.

Whether he means "Jews on the inside" literally or metaphorically, the statement pretty much proves he is an antisemite.

Since the Arab world insists that it is not antisemitic and has no problem with Jews, I'm sure that there will be a huge outrage in Jordan about such blatantly antisemitic statements by a member of Parliament, certainly a censure and a bunch of angry op-eds against such blatant use of the word "Jew" as an insult.

Any day now.

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.

Iran's official PressTV scoured the depths of US conspiracy theory sites to find a way to possibly blame Israel for Iran's shooting down the Ukraine Airlines Flight 752.

A former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer has raised the possibility of a cyber attack, carried out by the United States and possibly Israel, playing a part in the accidental shoot down of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 early this month.

“What seems to have been a case of bad judgments and human error does, however, include some elements that have yet to be explained,” Philip Giraldi argued in a recent article published by the American Herald Tribune.

“The Iranian missile operator reportedly experienced considerable ‘jamming’ and the planes transponder switched off and stopped transmitting several minutes before the missiles were launched. There were also problems with the communication network of the air defense command, which may have been related,” the former CIA specialist said.

It should come as no surprise that Girardi is an antisemite and Holocaust denier who also blames Israel for 9/11.

And the transponder stopped working when the first missile hit the plane, so even his theory is complete garbage.

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.

Historian and scholar Martin Kramer writes in Times of Israel:

Not a year goes by without an attempt by someone to associate the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. with the Palestinian cause. It’s particularly striking because while he lived, no one had much doubt about where he stood. Here, for example, is the late Edward Said, foremost Palestinian thinker of his day, in a 1993 interview:

With the emergence of the civil rights movement in the middle ’60s – and particularly in ’66-’67 – I was very soon turned off by Martin Luther King, who revealed himself to be a tremendous Zionist, and who always used to speak very warmly in support of Israel, particularly in ’67, after the war.

Kramer goes on to show how King was an unabashed Zionist even though today the anti-Israel crowd tries to steal his legacy.

The Edward Said quote is fascinating, though. It seems to indicate that all of the good King did - all of the progress he made towards equal rights for all people - is worthless to Said because of this one position. Never mind that King's position of support for Israel is entirely in line with his support for equal rights for all; after all, King saw the justice of having a Jewish state which in fact allowed Jews to be considered equals with other peoples in the world. But to Said, all of MLK's legacy seems to be worthless because of his Zionism.

Further reading into Said's writings show that this is in fact consistent. He addresses King briefly again in his memoirs, where he says:

Eleanor Roosevelt revolted me in her avid support for the Jewish state; despite her much-vaunted, even advertised, humanity I could never forgive her for her inability to spare the tiniest bit of it for our refugees. The same was true later for Martin Luther King, whom I had genuinely admired but was also unable to fathom (or forgive) for the warmth of his passion for Israel's victory during the 1967 war. (141)

Said didn't just disagree with these icons of human rights. He was revolted by them if they also were sympathetic to Jews and Jewish aspirations to self-determination.

(Roosevelt did visit the Middle East after Israel was reborn, and contrary to Said's words she expressed sympathy for Palestinian refugees, saying the situation in the camps was "dreadful," but she noted that Arab nations did not want to resettle them and wanted to keep them in misery. There is an entire book by an academic in Ireland expanding on Said's hate for Roosevelt.)

Said didn't really care about human rights if he couldn't tie them to the Palestinian cause. The essay, The Politics and Poetics of Exile: Edward Said in Africa by

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza notes that Said was silent altogether in his memoir about the civil rights movement in America:

Said's representation of the United States also remains strangely silent on racism, the country's original and enduring sin rooted in the ravages of European settler colonialism that led to the genocide of the native peoples followed by the enslavement of Africans. ...

He only mentions in passing that at the Princeton of the 1950s "there wasn't a single black" (274), offering no comment as if this were an inconsequential fact for a country then in the throes of the civil rights struggle, which he does not even address.

