I am very behind in my book reviews, and I need to write them before I forget the books!
Pumpkinflowers is a truly great book. It tells the story of the tail end of Israel's first Lebanon war, from first person perspectives of the soldiers who were defending one specific unremarkable hill in Lebanon, named Pumpkin, that was deemed critical at the time.
Friedman is an excellent storyteller and a really great writer. It is clear that he is also a fantastic researcher as well, in putting together sources to build a seamless story, especially in the first section of the book.
That section describes Avi, a soldier at the Pumpkin who was sent there soon after what was known as the Pumpkin Incident, where Hezbollah attacked the soldiers there and for a brief time put up a Hezbolah flag - and then publicized it. It was an early example of how a militarily meaningless action can become a great victory in the public relations war, and it showed how warfare itself is changing.
Avi's story is told in his own words and ends in a very unexpected and heartbreaking way which highlights Friedman's considerable writing talent.
The second part of the book is Friedman's own story as a young soldier at the Pumpkin. Here he really has a chance to show off his talent of observation. It is the story of the mundane, highly regimented life of low-level soldiers, following orders to obtain objectives they cannot possibly understand, with weeks of boredom punctuated with occasional dangerous and deadly incidents.
Yet it is much more than that, because that story of the soldiers at Pumpkin is the story of Israel in Lebanon at large, at a point where no one wanted to talk about it. This was during the Oslo process and people were intoxicated at the idea that peace was possible. The low level Lebanon quagmire was an embarrassing sideshow, yet there were real actors in that show, some who died way too young.
In the final part of the book, Friedman narrates his final visit to Pumpkin, coming as an American tourist to Lebanon a few years later, trying to understand what it all meant.
I'm not doing the book justice in this review. Just read it.
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The point I am trying to make is that while people can argue endlessly about how there are theoretical differences between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the rage that Jew-haters and Israel haters exhibit are absolutely identical. Antisemites and anti-Zionists are equally irrational, equally obsessed and equally wrong.
If racism and antisemitism are wrong because they are examples of irrational hate, then that same hate is immoral in any context. While the Israel haters would argue that they have justifications for their obsession, so do antisemites, racists and xenophobes.
There's no difference.
The only thing that can explain the seething and manic, obsessive hate for Israel is the fact that it is the Jewish state. No one has the same hatred towards Syria or China to the point that they say that they have no right to exist. Only Israel is such a target.
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The Israel Defense Forces will provide the civilians of Bnei Brak with assistance, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed Friday, as preparations for traffic restrictions in and around the ultra-Orthodox city were put into place and the Health Ministry announced that more than 7,000 people were diagnosed with coronavirus.
By evening, the National Emergency Authority published a procedure for approving entry and exit from the restricted area on Friday.
Four more people died on Friday, victims 37, 38, 39 and 40 were all elderly people.
The ministry's report showed that some 115 people were in serious condition, including 95 are on respirators.
The government officially decided to crack down on Bnei Brak on Thursday, approving a full military-enforced closure on the city. Armed troops from the IDF’s Paratrooper Brigade began being deployed early Friday to work with the Homefront Command and Netanyahu stressed that the responsibility for enforcing these new restrictions, including enclosing the city, rests with the Public Security Ministry and the Israel Police.
Bnei Brak has more coronavirus per capita than any other city in Israel, the Health Ministry showed. On Friday, 1,061 people were diagnosed with the virus there - up 513 people in the last three days.
Most of Israel’s coronavirus fatalities have been elderly men with underlying medical conditions, in line with global averages.
The average age of Israel’s dead was 79.8 years old as of Thursday afternoon. Of the 34 dead, 21, or 64 percent, were men, and 13 were women.
Ninety-four percent of Israel’s fatalities — all but two — are over the age of 60, in line with the average in Europe of 95%.
The vast majority of Israel’s dead had underlying medical conditions, as do most senior citizens. Israeli medical authorities rarely specify which preexisting conditions the fatalities had.
The World Health Organization said Thursday that 10% to 15% of people under 50 with the disease have moderate or severe cases.
Dr. Hans Kluge, head of the organization’s office in Europe, said recent statistics showed 30,098 people had died in Europe, mostly in Italy, France and Spain. More than half of Europe’s dead were over the age of 80.
