Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, June 15, 2020

France once again a hotspot for antisemitism in Europe (Daled Amos)

by Daled Amos

Protests against police brutality are not limited to Minnesota -- nor to the US, for that matter. This past Saturday, there was a “Justice for Adama” rally in Paris. Adama Traore was a black man who died while in police custody in Paris in 2016. His death continues to fuel protests of what is perceived as police racism and brutality, especially after the 3 officers who detained him were cleared of wrongdoing. There were multiple reviews carried out -- and the last one was just last month, on May 29, a few days after George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. But just as the protests that have spread across the US have been exploited to incite antisemitism, the same happened during the Paris protest as well. And these protests are all supposed to be anti-racist. Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, tweeted a video of the protesters in Paris yelling "Dirty Jews"

Anti-racism protesters in Paris today shout "Dirty Jews!" pic.twitter.com/APQCep0da0
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 13, 2020

Nor did the attack on Jews appear to be completely spontaneous

Back in 2004, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urged French Jews to immediately leave France and make Aliyah to Israel in order to escape "the wildest anti-Semitism." Just how bad was it?

According to the French interior ministry, in the first 6 months of 2004 alone there were 510 attacks or threats against Jews -- compared with 593 in all of the previous year. While that number has fluctuated since then, and at times has gone down, the number went up again in 2019. The Associated Press reported in the beginning of this year on the increased number of acts last year against Jews in France:

A total of 687 anti-Semitic acts were counted in 2019, compared to 541 the previous year. The account by the interior ministry showed that 151 of the acts were of the most severe category, “actions,” meaning attacks on people or their possessions, theft or physical acts. There were 536 threats.

That is an increase of 27%. More recently, Netanyahu also called for Aliyah -- this time by European Jews in 2015, following an attack by a lone gunman on a synagogue in Copenhagen. Netanyahu went Sharon one better. His Cabinet approved a plan for $46 million to be used for encouraging immigration and helping Jews from France, Belgium and Ukraine go through the immigration process:

“Of course, Jews deserve protection in every country but we say to Jews, to our brothers and sisters: Israel is your home,” Netanyahu said. “We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe. I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: Israel is the home of every Jew. … To the Jews of Europe and to the Jews of the world I say that Israel is waiting for you with open arms.”

At the time, not only did French officials take offense at Sharon's comments, but also Jewish leaders in France said that Sharon should have stayed quiet. They likely did not appreciate being put on the spot and having attention drawn to their situation. Just as French Jews were not happy with Sharon's comment, the response to Netanyahu's offer also drew criticism. Denmark's chief rabbi responded: “Terror is not a reason to move to Israel," (?) and Great Britain's former Middle East envoy, Lord Levy, said in an interview:

Look at the incidence of terror in Israel and I think it's a gross exaggeration to say that it is the only safe place for Jews.

But if the increase in antisemitism becomes more clearly a left-wing phenomenon and not associated only with white supremacists and other right-wing groups, will attitudes to Aliyah then change? The right-wing and left-wing are viewed very differently:

Left-wing antisemitism not only continues under the radar, unchallenged, it also makes the rounds with a certain level of acceptability. We may find out just how acceptable is it as we work our way to the November elections.

Here is a remarkable hidden camera video where an Israeli reporter went to ordinary Palestinians in the West Bank and asked them how they felt about the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

They were generally very frank in admitting that Mahmoud Abbas has not helped them at all, and that his attempts to get them to protest (for example, the Deal of the Century) were failures.

One said that if elections were held between Bibi and Mahmoud Abbas, Bibi would win.

In one telling section, a Palestinian police officer says that “For example, if they [the PA] would tell me ‘go shoot on Rachel’s Tomb,’ I would say ‘Let the son of Majid Faraj, Chief of Intelligence, go first.’” Given that PA TV has lately been playing videos meant to incite people to terror attacks, this example given is not so far fetched.

(h/t iTi)

Obama tried to push a UNSC resolution to create a Palestinian state

Israel Hayom has a bombshell report that in the waning days of the Obama administration, there was an attempt to stab Israel in the back even more than the infamous UNSC 2334 that said that settlements violated international law.