Edward Said, the leading Palestinian intellectual who came of age on American college campuses during the height of the civil rights movement, did not offer a word of support for the blacks of America struggling for equal rights.

Real human rights champions care about all people. MLK didn't care only about black people's rights, but about all human rights.

But when Palestinians speak about human rights, they are invariably trying to hijack the cause, not promote it. They demand women and blacks in the US include pro-Palestinian agendas in their "resistance" platforms but there is no reciprocity, something that Zeleza mentions about Said:

Support for Israel's aggression against the dispossessed and oppressed Palestinians does indeed deserve censure, but reciprocity is required, in this case in terms of support for African American civil rights struggles, which is noticeably absent in this memoir.

The case of Eleanor Roosevelt is even more stunning. Roosevelt chaired the drafting committee for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - but to Said, her including Jews as deserving of such rights makes her not mistaken but revolting. He is so disgusted by her that he discounts everything else she ever did, doubting her "much-vaunted, even advertised humanity" as if it was a scam and her entire life is defined by her supposed silence on Palestinian Arabs.

Is there anything that describes Palestinian Arab attitudes more accurately than this? Jews, the most persecuted people in history, have always been in the forefront of civil rights movements for everyone. For Palestinian Arabs, however, everything is looked at through the tunnel vision of their exclusive rights to being considered the victim, and other victims are only tools to push their own narrative.

Anyone who doesn't share their view of being the biggest victims is not considered merely wrong. They are the enemy.

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.

Latest "Apartheid?" poster

Time to get ready for this year's months-long "Israel Apartheid Week" with some new examples of how Israel accepts people of all colors, faiths and backgrounds.

Full story here.

(h/t Irene)

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.

01/19 Links: PA daily calls for murder to stop Holocaust ceremony in Jerusalem; Bernie Sanders is the American Corbyn… and this isn't good.

From Ian:

PMW: PA daily calls for murder to stop Holocaust ceremony in Jerusalem

“One shot will disrupt the [Holocaust] ceremony and one dead body will cancel the ceremony” – call for murder in op-ed in official PA daily

As over 40 world leaders gather in Jerusalem this week to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz at the event Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism, the Palestinian Authority wants to disrupt the ceremony. The official PA daily published an op-ed yesterday literally calling for murder in order to ruin the ceremony:

“One shot will disrupt the ceremony and one dead body will cancel the ceremony.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 18, 2020]

Before calling for murder, regular PA daily columnist Yahya Rabah criticized the international community for recognizing that the “Jews' Holocaust is terrible” while accepting as “insignificant, beautiful, [and] spectacular” what he called the “Palestinian holocaust by Israel that still continues.” Rabah warned: “It can be assumed that they [Palestinians] will resist the ceremony being held in Jerusalem itself, as Jerusalem is theirs.” His suggested solution to stopping the international ceremony from taking place – and which the official PA daily printed - is murder.

Palestinian Media Watch has reported on Palestinian Authority justification of terror and murder to achieve political goals.

Jonathan Tobin: Holocaust Politics Is Bad for the Jews

Poles suffered more cruelly at the hands of the Nazis than any other occupied country, save the Soviet Union. But while the Poles were horribly persecuted, the fate of the Jews was far worse. Approximately 18 percent of all Poles were killed during the war compared with a mind-boggling 90 percent of all Polish Jews.

But there’s more at stake here than a natural desire on the part of many Jews to express anger about revisionist history. As is true of other Eastern European governments, Poland does not share the antipathy towards Israel that is so common in Western Europe. Promoting warm relations between Israel and Poland isn’t so much a matter of Netanyahu practicing realpolitik but a policy based in the realization that the conflicts of the past should not doom Jews and Poles to conflict in the present and future.

Moreover, the politics behind the decision to exclude the Polish president from the list of Yad Vashem speakers is particularly troubling.

