Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 06, 2020

02/06 Links Pt1: As String of Palestinian Attacks Leaves 16 Israelis Wounded, Netanyahu Vows ‘Terrorism Will Not Defeat Us’; Evelyn Gordon: Trump's plan takes Resolution 242 seriously

From Ian:

As String of Palestinian Attacks Leaves 16 Israelis Wounded, Netanyahu Vows ‘Terrorism Will Not Defeat Us’

A string of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank on Thursday left 16 Israelis wounded.

“Terrorism will not defeat us — we will win,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented on the surge of violence.

In the first incident, 14 IDF soldiers were injured — one seriously — in an early Thursday morning car-ramming assault at the old train station on David Remez Street in the Israeli capital.

The perpetrator fled the area and the vehicle used in the attack was later found south of Jerusalem, near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

Later on Thursday, an Israeli Border Police officer was lightly wounded by a gunman in Jerusalem’s Old City, near the Temple Mount.

The assailant — an Israeli Arab from the northern city of Haifa who had recently converted to Islam from Christianity — was killed at the scene.

This was followed after a few hours by a shooting at a guard post at a junction on Route 463 in the Binyamin region of the West Bank, north of Jerusalem.

One IDF soldier was lightly hurt. The attacker escaped.

The Israeli military is sending reinforcements to the Jerusalem and West Bank sectors, in a bid to thwart further attacks.

Evelyn Gordon: Trump's plan takes Resolution 242 seriously

The plan's limited version of Palestinian sovereignty derives from the need for defensible borders as well, since as the past quarter-century has shown, Palestinian military control over territory means kissing Israeli security goodbye. The Palestinian Authority was able to wage the Second Intifada – which killed more than 1,100 Israelis, 78 percent of them civilians, including through suicide bombings in major Israeli cities – because the Oslo Accords barred the Israel Defense Forces from entering P.A. territory. Only after the IDF reasserted control over those areas did the terror wane. Similarly, the IDF's absence from Gaza is what has allowed Palestinians to fire more than 20,000 rockets at Israel from that territory, even as not one rocket has ever been launched from the West Bank.

Having learned this lesson, Trump's plan assigns security control of the West Bank solely to Israel. And again, this used to be an Israeli consensus before Oslo fever took hold; even Rabin, in his final speech, envisioned a Palestinian "entity which is less than a state."

One could obviously quibble with certain details of the plan; for instance, the idea of leaving some settlements as enclaves in Palestinian territory sounds like a security nightmare. One could even legitimately wonder, given the experience of the last 25 years, whether any kind of Palestinian state is compatible with Israel's security.

Nevertheless, Trump's plan is the first serious attempt to give Israel what Resolution 242 promised more than 50 years ago – borders that are not only recognized, but secure. As such, far from "violating UN resolutions," it's actually the first plan that doesn't violate them.

This provides Israel and its allies with a golden opportunity to remind the world that contrary to what is widely believed today, UN resolutions and "internationally agreed parameters" originally promised Israel defensible borders. Thus all the plans that broke this promise are the ones that ought to be deemed illegitimate – not the one plan that finally seeks to keep it.

The Arabs And Europeans React To Trump’s Middle East ‘Vision’

It takes time for attitudes to change, and changing attitudes in the Middle East is a tough proposition. Moving the Europeans may prove harder.

An Israeli general once told this story (I was there):

The Israeli general commanded a unit that crossed the Suez Canal in 1973 after repulsing Egypt’s surprise Yom Kippur War attack. In his headquarters, he received a message that purported to be from an Egyptian general, telling him to come — alone — in a jeep to a certain spot in the desert and “hear something.” The general told the group, “I was sure I was going to die, but I did it.” The Egyptian proved to be the chief of the Egyptian general staff and he, too, was alone.

The Egyptian said, “The war is over.”

The Israeli general said, “Yes. I know.”

The Egyptian general sighed, “Not this war. In 1948, Egypt was within 11 miles of Tel Aviv and you pushed us back. In 1956, you drove through Sinai — but it wasn’t fair because you had the French and the British. In 1967, you did it again — by yourselves. Now you have crossed the Suez Canal and are 99 kilometers from Cairo. I’m here to tell you that you won’t get any closer. The war is over.”

He got back in his jeep and left.

The Israeli returned to his headquarters and told the story to the general staff in Tel Aviv. “No one believed me,” the Israeli said.

But it was true. The Egyptian government had determined that fighting, losing, and regrouping was not a plan. In 1979, Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem, and in so doing met Israel’s primary condition for peace — recognition of Israel as a legitimate and permanent state in the region, entitled to “secure and recognized boundaries, free from threats or acts of force” (the language of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242). Today, Egypt and Israel cooperate on energy, security (including for the Gaza Strip), and trade.

In the broader Arab world, it is taking longer. Unable to countenance Jewish sovereignty in the region, the Arabs went to war in 1948 to erase it. They failed. They tried again in 1967. They failed again. After that war, an Arab League Summit convened in Sudan and issued what became known as the Khartoum Resolution: “No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.”

Mairav Zonszein, the far left writer who I have shown on numerous occasions to be intellectually dishonest, does it again - but this time for what most people consider a prestigious journal, the Columbia Journalism Review.

In short, her piece attacks The Forward for not being leftist enough. (The subtitle is "How America's Jewish newspaper lost the left.")