According to the report, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu asked Vladimir Putin to veto 2334, and he refused. But Obama, in the waning days of his administration, tried to push a much worse resolution to force Israel to establish a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1948 lines.

Netanyahu tried his luck again with the Russian president. he called up Putin and explained that such a move would severely hurt regional stability.

This time, Putin was convinced and informed Netanyahu that if the resolution goes to a vote, Russia will stop it.

According to what Netanyahu has said recently , the Russian intention to veto the US move against Israel became known to Obama. The outgoing president understood that if Russia were to veto this resolution in the Security Council, it would severely undermine the credibility of the United States as an ally of Israel and its own image in the Jewish community - and so he decided to shelve the initiative.

If the story is true, it is another example of Bibi’s brilliance at foreign policy.

Woman arrested by Waqf for saying that the Temples existed. (Muslims used to admit it themselves.)

Last week, Shaina Be Hirsch ascended to the Temple Mount with a friend, and then discussed the history of the Jewish Temples and the Muslim mosques and shrines there, on Facebook Live.

While there are some inaccuracies, the video gets most interesting at the 3:15 mark when a member of the Waqf interrupts her lesson and says (while she is still on live webstream) that she is “not allowed to talk Temple here in a mosque.”

Incredulous, Shaina argued with the guard about the most basic facts of documented history. He insisted that there was “zero proof” of a Temple at the site. He insisted that there was a mosque there “since Adam.” He insisted that Dan Bahat, an Israeli archaeologist, insisted that there was no evidence of a Temple at the site. (Here’s an illustration from one of his books.)

Shaina describes what happened to her next:

I was separated from my friend and taken by the Waqf security to be questioned.

They told me they would release me when I would stop telling lies. But I wasn’t telling lies.

They told me they would release me if I myself could prove that there was anything up there from before a mosque. I told them I just needed to take out the carbon-dating kit I always keep in my backpack and I could prove that in a jiffy. That seemed to confuse them.

But what really threw them for a loop was that I kept insisting that there were multiple temples there. At the very least four or maybe three and a half. The first Temple (Beit Hamikdash HaRishon), the Hasmonean Temple (perhaps this is the half because it was built out of existing parts), Herod’s Temple (The second Beit Hamikdash) and a temple to Jupiter. Now Herod’s Temple was clearly its own Temple, as he removed every single stone of the Hasmoneans before building his own.

As I kept repeating facts about the Second Temple Era, I held my phone tightly as they tried to grab it away. They didn’t seem to understand how LIVE video works, how well-locked an iPhone is, or that by erasing the history of the two other religions that their faith is based on, they weaken their own claim to this land.

After some questioning, I was handed off to the Israeli police, who tried to keep a straight face as they told me I did nothing illegal, but that I had to respect the site and I couldn’t say that there had been a Beit Hamikdash there. I wish they would have respected the integrity of the site. They also were very surprised to learn there had been more than two temples there. And even more surprised to learn that there had once been a church there. Does no one know history anymore?

While the incident is both funny and maddening, I think that Ms. Hirsch could have shut up her Waqf friend with two pieces of information.

One is from the Waqf itself. While the guard said that Jews were the ones who made up a story about the Temple around 1940, that happens to be not far from the time that the Waqf started erasing Jewish history there. The Waqf pamphlet for tourists up until around 1952 explicitly admitted that Solomon’s Temple was at the site:

A-1924-guide-to-al-Haram-al-Sharif-which-specificly-mentions-King-Solomons-Temple

The current Waqf pamphlet explicitly denies any Jewish history altogether.

The other piece of evidence that Muslims always admitted that there was a Temple at the site comes from one of the most celebrated and prolific Muslim writers, historians and scientists, Al Suyuti, a 15th century Egyptian, who wrote an entire book about the Temple that was translated to English:

