Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 17, 2020

02/17 Links Pt2: Confronting a noxious new age of Jew-hate; Can Democrats survive Bernie Sanders?; UC-Berkeley anti-Israel activists rip up photo of Rasmea Odeh’s terror victims

From Ian:

Confronting a noxious new age of Jew-hate

What is it that makes possible a horror like the machete attack on a Jewish gathering in New York in December? The outrage overshadowed increased sightings of anti-Jewish graffiti and incidents of boorishly aggressive behaviour towards Jews in public places, here as well as in the United States. Violence always depends on the normalising of bigotry, in which even the most farcically ignorant prejudice plays its part.

During the election campaign, a Labour candidate was obliged to stand down for having used the name “Shylock” as a term of abuse against a member of the Jewish community. In his defence, he claimed that he did not know that the name had any Jewish associations.

This may be chiefly an indictment of standards in British secondary schools. But it also points to an issue about cultural awareness of Judaism and Jewish history. Schoolchildren, of course, study the Holocaust. But what is disturbing —from our own experience and that of many other teachers—is that they often emerge with only the haziest idea of the specifics. We have heard of students who have studied the diaries of Anne Frank with barely any mention of the fact that she was Jewish. Holocaust education, and even events around Holocaust Memorial Day, can come to be focused on generalities about victimised minorities. We have encountered schoolchildren who have visited Auschwitz and returned with only the vague notion that it is bad to persecute people for their religion. This is a worthy enough principle (as Christians in the Middle East or Pakistan would agree); but it signally fails to bring out what is distinctive about the atrocities of the Third Reich and their accomplices, and what is distinctive about Jewish identity and history.

The Holocaust is not a story about deplorably bigoted attitudes. It was a systematic, indeed “scientific”, effort to exterminate an entire population. It is also about a campaign rooted in two millennia of consistent demonisation of that population by Christian theologians, artists and liturgists—and latterly by political extremists searching for a universal scapegoat. The nightmare of the Third Reich is intelligible only against the background of this long record.

What would effective Holocaust education look like? It would certainly have to involve an attempt to trace these historical roots, to look at, for instance: the history of the “Blood Libel” (the myth that Jews routinely kidnapped, tortured and killed Christian children at Passover), with origins that lie in this country in the Middle Ages; at the expulsion of Jews from England in the 13th century, France in the 14th century and Spain and Portugal in the 15th and 16th; at the 19th century pogroms in Tsarist Russia, and at the resulting first large waves of Jewish refugees in Britain and elsewhere. It would need to look at how these communities took root and developed, what they had to battle against and still have to combat in the form of lazy prejudices encoded in British literature and popular culture, even when the latter’s Christian rationale has long been forgotten.

Digital bullies are a problem, but they're not the Third Reich

Some important liberal journalists have recently started talking about an ugly fact. Running afoul of Sen. Bernie Sanders's online supporters isn't fun. That was the upshot of a recent conversation on MSNBC when Meet the Press host Chuck Todd read aloud a passage from an article by writer Jonathan Last that was published in The Bulwark, where he wrote about the behavior of Sanders' backers, popularly known as the "Bernie Bros."

Last accurately described fans of Sanders as an online mob that bullies the Vermont senator's critics, "hounding opponents, enforcing discipline, quashing any sort of dissent – and trying to preempt anyone else from taking sides against the Dear Leader." The point of the piece was to compare them to supporters of President Donald Trump, but in doing so, Last went a step further by saying that both Sanders and Trump each had a "digital brownshirt brigade."

Predictably, that sent up howls of protest from supporters of Sanders, who said it was offensive to compare a Jewish candidate's backers to Nazis. And, in the manner of online mobs, Todd's sin in merely quoting the article brought down on his head an avalanche of criticism, including a trending #firechucktodd hashtag. By calling attention to the bullying the press gets from the socialist's posse, Todd (who is also Jewish) was "canceled" by the political correctness police of the left.

The context for this kerfuffle is not one of the usual left-right, pro-Trump/con-Trump variety that seems to characterize all of our political arguments these days.

Todd is a liberal journalist notorious for his disgust of the president. And Last is a #NeverTrump conservative writing in an anti-Trump publication. Yet the tsunami of abuse thrown at Todd proved his point about the way the Sanders mob swarms anyone who speaks up against the current Democratic presidential frontrunner.

But there are two separate points to be made here.

One is that Sanders' supporters are right that Last was wrong to call them Brownshirts. Todd was equally wrong for quoting the passage on air without pointing out the huge difference between even the most obnoxious of the Bernie Bros and Adolf Hitler's Storm Troopers, who were known for their brown uniforms.