Now, I have attacked the Forward many times for publishing opinions and promoting articles that I think gave too much oxygen to the far-Left, providing their members a platform that is far out of proportion to their actual numbers. But the standard that one should use to criticize a media outlet, outside of insisting they report the truth, is whether it adheres to its own stated positions. The Forward's masthead says " News That Matters To American Jews," not "Bernie Sanders Fan Club" or "Zionists are Racists." (The Forward's advertising pitch does say that it is "a beacon of integrity, iconoclasm and progressive thought" but it is unclear whether it uses the word "progressive" the same way the uber-Left does. What is clear is that The Forward considers itself above all a Jewish media outlet, not a leftist one.)

Criticizing The Forward for not being leftist enough when it never claimed to be a leftist media outlet is only one piece of Zonszein's dishonesty. Zonszein misleads again and again, stating things that CFR should have fact-checked.

For example, she writes, "Compared to figures such as Omar and Ocasio-Cortez, Stephen Miller, a Trump senior adviser who is one of the most influential Jews in the White House, was given less attention, even as he advanced white-supremacist policies inspired by Mein Kampf." I count over 90 articles in The Forward about Stephen Miller, nearly all of them extremely negative. That's plenty of attention! Yes, there are about 130 articles that mention Omar, but a significant number of them support her against her critics. (Zonszein's link about Mein Kampf is also false, it does not support her assertion that Miller's positions were inspired by Hitler.)

The article goes on to berate the Forward for publishing occasional opinion pieces from the Right, such as from Mort Klein. Whether she likes him or not, he is the head of a major Zionist organization and to banning him from the Forward would be astonishing To the Left, censorship of opinions they don't agree with is a higher editorial imperative than publishing a variety of opinions that are representative of American Jews.

More outrageous is this section where Zonszein implies that The Forward is in bed with neo-Nazis: "Another contributor published 'We Need to Start Befriending Neo-Nazis.'" The article in question, by Bethany Mandel, was about the few people who try to get neo-Nazis to understand Jews and to change their minds - the exact opposite of the implication by Zonszein.

The straw that broke the camel's back, to Zonszein and her far-Left, anti-Israel friends, was that The Forward has not been shy about calling out leftist antisemitism such as that consistently pushed by Ilhan Omar.

That problem came to a head last February, when Batya Ungar-Sargon, The Forward’s opinion editor, called out Congresswoman Omar for anti-Semitism, sparking a national controversy and leading to the fundraising email that angered Jewish progressives like me. “It is frustrating and saddening to see The Forward today embracing, indeed, reveling in, its newfound role as policeman, prosecutor, judge, and jury deciding what is and isn’t anti-Semitism,” Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, says.

So the Left can tell us what antisemitism is and the Forward cannot? Because according to them, there is simply no such thing as any antisemitism that is not from the far Right, and mentioning any other type outrages them. Arab antisemitism is "protesting for Palestinian freedom" no matter how many times the word "Jew" is used. Attacks on Jews in Brooklyn are twisted to somehow be Trump's fault. And, of course, there is antisemitism on the Left itself, often camouflaged as being anti-Israel. Even UN expert on freedom of religion and belief admits that there is leftist antisemitism.

But the far Left is outraged and wants to silence any such opinion. To them, even the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance cannot express an opinion on what antisemitism is. Only they can, and all antisemitism conveniently comes from their political opponents. They are guilty of the "weaponizing" antisemitism they accuse everyone else of doing, even in this very essay.

The article doesn't even have a consistent, coherent viewpoint. Zonszein's last paragraph is a stunning example:

In many ways, what is happening with the paper reflects what has been going on in the American Jewish community writ large: the collapse of centrism, the polarization of discourse, and the imperative to take a stand. And that’s the source of my frustration with The Forward. Communicating through op-eds and imposing divides among Jews isn’t the kind of journalism required to guide us through the difficult moment we’re in.

She just wrote an entire article attacking the site for publishing opinions that are too Right and not enough from the Left, and then she complains about "the collapse of centrism"? She wants to silence Bethany Mandel, who cannot be pigeonholed as Right of Left and is as classically liberal as they come, and then complains about the "polarization of discourse"? Is the "imperative to take a stand" a bad thing? She mercilessly attacks any Jewish opinion she disagrees with and then complains about "imposing divides among Jews"? What a bizarre conclusion to Zonszein's screed.

The main thrust of the piece, besides attempting to smear The Forward, is to insist that it has no right to publish any opinions that Leftists disagree with. This fundamentally anti-liberal and anti-free speech stance is a very strange one for a watchdog like CJR to publish.

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Men killed by Israel in Jenin were both members of the PA police - and one might have also been Islamic Jihad!

From the Jerusalem Post:

Two Palestinians, including a policeman, were killed in riots which broke out in the West Bank city of Jenin after IDF troops demolished the home of a Palestinian terrorist responsible for the death of Rabbi Raziel Shevach in September 2018.

According to Palestinian news agency WAFA, 19 year-old Yazan Abu Tabikh was killed after IDF troops opened fire at rioters who had been clashing with troops. The policeman was identified as Sergeant Tarek Badwan.

The first question is - was the policeman attacking the IDF?

But there is more. Yazan Abu Tabikh was identified in Palestinian media as also a paid member of the PA's National Security Service in Jenin.

This means that two PA police were killed and they were the only ones.

This sure makes it sound like the PA is now actively attacking Israeli forces.

This gets even more interesting because Islamic Jihad issued a statement that strongly suggested that Abu Tabikh was also one of its members as well, but that is not certain.

Either way, if the PA is now encouraging its police to attack Israeli security, things could escalate quickly.

Mahmoud Abbas said last Saturday that "we still believe in peace and a culture of peace."