Now we are told by Ibn Almubarak, from Othman, When God commanded David (with whom be peace !) to build this Temple, he said, O Lord, where shall I build it ? Who said, Where thou shalt see the angel with a drawn sword. David then did see the angel in that place. David there fore fixed the corner-stones of its foundation, and raised the walls ; but when the walls were raised, they were pulled down again. David then said, O Lord, thou didst command me to build a house for thee ; and now that I have raised the walls, thou dost pull them down. Then he said, O David, it is because I have not appointed thee my vicegerent among created beings; nor must thou alienate the place from its possessor without a price. As to that building, a man of thy sons shall construct it. Again, it has been said that the meaning of the building being pulled down after it had been raised, was, that the place be longed to the whole community of the children of Israel, every one of whom had a right in it.
...All this happened when he had reigned eleven years : but he died before he had accomplished the building, and enjoined his son Solomon (peace be with him !) to build it ; which he did, and built it in nine years : and when he had finished it, the children of Israel feasted therein upon twelve thousand oxen. It is again said, that the cause of this was, that David (peace be with him !) saw angels, with flaming swords, ascending by a golden ladder from the Rock unto heaven. Then said David, This is a place whereon it is fitting that a Mosque should be built to God Almighty. Thus therefore he built it ; but,dying before it was completed, he enjoined Solomon to build it ; who built it, and finished it.

Also, from the beginning of the building by David, unto the destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, and the overthrow of the dynasty of the sons of Israel, elapsed 454 years. Again, from Abu Abdallah Almubarek, the Temple re mained in ruins until it was built by a Persian king, named Kushak ; for Al Baghooee says Kooshan-Ibn-Kushak-lbn-Achundash, built it seventy years after its demolition by Nebuchadnezzar. Then certain weak kings conquered Syria; the kings of Rome giving them the government thereof. These kings caused Syria to embrace their Christianity, until God brought Islam. Among these kings was Jabil-Ibn-Al-Ayham. And God gave the Moslem an entrance into Syria, at the time of Omar-Ibn-Al-Khattab, (God rest content with him !). Then the Temple was surrendered to Omar by capitulation, and continued in the hands of the Moslem from the Omarian conquest until the Franks seized upon it, and wrested it from the hands of the Moslem, and ruled over it, under the dynasty of the Fa- themites, until God again opened Syria to the hand of the Sultan of Islam and of believers, Salah-ud-din, (God show mercy to him !) according to the victories and the great events which will be accurately embodied (please God!) in a chapter of this book, which is to follow.

Muslims throughout history knew why the Dome of the Rock was built exactly where it was. The current attempts to rewrite history are quite pathetic. But all one has to do is to show them their own writings.

“Satan, Jews and Crusaders”–just some more Arab antisemitism

Al Omah has an article that starts off with a Quranic quote (5:64):

And the Jews say, "The hand of Allah is chained." Chained are their hands, and cursed are they for what they say. Rather, both His hands are extended; He spends however He wills. And that which has been revealed to you from your Lord will surely increase many of them in transgression and disbelief. And We have cast among them animosity and hatred until the Day of Resurrection. Every time they kindled the fire of war [against you], Allah extinguished it. And they strive throughout the land [causing] corruption, and Allah does not like corrupters.

It goes on:

Satan and the Jews and the chains of blood are a team of heresy, tyranny and evil and its perpetual outcome is corruption that extends over history in its entirety, it sets in flames current reality, and it establishes the continuance of corruption in the future.

….

And then the base of hostility (to Islam) emerged: Satan, Jews, and Crusaders.

….

The Jews wage a war of accusations of lying against the Prophet Muhammad and hostility against Islam as a whole.

Global Crusade (codename for the West) adopted a war of making people doubt the shari'a and Islam as a whole.

Nothing about “Zionists.” Imagine that.

(h/t ibn Boutros)

…

The Jews created the idea (or ideology) of the Safavid, Khomeinist, Houthi, and Nusayri (Alawi) Sabai'yya (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_ibn_Saba') which was hostile towards the Companions (of Muhammad) in general, and especially Abu Bakr, Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, Othman Bin 'Affan, 'Aisha Bint Abu Bakr - the Truthful, daughter of the Truthful – and Hafsa Bint Omar.

06/14 Links: Anti-racism protesters in Paris yell 'dirty Jews' at counter-protesters; Jason Greenblatt: Applying Israeli law in West Bank is not illegal

From Ian:

Anti-racism protesters in Paris yell 'dirty Jews' at counter-protesters

French anti-racism protesters shouted antisemitic slogans including "dirty Jews" and waved placards reading "Israel, laboratory of police violence" at a rally in Paris's Place de la République on Saturday.