Kluge said more than 80% of those who died had at least one other chronic underlying condition like cardiovascular disease, hypertension or diabetes.
There are more than 980,000 confirmed cases worldwide, led by the United States with more than 226,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. The US has recorded over 5,100 deaths, with New York City, the US epicenter, recording 1,374 fatalities.
The number of deaths worldwide passed 50,000 on Thursday. Over 204,000 have recovered from the illness.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday evening said all Israelis should wear masks when out in public, and promised stipends for Passover for Israeli children and pensioners.
He also introduced strict limitations to travel in and out of Bnei Brak, the ultra-Orthodox city with one of the highest coronavirus infection rates in the country, as part of new directives to stop the spread of the pandemic.
Netanyahu, emerging from voluntary quarantine at his official residence in Jerusalem after an aide tested positive for the coronavirus, said that people who don’t have masks can use an improvised facial covering such as a scarf.
Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman-Tov reiterated that Israelis should not rush out to buy masks as they should be left for medical professionals, but can improvise with material and rubber bands.
The most important thing, Bar Siman-Tov said, was that the nose and mouth were covered.
Netanyahu also announced that families will receive a one-off payment of NIS 500 per child (approximately $140), up to the fourth child, ahead of the upcoming Passover holiday. There will also be stipends for the elderly, he said, without specifying the minimum age. He said these payments will be approved via emergency legislation, and that payments will be made directly into bank accounts, with no bureaucratic red tape.
Most large companies have very specific policies against any employee giving the appearance of speaking on behalf of the company unless specifically authorized to. So while, for example, an employee is free to rant about abortion on message boards, he or she cannot associate themselves with their company in their posts. Doing so would imply that the company itself is behind these statements.
I would imagine that Goldman Sachs has a similar policy.
Meet Jameel Kassouri, a senior quantitative analyst at Goldman Sachs in London. He writes frequently on Quora about his opinions on the Middle East, opinions that are misinformed, biased and false.
And he does it while identifying himself as an executive at Goldman Sachs.
And then there's this bit of antisemitism:
There is of course no shortage of ignorant people on Quora pretending to be experts. But when they attempt to give their opinions credibility by saying that they are a vice president at a major international financial institution, they are smearing the name of their company.
I don't think Goldman Sachs would be happy to know how their name is being used.
(h/t E)
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Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar threatened to kill all of Israel's Jews if Gaza does not get enough ventilators.
“If ventilators are not brought into [Gaza], we’ll take them by force from Israel and stop the breathing of 6 million Israelis," he said, as reported by Times of Israel and Arab media.
Israel has close to 9 million people, of whom about 6.9 million are Jewish. Sinwar's use of the word phrase "six million" is meant to apply only to Jews, as well as to evoke the Holocaust.
No "human rights" group seemed bothered by that.
But, at the same time, Hamas pretended to offer a deal if Israel released prisoners who are old and sick, women and those under 18. A Hamas press release said, "We can offer a partial concession on the issue of the captured Israeli soldiers, in exchange for the release of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian prisoners, the elderly, the sick, women and children."
The nature of this "partial concession" is not even hinted at. Maybe Israel can expect a fingernail or a 1 cm square piece of cloth from one of the uniforms of the dead.
Left completely unspoken is the fate of the two Israelis who are still presumed alive in Gaza, Hisham al-Sayed, an Israeli Arab, and Avera Avraham Mengistu, an Ethiopian Jew, both of whom are said to be mentally impaired and both of whom walked into Gaza on their own where they disappeared. They are clearly not soldiers and therefore not mentioned by Hamas, although Hamas has implied that it is holding them hostage.
Even though Hamas is not offering anything concrete or specific for the unnamed "partial concessions," it is congratulating itself on its humanity by even pretending to make an offer. "As a humanitarian initiative in light of the coronavirus crisis, it reflects the values, ethics and principles of this movement that values man, his life, his freedom, his dignity to everything, and the flexibility of Hamas in dealing with this situation," the press release said.
Yes, at the same time they are threatening a new Holocaust against Jews, they are telling the world how moral they are. You could not make this up.
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While they say that the textbooks are much less hateful than they were in 2017, they still have some pretty bad stuff.