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Morocco's mainstream Hespress news site has an article about how Eurovision is trying to get Morocco to return to the competition.

Morocco only entered once, in 1980, with the only song ever sung in Arabic for the competition. However, it ended up in next to last place and Morocco's king vowed never to return.

Now, Morocco is using another excuse for not returning to Eurovision: the competition's decision in 2016 not to raise the flag of any country that is not a member of the UN, which applies to "Palestine" as well as Crimea and other flags.

The comments on the article are most interesting.

While some hail the ostensible solidarity with Palestinians that Morocco is pretending to have, others are slamming the idea of not joining Eurovision because of the Palestinian issue.

The Palestinian cause will not benefit from anything, but we lost and are still losing the billions that we support the Palestinians through the Al-Quds Committee and the Arab League in return, nothing.

Normalization is ongoing with the entity already. Recently, Morocco bought 3 drones [from Israel.]

How long will this folly persist, isolating Morocco internationally and selling its ideals in exchange for serving a single agenda that does not help the Moroccan people at all?. What is the relationship of the Moroccan people to lifting or not lifting a piece of cloth on an international competition? Isn't Morocco's participation and showing its capabilities internationally more worthy than the Arabs and their boycott?

A very strange logic among many Moroccans and with great regret. Why do we hate the Israelis when they are an internationally recognized country? What is even stranger is that many Moroccans hate even Jews from other countries and even Moroccan Jews. Why do you hate the Israelis? Because they kill Palestinians and because they raped Palestinian land, seems to be the answer. Turkey does not kill the Kurds and the Syrians, and Syria does not kill its people and it is from its blood and flesh? Iraq does not kill the Iraqis today? And the Saudis and the Emirates do not kill the poor Yemenis? By Allah, Israel has no weapons made in order to kill Moroccans on the contrary, it will help Morocco obtain weapons if we Algeria attacks...

This decision and this non-participation policy contradicts the provisions of the Moroccan constitution and the spirit of ancient Moroccan history, with its dimensions and its affiliation to the Mediterranean space and culture.
Who is Palestine to prohibit and separate Morocco from its Mediterranean civilizational affiliation?

The ban of non-flags of countries that are not recognized by the United Nations is natural. Otherwise, it will raise the flag of the Polisario and provide a time for them to be seen by 600 million people!
As for normalization with Israel, would you laugh at us, as Erdogan laughs at us? Turkey's trade exchange with Israel in the millions, they have embassies, offices, reception of heads of government, etc. .. Israel has been recognized by all Arabs and Muslims directly or indirectly .. So stop laughing at yourself. If Morocco does not participate, Nablus and Jericho will be liberated?
Moroccan participation is a good publicity for the country as a country of openness and peace.

Since the beginning of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, we have not gotten anything from Palestine except headaches with their empty expressions and their racism based on a vacuum that does not increase except in delaying our economic and political progress. It is time to say to the Palestinians about the wisdom of dignity - a land that you are defending as adults. Stand up, take the burden of building your future with your own hands, as we do, and let us live in peace and progress. We did not and will not forget, I, the Palestinians, many times, they provoked us with their cooperation and stood by the terrorist gang (Polisario) striking at the wall every good thing we did from them, forgetting that Moroccan souls died for them and on top of them are the two Moroccan sisters (Ghaithah and Nadia El-Bradley) who Sacrificed everything for their sake for Palestine.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Our state is tiny, in size and population. The Nations didn’t want it to exist at all, and when they couldn’t stop it they did their best to keep it small. There aren’t so many Jews in the world, anyway; millennia of oppression and murder have kept our numbers down, and today there are millions who are “Jewish by extraction” but are assimilated enough to other cultures to be lost forever to the Jewish people.

In all the world there are fewer than 15 million Jews, in Israel fewer than 7 million. But there are forces arrayed against us that are unique in their scope and viciousness. Throughout the world, even in countries where there are few Jews or none at all, people have opinions about us. According to a worldwide survey done by the ADL, some 26% of the world’s 7.5 billion people “harbor antisemitic attitudes.” That is incredible, when you think about it.

There are 35 million Kurds in the world, another people seeking (but so far not getting) self-determination. Certainly they have issues with their Turkish and other neighbors, but I venture to guess that it is highly unlikely that anywhere near as many people have even heard of the Kurds, much less “harbor anti-Kurdish attitudes.”

What’s true for Jews goes triple for their state. I won’t repeat the depressing statistics about the number of UN resolutions condemning Israel that pass every year, and the fact that it is consistently attacked there for crimes that it did not commit while countries that do engage in murder, aggression, and oppression are never mentioned. I won’t go into detail about the extreme and irrational anti-Israel expression (misoziony*) found in almost one hundred percent of the world’s academic and artistic realms.

Really, Israel and Jews are sui generis in the “objects of hatred” department (and if you think it is our fault, you are part of the problem).

This hatred is not just theoretical. From time to time, our immediate neighbors, cousins if you will, start wars whose intent is to kill or disperse the Jews who are occupying the Land of Israel. As a result, Israel has been forced to spend a large portion of her GDP on defense, which has led to her possession of very advanced military technology, which – along with her slightly better degree of organization – led to the defeat of our enemies in conventional war. That in turn led them to adopt strategies of asymmetric warfare and terrorism, which we have managed to counter, although less successfully.