In light of the Black Lives Matter rallies that have been taking place in protest against police brutality in the US, French protesters gathered in the city to protest the death of Adama Traoré, a Malian French man who died in police custody in 2016. According to Valeurs, tensions were running high as police first blocked the march from taking place, holding protesters in the square, and then a counter protest group dropped a banner from a nearby building reading "Justice for the victims of anti-white terrorism."

In response, protesters were heard yelling "dirty Jews," at the counter-protesters. The police prefect has reported these remarks to the magistrates, they said on their Twitter account.

In addition to the chants, to which the protesters raised their fists, i24 reported that protesters were seen wearing t-shirts reading "Justice for Palestine," and waving Palestinian flags at the event. Placards being held aloft included the phrase "Israel, laboratory of police violence," and another banner read "Stop the massacres by Israel. Liberty and justice for Palestine."

Last week an American organization, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, likewise blamed the deaths of a number of African-Americans on Israel, claiming that the IDF trains American police offers in tactics that lead to human rights violations. The group tweeted: "The Israeli military trains US police in racist and repressive policing tactics, which systematically targets Black and Brown bodies," with a link to a 2016 Amnesty International report making the same claim.

Crif, the umbrella organization for French Jewry, denounced the incident, saying “there cannot be a fight against racism which directly or indirectly tolerates antisemitism in its ranks.”

Anti-racism protesters in Paris today shout "Dirty Jews!" pic.twitter.com/APQCep0da0
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 13, 2020

Israel Advocacy Movement: Europe descend into antisemitic chaos!

Anti-racists in Paris screamed “dirty Jews” at white supremacists
Google removed Churchill’s image, but not Hitler’s
‘Patriots’ in London defended Churchill’s statue by Nazi saluting it
A Jew was stabbed 2 miles from Corbyn’s house… he said nothing
Can someone cancel 2020?

I just finished an EoZTV interview with Gerald Steinberg, founder of NGO Monitor.

We spoke about their work in exposing to European funders of anti-Israel NGOs the terrorist connections of many of their major members, and went into some specifics about anti-Israel NGOs like Human Rights Watch, Defense for Children International-Palestine, Miftah, Al Haq, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Gisha and others – many of which I have discussed in detail on this site.

Check it out!

New York Review of Books parrots “Deadly Exchange” lies

The New York Review of Books Daily edition has an article by Michael Shank titled “How Police Became Paramilitaries.” It includes the lie that Israel is somehow responsible for how US police act.

Law enforcement has, in fact, been training for a moment like this—specifically by learning techniques and tactics from Israeli military services. As Amnesty International has documented, law enforcement officials from as far afield as Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state, and the D.C. Capitol have traveled to Israel for such training. These programs, according to research backed by Jewish Voice for Peace, focus on exchanging methods of “mass surveillance, racial profiling, and suppression of protest and dissent.” The 2018 report has prompted some cities, such as Durham, North Carolina, to oppose police training with Israeli security partners because of concerns about “subsequent harms to communities of color” in the US.

The actual “Deadly Exchange” report from 2018 by Jewish Voice for Peace and Researching the American Israeli Alliance (which is essentially JVP’s research arm) is a 57 page masterpiece of implying lots of relationships that don’t exist between US police and Israel.

The “research” is a large set of failed attempts to blame Israel for three specific attributes that US police forces are said to have: surveillance, racial profiling and use of force. Practically all of the report is to catalogue specific examples of each in both the Israeli side and American side, but every attempt to link US practices to specific Israeli training fails.

For example, the report says

Throughout Israeli counterterrorism trainings for American police and security forces, direct parallels are made between the Palestinians and those who are presumed to threaten American safety, bolstering the idea of a US-Israeli alliance against Muslims and Arabs. Israeli trainings in counterterrorism reinforce a highly militarized discourse that calls for institutionalized racial profiling and state violence targeting Black and Brown communities and social movements that seek racial justice.

The “direct parallels” link comes from this section of a Jerusalem Post article:

Craig W. Floyd, president and CEO of the National Law Enforcement Officer’s Memorial Fund, said the significance of the US officers coming to Israel to hold a 9/11 ceremony during the present international terrorism wave cannot be overstated.