Here's an excerpt showing both how bad it is now and how much worse it was two years ago:
Jews Turned into "Real Monkeys" [by Allah] The curriculum interprets a Qur'anic surah (A'raf 7:163–66), which narrates the story of one
group of Jews who (in pre-Islamic times) did not respect the Sabbath and set fishing nets to
catch fish during the day. The text refers to the changing of a group of Jews by Allah into "real
monkeys" ruling out other, gentler interpretations that usually view this as a metaphor.
139
3. Falsehood of the deception leading to the disruption of the law of Allah, breaking
limits (hudud)
140 set by Him, and performing what He forbids. The way the Jews acted
when they threw their nets into the sea on Friday for fishing, and then pulled the nets out
on Sunday. And they say: 'we did not do anything on Saturday [the Sabbath].'
6. Allah punished [these] Jewish oppressors by turning them into real monkeys. Tafsir 1, Grades 10–12 (Joint Track), 2019, p. 73.
While one can find more examples of extreme anti-Jewish polemic in this Qur'anic commentary
textbook, the 2017 edition of this very same book includes more such examples. In other words,
there is a certain toning down of rhetoric even in pure religious polemic that mimics hate
messaging.
Examples of the removed subject matter follow:
The Islamic nation is the best of all nations, and their greatest in status. It carried the
torch of guidance, led humanity to glory and eminence, eliminated superstition and
charlatanism, and established the rules of justice. It has received this in return for harsh
sacrifices, the most important of which are faith in Allah, care for the guidance of
Allah's creation, and the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice. For the People of the Book to drink from this benevolence, and be lighted by this light,
they should only believe in Allah as God, Islam as religion, and Muhammad as
messenger. And if they refuse, as a proper punishment they deserve humiliation and
servility and the anger of the Mighty. Tafsir 2, Grades 10–12 (Humanities), 2017, p. 78.
The textbook then explains that in this particular case the People of the Book are specifically
the Jews. While this text has been removed in the 2019 edition, the idea that Islam is the one
and only legitimate religion is presented elsewhere in the curriculum and is not meant to be
merely theological, but has practical dimensions.
(h/t Alexi)
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Scandal, anti-Semitism, and experiments on human beings – when we opened this fascinating archive to have a look at the documents contained within, we could not have imagined how this incredible tale would unfold – the story of a Zionist scientist who was determined to save the world from the plague and cholera against all odds. Introducing Waldemar Mordechai Wolff (Zeev) Haffkine.
Haffkine was born in the Russian Empire in 1860 in what is today the Ukraine. His life trajectory was determined as soon as he completed his studies in Switzerland in the late 19th century, when he decided to dedicate his life to the study of tiny organisms. At the time, Louis Pasteur was one of the best-known scientists in the field, and Haffkine decided to seek work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He was accepted but was given a job as a librarian, as that was the only available opening at the Institute. Bureaucracy, what can you do?
While Haffkine was working with experts like Pasteur and Ilya Mechnikov, cholera outbreaks in Russia and India emerged as a serious threat. Haffkine felt his time had come, and after tireless research, he managed to develop a cholera vaccine based on attenuated bacteria. People may have been dying in masses of a rampant pandemic, but no one stepped up to support Haffkine’s research. He decided to take a drastic step – a last resort to prove the vaccine’s credibility: Haffkine picked up a syringe full of an attenuated strain of cholera, inserted the needle into his arm, and injected the disease straight into his bloodstream. How many would have done the same?
After several days of suffering from fever and worrisome symptoms – the long-awaited turnaround arrived, and on July 30th, 1892, Haffkine reported his findings and the success of the vaccine to the Biological Society in France. But France and other European countries remained skeptical and suspicious of his methods, and refused to accept his results. At the time, European official medical establishments weren’t very enthusiastic about the idea of vaccines in general.
As measures to curb the coronavirus around the world keep people isolated in their homes, Jews are still able to commemorate the Holocaust together on Holocaust Remembrance Day as the social initiative project "Zikaron BaSalon" is now holding events online via Zoom.
"This year, even more than ever, we will mark Holocaust days and the heroes at home, in our private living rooms together with family members," said project founder Adi Altschuler.