These aren’t our only enemies. In the middle of the twentieth century, one of the most highly developed scientific, literary, and musical cultures in the Western world descended into genocidal madness and ignited a war which resulted in 60 million dead and much of Europe laid waste, primarily – there were other reasons, but I’ll stick with “primarily” – to annihilate us. Largish groups in almost every country of Eastern and Western Europe worked together with the Nazis to help collect, ship, and exterminate those of us who fell into their hands.

After the war there was a general revulsion in what was left of the countries that had participated in the biggest pogrom in history, as well as an understanding on the part of the Jewish remnant that our state had to be established regardless of the cost, which prevailed against the resistance – imagine, after all that! – the resistance from Britain and the Arabs.

But the antisemitism of Europe didn’t go away, although it was pushed under cover by the embarrassment of its involvement in the pogrom of pogroms. There was no embarrassment about expressing it in the form of misoziony, the wild hatred of the state that we managed to establish despite Britain’s best efforts to prevent it. And while there is still enough revulsion left to prevent them from repeating their attempt to liquidate our people, it hasn’t stopped them from paying to create the conditions for others to do it for them.

So we have European powers, particularly Germany (of all nations) and the hyper-civilized Scandinavian countries, the ones who abhor physical violence and have made the expression of racist sentiments illegal, spending millions of Euros of their citizens’ taxes on enterprises designed to weaken the Jewish state and set the stage for its destruction by Arabs or Iranians who aren’t squeamish about direct action with guns and bombs to accomplish the goal desired – but never said out loud in public – in Brussels, Berlin, and Stockholm.

European money keeps numerous international and Israeli organizations afloat, usually ostensibly in defense of human rights, but practically focusing on the rights and national aspirations of one particular group, the Palestinian Arabs. If you ask an honest Palestinian, he will tell you that he aspires, above all else, to violently kick the Jews out of all of the Land of Israel, in which he believes they have no right to live (except as a dhimmi minority), and certainly no right to have a sovereign state.

The Europeans, realizing that this aspiration smells uncomfortably like the 1940s, insist that what they want is only to divide Israel along the 1949 armistice line and set up a Palestinian Arab state in the eastern part. Then this state will live happily alongside Israel, with its 9-mile wide waist, and the “Middle Eastern Conflict” will be over. This is called the “two-state solution,” but of course won’t solve anything except the difficulties the Arabs have today in hitting Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion Airport from their territory with the cheapest and simplest of mortars.

Israelis learned by experience that Arab control of areas near Jewish populations makes them a target of terrorism and rocket attacks, and refuse to vote for the stupid or psychologically disturbed politicians who advocate this. Thus, since the Second Intifada (2000-3) and the Hamas takeover of Gaza (2007), Israeli voters have rejected the parties of the Left, whose support has fallen to the point that they flirt with the cutoff percentage in elections.

Europe wants to change that. For example – and this is just one of countless similar examples – the European Union has granted more than half a million dollars (500,000 Euros) to an Israeli NGO whose objective is to change the attitude of Russian-speaking Israelis, who have always leaned politically right – for obvious reasons – and who have opposed the creation of a Palestinian state. The EU says that the grant is intended to

…promote conditions for a negotiated settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and potential shifts in public opinion among the Russian-speaking community by building confidence and trust in the two-state solution among a population that has traditionally rejected and been omitted from the process, as well as to deconstruct a negative view of the Palestinian narrative.

It should be obvious that the political attitudes of Russian-speaking Israelis are nobody’s business but Israel’s. But this item provides a window into the overall program of the EU and individual European countries, which work on numerous levels to bring about the partition of the Land of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state.

This and other manipulative programs, including financial support for international and Israeli NGOs that propagandize, support BDS, and engage in lawfare against Israel, complement the EU’s investment in building infrastructure for Palestinians in Area C, the part of Judea and Samaria that according to the Oslo accords is under Israeli civil control. These building projects, done without permits or permission, are intended to create facts on the ground that will make it more difficult for Israel to retain control of these areas in any future deal. At the same time, international pressure on Israel to not build in the territories, even inside existing settlements that will certainly end up as part of Israel, has been effective. Despite news reports that “1000 new homes have been approved” and so forth, very few buildings have actually been constructed. And illegal Palestinian settlements have not been removed.

Make no mistake – the Palestinian leadership has no interest in a state in the territories except as a stepping stone to the replacement of Israel by an Arab state, and the death or dispersal of about half of the Jewish people. They say it themselves over and over.

Are officials in the EU and individual countries that support this project so stupid or blind and deaf as to fail to understand that? Do they not know that the funds that they provide to the Palestinian Authority are used to pay terrorists? Do they not see that UNRWA, of which they are now the prime funder, educates Palestinian children to hate?

I don’t believe it.

_______________________
* Misoziony (pronounced mis-OZ-yoni) is the extreme and irrational hatred of the Jewish state. It is antisemitism raised up one level of abstraction, although almost all misozionists are antisemites as well.

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02/05 Links Pt2: European Funding to Terror-Linked NGOs Exposed in Comprehensive Report; How the Soviets promoted openly antisemitic anti-Zionism

From Ian:

European Funding to Terror-Linked NGOs Exposed in Comprehensive Report

Eight European-funded Palestinian NGOs have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a US-designated terrorist group, according to a new report.

Palestinian NGOs Addameer, Al-Dameer, Defense for Children International–Palestine, Health Work Committees, Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Union of Health Work Committees and Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees were all identified by Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor in a report released last week as having extensive ties to the PFLP.

“Over 70 current and former staff, board members and general assembly members, as well as senior management and founders at these NGOs have direct ties to the PFLP, designated as a terror group by the US, EU, Canada, Israel and others,” said the report.