“I think the timing is certainly very appropriate, because we’re involved in a global war on terrorism, and we need to work together and build solidarity between law enforcement officers from around the world to combat that terrorism, and win that war,” said Floyd.

They are talking about terrorists. No one in Israel or the NYPD is saying to target Muslims or Arabs as a whole, and to pretend that the NYPD shouldn’t care about international terror is to tell New Yorkers that they aren’t a target.

In fact, that exact same article included this quote that contradicts the entire Deadly Exchange report:

Asked why the relationship is so strong between the US and Israeli police forces, [chief of the Essex County’s Sheriff’s Office Deputy Division Michael] Safris noted respect for Israel’s efficiency and advanced tactics, coupled by its ability to enforce the law in a humane manner, despite dealing with countless depraved terrorists.

The entire report is filled with this kind of sleight-in-hand where is asserts one thing but when you follow the links and footnotes, they don’t prove a thing.

This all ignores the simple fact that US police are the ones responsible for US police methods and procedures. Israel doesn’t write the police manuals – thousands of US police departments do, independently. Israel doesn’t decide whether US police use tear gas or which brand they use.

One more example of deception in the report comes from its very first footnote:

The NYPD also ran a “Demographics Unit” to spy on daily life in Muslim communities in New York City. Informants known as “mosque crawlers” were deployed to visit mosques, bodegas, and student organizations, and kept extensive dossiers on Muslim communities. Founders of this program admitted that they were inspired by Israeli practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.[1]

That program started soon after after 9/11, way before any of the ADL or JINSA-sponsored trainings that the report discusses.

Another link in that same paragraph points to this article about a visit to Israel by the Mansfield, MA police chief, where we learn that he also met with Palestinian police chiefs – and extolled the cooperation that Israeli and Palestinian police shared. Here is a photo of his meeting a Palestinian police leader.

Perhaps US police brutality is a result of meeting with Palestinian police. It makes exactly as much sense as blaming it on Israel.

In this same article you can read the truth about what happens at these trainings, and it is nothing like what JVP says:

The Israelis …recommended obtaining high quality intelligence, creating physical obstacles like cement planters to protect areas, adding more police to the streets and use of technology.

They discussed how important it was to have police embedded in the community to get intelligence about a problem before it happens.

Sellon said they have a very strong effort to search and monitor social media to prevent radicalization.

“There is no such thing as a lone wolf,” Sellon said they told them.

Another focus is BOSAR (Behavioral, Observation and Suspicious Activity Recognition) training which is something Mansfield is already implementing. The goal is to notice not the individual but what he or she is doing or not doing.

“You profile behavior not appearance,” Sellon said.

The most well known example was when law enforcement viewed the behavior of the Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev during the race on video. The brothers were looking and moving in a different direction from the rest of the crowd.

The group visited a prison where PLO and Hamas prisoners are kept.

“You could see the mutual respect between prisoners and warden,” Sellon said.

One third of the “Deadly Exchange” report claims that Israel teaches racial profiling to the US police – and this article explicitly says the exact opposite!

But the NYRB cannot be expected to actually fact check a document by the rabidly anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace. Why would they lie? it is a slick PDF with lots of footnotes, so it must be true!

Last week a workshop was scheduled for the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) called “Jews and Whiteness in Colonial Spaces.” While the workshop itself was postponed due to COVID-19, the topics to be discussed seem obsessive on the question of Jews and “whiteness,” including:

1. Jews as colonial settlers: their “suitability”, acculturation, encounter with native population, other settler groups, Imperial powers; “Whiteness” for Zionism, Territorialism

2. The racialization of African Jews in colonial and post-colonial contexts

3. The extension of European citizenship to native Jews in North African under European colonialism, and its effects

4. The racialization of Middle Eastern Jews in circuits of migration during colonial times: e.g. Jewish-Iraqi migrants eastwards - to India, China - and westwards, the the UK

5. The question of “whiteness” for Sephardic/Mizrahi communities in Europe and elsewhere

6. The place of “whiteness” in antisemitism, historical and contemporary, and its relation to colonial and anti-colonial discourses

7. How does the materiality and fluidity of place-making correlate with the operation of whiteness for Jews in such spaces

The papers are not yet available. Yet the choice of topics almost all seem to be an academic cover for effectively calling Jews, or Ashkenaz Jews, white supremacists. (The main exception is #3, which presumably deals with the French offering Algerian Jews French citizenship and how that affected their relations with their Arab neighbors.)