Can Democrats survive Bernie Sanders?

Those words can't come from someone caught in the throes of war. In its relentless focus on taking down Trump, the Democratic Party has overlooked the power of a unifying message. Yes, the goal is to replace Trump – but how and with what? Bashing Trump is a tactic, not a strategy. And promising radical changes to the country and the economy is a strategy, but the wrong one.

The lesson of the Trump presidency is that character counts at least as much as policy. America doesn't need a policy revolutionary. It needs decency. It needs a mensch in the White House. A mensch with the wisdom to hear all voices and the spine to make difficult decisions.

Bernie Sanders is no mensch. He's a cranky idealist hell-bent on pushing his utopian socialist agenda – and "healing the country" is not on that agenda. He's exploiting the rage at Trump to trigger the kind of class warfare that spreads even more animosity and division.

Sanders is just the most extreme expression of a phenomenon that has plagued the Democrats: They've allowed their fury at Trump to turn them into a crisis party. In their near panic at the prospect of losing another election, they've thrown the kitchen sink at Trump and the American voters hoping something would stick.

But in the process, they've missed the real crisis: We are a deeply divided nation in desperate need of a courageous leader who will embrace the challenge to Make America One Again.

I know: I'm dreaming. Being a dreamer these days is a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.

Funny how colonial powers created "historic Palestine" plus another recent cartoon

Two posters/cartoons I put on Twitter recently:

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The Speaker of the Jordanian Senate, Faisal Al-Fayez, is sponsoring a campaign to be launched by the Palestine Committee in the House of Representatives on Thursday, titled "The Return Campaign ... My Right and My Decision."

The campaign aims to collect a million signatures affirming the right of the return of all Palestinian refugees to their homeland along with compensation.

Al-Fayez confirmed during his meeting with the President and members of the Parliamentary Committee of Palestine Sunday, in the Senate, that the right of return is a sacred right and cannot be relinquished, and that King Abdullah II is clear in asserting that "neither resettlement nor the alternative homeland [Jordan]" is acceptable.

The petition is supposed to be given to the London-based Palestinian Return Center which will in turn deliver it to the United Nations.

There are some two million Palestinian citizens of Jordan. Jordan is the only Arab country that used to allow Palestinians to become citizens. But even now, some 70 years after they gained citizenship, they are still treated as different from "normal" Jordanians.

This petition, sponsored by the Jordanian government itself, tells the Palestinians citizens - in no uncertain terms - that they are not wanted, that they really belong in Israel. But they dress up that desire for ethnic cleansing of their Palestinians as defending a "right" to move to Israel, pretending that they are actually supportive of the millions they want to get rid of.

This is how the entire Arab world has treated Palestinians since 1948 - outward support for their cause and for "return" masking a desire for them to move anywhere else.

Yet no "human rights" organization calls out Arabs for their disgraceful treatment of their "brethren." Human Rights Watch and Amnesty both twist international law to pretend that there is a legal "right to return." Furthermore, while they work against statelessness of all other peoples, they don't pressure Arab nations to make Palestinians citizens even after 71 years; even after most Palestinians were born on their soil.

Same as it ever was.

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02/17 Links Pt1: Netanyahu Says Work on Annexation Map Has Begun: ‘We Are Turning Parts of the Homeland in Judea and Samaria Into Part of the State of Israel Forever’; Egypt Builds a Wall on Border with Gaza

From Ian:

Trump’s deal highlights the great Jewish rift

One of the less remarked upon, but nevertheless most painful series of reactions to President Donald Trump’s long awaited “Deal of the Century” has been the response of the organized American Jewish Left, which I will refer to here as AJL.

That there has been relatively little focus on this facet of the announcement’s aftermath might be because we have gotten used to the critical-unto-condemning tone adopted by many of these groups toward Israel.

However, the deal and its copious details have provided a unique platform for those attitudes to play out. AJL reactions focus overwhelmingly on the plan’s accentuating and enabling increased Israeli “occupation” (J Street and The New Israel Fund), “annexation” (Israel Policy Forum), and “apartheid” (Jewish Voice for Peace).

There are numerous lamentations about the negative implications for Palestinians and the manifest injustice being paid to them.

Nowhere, though, is there any sense of balance, nuance or understanding.