Moshe Kantor, head of the European Jewish Congress, chairs the Yad Vashem event. Kantor is a Jewish philanthropist. But he’s also a Russian business oligarch who is close to Putin. That authoritarian leader is clearly interested in undermining Poland and separating it from allies like Israel. It’s likely that the insult to Poland was orchestrated by Moscow.

Russia is also guilty of its own outrageous revisionism. The invasion of Poland and the start of World War II were made possible by the Soviet-Nazi pact of August 1939, in which the two totalitarian governments divided up their neighbor. But Putin’s foreign ministry has the chutzpah to claim it was the Poles’ fault, and that Stalin was justified in collaborating with the Nazis.

Kantor could have been overruled by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin, but he failed to heed Netanyahu’s plea to avoid the dispute. The only explanation for that is that Rivlin’s antipathy for Netanyahu and a desire to thwart the prime minister’s policy goal prevailed over common sense. And it has created an incident that hurts Israel and helps no one but Putin. Indeed, the absurdity of the decision is one that has created a rare agreement between columnists from the right-wing Israel Hayom and the left-wing Haaretz.

Poles and Jews shouldn’t be doomed to continued enmity by a shared tragic history. Nor should the interests of Putin or the absurd rivalries of Israeli politics determine how the Holocaust is remembered.

Israel Advocacy Movement: Bernie Sanders is the American Corbyn… and this isn't good.

Bernie Sanders is the American Corbyn… and this isn't good.

You can now support our work on Patreon: https://t.co/ljkZpJWqs7 pic.twitter.com/02LNIB05Ma
— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) January 19, 2020

Apple’s Siri says Israeli president is ‘President of the Zionist occupation state’

Apple users from around the world were surprised to learn overnight Saturday that Israeli President Reuven Rivlin is the “President of the Zionist occupation state,” according to the giant tech’s vastly popular Siri app.

This post can't be displayed because social networks cookies have been deactivated. You can activate them by browsing the cookie settings page.

After the story broke on social media, angering many people in the process, it was understood that Rivlin’s English Wikipedia page was hacked which caused the unpleasant malfunction.

Siri is a built-in “intelligent assistant” application that enables users of Apple devices to voice commands to the app in order to perform a string of tasks.

When Siri is asked about a public figure, the answer is usually extracted from the person's Wikipedia page. (h/t vwVwwVwv)

Appears to have been fixed in Siri now too pic.twitter.com/XHurR4j1T2
— 𝗠𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗱 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁 (@MadMikeOfficial) January 19, 2020

Harpoon: Inside the covert war against terrorism's money masters by Shurat HaDin's Nitsana Dershan-Leitner, published in 2017, is an important chronicle of how Israel, as well as the US, identified the importance of cutting off the money supply to terrorists.

Traditional anti-terrorism methods would follow the operational organization chart of the terror groups, using human and electronic intelligence to find the top people and arrest or kill them. But Israeli intelligence officers in the 1990s realized that when you starve terrorists of their funds, they can't mount any attacks. How to do that is a challenge, though.

The book follows Meir Dagan, legendary head of the Mossad, as he learned the importance of the money trail and became also the head of a task force, codename Harpoon, across Israel's financial, legal and intelligence experts aimed at disrupting and stopping terror financing.

As time went on, several methods emerged of going after the money. Dagan ensured that when Israel went after terrorists during the Second Intifada, they would take all financial records and computers that would allow them to reconstruct the networks of payments and sources.

Another, cruder method was to directly attack sources of money during wartime. Israel bombed banks in Beirut during the 2006 Lebanon War, which meant that Hezbollah couldn't pay their fighters, and - according to the book - Hezbollah asked for a ceasefire when they ran out of money. Similarly, Hamas gave up in the 2014 war after Israel traced a huge cash shipment that was smuggled in through Gaza tunnels to Hamas' main money man, Mohamed el-Ghoul, and blew up his car and all the money.