“A number of them are employed in financial positions at the European-supported NGOs, raising questions about oversight and aid diversion,” it continued.

“This is part of a wide-ranging network used by the terror group to gain legitimacy by operating under the façade of civil society,” the report added.

The report details millions of dollars in funding to these NGOs from government sponsors including the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, France, Ireland, Norway and Belgium, with additional support from the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and UNICEF.

It also identified five members of the European-funded NGOs, including an accountant at UAWC, who were indicted in December in connection with the terrorist attack in Israel in August that killed 17-year-old Rina Shnerb.

According to professor Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor’s president and founder, European support for select Palestinian and Israeli NGOs began in the mid-1990s, with several European Union and member state officials using the support to increase their influence.

After ‘Post’ report, German MP to quit BDS NGO if it does not reject BDS

Following a recent Jerusalem Post report, German politician Olaf in der Beek on Wednesday confirmed a letter in which he threatened to resign from the German-Palestinian Society, a hardcore BDS organization targeting Israel, if the group does not reject the “antisemitic” pressure campaign.

“My letter to the president of the German-Palestinian Society proves my clear stance against antisemitism and the BDS movement. If the German-Palestinian Society does not distance itself from the BDS campaign, I will leave it,” the Free Democratic Party (FDP) MP told the Post.

The Post first reported Wednesday on in der Beek’s membership in the German-Palestinian Society. Numerous Post queries sent to the president of the Society Nazih Musharbash and all members of the executive board of the organization were not returned. The Post asked Musharbash if he planned to reject BDS in to the letter.

The Post first exposed a group of German MPs who are members of the German-Palestinian Society’s advisory board. Some of the most hardcore anti-Israel MPs in the Bundestag are members of the board. Take the example of Christine Buchholz, an MP for the German Left Party, who has defended the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah in their violent terrorism war against the Jewish state.

Other members of the Society include Social Democratic MP Aydan Özogus and Green Party MP Omid Nouripour, the latter of whom co-sponsored a parliamentary initiative in 2013 to punish Jewish products from the West Bank with a labeling system. The Post has sent press queries to the Green Party and Social Democrats regarding their members’ roles in the society.

How the Soviets promoted openly antisemitic anti-Zionism

In this column in January 2017, I discussed some research done on archived KGB documents by noted Israeli investigative journalist and author Ronen Bergman. Basically, Bergman showed that during the Cold War, Soviet efforts to support the Arab war on Israel and spread extreme propaganda demonising Israel and Zionism were not simply cynical efforts to gain Arab support and damage the interests of US allies.

The documents suggest KGB leaders were sincere believers in the worst sort of antisemitic conspiracy theories, including believing in the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, openly speaking of the “global Jewish conspiracy”, and insisting Zionists were secretly behind anything negative affecting Soviet interests, such as the increase in US-USSR tensions following the election of Ronald Reagan as US President in 1980.

As I also noted, Soviet propaganda lies behind many of the extreme claims about Israel and Zionism found on the international left today – Zionism as a uniquely evil form of imperialism and colonialism; claims that Zionists both collaborated with the Nazis and exhibit behaviour similar to Nazism; beliefs that Zionists and the “Jewish Lobby” control Washington and other capitals, the media, and international finance, etc.

Now the American blogger “Elder of Ziyon” (a tongue-in-cheek nom de guerre) has uncovered some new details about how these Soviet-promoted racist beliefs were disseminated. He notes a recent column in a Jordanian newspaper by anti-Zionist writer Marwan Soudah in which Soudah recalls the importance in Arab intellectual circles in 1970, of a “book written by the martyr of thought and the word, Yuri Ivanov, entitled ‘Beware of Zionism!’. …. I remember that these books were distributed in Amman for free and on a large scale to the pioneers of the Soviet Cultural Centre…”

The Ivanov book in question, called in English Caution: Zionism!, was one of the most seminal and widely distributed works of official Soviet anti-Israel propaganda.

And as Elder of Ziyon demonstrates through extensive quotes, it went beyond spreading the usual claims about Zionism being “a tool and agent of imperialism”; a form of colonialism and racism deploying “fascist methods” which is also able to censor the international media, and engaging in endless atrocities including “widespread” use of “paid hirelings to organise the ‘elimination’ of people refusing to serve the Zionist interests.”

Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers fights hatred and antisemitism on campus in the Bay Area, so I was surprised when I tried to share a recent piece on Facebook, Glorifying Jew Killers at Cal, and got this error message, instead:

Your message couldn't be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.

There was, of course, nothing abusive about this piece, except for the fact that it describes a display in the Berkeley Student Union that is intolerably abusive to Jewish students. The display consists of a series of photos and captions celebrating terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands. While the display was largely met with indifference by the student body and UC Berkeley administrators, some Jews decided to fight back, by adding context to the display, with explanatory notes.

Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers next refers us to a passionate response by student Maya Reuven in the Daily Cal student newspaper, ASUC should condemn Bears for Palestine’s display. Here, Reuven describes the actual deeds of the terrorists depicted in that display. How Rasmea Odeh bombed and killed two Jewish students shopping for groceries. The way Fatima Bernawi tried to blow up a movie theater in downtown Jerusalem. The fact that Leila Khaled was involved in more than one hijacking attempt.

The student writer asks why Bears for Palestine, in our current climate of antisemitism, in the wake of Poway, Tree of Life, and Jersey City, could not instead laud activists for coexistence and peace. People like, for instance, Bassam Eid. These are pertinent questions that are worthy of our consideration.