What comes through overwhelmingly clearly is the profound lack of empathy of these left-wing American Jews for their Israeli brethren. There is no recognition of the conditions that have kept the region in its current limbo state; no understanding of the vulnerability, fragility and tenuousness that even a stronger and more successful Israel lives with daily.

Dore Gold: "We Presented the Americans with What Most Israelis Believe In"

During a briefing last week on the U.S. peace plan at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman expressed his thanks to former diplomat and Jerusalem Center president Dore Gold "for the three years of terrific collaboration and advice. Dore and I have spoken countless times about these issues....He played a very important and significant role in this process and one that I would say was irreplaceable."

Gold would occasionally brief Netanyahu on the content of the talks he was holding with the U.S. administration and got a green light from the prime minister to continue. "Most of the meetings were held in Israel, but quite a few were held at the White House," he said.

"We presented the Americans with what most Israelis believe in," Gold said. "For example, they read the book Jerusalem: Delusions of Division by Israel Hayom columnist Nadav Shragai, which detailed the many dangers that the partition of the city would entail. It's not that they actually wanted to divide the city, but the book gave them the ammunition they needed and the rationale for why it would be problematic."

"I felt like the librarian who had to find the Americans the relevant material so that they could make decisions. But I also felt that I was carrying out an important job and fulfilling my duty to my country and people."

Gold makes it clear that not all of Israel's requests were met. He would have preferred that the plan gave the Palestinians less territory and he is less than thrilled about the prospect of establishing a Palestinian capital in the eastern part of Jerusalem.

"This plan comes with costs, but we look at the cost-benefit analysis. Would anyone have imagined such a plan being rolled out by an American administration several years ago? And a plan that endorses Israeli sovereignty in the Jordan Valley?"

The ‘Deal of the Century’ – changing the borders

Despite the expected resistance of the Palestinian leadership, January 28, 2020, will be remembered as a historic date in the longstanding conflict. The “Deal of the Century” is the most detailed plan ever presented and it showcases a much-needed strategy shift for the region. The plan redefines the psychological borders of the conflict, which will enable the physical borders to be fixed at a later date.

The continuous Palestinian rejection of any type of resolution since the days of the Oslo Accords has imbued them with a false feeling of strength that has harmed both them and the chances of a realistic settlement. From a historical perspective, their reluctance to reconcile themselves with the concept of a Jewish national home caused them to lose land. Every time they refused to share the land “between the river and the sea,” their proposed state shrunk in size. A look at the maps from the Peel Commission in 1937, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947, and the eventual cease fire border lines in the 1948 War of Independence show this graphically.

When the Palestinians reached the conclusion that rejection does not pay, they recognized Israel’s statehood and signed the Oslo Accords. Not long after, though, the Palestinians reversed track with the intuition that their rejection would benefit them and increase the size of their eventual state. This theory was supported by empirical facts. The Israeli offers improved in each round of negotiations – from Camp David, to the Taba summit and later to the offer from Olmert to Abbas. So, rejection was deemed worthwhile and serious compromise was delayed.

The “Deal of the Century” reverses this dynamic. The plan changes the psychology of the conflict and its resolution. Palestinian rejectionism will no longer benefit them. Rather, we have returned to the logic of the “Iron Wall” of Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Peace will only be achieved when Israel’s neighbors internalize that the nation-state of the Jewish people is here to stay. This has happened with Egypt and Jordan, and now comes the Palestinians turn to play ball as well.

The Forward hires Hamas apologist/mouthpiece Muhammad Shehada as a columnist (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

Meet Muhammad Shehada – the Forward’s (not so) new columnist and Hamas apologist

When the Forward announced at the end of last year that they were “adding five contributing columnists” to write for their op-ed pages, I felt that professor Deborah Lipstadt had gotten a rather bad deal. As a highly regarded scholar, she was by far the most prominent among the new columnists, and the Forward rightly noted that she is also widely known outside academia ever since she “famously vanquished Holocaust denier David Irving in court after he sued her for libel.” But now this fierce fighter against antisemitism was listed just above professional Hamas apologist Muhammad Shehada.

For Shehada, this is of course a great line-up. Almost exactly five years before he officially became a Forward columnist alongside Deborah Lipstadt, he had proudly posted what he called “a selfi with the ex-Prime Minister Of #Gaza and the leader of #Hamas: #Ismail_Haniya.” The photo shows Shehada smiling and with his hand on the shoulder of Ismail Haniyeh, one of the veteran leaders of the Islamist terror group Hamas.