The entire question of Jews’ “whiteness” is racist. The fact is that Jews have been treated differently than the majority population of nearly every country they’ve lived in, sometimes better than other minorities and sometimes worse, and color has nothing to do with it.

Interestingly, Americans treated many Italians as non-white in the 19th century. Arab immigrants to America tried to be classified as white in order to gain entry, some were and some weren’t. Studying those cases in the context of the history of American racism is acceptable, of course, but this workshop is specifically trying to paint Jews as inherently racist, especially topic #1, which assumes that Jews who returned to their ancestral homelands are “white colonialist” racists invading the land of the Arab people of color. The entire point is to add a racial component to the conflict, but only one way – only the Jews are the racists, while the Arabs who treated Jews as second class citizens for centuries are not accused of anything.

This obsession with characterizing Jews as “whites,” and therefore as oppressors, is academically and socially acceptable antisemitism.

It is also racism itself to try to place every group of people into a paradigm of “whiteness” or “people of color” when the world is so much more complicated than that. Just like racists, these new left-wing racists justify their racism, but it doesn’t make their racism any less reprehensible. Studying the history of racism is necessary, using academic cover to categorize Jews as “white” is just more racism.

The organizer defended the workshop by saying that it was “a critical and honest discussion about racism, anti-blackness, and whiteness in the Jewish community.” This is garbage. There are no “critical and honest discussions” in academia about black antisemitism, or Arab antisemitism, or Arab slavery, or historic Muslim colonialism, or “settler colonialism” in Latin America, or any of hundreds of other topics that aren’t politically correct while there are huge numbers of papers about how evil Jews and Zionists are. This isn’t an honest discussion. It is an academic cover for the world’s oldest hatred under the imprimatur of an academic conference – while whining about how difficult it is to hold such a conference.

(h/t Andrea Zanardo, who also wrote about this in Times of Israel)

06/13 Links: 177 new virus cases found in 24 hours, including among Netanyahu, Rivlin staff; PA to stop getting IDs authorized by Israel; One-on-one with Hollywood star Jesse Eisenberg

From Ian:

177 new virus cases found in 24 hours, including among Netanyahu, Rivlin staff

The Health Ministry on Saturday night reported 177 coronavirus cases had been diagnosed over the past 24 hours, as new infections in the vicinity of the prime minister and president prompted concerns regarding their health.

Three security guards at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence tested positive for the pathogen. Netanyahu’s office said tests were carried out for the premier and others at the residence. The guards’ came back positive while Netanyahu was negative.

“The prime minister isn’t required to quarantine because the guards weren’t in his vicinity,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office said.

Meanwhile, the President’s Residence said that over the weekend a staff member tested positive. After consultations with health officials it was said that President Reuven Rivlin would not need to isolate, but that cleaning and testing of employees would be carried out.

The latest infections brought the total cases in the country since the start of the pandemic to 18,972. The number of active cases was at 3,315.

According to the Health Ministry, 35 people are in serious condition, 26 of whom are on ventilators. Another 45 are in moderate condition and the rest have mild symptoms. The death toll remains at 300.

The ministry said 12,578 tests were performed Friday.

After a sustained decline that saw the number of new cases each day dropping to low single digits, Israel has seen a significant spike in the infection rate over recent weeks. On Thursday, over 200 cases were recorded in a 24-hour period for the first time since late April.

AstraZeneca to supply Europe with 400 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine

AstraZeneca Plc has signed a contract with European governments to supply the region with its potential vaccine against the coronavirus, the British drugmaker's latest deal to pledge its drug to help combat the pandemic.

The contract is for up to 400 million doses of the vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford, the company said on Saturday, adding that it was looking to expand manufacturing of the vaccine, which it said it would provide for no profit during the pandemic.

Deliveries will start by the end of 2020.

The deal is the first contract signed by Europe's Inclusive Vaccines Alliance (IVA), a group formed by France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands to secure vaccine doses for all member states as soon as possible.