In the past, Zikaron BaSalon – meaning "remembrance in the living room" – hosted events in private homes, where discussions were held on the Holocaust in attempts to keep the memories alive. Bridging the past to the present, the project has had over a million hosts in over 54 countries worldwide.
This year a website has been launched online so that hosts can hold events, since official events have been canceled, parades and tours have been stopped and Holocaust survivors have been told to stay home in order to stay healthy. "Despite all of this, it is important to hear the stories and testimonials of the survivors," said Altschuler.
On the website, special events can be found tailored to families, designed for kids and teens alike, as well instructions on how to have a Zoom meeting with grandparents or second generation family members.
As the Holocaust survivors are most vulnerable to the virus, the project will unfortunately proceed without their live testimonials, as the social initiative aims to protect them.
"It is the personal responsibility of all of us to commemorate the Holocaust Remembrance Day along with its heroes, listen to the testimonies and stories, in every way possible, even in today's reality – despite the coronavirus, so we will never forget," said Altschuler.
As the Health Ministry strives to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic across Israel, it has issued a list of guidelines in conjunction with the Chief Rabbinate to help keep Israelis safe.
Why is this Passover different from all others before it?
This Passover:
1. We will celebrate in our own homes and only with our nuclear families.
2. None of our dishes or other utensils will be kashered and no hametz will be burned outside of our homes.
3. We will not hire outside cleaning help but will clean our homes on our own with store-bought bleach or other cleaning products.
4. We will order our groceries to be delivered.
“This Passover, send love remotely through Zoom or phone calls,” the ministry advised, adding that if for any reason people leave their homes, they should wear a face mask and stay two meters from anyone they encounter. The ministry said people should pray alone, refrain from taking walks in nature or anywhere more than 100 meters from their homes.
“Please obey the Health Ministry guidelines so that we can all celebrate together next year,” the Health Ministry wrote.
1) It criticizes Israel and @netanyahu for using cell phone records to track people's locations so it can inform them if they were near someone with COVID-19 saying it is an invasion of privacy.
2) It publishes its own analysis of where Americans have been traveling during the crisis, based on billions of cell phone records. But it insists that the data they used is anonymous.
3) Last December, it publishes an expose showing how easy it is to figure out who people are based on the same kind of cell phone data that the NYT obviously has access to.
Showing that "anonymous data" is a lie, by their own reporting.
So what, exactly, is the difference between what Israel is doing to help slow down the pandemic and what the NYT is doing to publicize how people are behaving?
Because I cannot see any moral difference between the two.
But there is one significant difference:
Israel's surveillance has oversight, it was agreed to by the High Court and the cabinet.
The NYT does its surveillance with no transparency whatsoever.
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Gaza City, April 2 - A pathogen responsible for tens of thousands of deaths worldwide and hundreds of thousands more with life-threatening respiratory symptoms has either ignored or remains unconscious of the guarantees of various Islamic preachers that the faithful will remain unscathed, and has ravaged those believers along with everyone else.
SARS-CoV-2, known by various other appellations such as COVID-19, The Wuhan virus, or the more general term coronavirus, has killed thousands of Muslims in Iran and other predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East, in addition to Muslims residing outside the region, such as in the US or UK. The virus has infected millions of people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, indicating that it either does not know or does not care that Imams from Malaysia and the Philippines to Nigeria and Gaza have pronounced COVID-19 a divine weapon against the infidel that will cause no harm to loyal followers of Muhammad.
"No one seems to have told the virus to avoid Muslims," lamented an epidemiologist in Mashad, Iran. "All this trouble with the disease spreading outwards from the holy city of Qom, and the shrines there that people licked for protection, all because of that oversight. Like, even putting a Quran up on the telephone wires hasn't kept COVID-19 out of people's neighborhoods, even though many of our spiritual leaders issued guarantees that such measures would shield us. We need an inquiry into whose job it was to inform the coronavirus only to attack infidels."
After the pandemic claimed the lives of three Muslim healthcare workers in London last weekend, Imams began to suspect a more fundamental problem. "This looks a lot more systemic than simple negligence," worried a preacher at a mosque outside Paris. "I think we need to consider that the entire mechanism for sparing faithful Muslims from the ravages of misfortune and evil - be they war, disease, famine, oppression, enslavement, or indignities of all kinds - requires attention. Far too many examples just in recent memory provide evidence that divine protection for Muslims has not been implemented as we have been led to expect: conflicts in Yemen, Afghanistan, and Iraq; the current pandemic; droughts that hit Africa every few years; Uighurs in Chinese concentration and forced-labor camps; and ongoing subjugation to non-Islamic regimes in India and Israel as well, just to name a few."