Also in this category was the spectacular assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Hamas commander and financier of Hamas rockets, in Dubai. Such acts ensured that any of the accountants and money-men for terror groups would think twice and spend much more time protecting themselves, meaning less time to do damage.

A very effective method, and one that Derahan-Leitner knows well, is using the legal system to sue terror groups and their financial institutions in friendly countries. Some of these break new legal ground, and now banks are much more responsible for keeping track of who they provide services to.

The book's blurbs talk about how it "reads like a thriller." Not really. There are a couple of interesting episodes, though not directly attributed to Israel or the US, where a major Hezbollah financier was convinced to invest in a sure-thing investment in Doha; after seeing astonishing returns he convinced Hezbollah leaders including Hassan Nasrallah to invest a total of about a billion dollars. The company vanished along with their cash.

The sources of terror financing were Islamic charities throughout the world, Iran, the PLO skimming money from aid given to them by Europe and the US to build a state, and a huge criminal enterprise that Hezbollah and Iran set up in Venezuela and Africa (as well as the US) to make money off of illegal drugs, prostitution, cigarette smuggling and the like, and laundering these through purchases of items like cars.

Many of the episodes mentioned in the book were tactical successes but the major money machine from Iran and Hezbollah criminal enterprises continued to churn out huge amounts of cash for terrorists. Mentioned although not stressed in the book are US sanctions against terror groups and their sponsors, mostly Iran. Israel cannot do this alone - it had to lobby the US over years to understand the importance of money for worldwide terror. The current sanctions against Iran are one of the single most important things possible to choke off terror financing in the Middle East.

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.

Palestinian media are reporting that for the third time this week, Israel opened up some (nonexistent) dams to flood farmland where Gaza farmers planted wheat, barley, legumes and other crops.

Quds News Network, which recently was honored by Google and the news NGOs, said:

Abdellatif Qannou’, a spokesperson for Hamas, said that the Israeli ongoing assaults on farmers and their properties are a crime and a form of the Israeli attacks on the Palestinian people.

Qannou’ added that this is an example of the Israeli barbarism, arrogance, and blatant violation of all humanitarian laws and international norms, which require an international intervention to leash the occupation and end its barbaric policy against our people.

Apparently news awards don't care about things like "truth" as long as the news source attracts youth.

There was severe and deadly flooding in Iran this past week as well. It took days before Iran's president acknowledged the disaster.

I wonder if Israeli dams are powerful enough to flood Iran? Hmmm.

Meanwhile, even the UN says that Israel has nothing to do with the flooding.

Some 235,000 people residing in 39 low-lying areas lacking adequate infrastructure across the Gaza Strip are at risk of flooding during the upcoming winter season due to possible overflow of stormwater facilities and sewage pumping stations, according to estimates by the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Cluster for the oPt. This may expose an already vulnerable population to waterborne diseases, property losses, disruption in access to livelihoods and services, and displacement.

The immediate reasons behind this risk are gaps in maintenance and repairs of the relevant WASH facilities, compounded by the shortage of fuel to operate backup generators during long electricity outages: both factors are driven by significant funding shortages.

In 2019, less than 74 per cent of the amount needed to operate Gaza’s 484 water and sanitation facilities was funded, leaving a critical gap of $18 million.

According to the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), Gaza’s main provider of water and wastewater services, the running costs of Gaza’s 484 public water and sanitation facilities are US$68 million per year, including staff salaries, fuel, electricity, chemicals and spare parts. In 2019, less than 74 per cent of this amount was funded, leaving a critical gap of $18 million. According to the Palestine Water Law, the main source of funding for the operation and maintenance of these facilities is the recovery of bills from consumers. However, recovery rates in Gaza currently stand at around 20 percent, forcing CMWU to rely primarily on support from international donors, which has significantly declined in 2019.

80% of Gazans aren't paying their utility bills that would keep them safe from disasters like this.

(h/t Irene)

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.

Every week Dr. Nasser Al-Lahham. editor of the Palestinian Maan News Network, goes on TV and says his view of the situation in the Middle East.