So it’s quite pointless to get upset about Shehada writing articles that whitewash Hamas. The Forward and other media outlets – notably the Israeli paper Ha’aretz – that publish him regularly do so precisely because Shehada skillfully poses as a likeable and eminently reasonable progressive Palestinian who ardently defends Hamas as a legitimate group that must not ever be condemned for terrorism, while at the same time pretending to be all for some kind of vague kumbaya-style coexistence.

As far as Shehada is concerned, “Hamas incurred the ‘terror’ label for political reasons,” and it would only be fair if everyone realized that the thousands of rockets that have been launched from Gaza since Israel withdrew from the territory should be dismissed as “Hamas’s occasional projectile attacks,” while the violent Hamas-orchestrated border riots incited with murderous antisemitic slogans should be appreciated as a “non-violent grassroots protest.” And in any case, if there ever is anything for which Hamas might deserve a slightly raised eyebrow, it’s Israel’s fault. You can see that idea nicely reflected in the hyperlink for Shehada’s recent Forward article: https://forward.com/opinion/439846/israel-is-clearing-the-way-for-more-violence-by-demonizing-moderate/ -- it’s of course Israel that “is clearing the way for more violence.”

But while Shehada considers Hamas as a legitimate Palestinian group that deserves to be defended, he has some really harsh words for the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas, which he has denounced as “tyrannical, careless and unpopular.”

Shehada’s eagerness to serve as a Hamas apologist while also pretending to be vaguely for peaceful coexistence (presumably under the benevolent rule of Hamas from the river to the sea) imbue his usually very well written articles with a marked disingenuity. Camera highlighted some of the omissions and distortions in several of his articles last year. But the question who Muhammad Shehada really is, or what he really stands for, seems also worthwhile asking given that, for a young man from Gaza who appears to be on very friendly and familiar terms with a senior Hamas leader, he has managed very quickly to establish himself as a regular contributor for a major American Jewish site like the Forward – for which he has written regularly since January 2018 – and Israel’s Ha’aretz – for which he has written regularly since July 2017.

It seems that Shehada first tried to make a name for himself as a writer in English in May 2016. Nowadays Shehada usually presents himself as “a writer and civil society activist from the Gaza Strip and a student of development studies at Lund University, Sweden,” as well as a former “PR officer for the Gaza office of the Euro-Med Monitor for Human Rights.” However, when Shehada started out in mid-2016, he chose a very different biography: “Born in Egypt, raised in diaspora, Palestinian by blood, Egyptian by birth. With progressive endeavours towards democratic reforms and deradicalization, religious tolerance and coexistence, social equity and feminism, I aspire to construct an intellectual debate that corrects the misconceptions about the Middle East and offers a clear picture of Palestinian daily life, which will be my main focus.”

So if Shehada was “raised in diaspora,” where did he grow up? Perhaps he regards Gaza as some kind of “diaspora,” because he seems to have spent at least part of his childhood and his teen years in Gaza. This is at least what he claims in an article marking the anniversary of the end of Operation Cast Lead, where Shehada offers a harrowing account of living through this war in 2008/09 as a fourteen-year-old.

There are several noteworthy points regarding this article from January 2018. First, it was published by Ali Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada – and Abunimah, who is an outspoken supporter of Hamas, can be counted on to publish only articles by authors he considers as reliable allies. Secondly, the article offers a glimpse of Shehada’s life in Gaza: while he refers to “a family house in Cairo,” he writes that in Gaza, his family lived in the Tal al-Hawa area, which – though he doesn’t mention it – is regarded as a fairly affluent neighborhood not far from the Hamas-dominated Islamic University. Indeed, Shehada’s family lived in a house that even had underground parking, and they owned a car.

It seems that Shehada eventually went to study computer engineering at the Islamic University. At the university, he became friends with a murky figure who makes an appearance in the work of British antisemitism researcher David Collier. In the course of a project that focused on supposedly independent “activists” from Gaza with a sizeable social media following, David encountered Walid Mahmoud/Walid Mahmoud Rouk, whose “reporting” from Gaza always seemed to echo Hamas propaganda. More bizarrely, Walid Mahmoud was involved in, and even administering, Facebook pages followed by tens of thousands of supporters of British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. These Facebook pages included countless posts demonizing Israel, Zionism and Jews. But it turned out that Walid Mahmoud also used his social media clout to fundraise for all sorts of ostensibly charitable projects that he claimed to have started – and he actually managed to take in tens of thousands of dollars in various campaigns (see e.g. here).