"This will ensure that hundreds of millions of people in Europe will have access to this vaccine, of course if it works and we will know that by the end of summer," the company's chief executive, Pascal Soriot told journalists. He said he has "good hope" that it will work, based on initial data.

The alliance "will work together with the European Commission and other countries in Europe to ensure everybody across Europe is supplied with the vaccine," he said.

"We have a very self-sufficient supply chain for Europe" with manufacturers lined up in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Italy, among others, he said.

The vaccines are for all EU member states. The four nations that agreed the deal will pay for the total amount, which has not been disclosed,
and the scheme allows other countries to join it under the same conditions, a source from the Italian health ministry said.

China, Brazil, Japan and Russia have also expressed interest, he said.

PA to stop getting IDs authorized by Israel, move that could strand thousands

The Palestinian Authority said Friday it will start issuing personal documents for Palestinians without having the papers validated by Israel as in the past.

The move follows PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s announcement last month of an end to all agreements with Israel over its plans to annex parts of the West Bank.

“We are now registering our citizens in our own databases, without sending them to Israel as we did before, according to instructions not to work with Israel on this subject,” Palestinian Authority interior ministry spokesman Ghassan Nimr told AFP.

Under the 1993 Oslo peace accords, the PA has issued identity cards, birth certificates and other documents to the approximately five million residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

But they were only considered valid after endorsement by Israel, which controls all movement in and out of the West Bank and from Gaza through Israeli territory.

“We are working on setting up a new framework based on coordination with the international community to allow us to move freely without the approval of Israel,” said Nimr, without giving details.

The end of coordination with Israel on the issue has not yet had any impact on Palestinian travel due to closure of the borders of Israel and the Palestinian territories due to coronavirus restrictions.

But when crossings are reopened thousands of Palestinians could find themselves unable to enter Israel to work.

06/12 Links Pt2: Making Holocaust Education About Jews and Anti-Semites; BDS Is about Bigotry; Polish Police Involvement in the Nazi Final Solution

From Ian:

Making Holocaust Education About Jews and Anti-Semites

Acknowledging the centrality of conspiratorial Jew-hatred to the Holocaust does not preclude also acknowledging the suffering of tens or hundreds of millions of people across Europe who fell victim to Nazi aggression, occupation, and oppression. Nor does it downplay the horror of the millions of non-Jews who perished in Nazi death camps—including Romani, gays, and Poles. It simply highlights the reason those death camps existed in the first place. Without the pressing need to eradicate international Jewry, the Nazis would never have developed their industrial death machinery. And like all other weapon systems, once the Nazis perfected it, they were inclined to deploy it broadly. “Never Again” is not meant to protect only the Jews; it is meant to stave off societal suicide.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is the entity charged with developing educational material under the new law. The museum currently teaches that anti-Semitism has “its origins in the days of the early Christian church.” It traces the Holocaust’s origins only within the context of Christian Europe. But Jews have recorded anti-Semitism, and attempted genocide, for many centuries before the church and in many cultures untouched by Christianity. As described in Jewish literature from the epochs of ancient Egypt, Persia, Rome, and Greece, and until today Jew-hatred has defined a unique, stunningly consistent, niche in the annals of human hatred. Millennia of Jewish literature relate how, in the deranged minds of conspiratorial anti-Semites of all races, creeds and cultures, the real battlefront is always the war against the Jews.

Holocaust education is not getting that message across. It was not merely “hate” that created the Holocaust then or that threatens Jews today. It was not the charismatic leader, the socialist, nationalist, and populist overlays, or even the assertion of racial purity. Nor was it merely a continuation of Europe’s Christian anti-Semitism. Haman is described to have won his bid for Jewish genocide based on claims that the Jews of the Persian Empire were a disloyal fifth column. Today, with the advent of the State of Israel, this argument takes the form of suspicions of Jewish “dual loyalty.” The Holocaust itself was framed as a conscious, strategic response to imagined Jewish manipulations.

