Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 07, 2020

07/07 Links Pt1: Mossad said to foil Iranian attacks on Israeli embassies in Europe; UN expert: US drone strike which killed Iran's Soleimani was 'unlawful'; Will Pres Trump bring King Abdullah to heel?

From Ian:

Meet the Law Professor Laying Out the Facts on Annexation

Kontorovich’s latest battle is destroying the myths surrounding the Israeli government’s plans to apply sovereignty over (aka annexation of) Judea and Samaria. The term annexation in international law refers to the forced appropriation of one state’s territory by another state, Kontorovich said, explaining that in this case, applying Israeli law to those areas — some 30% of the land as delineated in President Donald Trump’s administration’s peace proposal — is simply a realization of a long-held right.

Close to 500,000 Israeli Jews living in the settlements are governed by a mish-mash of military rule and archaic Ottoman laws that makes implementing any changes to the area — such as building roads, schools and basic infrastructure — a bureaucratic nightmare that takes at least twice as long as anywhere else in Israel, Kontorovich said.

The reason that it is still this way decades on, he explained, is because of Palestinian intransigence. He added that in 1967, when Israel captured the area from Jordan occupation in a war of self-defense, the belief was that a final status solution would be hashed out quickly with the Palestinians. “This was supposed to be temporary until the Palestinians quickly came to the table, which didn’t happen,” he said. “But in the Middle East, nothing is as permanent as the temporary.”

According to Kontorovich, several offers of Palestinian statehood have been proposed but not one has been accepted. For the past 53 years, he said, settlers “have been held hostage to Palestinian rejectionism,” and every peace agreement before Trump’s was based on the notion that there would be population transfers of Jews living in those areas.

“Israel is not going to play along with this game, and neither will America,” he said, “that the Palestinians should only get a state that was pre-cleansed of Jews.” That idea, he noted, is “morally repugnant.”

Applying Israeli law now “underscores that Israel is not going to accept a situation in which it has indefensible borders [as well as] the notion that Jewish presence there is illegal and is so reprehensible that it needs to be reversed. The communities there are a reality,” Kontorovich said, “and they’re not going anywhere.”

Mossad said to foil Iranian attacks on Israeli embassies in Europe, elsewhere

The Mossad spy agency recently foiled planned or attempted Iranian attacks on Israeli diplomatic missions in Europe and elsewhere, according to a report Monday.

The report by Channel 12 said the names of the countries where attacks were prevented remain under censorship, but cooperation with them helped to thwart the attacks.

“Frustration is growing fast in Iran,” the report said.

No other details were available, and no sources were named.

In 2012, Iran and its Lebanese proxy, the terror group Hezbollah, seemingly attempted to carry out a number of attacks against Israeli diplomatic missions in India, Georgia, Thailand, and elsewhere.

Monday’s Channel 12 report also said that an attack on the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran, credited to Israel, had managed to set back Tehran’s uranium enrichment program by two years, citing Western intelligence estimates.

A report by Channel 13 on Sunday claimed the attack only set back the work by a single year.

UN expert: US drone strike which killed Iran's Soleimani was 'unlawful'

The January US drone strike in Iraq that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and nine other people represented a violation of international law, a UN human rights investigator said on Monday.

The United States has failed to provide sufficient evidence of an ongoing or imminent attack against its interests to justify the strike on Soleimani's convoy as it left Baghdad airport, said Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

The attack violated the UN Charter, Callamard wrote in a report calling for accountability for targeted killings by armed drones and for greater regulation of the weapons.

"The world is at a critical time, and possible tipping point, when it comes to the use of drones. ... The Security Council is missing in action; the international community, willingly or not, stands largely silent," Callamard, an independent investigator, told Reuters.

Callamard is due on Thursday to present her findings to the Human Rights Council, giving member states a chance to debate what action to pursue. The United States is not a member of the forum, having quit two years ago.

Soleimani, leader of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, was a pivotal figure in orchestrating Iran's campaign to drive U.S. forces out of Iraq, and built up Iran's network of proxy armies across the Middle East. Washington had accused Soleimani of masterminding attacks by Iranian-aligned militias on US forces in the region.

Anti-Jewish crime in NYC dwarfs anti-Black crime

Here are the NYPD statistics on anti-Black, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hate crime complaints since 2017, the first year the NYPD started keeping these statistics.