Needless to say, Walid Mahmoud was not accountable to anyone and free to use the money as he pleased, but as David Collier rightly points out, it is hard to imagine that Hamas would be unaware of a social media activist in Gaza “with an audience of 100,000s, access to sympathetic political players in the UK and the ability to generate hard foreign currency.”

At one point, Walid Mahmoud apparently also tried to use his fundraising skills for the benefit of his friend Muhammad Shehada; nowadays the two continue to collaborate on journalistic projects (see e.g. Walid Mahmoud’s author page at Al Jazeera, where all articles are co-authored with Shehada).

But back to Shehada’s time as a student at Gaza’s Islamic University. In 2015, he was interviewed by a fringe website, where he was introduced as a “21 year-old engineering student” and a “a community translator and researcher for outspoken author and critic of Israel, Professor Norman Finkelstein.” Given that Finkelstein’s work has made him “a superstar for antisemitic websites,” it seems safe to assume that having a soft spot for Islamist terrorists and obsessively hating Israel is a requirement for working for him.

Shehada called Finkelstein “my dear friend” in a Facebook post in March 2017, when Finkelstein apparently gave a talk at Harvard that Shehada joined via Internet. And in fall 2016, when Shehada was leaving Gaza for Malaysia – much to the regret of his friend Walid Mahmoud – Finkelstein shared on his website an appeal for donations ‘to help a Gaza student resettle in Malaysia.’

In this fundraising appeal, Shehada described himself as “a junior 21-year-old writer and civil society activist from the Gaza Strip” who was planning to “start a program of Business Administration at the University of Malaya, for the next three years.”

But luckily for Shehada, his worries about how things would work out for him in Malaysia proved unwarranted.

When the veteran Malaysian politician Mahathir Mohamad – who also happens to be a notorious Jew-hater – won elections in May 2018, Shehada offered his heartfelt congratulations in a Facebook post, accompanied by a photo that showed him shaking hands with Mahathir Mohamad. As Shehada explained: “Malaysia was one of the most crucial milestones in my life! There, I was reunited with my heart and soul. It is where I met some of the most extraordinary friends who overwhelmed me with unique kindness and selflessness. In my first few days in Kuala Lumpur, I was introduced to the founder of modern Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, a sweet dedicated father and lovable grandfather who nonetheless commands enormous respect. His support of the Palestinian cause is greatly remarkable.”

Well, it is certainly a fabulous stroke of good luck if you come to a foreign country as a penniless 21-year-old student and happen to be introduced to one of the country’s most prominent and powerful politicians right away.

Those of us who don’t believe all that much in such extremely happy coincidences can of course only speculate about the connections that got Shehada his lucky break. The most obvious possibility is that Shehada had contact with the network of Hamas operatives based in Malaysia. The country has been described as “Hamas’ gateway to Asia,” and only a few weeks ago, Mahathir Mohamad was happy to receive Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and to tweet about their get-together extensively (see this thread and the retweets here and here).

But whatever happened to make Malaysia “one of the most crucial milestones” in Shehada’s life, he apparently didn’t stay there too long. Instead of studying business administration at the University of Malaya, he seems to have moved on to Sweden some time in 2017 to pursue development studies at Lund University.

Perhaps his association with the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med Monitor) had something to do with this move. As mentioned previously, Shehada claims in some of the biographies for his op-eds that he was a “PR officer for the Gaza office of the Euro-Med Monitor for Human Rights.” In his current Twitter biography, he claims to be “Manager at @EuroMedHR” and links to the organization’s website, where he is indeed featured as the first of the “leadership team,” though it seems somewhat odd that his area of responsibility is given as “Europe Affairs.”

According to its website, the Euro-Med Monitor was founded in 2011 “by a group of European youth from diverse origins, MENA [Middle East &North Africa] immigrants and students living in Europe, who were inspired by the people’s will to rebel against tyranny and oppression that swept through the Arab region in 2011.” The organization emphasizes in bold print that it is “youth-led,” though they make up for it with their Board of Trustees: the current chairman is none other than veteran Israel-hater Richard Falk, an ardent supporter of Hamas who also managed to gain notoriety as a “9/11 truther and promoter of anti-Semitism.” So in a way, Muhammad Shehada had a point when he described Falk as “legendary.”

Another not-so-youthful board member is John Whitbeck, who clearly shares Falk’s hatred for Israel and is apparently also fond of 9/11 conspiracy theories.

* * *

While it is not clear if Shehada’s eagerness to serve as an apologist for Hamas is due to any actual ties to the Islamist terror group, it is quite obvious that even though he managed to leave Gaza, he always stayed in a world where hatred of the world’s only Jewish state is not just normal, but actually useful for your career.