This week's was pretty laughable.

Al-Lahham said that Israel’s export of gas to Egypt and Jordan makes Tel Aviv a great power in the region. As a result, today, Israeli and American companies control the Arab nation - they destroy it through arms and rebuild it with the Arabs' own money.

Al-Lahham said it is possible that not only will Israel in 2020 become a member of the League of Arab States but it can become the president of the League as well, "in light of Arab silence and negligence."

He continued: to say that Israel's ambitions are not only to seize Jerusalem and occupy Palestine, but to seek to control the Arab countries and plunder their resources with American assistance.

Of course, he doesn't really believe any of this. Al-Lahham is engaging in the time worn Arab tradition of starting absurd rumors in order to get the Arab street to wake up and start rioting against Israel.

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.

01/18 Links: Simon Schama: Auschwitz and the new anti-Semitism; Democrat backing for antisemitism is killing Jews; LBC: Maajid Nawaz takes down caller who said Hamas are not terrorists

From Ian:

Simon Schama: Auschwitz and the new anti-Semitism

The greater point, though, is connectedness. The reason why the likes of Émile Zola sprang to the defence of Dreyfus and into combat with the anti-Semite Edouard Drumont – whose acolytes and devotees, at one especially odious moment in 1899, proposed a wide variety of “solutions” to deal with the Jews of France, including turning them into dog food, subjects for medical school vivisection and target practice for artillery – was that Zola saw the integrity of republican democracy itself as contingent on treating the Jews as full, patriotically loyal citizens.

So too, now, any campaign against anti-Semitism is necessarily a campaign for the basic decencies of liberal democracy; a consistency of principle which makes Jews not just the kin of other people who have suffered genocide – Armenians, Bosniaks and Tutsis, for instance – but of those currently suffering the theft of civil rights on account of their race or religion: the Uighurs, Rohingya, the defenceless children of Latino fugitives from terror and dispossession in their homes; and, indeed, Palestinians living under the daily hardships and injustices of occupation.

What, then, is the purpose of acts of remembrance of the kind that will take place at Auschwitz and Jerusalem; who are they for? To begin with, in the age of disinformation when Holocaust denial has become commonplace and more are taken in by the demonising forgery of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion through online access to the libel; at a time when the power of evidence has to contend with the intoxication of malignant belief; at a moment when those who went through the tormenting fires themselves are leaving us, it is essential that the cautionary history be imprinted in the minds of the future.

But this should be not done just to vindicate the survivors and the millions whose bodies were turned to smoke, or whose bones still lie in the mass pits of eastern Europe. It should also be done, especially in this wretched time of tribal shrieking, for the sake of our common humanity. If the story represents the very worst that humans can do, and must not do again, the act of telling is also a reassertion through horrified decency of the mutual care and kindness of which humanity must yet be capable.

Phyllis Chesler: Western Feminists AWOL in Supporting Abused and Dissident Muslim Women

Muslim and ex-Muslim feminists and dissidents have been risking torture and death in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and the Far East by refusing to wear the hijab and by adopting other Western ways.

Bizarrely, Western feminists and accomplished and powerful women, including diplomats and politicians, are donning the hijab as a gesture of cultural “sensitivity” and as a symbol of resistance to alleged racism.

For example, the American female lawyers defending the jihadists in Guantanamo Bay, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are wearing hijabs and abayas so they will not “offend” their clients, and as a way of gaining their trust.

“Women on Mr. Mohammed’s team mostly wear long skirts and other loose-fitting clothes topped by a variety of colorful scarves, shawls, head coverings and, in at least one instance, a one-piece, pull-on hijab,” The New York Times reported on December 27.