Questions that should not be shut down by Facebook playing Big Brother.

We know very well what happened here. Those who celebrate the Jew-killers reported Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers to the powers that be at Facebook. The report was accepted at face value, and no one bothered to look further. Or perhaps they looked further and hate Israel and the Jews, so decided to use their power at Facebook to shut down someone who fights for Israel and against hatred.

In my search for some way to work around this unjust decision, I then attempted to share the homepage of Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers: http://proisraelbaybloggers.blogspot.com/ and received this error message:

You can't share this link

proisraelbaybloggers.blogspot.com

Your post couldn't be shared, because this link goes against our Community Standards

If you think this doesn't go against our Community Standards let us know.

I duly clicked the “let us know” link and in the box provided, explained that Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers, far from being abusive, is a good website that is fighting against hatred and antisemitism. I sent off my comment and received a generic thanks:

Thanks for providing feedback about this experience.

In other words, “We’ll probably never read what you took the time to write us, but we know it makes you feel good to vent. You’re welcome.”

Not quite ready to give up on Facebook as a reasonable entity (Ha!), I decided to click on the link to “Learn more about what happens when you’re blocked or your content is removed.”

Here, I was led to an explanation of blocking, how long it lasts, and a lot of blah, blah, blah, about appropriate behavior on Facebook and how one might improve in order to be acceptable in future. Below was a series of boxes to click. I decided on “This solution doesn’t work,” and left a comment:

“Anyone who hates you personally or who disagrees with your politics can report your content as abusive, when it isn't, as a way to punish and hurt you and you have absolutely no recourse against this decision. There is no appeals system. It's actually a hateful policy that allows abuse to flourish in the Facebook community. This policy silences voices and shuts down freedom of speech.”

I clicked submit and my comment disappeared. In its stead, was a short message:

Thanks! Your feedback helps improve this answer for everyone.

I had gone as far as I could go. I could only hope that the ban on Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers lasts only 30 days, as Facebook’s explanation on blocked content suggests. But we all know that if someone wants to silence them once more, all they have to do is report the website again, and Facebook offers its users no recourse for appeal.

Several years ago, I decided to hold a one-day ban of Facebook, until they shut down a certain antisemitic page (the name of the page was something like "Kill the Jews"). I had thousands of people join the event, but when Facebook caved in and shut down the antisemitic page, I deleted the event.

Can you guess what happened next? Facebook restored the antisemitic page the very next day.

Many of us hate Facebook and use it anyway. Because the alternatives, for instance Twitter, Gab, and MeWe, just don’t give us the same satisfaction. At some point, however, the injustice of Facebook policies, and the lack of recourse to appropriate solutions may just drive us over the edge, and make us leave en masse.

Facebook is, on the other hand, such a monolith, that I wouldn’t suggest you hold your breath.

UPDATE: Btsalmo suggests that as many people as possible fill out a report at Facebook (see: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/571927962827151) stating that Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers (http://proisraelbaybloggers.blogspot.com/) and all content there, is safe and not abusive.

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Eradicating malaria from Palestine was another Zionist colonialist plot!

After I posted about the 1934 economic survey of Palestine that showed that Jewish investment had brought great benefit to the Arabs of the region, including controlling malaria, I was shown a remarkable pair of maps.

One showed where the major malaria-infested lands of Palestine were as of 1920, according to a British report.

I found a similar map from 1925:

The other showed where Jews had bought land in Palestine as of 1944 (blue=JNF, green=privately owned):

The two maps are remarkably similar.

The conclusion is that Jews bought the worst swamp lands, drained them and made them into usable, arable areas, to the benefits of everyone.

It took until 1968, but Israel was the first nation in Asia to eradicate malaria completely.

If you hate Israel, though, this can be considered an evil colonialist plot.

The book "Healing the Land and the Nation: Malaria and the Zionist Project in Palestine, 1920-1947"
by Sandra M. Sufian (2007) says that the swamps that were infested with malaria-spreading mosquitoes were in fact considered sacred, therapeutic pools to rural Palestinian Arabs:

Just two competing narratives. Who is to say that the Jewish conception of swamps as spreading disease is the correct one? Maybe they were really holy, healing swamps as the Arabs say. Draining them was just another example of oppression.

This review of the book, published in academic journal H-Levant, lays out the thesis that the entire malaria-clearing project was nothing more than a Zionist colonialist plot:

According to Sufian, the Zionist leadership, like the Mandate government, tried to manage the health of the Palestinian Arabs as though they were part of the natural environment. Diseases from the “natives” might be transmitted to the colonial authorities or the Zionist settlers and so should be managed through official public health policies. The Zionists imported European and U.S. medical technologies and foreign capital to restore the land to what was in their eyes its original state, with little concern for those who had long made their living from it. The Zionist settlers had no sense of the national rights of the Palestinian Arabs, who they believed had no real attachment to the land. Like European settlers elsewhere, the Zionists considered the indigenous population primitive and backward. The land was a swampy wasteland inhabited by an unproductive people. In this, the Zionists were merely drawing upon racial views of non-European, indigenous populations then prevalent among colonialists. As Sufian points out, Zionists, like other Europeans, saw malaria not as an environmental problem, but one caused by the neglectful, indifferent, and lazy lifestyles of the natives, whose watering holes and leaky irrigation ditches were ideal places for mosquitoes to breed. The Zionists' goal was to drain the swamps and pools of water to eradicate the disease, thereby expanding the land available for settlement and agricultural production. As the author notes, in many parts of world European settlers made this connection between disease eradication, immigration, and settlement. When the Zionists drained the swamps they also reduced the pasture land long used by Bedouins and other Arab agriculturalists for grazing their livestock. Despite stiff resistance, land formerly held collectively by Palestinian Arabs became private land owned by Zionist settlers.