Shehada knows and admires an awful lot of people who hate Israel (and Jews) just as much as Hamas does. For a young man of 26, he has already a rather promising career, and he may well have bright prospects. Hopefully he will come to realize at one point that a better Middle East, which is something he supposedly wants, can emerge only once Islamist terror groups like Hamas are firmly rejected instead of whitewashed. And perhaps now that he is officially a Forward columnist – which he currently notes proudly in his Twitter profile – he will try to widen his horizon by checking out the work of his fellow Forward columnist Deborah Lipstadt. He could start by reading this Forward column, and of course he could read her book on “Antisemitism: Here and Now.”

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Yesterday, Israeli reporters met with Palestinian officials at a restaurant in Ramallah, where the officials gave their spin to the Trump plan, the Arab world's seeming abandonment of their cause and other issues.

The officials included Palestinian Authority Information Minister Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the PA’s supreme Sharia judge Mahmoud al-Habash, former PA prisoner affairs minister Ashraf Al-Ajrami and Vice chairman of the PLO Committee for interaction with Israelis Elias Zananiri.

This morning, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at that restaurant - Casper & Gambini's, a chain restaurant that has a presence in other Arab countries - as a warning against "normalization" with Israelis.

There was no damage.

In a statement to Anadolu Agency, an unknown group that seems to be associated with the PFLP wrote, "what happened Sunday, at the Casper and Gambinis restaurant was a corrupt system of betrayal and normalization which brought together Mahmoud Al Habbash with a Zionist delegation.”

The statement added, "Our Palestinian people will hold you accountable...All the offices, restaurants and cafes will have the same fate as this restaurant, which we have done in the name of our families and our martyrs."

Habash defended the meeting on his Facebook page, saying that the meeting "is within the framework of the Palestinian leadership's efforts to confront the conspiracy of the deal of the century, politically, legally and in the media."

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Previous anti-Israel demonstration at the Tomb of Esther and Mordechai

The Basij are a paramilitary arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They are volunteer fanatics to keep Iranians under constant surveillance and they are deployed to stop demonstrations and to spy on and intimidate all Iranians against doing anything the regime doesn't want.

They are active at all levels, and recruit member as young as elementary school students.

Earlier this month, the Council for the Study of Student Mobilization of Hamadan Universities - the Basij branch of that university - threatened to convert the Jewish pilgrimage site Mausoleum of Esther and Mordechai into a Palestinian consulate in response to the "Deal of the Century."

"We warn the United States and the Zionist regime ...that the first act of fulfilling their filthy desires and the slightest attack on Palestine and the holy al-Quds means that they will no longer occupy a place as Esther's tomb. And with God's help, with the recent conspiracy and failure to fulfill the promise of deterioration and child-killing Zionist racist regime we'll turn it into a Palestine consulate and you will see the fulfillment of this promise," their statement said.

In response, Ali Malmir, Director General of Cultural Heritage and Tourism of Hamadan Province, said that the Mausoleum and the consulate have nothing to do with each other. He said that there are specific rules and regulations governing cultural heritage buildings while the Consulate location is a matter for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He said his Cultural Heritage Office has not received any news or information in this regard.

Tayeb Frydras

The head of the student Basij in Hamadan, Tayeb Frydras, responded to Malmir as well, saying that Iran must do what is necessary to show its power and if the US or Israel threaten Muslim cultural sites like Jerusalem, then it is foolhardy not to threaten Jewish cultural sites that could force the Zionists to act as Iran wants.

Frydras emphasized that the Basij would not wait for the permission of anyone in the comment, saying: "If the people were waiting for someone's permission, they would never make a revolution," he said. Frydras said that it would be a good idea to turn the building into a Palestinian consulate but that idea does not seem to have any official sanction.

The ARAM Alliance, a watchdog group for minority rights in Iran, reported that the Basij student group tried to make good on its threats on Saturday, attempting to raid the tomb.

It is unclear whether these Basij statements have the official or tacit support of the IRGC. However, given that Frydras made his second statement in response to the heritage director in Hamadan, it appears that the IRGC did not even pretend to dissuade him from continuing on with his threats.

This is just more proof of the institutionalized antisemitism in Iran's leadership, despite their insistence that they respect Judaism as a divine religion. Obviously that respect doesn't exist when they can threaten Jewish sites in response to American actions.

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When is it important to mention that a Trump fundraiser is Jewish?