Something is radically wrong with this picture, and I’ve been writing about it for more than 20 years. My strongest allies are brave Muslim and ex-Muslim women and men, as well as other tribal feminist activists (Sikhs, Hindus). With exceptions — like Eleanor Smeal’s campaign against the Afghan burqa in the 1990s — most liberals, leftists, and feminists support Sharia-compliant customs of all kinds. Westerners support barbaric behaviors due to the influence of multi-cultural relativism, a commitment to tolerating even the intolerant, and as a statement against Western racism. In doing so, they betray their own feminist and humanitarian principles.

The hijab is a symbol of female subordination. When Western feminists fetishize it, they also cover for the extreme and barbaric abuse of women that often is hidden beneath the Islamic veil.

LBC: Maajid Nawaz takes down caller who said Hamas are not terrorists

When this caller claimed Hamas were "resistance fighters" against the terrorist state of Israel, Maajid Nawaz gave him a few facts.
Khalid from Swindon insisted that Hamas were simply trying to protect and free the Palestinians.
But when he claimed that they were peaceful and only "throw rockets here and there", Maajid decided to teach him a few things. Maajid told him: "Sheikh Qaradawi is an Egyptian Muslim brotherhood cleric, based in Qatar. That extremist gave a fatwa to Hamas, saying it's ok to kill Israeli civilians.
"The reason I'm explaining all this to you is because you said Israel does that.
"I asked you to point to the specific law where Israel does that and you said you can't. I then pointed to the specific fatwa - because for Hamas, a fatwa is law.
"So Hamas admits to killing Israeli citizens. Israel doesn't have a law that justifies killing Palestinian civilians.
"So therefore, Hamas is a terrorist group. Israel may be many things, but isn't targeting Palestinian civilians."

Last week, Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues Cherrie Daniels and Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Elan Carr held a briefing in Washington.

Carr addressed the issue of when criticism of Israel turns into antisemitism:

There are three primary sources for the rise in anti-Semitism: the far-right ethnic supremacists, the radical-left anti-Zionists, and the militant Islamists. It is a fundamental principle of our work that we do not rank these sources in importance nor do we minimize any of them. All three are dangerous and all must be combated. If one-third or two-thirds of a tumor is left untreated, the patient does not fare well. So all must be combated.

When Jewish individuals are demonized, delegitimized, or when Israel is held to a standard not applied to any other country in the world, that is anti-Semitic. Secretary of State Pompeo has clearly stated, and I quote: “This bigotry is taking on an insidious new form in the guise of ‘anti-Zionism.’ … Now, don’t get me wrong, criticizing Israel’s policies is an acceptable thing to do in a democracy. It’s what we do. But criticizing the very right to exist of Israel is not acceptable. Anti-Zionism denies the very legitimacy of the Israeli state and of the Jewish people. … Let me go on [the] record: Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism,” end quote.

Later, during Q&A, a reporter named Said who was clearly insulted by this tried to ask a question:

Q: My question is to Mr. Carr. What would constitute a legitimate criticism of Israel in your opinion, or in your definition?

MR CARR: Any criticism of Israeli policy is legitimate as long as Israel is not being subjected to a double standard. Now, one of the defined examples of anti-Semitism is subjecting Israel to a double standard. So even criticism of Israeli policy could be anti-Semitic if it’s a criticism that is – if it embraces a standard not applied to any other country in the world. However, other than that case, any criticism of a policy of the state of Israel is legitimate. However, criticizing Israel’s right to exist, targeting Israel as a Jewish collective, denying the Jewish people the right of self-determination in its ancient homeland, these are defined in the IHRA working definition as examples of contemporary anti-Semitism.

MS ORTAGUS: Okay —
QUESTION: But on – in terms of —
MS ORTAGUS: Said, I’m trying to let everyone —
QUESTION: Please, let me just follow up on this?
MS ORTAGUS: No, we’re going to let everyone do a question first.
QUESTION: I just wanted to clarify something that he’s —
MS ORTAGUS: No. We’ll let your colleagues have a question, and then we can come back to you once everyone’s had a chance. Thanks.