And here are the statistics for arrests for hate crimes by motivation:

One has to be careful about drawing direct conclusions from these. It is possible that blacks do not report anti-black graffiti nearly as often as Jews might report antisemitic graffiti, for example. But one cannot escape the impression that antisemitic incidents are downplayed compared to their frequency.
Does this mean that there is systemic antisemitism in New York? I don’t think so, but the word “systemic” is being batted around a lot nowadays as if it is obvious, and these statistics indicate that antisemitism is more prevalent and widespread in New York than any other bias by any measure.
In fact, anti-Jewish crimes come from all corners – some years there are more white attackers, some years more black ones. Last year 13% of the antisemitic crimes were done by Asians, but zero from Hispanics (who one would think would have identical grievances as Blacks do against Jews.)
That is equal opportunity hate.
And here’s an amazing statistic: there more more arrests for anti-Muslim crimes than there were complaints over these three years: 42 complaints and 49 arrests. For Jews it was 579 complaints and 139 arrests. So it appears that the police take anti-Muslim crime very seriously, and anti-Jewish crime not nearly as much, the exact opposite of the impression one gets from the media.

Pro-Israel Democrats and their fundamental misunderstanding of the 20 years since Oslo

The Israel Policy Forum put together a webpage quoting all the senators –39 of them, all Democrats, all who say they are pro-Israel – who are against what they call “annexation.”

Nearly all the senators base their argument on what is best for Israel’s security. But many of them – and the Israel Policy Forum itself – also argue that one major reason against extending Israeli law to sections of Judea and Samaria will “create unprecedented stress on the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

The only reason for that stress is because nearly every pro-Israel Democrat is more interested in a two state solution based on the 1949 armistice lines than in peace. The concept of a Palestinian state has morphed from a good idea at the time of Oslo into a religion that has no rational basis. The circumstances have changed a great deal since 1993 but the “pro-peace” position has not.

For example, here is one of the arguments used by the Israel Policy Forum against the Trump plan:

The Trump plan incorporates the important concept of land swaps. However, the land swaps are imposed rather than mutually agreed upon, and are not equitable in quantity or quality.

Implied in this analysis is that any solution must be “mutually agreed upon.” This seems like a truism, but the past twenty years shows that this basic concept is antithetical to peace, not a prerequisite.

Over the past two decades, the Palestinian Authority has rejected every plan that would have given them a state. They didn’t do this with any realistic counterproposals – they did this by employing veto power over any solution offered. Because every agreement, by definition, must be “mutually agreed upon,” the PA has the power to never agree to anything beyond their maximal demands. The negotiations haven’t been a give and take – they’ve been offers and refusals.

This same Palestinian Authority has never prepared their people for a future where they live in a state side by side with Israel. Every single map they publish of Palestine – in schools, in newspapers, on TV, in their logos – includes all of Israel.

This same Palestinian Authority still makes terrorists, not peacemakers, into heroes. It lionizes murderers. It prioritizing paying terrorists and their families.

This same Palestinian Authority has refused to hold elections for close to 15 years now.

This same Palestinian Authority has been using the people of Gaza as pawns, cutting aid to them while creating, with Hamas, an environment where all criticisms about Gaza’s awful situation must be blamed on Israel, not on their infighting or on Hamas terror.

This same Palestinian Authority has no mandate – Hamas, a terror group, won the last elections.

This same Palestinian Authority keeps insisting that there can be no peace without “return,” a transparent ploy to destroy the Jewish state.

This same Palestinian Authority has unilaterally decided that they will not talk to Israel. They criminalize anyone who wants to work with Israelis on a grassroots level. And they do not allow a free marketplace of ideas in their media where these topics can be openly discussed. In fact, criticizing the PA can result in being arrested.

For all these reasons, the very basis of the idea that any solution must be mutually agreed upon is shown to be false. Reality on the ground has fundamentally changed since the 1990s. A peace agreement with the PA is impossible.

I have no doubt that most of these Democrats, and liberal think tanks like the IPF, support Israel’s right to exist in peace and security. But they blind themselves by sticking with a peace paradigm that has been proven to be not only impossible but based on a false idea of what the Palestinian Authority is, and what it can do.

The PA strategy is to keep using their veto power until Europe (or the US Democrats) pressure Israel to give them what they want without any compromises. And, unfortunately, the US Democrats are playing their part.

If peace is the goal, and the Palestinian Authority has shown that is cannot be a partner for peace, then there are only two choices: the status quo, which works in favor of the Palestinian leaders – or Israel acting in its own interests unilaterally.

That means, at a minimum, Israel setting its own borders rather than wait for an agreement that will never happen. That means “annexation” of some disputed land.

One can argue about the specifics, one can argue about the timing, one can argue about the effectiveness. It is very easy to criticize. However, one cannot insist on the impossible. The Palestinian Authority has taken a negotiated two-state solution off the table, so Israel has to act in its own interests rather than wait for events to force it into a worse position. Any nation would do the same.

If these pro-Israel Democrats really wanted peace, they would be using their energy to warn the Palestinian Authority of the consequences of their unilateral actions over the past twenty years, rather than warn Israel of the consequences of its potential actions. Israel is quite aware of the risks, thank you. If members of Congress want peace, don’t pressure the only side that has shown it wants peace.