Haaretz published an article originally from AP:

U.S. President Donald Trump mixed reelection business with pleasure during a weekend stop at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, attending a fundraiser on Saturday evening expected to raise $10 million for his campaign and the Republican National Committee.

The event was believed to be his most expensive fundraiser ever, with invitations going to donors who gave $580,600 per couple, according to The Washington Post, which obtained an invitation to the event at the Palm Beach estate of Jewish billionaire investor Nelson Peltz.

Saying "Jewish billionaire investor" seemed curious to me, especially from AP. Peltz gives to Jewish causes but that it not what he is most known for, an mentioning that he is a Jewish billionaire in an article about Trump seemed to be an antisemitic swipe to associate Trump with Jewish billionaires.

It turns out that the "Jewish" was an addition by Haaretz; it was not in the original AP article.

Perhaps we can give Haaretz the benefit of the doubt by assuming its readership would like to know that Peltz is Jewish, but it feels like a slur in this context.

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02/16 Links: Humanitarian Aid donated to the Palestinians sold for profit; Facebook's lethal double standard; NYTs Falsely Claims West Bank Settlements ‘Alienated Much of the World’

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: An analysis of the United Nation’s BDS blacklist

After multiple delays over legal, due process and methodological concerns, which do not seem to have been addressed, on Wednesday the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published its “database of all business enterprises” that it claims contribute to “human-rights concerns.” This U.N. blacklist, ordered by the U.N. Human Rights Council, is meant to bolster BDS campaigns, singling out Israel.

This singular treatment of Israel in this exercise, as with many other HRC initiatives, violates the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

The database is aimed at economically damaging Israel and companies owned by Jews or that do business with Jewish Israelis. In keeping with the BDS objective, 94 of the 112 companies on the blacklist are based in Israel. Many Arab, European and Asian companies that meet the list’s criteria were excluded; large Israeli companies were included, clearly in order to maximize the economic harm to Israel’s economy as a whole.
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This blacklist operates under the false premises that business in occupied territory is “illegal settlement activity” barred by international law. In fact, there is no such prohibition, and almost every country engages in and/or facilitates business activities in settlements in situations of occupation. Unsurprisingly, however, the United Nations is only pursuing such a list regarding Israel.

A major category of listed companies are those providing consumer goods and services (food, telecommunications, transportation, gas, water) to both Palestinians and Israelis. The United Nations seeks to bar such companies from operating or impose discriminatory business criteria with little regard as to the human rights and economic impacts on the local population and the companies’ employees.

Pro-BDS NGOs, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International and Al-Haq, have been major proponents of the blacklist. Over the past few months, these groups, along with UNHRC-member dictatorships, have been intensively lobbying High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet, the former socialist leader of Chile, to publish it.

Israel freezes ties with UN rights chief after release of settlement blacklist

Israel is suspending its ties with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday, several hours after the UN body published a list of 112 companies that do business in West Bank settlements.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz’s office said he ordered the “exceptional and harsh measure” in retaliation for Michelle Bachelet’s office “serving the BDS campaign,” referring to the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement.

Katz intends to protect the companies operating in Israel, his office stated.

It was not immediately clear what practical implications the decision would have. The commissioner’s office has representatives stationed in Israel, but they are not known to enjoy good working relations with Israeli diplomats. Officials in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening merely said that any requests they may have will not be answered as of today.

Earlier on Wednesday, the commission unexpectedly released the so-called blacklist, which had been in the making since March 2016, when the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution calling for a database of companies promoting or maintaining Israeli settlements.

Israeli reacted angrily to the publication of the blacklist, denouncing the UN body responsible for compiling it and vowing to protect Israeli financial interests. The Palestinians, meanwhile, celebrated a “victory for international law.”

Ninety-four of the 112 companies on the list are Israeli, including all major banks, state-owned transportation companies Egged and Israel Railways Corporation, and telecommunications giants Bezeq, HOT and Cellcom. It also lists medium-size companies such as restaurant chain Café Café and Angel Bakeries.

Humanitarian Aid donated to the Palestinians sold for profit

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) is tasked with administering humanitarian aid and social welfare to Palestinian refugees.

Last year, a leaked confidential report from UNRWA’s ethics office detailed abuses of power among the agency's senior management, documenting incidents of "sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent, and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives."

In light of the scandal, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and New Zealand suspended funding the agency.

UNRWA has long been controversial as it seeks to perpetuate the Palestinian refugee crisis, rather than resolve it.

The corruption and abuse of power exists even at the most fundamental level.