Specimens of the COVID-19 pathogen declined to be interviewed for this article, citing social distancing precautions.
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Israel’s coronavirus death toll rose to 33 on Thursday afternoon as patients in Ashkelon and Tel Aviv succumbed to COVID-19, sustaining an increase in the fatality rate over the last several days.
The deaths were the sixth and seventh announced on Thursday, bringing the toll over just the last day and a half to 13.
Barzilai Medical Center said one fatality was a 77-year-old man who suffered from several preexisting medical conditions.
The medical center said the man, whose name has not yet been released, had been brought to the hospital on March 22.
“His condition deteriorated and he was transferred a few days ago to the intensive care unit. In the past two days, his situation got much worse, and despite treatments with all possible equipment, the patient passed away,” the hospital said.
Medical personnel after evacuating a suspected COVID-19 patient at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, March 31, 2020. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)
A second man, 90, died of the virus at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, the medical center said. It said the victim had preexisting conditions.
All of Thursday’s victims have been men over 72 years old, and five of them had underlying conditions, according to hospitals announcing their deaths.
The death toll has more than doubled from 16 since Monday, and the number of people on ventilators or in serious condition has also nearly doubled in the last week.
A team of Israeli researchers says that they are days away from completing the production of the active component of a coronavirus vaccine that could be tested on humans as early as June 1.
“We are in the final stages and within a few days we will hold the proteins – the active component of the vaccine,” Dr. Chen Katz, group leader of MIGAL’s biotechnology group, told The Jerusalem Post.
In late February, MIGAL [The Galilee Research Institute] committed to completing production of its vaccine within three weeks and having it on the market in 90 days. Katz said they were slightly delayed because it took longer than expected to receive the genetic construct that they ordered from China due to the airways being closed and it having to be rerouted.
As a reminder, for the past four years, researchers at MIGAL scientists have been developing a vaccine against infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), which causes a bronchial disease affecting poultry. The effectiveness of the vaccine has been proven in preclinical trials carried out at the Veterinary Institute.
“Our basic concept was to develop the technology and not specifically a vaccine for this kind or that kind of virus,” said Katz. “The scientific framework for the vaccine is based on a new protein expression vector, which forms and secretes a chimeric soluble protein that delivers the viral antigen into mucosal tissues by self-activated endocytosis, causing the body to form antibodies against the virus.”
At the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, a 67-year-old patient who had been in an induced coma and on a ventilator for two weeks was taken off the ventilator on Tuesday night and is breathing on her own. Her condition has been upgraded to moderate. The patients contracted the virus while visiting Egypt with her partner.
The director of the corona ICU at Wolfson called the woman's case "encouraging."
"Of course, we are continuing to monitor the patient's condition closely, and hope that we will soon be able to report more improvement," he noted.
Israel Hayom has elected to take a closer look at the "pre-existing conditions" that have been reported for all the corona fatalities in the country thus far and discovered that while the term might imply that the victims were already critically ill, in at least some cases the "pre-existing conditions" were common medical conditions that in approximately one-third of the Israeli population over 40 have: diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure.
Israel Hayom identified the "pre-existing conditions" from which 18 of the 21 victims suffered and discovered that eight were diabetics; eight had high blood pressure; and seven suffered from heart and vascular disease. Five of the patients were in varying states of dementia or had suffered strokes or a loss of cognitive functioning. Another four had respiratory illnesses. One patient who succumbed to coronavirus already had liver disease, an autoimmune condition, and cancer.
J Street seems to make it a point to find ever-innovative ways to lower the bar on what passes for pro-Israel.