Said managed to get his followup later, but he wasn't pleased that he couldn't start an anti-Israel rant this time either:

MS ORTAGUS: Said, did you have another follow-up?

QUESTION: Yeah, I just wanted to clarify. You said that Israel is being held to a double standard. Can you give us some examples? I assume you – that you are referring to debate or activities that probably are taking place in international bodies like the UN and other places. Could you clarify and cite some examples?

MR CARR: Exactly. Well, exactly. I mean, the UN Human Rights Council’s obsessive focus on condemning Israel and according Israel a specific agenda item for discussion and condemnation is unacceptable, and that’s one of the reasons why the United States walked out. And we see under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Pompeo a determination not to collude in this kind of singling out of the one Jewish state in the world and treating Israel like no other country should be treated.
Now, again, criticism of Israeli policy, sure, have at it. You can criticize American policy, Israel’s policy, and every country’s policy. But be fair, don’t apply double standards, and don’t question the very right of the Jewish state to exist.

QUESTION: But Israel, you must agree, occupied the Palestinians for over 52 years.

MS ORTAGUS: Wait, let’s let Michel go. Go ahead. Thank you. You don’t have to answer that. Go ahead, Michel.
QUESTION: What’s the —
QUESTION: Can I finish my question, Morgan, because that is the kind of —
MS ORTAGUS: No, you can’t. No, you can’t. You cannot finish, thank you. Go ahead, Michel.

To Said, obviously Israel should be treated with double standards, because, um, occupation!

Ironically, HRW's Ken Roth tweeted Carr's definition of antisemitism including double-standards towards Israel without any irony that this is exactly how HRW treats Israel.

I responded with several examples.

Yes, everyone agrees with that.

And @HRW has been guilty of a double standard towards Israel for a LONG time. Which makes it antisemitic.

Some examples:https://t.co/JvKrN9tc0h https://t.co/NJwVEdkIt4 https://t.co/0bzh4jjqyj pic.twitter.com/OUoOrNjhqu
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) January 16, 2020

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.

01/17 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The west mourns the Jewish dead. But what about the living?; Keep an eye out for Israel Derangement Syndrome; The British Jews Who Want to Go Back to Germany

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The west mourns the Jewish dead. But what about the living

At Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Jan. 23, some 46 political leaders and royals, including Britain’s Prince Charles, will be attending the fifth World Holocaust Forum to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

At this and doubtless other such memorial events, many eloquent, important and heartfelt observations will be made about the evils of Nazism and Jew-hatred. In today’s climate, however, there’s something disquieting about such memorializing.

Given the eruption of physical and verbal attacks on Jews in Britain, America and Europe, it might be said that it’s never been so important to remember the horrors of the Holocaust.

But the west is now teeming with Holocaust memorials and museums, while schools have been imparting Holocaust education since the 1980s. And yet never since the defeat of Nazism has there been such an epidemic of Jew-hatred in western society.

Moreover, some of the countries that will be represented at Yad Vashem support people who want to kill Jews. They fund the Palestinians, who pump out murderous anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement.

Some of these countries have also turned a blind eye for years to the Iranian regime’s genocidal agenda towards Israel and the Jewish diaspora, and have even been trying to continue to funnel billions of dollars into Iran in defiance of U.S. sanctions.

To put it bluntly, it might appear that while the west beats its collective breast over dead Jews, it is largely indifferent to the mortal threats currently posed to the living ones.

At the very least, it’s clear that all this Holocaust memorializing and education hasn’t put antisemitism back in its putrid box.

Indeed, such Jew-hatred is propagated most perversely among liberals, who constantly flaunt their anti-racist and anti-Nazi credentials.

Keep an eye out for Israel Derangement Syndrome

I am not a psychiatrist, but I’ve observed a kind of psychosis in far-left activists of the West who claim to be progressives championing the Palestinian cause: Israel Derangement Syndrome, or IDS.