For Holocaust education to counter anti-Semitism, it must be reoriented away from hyperfocus on the externalities and mechanics of Nazism toward the inner obsession that remains relevant and dangerous in disparate guises. Teaching the threat of conspiratorial Jew hatred can counter the barbarism of a Europe intent upon atoning for its atrocities against Jews by opening its borders to violent anti-Semites. It can explain why a member of Congress’ paranoid public fulminations about the Jewish State hypnotizing the world and Jewish money manipulating Washington are cut from the same cloth as swastika-brandishing white supremacists chanting about not being replaced. It can halt the accelerating descent of the American intelligentsia into paranoid blood libels that characterize hardcore anti-Zionism and BDS—including the rising obscenity of Jewish groups trafficking in the same delusional psychosis.

Understanding—and holding at bay—the ancient, culture-destroying threat of anti-Semitism lies not in obsessing over the inconstant identities of fungible Jew-haters, but in seeing beyond those details to the unique and consistent nature of toxic anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives.

Understanding history is vital. Fighting bigotry and racism is imperative. But those who take up the “Never Again” banner must not look away from what lurks in the heart of darkness that once again threatens to engulf society. “Never Again” education must focus directly on the dangerous delusions of the anti-Semite and stop providing that beast the narrative tools by which to scapegoat us. Anti-Semitism—including the Holocaust—is always all about the Jews.

Belgian TV show on Holocaust says Jews ‘massacred’ Palestinians

A Belgian state broadcaster claimed in a Holocaust documentary that Jews repeatedly “massacred” and “systematically” displaced Palestinians.

The claim was aired on May 26 in a voiceover narration in the fifth episode of the Dutch-language television documentary series titled “Children of the Holocaust,” produced by the VRT broadcaster.

After seven Arab armies declared war on and invaded Israel in May 1948, “Israel’s army systematically destroyed Palestinian villages, expelled the population and destroyed their homes,” the narrator said about the days following the end of the British Mandate over Palestine.

In the civil war between Arab and Jewish residents of the Mandate that preceded the Arab invasion, “Jewish militias perpetrated massacres in 20 Palestinian villages, prompting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee,” the narrator says in the 48-minute episode.

The series mentions neither Arab killings of hundreds of Jewish civilians in the years 1947-49 nor dozens of Arab settlements that were left intact and incorporated with their residents into the State of Israel.

The Forum of Jewish Organizations of the Flemish Region sent a letter to VRT protesting the depiction and disputing its assertion of “massacres” by Jews.

“This objectionable and demonstratively inaccurate presentation implicitly subtracts from the messages of the Holocaust survivors” interviewed, Hans Knoop, the Jewish group’s spokesperson wrote.

Ha'aretz: Polish Police Involvement in the Nazi Final Solution

Polish historian Jan Grabowski's new book, On Duty: The Role of Polish "Blue" and Criminal Police in the Holocaust, published recently in Poland and forthcoming in English later this year, has upset the Polish right wing. Grabowski responded in a Facebook post: "I am glad that the book has had its impact not only among the more enlightened readers but also among those who prefer to build their historical identity on historical fallacies and myths."

"I was surprised to discover the role played by the Polish police in the murder of Poland's Jews," Grabowski told Ha'aretz this week. "Murder, rape, robbery - the scale is incomprehensible," he writes in the book.

The Polish police was reconstituted by the Germans in 1939, immediately after their conquest of the country. Many of the personnel in the new force came from the local Blue Police that had existed before the war. The Polish police under German command, Grabowski explains, became "a murderous and criminal organization which was a key element in the implementation of the Final Solution."

Grabowski provides documents that demonstrate that under German auspices, but with independent initiative and great fervor, the Polish police officers took part in the systematic murder of Jews in cities and villages, in ghettos and in places of hiding. "Without the Polish police, the Germans would not have succeeded in their plan," Grabowski said. "The Polish police became important actors in the German policy of extermination."

The Germans found it difficult to distinguish between Polish Jews and Poles who were not Jews. "The Germans were rather at a loss and did not have a clue about how to distinguish those who were Jewish, once they blended into the outside population and took off their arm bands." In this they were aided by the Polish police, who knew their Jewish neighbors well. Grabowski also documents many other cases in which Polish police officers acted independently and murdered Jews without any German involvement. "They were the people who made certain that there was no way for the Jews to escape."

1950s cartoons against racism, antisemitism by the American Jewish Committee

Things were much simpler then.

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