J Street Support For The Goldstone Report
In an October 23, 2009 piece for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami. In response to Goldberg's concern that there are those "who are glomming on to you guys as a cover, just using you to advance another agenda entirely," Ben-Ami replied:
I hope that we have a very strong left flank that attacks us, that Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups that are consistently upset with us for backing Howard Berman's sanctions plan and for refusing to embrace the Goldstone report and for standing up for the right of Israel to defend itself or for its military aid -- I hope we get attacked from the left because I would characterize J Street as the mainstream of the American Jewish community. [emphasis added]
The following week, October 30, The Standard's Michael Goldfarb posted J Street Adviser Morton Halperin Goes to Work for Goldstone. According to Goldfarb, in response to H.R. 867 -- condemning Goldstone's report claiming Israel committed war crimes in Operation Cast Lead -- a document authored by Judge Goldstone was being circulated on Capitol Hill.
Goldfarb notes that
it seems that certain elements of J Street have indeed embraced Goldstone and his report. Upon further inspection of the Goldstone letter, the actual author seems to be Morton H. Halperin [president of the Open Society Institute (OSI)], who serves on the J Street advisory council and is a senior adviser at George Soros's Open Society Institute.
...Individuals with official ties to J Street are not just embracing the Goldstone report, they are involved in efforts on behalf of Goldstone himself to scuttle opposition to the report in Congress. It's just another example of the disconnect between J Street's official positions and the actions of those who are connected to the organization. [emphasis added]
J Street — the self-described pro-Israel, pro-peace lobbying group — facilitated meetings between members of Congress and South African Judge Richard Goldstone, author of a U.N. report that accused the Jewish state of systematic war crimes in its three-week military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
Ben-Ami told The Washington Times that while “J Street did not host, arrange or facilitate any visit to Washington, D.C., by Judge Richard Goldstone,” but that “J Street staff spoke to colleagues at the organizations coordinating the meetings and, at their behest, reached out to a handful of congressional staff to inquire whether members would be interested in seeing Judge Goldstone.” Ben-Ami reiterated “We believed it to be a good idea for him and for members of Congress to meet personally, but we declined to play a role in hosting, convening or attending any of the meetings.”
When asked later how many congressional offices had been contacted, a J Street staffer told the Times that it was 2 or 3. Mr. Ben-Ami later said he did not remember reaching out to Congress. [emphasis added]
But Goldstone himself contradicted both the staffer and Ben-Ami:
Judge Goldstone said he remembers attending “10 or 12” meetings.J Street co-founder Daniel Levy, who accompanied the judge to several of the parleys, said that the New America Foundation (NAF) — whose Middle East Task Force he co-chairs — had also hosted a lunch with Judge Goldstone for “a group of analysts and Middle East wonks.” The judge, Mr. Levy, and J Street all declined to identify the members of Congress. [emphasis added]
As the article points out, all 3 of those organizations connected with Goldstone’s visit to Washington -- J Street, NAF and OSI -- are funded by Soros.
Contrary to J Street, most of the organized American Jewish community, across the spectrum from left to right was critical of the report.
In the end, the House passed a resolution condemning the Goldstone Report by a vote of 344-36. However, J Street said that it was unable to support the resolution as written.
J Street And Betty McCollum's Military Detention Bill HR 2407
This bill prohibits the use of certain foreign-assistance funds to support the military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill treatment of children in violation of international humanitarian law. The bill also prohibits such funds from being used to support certain practices against children, including torture, sensory deprivation, solitary confinement, and arbitrary detention.
The bill also authorizes the Department of State to provide funding to nongovernmental organizations to (1) monitor and assess incidents of Palestinian children being subjected to Israeli military detention, and (2) provide treatment and rehabilitation for Palestinians under 21 years of age who have been subject to military detention as children.
McCollum sent a letter to J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami on June 4th [2019] seeking his endorsement of the bill. In a response sent almost two months later, Ben-Ami described his board’s internal deliberations. He wrote that J Street strongly opposes unique standards being applied to Israel, but also believes Israel must adhere to legal requirements placed on all recipients of taxpayer-funded military assistance.
“While our Board of Directors has not yet made a decision on whether to support H.R. 2407, it is seized [sic] of the matter and has instructed our staff to engage in further research and consultations with relevant experts and stakeholders on this legislation and the critical issue it addresses,” Ben-Ami wrote. J Street Communications Director Logan Bayroff confirmed that this continues to be the organization’s position on the bill.
But J Street was not always so hesitant.