Sufferers of this insidious illness don’t rationally advocate for Palestinians and criticise Israeli policies, in the same way they’d criticise other states. They are doctrinaire cultists possessed of an unadulterated, unhinged hatred for Israel, which they see as a uniquely evil state that must be eradicated. Until then, it will be their all-consuming, defining cause; never mind the Uyghurs, Kurds or Iranian women. In indulging in the delusion that the end (of Israel) goal will eventually occur, they are complicit in perpetuating the conflict and emboldening the despotic regimes that act against the interests of the very people they purport to champion, the Palestinians.

Corbynism is the most recent prominent example of IDS. While we will no longer be bombarded with its leader’s sneering visage, the animosity towards Israel that its dogmatism exemplifies, replete with conspiracism and terrorist sympathising, is unlikely to fade. And it is rising across the Atlantic.

The hallmarks of this anti-Israeli posturing cult include such garb as ‘free Palestine’ t-shirts, keffiyehs, and snazzy accessories daubed with Palestinian flags. Their social media is flooded with memes and Electronic Intifada articles about evil Israel, and little else. They proudly quote token anti-Israel Jews like Noam Chomsky. In their special language ‘peace and justice’ is code for ‘end of Israel’ and ‘resistance’ is code for ‘terrorism’. And they think they’re clever, rhyming ‘resistance is justified’ with ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’ in their street mob chants.

The derangement that Israel is the root of all evil requires certain tropes and conspiracy theories — such as that Israel was behind 9/11 and Isis — to make sense of a world that is too complex, nuanced, uncertain and daunting, for their ideology to accommodate. But when, despite their best efforts, Israel can’t be blamed for the Palestinian plight, you will not hear a whimper from them. Not about the Palestinians living in Lebanon who are denied citizenship, excluded from social services and prohibited from owning property and entering over 20 professions. Nor that Palestinians are among the worst affected by the Syrian civil war and that their community in Yarmouk has been decimated. Nothing about the Gazans whose protests against Hamas are brutally suppressed, or LGBT groups, women’s organisations and journalists increasingly persecuted by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. They’ll excoriate Israel (never Egypt) for the blockade on the Gaza strip and the poverty of its people, but ignore the fact that, despite the blockade and poverty, Hamas spends tens of millions building sophisticated tunnels under Israel and firing thousands of rockets at it, instead of building hospitals. And when President Abbas recently announced that he won’t allow the building of a US-funded field hospital in Gaza, silence.

Martin Luther King on Peace, Israeli Security and Anti-Zionism

The Op-Ed also pointed out that King was clearly against against attacks on Zionists. Lewis wrote that “During an appearance at Harvard University shortly before his death, a student stood up and asked King to address himself to the issue of Zionism. The question was clearly hostile. King responded, ‘When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews, you are talking anti-Semitism.'” (This is not to be confused with a widely circulated hoax letter said to be written by King.)

Clarence B. Jones, a friend and advisor to King, likewise recalled King’s opposition to anti-Zionism. “I can say with absolute certainty that Martin abhorred anti-Semitism in all its forms, including anti-Zionism,” he explained in a 2008 Op-Ed. Jones elaborated on that point in What Would Martin Say?, a book he co-authored with Joel Engel. Mainstream reporters, he argues, have given a pass to anti-Semitism by black leaders like Al Sharpton because they buy the rationale that Israel’s existence is a provocation to Arabs. “Martin, for one, could see this coming after the Six-Day War in 1967, which is why he warned repeatedly that anti-Semitism would soon be disguised as anti-Zionism.”

While King would surely support better circumstances for both Israelis and Palestinians, it seems clear that he was unambiguously opposed to the Israel-bashing that counts as pro-Palestinian advocacy today. His strong statement about Israel’s right to exist suggests he recognized the centrality of this issue to the conflict. And judging by his views on anti-Zionism, he would be outraged by the idea that an avowed anti-Zionist like Omar Barghouti, who openly calls for replacing Israel with a state in which Jews will be a minority, pretends King would back boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.