Food aid donated to the people of Gaza from UNRWA and from private donations has been seen on the grocery store shelves, sold for profit and promoted on the stores social media pages.

One store advertised cans of tuna, clearly labeled as a "gift" from the people of Japan

Powdered milk, donated from the UN Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA) and clearly marked "Not for Sale" was also available

It spite of the ongoing controversy, UNRWA continues to solicit funding worldwide. Its time for anyone committed to justice for the Palestinian people to seriously consider alternatives to the bloated and corrupt UNWRA bureaucracy.

According to Rome's Il Messaggero, an Italian bus line leased 70 buses that had been used for ten years in Tel Aviv - only to find out that they did no tmeet more modern emissions requirements for the EU, and they were therefore worthless.

The contract terms showed that even if they return the buses they would have to pay 16% of the 4.3 million euros of the total cost.

Italians are upset over the obvious waste of public money.

The Italian company instead decided to resell the buses to Morocco. So now the Moroccans are angry that they bought buses that were originally used in Israel.

The buses are still in the port but people are upset - Casablancans are upset that the buses that they desperately need are not being deployed yet, and the Islamists are angry because they have a bizarre idea that since the buses were used in Israel for a number of years this would be a form of "normalization."

Even though the buses were not manufactured in Israel. Even though Israel will not receive a dime for the buses being sold by Rome.

If someone can demonstrate that a percentage of the water in Morocco's beaches was once off the coast of Israel, maybe the Islamists there will have to move elsewhere.

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Video: This is the terrorist and antisemite that Jeremy Ben Ami embraces

Here is a video showing J-Street leader Jeremy Ben-Ami embracing and kissing Mahmoud Abbas last week, interspersed with Abbas' own antisemitic and pro-terror statements in his own words.

These are just the words of Abbas I found on video. He's also blamed Jews ("rabbis") for poisoning Palestinian water, he's blamed Jews for raising and releasing wild boars and dogs to attack Palestinian farmers, he's denied all Jewish connections to the land of Israel, he's embraced the Khazar theory that Jews aren't even Jews.

This is who Jeremy Ben Ami considers a dear friend. And the number of times he and J-Street contingent have visited Abbas in Ramallah indicates that he actually collaborates with Abbas in coming up with strategies to help destroy the Jewish state - in the name of "progressivism."

I'm not speaking hyperbolically. J-Street has even endorsed the "right of return" meant to destroy Israel. J-Street's official positions do not support Israel as a Jewish state - just like Abbas.

(h/t Daled Amos)

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Algerian site says the Torah has been distorted to be Zionist - and Joseph's dream proves Israel's racism

Echorouk Online, one of Algeria's most popular news sites, published an article called "Religious myths founding Israel:"

Among the most dangerous religious myths in modern times is the myth of the establishment of Israel as the national home of Jews in Palestine. At a time when the West is pressuring the Arab world to liberate from the past and increase it with freedom, democracy and a civil state, the Zionist entity supported by the West itself tends to drown in the past and turn towards the myths of the religious state, the racist entity, and bloody politics. Global Zionism was launched as a political ideological movement closely related to contemporary colonial projects, but the dream of creating a national homeland for Jews in the world cannot be achieved or mobilized except by tickling the Jewish religious emotions to persuade them to emigrate to this land, and only a legend in the distorted Torah found that God promised Israel the promised land, which is Palestine, through our master Abrahim, peace be upon him.

This dangerous myth appears from the religious designation of this entity (Israel), which is the name of the Prophet of God Jacob, peace be upon him, one of the sons of our master Abraham, peace be upon him, even though God Almighty cut off this alleged link to them, and God Almighty said: “Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but it was A true Muslim .. ”(Al-Imran: 67), because Judaism is attributed to "Judah" and he is one of the 11 sons of Israel from the brothers of our master Joseph Ibn Yaqoub Ibn Ibrahim, peace be upon them, referred to in the Almighty saying:“ When Joseph said to his father, my father, I have seen Eleven planets, the sun and the moon saw them prostrate to me. ” (Joseph: 04). This requires us to know the illusory foundations of the existence of this cancerous entity in the side of the nation, and that Zionism is nothing but a racist nationalist ideology that has consumed the Jewish religion and the distorted Torah for the establishment of Israel as an alleged religious state.

The article goes on with lots of other familiar anti-Israel and antisemitic arguments (including quoting Shlomo Sand and saying that today's Jews have nothing to do with ancient Jews), but the Biblical argument was particularly novel.

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