H.R. 2407 is the second iteration of McCollum's bill.
This bill prohibits U.S. assistance to Israel from being used to support the military detention, interrogation, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children in violation of international humanitarian law or the use against Palestinian children of: (1) torture, inhumane, or degrading treatment; (2) physical violence or psychological abuse; (3) incommunicado or administrative detention; (4) solitary confinement; (5) denial of parental or legal access during interrogations; or (6) force or coercion to obtain a confession.
Instead of directing the secretary of state to certify that U.S. aid is not being used by Israel to detain children, as the 2017 version does, the new bill amends U.S. law to explicitly ban U.S. aid from going toward the abuse of children, a move that takes discretion over such a ban out of the hands of the State Department.
But more than that, H.R.2407 amends the Leahy Law that prohibits the US from giving aid and training to either foreign military or individuals who are accused of "gross human rights violations" -- and adds a focus on Israel:
McCollum’s bill would make the Leahy Law even more explicit by barring foreign security units from using U.S. aid to carry out the “military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill-treatment of children.” The bill’s amendment to the Leahy Law would apply to all countries that receive U.S. military aid, but its focus on Israel has made it particularly controversial. [emphasis added]
The potential for cutting aid to Israel concerns not only Democrats in Congress, but J Street as well.
J Street’s endorsement could provide wavering members of Congress enough political cover to back the bill. But J Street is still debating whether to ultimately endorse it. “We haven’t taken a position on this bill yet. We are still looking at the language and researching the very important issue it deals with,” said Logan Bayroff, a spokesperson for J Street.
Advocates for the bill have heard from congressional staffers that J Street is skeptical about using the Leahy Law to bar aid because, in J Street’s eyes, the law should be applied to only the most extreme human rights violations like mass sexual violence, massacres, or ethnic cleansing.
It is not surprising then that J Street has not been lobbying on the issue of H.R. 2407 as it did on H.R. 4391.
Ben-Ami was the one who bragged to Jeffrey Goldberg "I hope that we have a very strong left flank that attacks us."
But the increasingly vocal radical left is not impressed by Ben-Ami's claim to represent the American Jewish mainstream. Instead, just as Ben-Ami once admitted to The New York Times "our no. 1 agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s [Obama's] blocking back,” progressives expect Ben-Ami and J Street to keep moving to the left and provide cover for increased attacks on Israel by Democrats.
Now vocal anti-Israel progressives demand J Street do just that.
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The Gaza Strip and COVID-19: Preparing for the Worst
What’s new? COVID-19 cases have appeared in the Gaza Strip, where close to two million Palestinians live in 365 sq km, many of them in crowded refugee camps where social distancing is hardly feasible.
Why does it matter? A major outbreak of the illness would swiftly overwhelm Gaza’s health care system, which has been devastated by years of war and Israeli blockade. The death toll could be horrific.
What should be done? The Hamas government should maintain its quarantine measures and step up other efforts to contain the virus’s spread. Israel should lift the blockade for medical supplies and allow Palestinians out of the strip should they require hospitalisation.
The report itself includes lots of footnotes to prove its point. Unfortunately the facts are overwhelmed by anti-Israel propaganda and falsehoods. Here's just one paragraph, footnote in italics:
After Hamas assumed control of the strip in 2007 (following elections the previous year), the Israeli government imposed a blockade that continues to severely restrict the movement of people and goods into and out of the territory. Apart from devastating the economy – in what the UN has termed a form of collective punishment – the blockade has crippled Gaza’s health care sector. In 2018, the UN reiterated that “Israel’s 11-year-old air, sea and land blockade has driven Gaza’s social and economic conditions steadily backwards. This amounts to the collective punishment of the two million residents of Gaza, which is strictly prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention”. See “Closure of Gaza commercial crossing: UN expert calls on Israel to reverse decision”, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 13 July 2018.
GENEVA (13 July 2018) – A UN human rights expert has called on Israel to reverse its decision to close the Kerem Shalom/Karm Abu Salem commercial crossing into Gaza.
The Israeli decision, announced on 9 July, prohibits the import of everything but food, animal fodder, livestock, fuels and medical supplies into Gaza, and bans all export from Gaza. Israel imposed these new restrictions in response to burning kites being sent by Palestinians into southern Israel from Gaza.