Evil Zionists eradicating malaria were really oppressing the Arabs whose lives they were saving.

That is a hell of a take.

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02/05 Links Pt1: Palestinian ‘right of return’ is really about ending Israel's existence; Giving the Palestinians a dose of 'reality therapy'; PA must halt pay-for-slay policy for ‘peace and prosperity’

From Ian:

Palestinian ‘right of return’ is really about ending Israel's existence

According to UNRWA, any Palestinian Arab descendants from the 1948 conflict are considered “refugees” until they “return” to Israel.

Thanks to this dubious definition, UNRWA considers there to be more than 5.3 million “Palestinian refugees” who have a “right to return.” In an Oct. 28, 2018, speech, PA President Mahmoud Abbas even claimed that there were 6 million. The actual number of surviving refugees from the 1948 war is closer to 30,000, according to an unreleased State Department report.

Demanding that 6 million Palestinian “refugees” have a “right” to "return" to a place where most of them never lived runs counter to Palestinian claims that they want to have their own independent state. As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis noted in the Washington Post, this demand negates the idea of Palestinian statehood — unless that state means, by its definition, the demographic end of the Jewish nation of Israel. As the American Jewish International Relations Institute observed, such a move would "end the existence of the majority-Jewish state" in Israel.

In their unguarded moments, Palestinian leaders and their state-controlled media have said as much. Palestinian Media Watch, which monitors Arab media in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has highlighted that official PA television promotes the “right of return” by showing a map of “Palestine” that simply erases Israel. PA-approved textbooks also hail that demand.

Defenders of the “right of return” often cite U.N. General Assembly Resolutions 194 and 394 and Security Council Resolution 224 to buttress their claims. But the Arab states voted against 194 in part because it did not establish a “right to return.” Indeed, it only “recommended” that original refugees from the conflict, not descendants, be permitted to return, and only after they agree to live “at peace with their neighbors.” (It should also be noted, as the late historian Martin Gilbert has documented, that these resolutions can be applied to the Jewish refugees as well.)

For decades, Palestinian leaders have rejected offers for statehood and peace while citing a “right” that doesn’t exist. Both the press and policymakers should speak honestly and openly about what it would truly mean and perhaps reflect on why Palestinian leaders continue to demand it.

David Singer: Trump Plan to end Jewish-Arab Conflict sees PLO implode

Jordan and Israel are the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine – currently exercising sovereignty in 95% of former Palestine. Sovereignty in the remaining 5% – Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza – remains undetermined.

The PLO refusal to negotiate with Israel on the Trump plan - will have the following results:
· No second Arab state - in addition to Jordan – will be created in former Palestine
· US$50 billion in development aid will not be required to build and develop that new State
· Gaza and the West Bank will remain politically divided

Jordan should now replace the PLO in negotiations with Israel on Trump’s plan because:
· Jordan was the last sovereign Arab state to occupy the West Bank between 1948 and 1967 when the PLO expressly rejected any claim to sovereignty.
· Jordan conferred Jordanian citizenship on the Arab residents of the West Bank between 1950 and 1988
· The 1994 Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty will ensure good-faith – not confrontational – negotiations

The areas designated for A Future State of Palestine in the Trump Plan (pictured below) now become possible areas for transfer to Jordanian sovereignty in negotiations with Israel.

Successful Israel-Jordan negotiations would be a real game changer – holding out great prospects that the long-running Jewish-Arab conflict could finally be achieved.

Failure by Jordan to negotiate with Israel could see Israel extend its sovereignty to all of Area C in the West Bank.

President Trump needs to phone King Abdullah of Jordan and persuade him to embrace Trump’s “deal of the century”.

The PLO has blown its chance to do so.

PA must halt pay-for-slay policy for ‘peace and prosperity’ - analysis

Palestinian incentivization and the rewarding of terrorists would come to a halt if the “Deal of the Century” is implemented.
The “Peace for Prosperity” plan mentions the need for the Palestinian Authority to cease its “pay-for-slay” terrorism-funding program in four different instances – as much as or even more than the plan refers to Israeli sovereignty over Area C settlements or security.

“This is obviously a major obstacle to peace,” said Maurice Hirsch, director of legal strategies for the Israeli watchdog Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). “The antithesis of peace is taking money to reward terrorists for being terrorists. Terrorism undermines peace. You cannot have a state that rewards terrorism – this is something contradictory to the whole world order.”

On pages 4, 34, 43 and 51 of the 181-page peace plan, the Trump administration makes clear that the PA’s law “incentivizes terrorism… Billions of dollars have been squandered and investment is unable to flow into these areas to allow the Palestinians to thrive.

“The Palestinians shall have ended all programs… that serve to incite or promote hatred and antagonism toward its neighbors, or which compensate or incentivize criminal or violent activity,” the document says.

PMW: Animated video of real murder of Israelis - on social network popular among children

An animated video that encourages murdering Israelis by showing graphic recreated scenes of real terror attacks has appeared on TikTok – a social network popular among children, where users can create and share short videos.