Even during an assault on Israeli civilians with incendiary devices dropping all over the south, Israel still didn't restrict medical aid - but the ICG uses that as proof that its does, today!
The next sentence of the report shows that this isn't a one-off mistake:
The World Health Organization has said that, while Israel generally allows pharmaceuticals and disposables to enter Gaza because of their humanitarian nature, Israel has either delayed or prevented the import of medical equipment, consumables and spare parts. See “Medical Equipment in Gaza’s Hospitals”, World Health Organisation, July 2009. From the blockade’s early days, the WHO has accused Israel of limiting access to proper medical supplies and spare parts, with the result that most of the equipment in Gaza is broken or outdated. “WHO: Israel-led blockade limits medical supplies in Gaza”, Haaretz, 30 July 2009.
Eleven year old reports are being used as proof of what Israel is doing today. In 2009, Israel was still formulating the rules of what to allow into Gaza without endangering Israelis and what the procedures would be. Those procedures have evolved over the years to facilitate entry of equipment that was previously delayed. Today is nothing like 2009.
ICG realizes that, and goes on:
These accusations have persisted. In 2018, the UN urged Israel to stop preventing the entry of humanitarian aid and medical supplies to the besieged strip. See Bel Trew, “UN urges Israel not to withhold aid from Gaza, as crisis deepens”, The Independent, 23 August 2018.
That article does not say one word about Israel limiting medical supplies! It does say that there is a shortage of such supplies, but that was entirely because the Palestinian Authority - which is responsible for medicines in Gaza hospitals despite Hamas' coup - actively decided to limit medicines and other critical products from Gaza. ICG mentions this in the next paragraph so it clearly knows about the PA's role in limiting medicine - yet it still blames Israel based on zero evidence, only a poor reading of newspaper articles and NGO reports that imply but do not show that Israel imposes restrictions.
For example, Israel does not permit the import of hydrogen peroxide, a medical disinfectant, noting that it can also be used in explosive devices. “List of ‘Dual Use’ Items”, Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), 2008.
If you look at the document they mention, it says that hydrogen peroxide with concentrations above 18% are prohibited - and for good reason, because mixing high concentrations with acetone can create a very easy to build explosive. Hydrogen peroxide to treat wounds is typically at 3% concentration; hydrogen peroxide cleaning products for hospitals are even less, so as far as I can tell there is no valid medical reason to allow higher concentrations ofH2O2 into Gaza.
ICG then goes on to quote Amnesty and others claiming that Israel has targeted hospitals in the past, falsehoods that I have debunked many times, one at a time, showing how every one was targeting a valid military target that was using medical facilities as cover. It is also irrelevant to the discussion. In addition, ICG repeats the B'Tselem lie about Israel dismantling a medical clinic in the West Bank without noting COGAT's debunking.
What about the ICG recommendation that Israel allow Gaza Covid-19 patients to be treated in Israeli hospitals? It's own report shows that this can only happen at the expense of Israel treating its own citizens!
Even if Israel opened all its hospitals to Palestinians in Gaza who require hospitalisation without caring for its own citizens, it would be able to accommodate only 5,000 of the most severe cases. As a state comptroller’s report explained, Israel’s own health system is underprepared and overstretched. A former commander of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli army unit that deals with civilian needs in the West Bank and Gaza, said: “Israel cannot be blamed, [as] Israel is suffering already from this virus”.
If Israel would follow the recommendations in the report, it would result in many Israelis dying to save the lives of people who consider Israel their enemy. Why a nation sacrificing its own people to help those who want to destroy it is a moral decision is not explained.
One other issue not mentioned in this report is that Egypt, also on the border with Gaza, is not called upon to open its crossings to help fellow Arabs. Only Israelis are expected to do that.
It is most disappointing that an organization that clearly has access to the facts still says untruths.
No one wants an epidemic in Gaza. Israel is doing everything it can to minimize the chances of that happening without putting its own citizens at further risk. Anyone who says otherwise is not stating facts but parroting propaganda.
I don't know anything about the ICG's politics, and I hope that this poorly written report is more a reflection of unconscious bias than an attempt to smear Israel. We'll know soon enough if they issue corrections.
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Friday, April 03, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