The video shows four lethal terror attacks that were committed against Israelis – a terrorist who rammed his car into Israelis at a Jerusalem light rail station, another who shot at Israeli police, and two stabbers. An eagle – possibly symbolizing the eagle in the emblem used by the Palestinian Authority and the PLO – flies above the carnage throughout the video, at one point moving in unison with 19-year-old Palestinian terrorist Muhannad Halabi as he stabs a religious Jew in the Old City of Jerusalem. The video carries the text “Jerusalem is the dread of the Jews," followed by a red heart.

The following are screenshots from the animation paired with details of the Palestinian terrorists and the attacks they apparently portray:

Car ramming attack: Palestinian terrorist and Hamas member Ibrahim Al-Akari from East Jerusalem deliberately ran over several Israelis with a white van at a light-rail station in Jerusalem on Nov. 5, 2014, murdering Jidan Assad, 38, and Shalom Aharon Badani, 17, and wounding at least 13 others. The terrorist was shot and killed by Israeli police officers who arrived on the scene.

Stabbing attack: 19-year-old Palestinian terrorist Muhannad Halabi murdered 2 Israelis, Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Bennett, and injured Bennett’s wife, Adele, and their 2-year-old son in a stabbing attack in the Old City of Jerusalem on Oct. 3, 2015. Following the attack, the terrorist was shot and killed by Israeli security forces.

Ma'an reports that the European Union and Denmark have provided about 6 million euros to implement 16 social and service infrastructure projects in Area C.

The funded projects include schools, roads, multi-purpose buildings, water distribution networks, water tanks, and repair of electrical networks.

With this contribution, the total value of the program for this year amounts to 15.2 million euros, funded by the European Union and its member states.

EU funds buildings in Area C that are illegal under existing international agreements during the Oslo process. It justifies this by pretending that those agreements don't apply anymore:

According to the Oslo agreements, Israel was to retain control over law enforcement, planning and construction for an interim period of 5 years ending in 1998.

But if the EU considers the interim period agreements to not be valid anymore, that means that they should shun cooperating with the Palestinian Authority, whose existence was an integral part of the interim agreement and not meant to be permanent. Yet they work with the PA in deciding where to pour their Area C (and "East Jerusalem) money.

Furthermore, if the EU considers Area C to be occupied by Israel, then zoning and building activities there are the sole responsibility of the occupying power according to international law.

In short, the EU is violating international law no matter which way you look at it.

A recent example is that the EU funded a school, built by the PA, in the middle of the Nahal Macocha Nature Reserve on state land.

The EU justifies its illegal activities by saying things like "While Israel has overall security and administrative responsibility in Area C, under international law Israel also has the obligation to protect and facilitate development for the local population, and to grant unimpeded access for humanitarian assistance. " It also officially considers all of Area C to be "occupied Palestinian territory" even as it says, at the same time, that "unresolved final status issues must be decided through direct negotiations between both parties [which includes] he issues related to borders."

Somehow, specific parts of the Oslo Accords that the EU doesn't like are considered temporary. Other parts are considered permanent. The armistice lines of 1949 that were never meant to be borders are considered permanent to the EU, and they are considered borders for a non-existent state which magically transitioned from "Jewish homeland" and "British mandate" through an illegal annexation by Jordan to "Palestinian" without anyone being able to point to any legal support for such a transfer of ownership.

No one is saying that the EU cannot petition Israel to allow more Palestinian building in Area C. But the Palestinians are knowingly moving people into the area all the time to assert rights that they don't have, and the EU is considering these squatters to be legal residents that they must support. They are quite aware of this fiction just as they are aware that the buildings they fund violate international law. Yet they claim that they are somehow allowed to do these illegal activities because of some sort of higher "humanitarian imperative" that goes beyond international law.

There is no humanitarian imperative to set up schools for brand new slipshod and haphazard housing of squatters who just moved there from real homes in Areas A and B.

This is not how international law works. This is politics.

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From the Jerusalem Post:

Eden Alene became the first Israeli of Ethiopian descent chosen to represent Israel at Eurovision when she won The Next Star for Eurovision 2020 competition Tuesday night.

“I’m so happy and incredibly emotional, I wanted this so much,” she said in an interview with Channel 12’s Nadav Bornstein following her victory. "It is a great honor for me. This is my country and it is amazing that an Ethiopian will represent the country for the first time."

Alene was raised in Jerusalem's Katamonim neighborhood by a single mother who immigrated from Ethiopia, and later moved with her family to Kiryat Gat. “My poor mother, she had a hard time taking it in. She collapsed in my arms,” Alene, 19, said on The Morning News show.

Alene was the winner of the third season of Israel's X-Factor 2018.

Which makes her a wonderful addition to the continuing "Apartheid?" poster series.

Here are a couple of others I have not yet posted:

I didn't realize that I had made one for Eden when she won X-Factor:

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The Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nasser Bourita, defended his cautious optimism about the "Peace to Prosperity" plan.

"The Kingdom appreciates the peace efforts made by the administration of US President Donald Trump after noting that Washington is for the first time talking about the two-state solution," he said, adding that "the Palestinians have the right to accept or reject the deal," and saying: "We must not be more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves. "

In his answer to harsh criticism from members of the Justice and Development Party, who said the Palestinian issue is the first national issue for Moroccans, Bouraita sharply rebuked them. He said "the first issue of Moroccan diplomacy is the issue of the Moroccan Sahara."

This is, of course, the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, where two thirds of the residents would be considered illegal settlers if they were Jews, and Morocco's claim over the area would be considered illegal annexation if it was done by Israel.

No one, of course, talks about Morocco violating the Geneva Conventions. Because certain international laws seem to be used only against the Jewish state and ignored elsewhere - meaning that they are really not international law.

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