It isn’t Israel that is putting the US-Israel relationship at risk. It is the people who make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Israel has waited for decades for a partner; when there is no partner one must act alone in one’s own interests. Real friends of Israel would know this.

EoZTV: Bryan E. Leib, HaShevet

My latest EoZTV was with Bryan E. Leib, who recently started along with other prominent young professionals HaShevet, a Zionist organization meant to be a watchdog to ensure that mainstream Jewish organizations don’t lose their commitment to Israel, and that qualified Zionists can network to join these organizations to keep them relevant in the future.

Enjoy!

07/06 Links Pt2: The Third Wave of Anti-Semitism is on the Way; Biden's Foreign Policy Boss Called for Anti-Israel DNC Platform; YouTube: Delete Louis Farrakhan’s 4th Of July Speech ASAP

From Ian:

JCPA: The Third Wave of Anti-Semitism is on the Way

What is currently being promoted by the international community is not a discourse of criticism, which would be legitimate, but instead a storm of prejudices.

Research and polls carried out in dozens of countries testify that virus-inspired anti-Semitism has gone viral on social media, and it is the continuation of the ancient conspiracy theories of blood libels that have always painted the Jews as the source of diseases and the spreaders. Public opinion will surf again on this deadly anti-Semitic wave.

The Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, personally promoted the coronavirus blood libel by stating that Israeli soldiers and settlers knowingly spread the Coronavirus widely among Palestinians. His spokesperson went so far as to state that the occupation itself was the virus and that the Jews had inflicted the pandemic on the Palestinians. The phenomenon of the anti-Semitism plague converged with the Coronavirus, which then intertwined with subsequent waves.

Responsible national and international leaders who have taken a stance to combat anti-Semitism in this period have mobilized to fight the idea that the Jews are responsible for COVID-19. In addition, some leaders seek to quash the conspiracy theories that imperialist Jews and their wealth are attempting to dominate the world. Some combat those who want to obliterate the Shoah’s memory. Others confront Neo-Nazi hatred. And others focus on their societies’ bias against the Jews because of their hatred, prejudice, and ignorance about Judaism.

The political, diplomatic, and academic spokespersons who care deeply about the adoption and the promotion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), upheld the connection between hatred for Israel and anti-Semitic hatred during a webinar conference in June 2020. Katharina Von Schnurbein, the European Commission Coordinator on combating Anti-Semitism, alluded to a 2019 survey in which 85 percent of Jews declared that they feel they are perceived through the Israeli lens. Jews are synonymous with Israel.

The question that arises is the following: if, as the IHRA suggests, anti-Israel hatred is the engine of anti-Semitism, its twin, why are there no measures to deal with this dual-threat? Why not be more cautious when dealing with issues relating to Israel? Why not challenge both hatreds by delving deeper into Israel’s history, its democratic nature, humane inspiration, and the heroic story of the country itself?

Institutions and states that have implemented measures against anti-Semitism and have adopted the IHRA should monitor how they and their institutions influence public opinion and the spread of prejudice against Israel. Political actors must be more cautious before putting labels on Israeli-Jewish consumer products, or bandying about apartheid, or legitimizing BDS. The examples are endless, and the many condemnations and institutional threats today push anti-Semitic crowds into the streets with a “moral cloak.” These political actors and institutions are committed to fighting against anti-Semitism, but they are also responsible for creating it. This has been the case since the 1975 UN Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism.

Rachel Riley – JLGB LIVE Youth-Led Q&A (h/t Arie)

South Africa paid the price for defaming Israel

Party members are expelled if they set foot on the tarmac of Ben Gurion International. Foreign Affairs bureaucrats walk the talk of the local BDS franchise, so rotten that it lost the license to tell lies about Israel under the BDS brand. But dare challenge bizarre views and you’re toast.

Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng is toast. He is threatened with removal from office. For loving Israel he is guilty of “endangering the justice system.” This from a governing party that beat the rule of law stone dead so that comrades could loot the country to their heart’s content.

Two things that the Chief Justice said brought haters out of the woodwork. One, he connected Israel to the bible, and two referred to God’s blessings and curses. To me the latter struck the rawest nerve.

Then a law professor entered the fray to do a non-political, objective hatchet job on Mogoeng Given that law professors who recognise the sovereign rights of Israel are as rare as a pig in Palestine, we can speculate if the professor would have delivered the opinion he did, or any at all, had the Chief Justice laid into Israel for crimes against humanity.

Israel more than any country attracts claims beyond wild, and most especially Jews with a chip on their shoulder who compete with Palestinian Arabs to come up with the wildest. Here is one example of suggested reading: The Chief Justice the Bible and Palestinian Real Estate, Daily Maverick 01.07.2020.

But for my money, the claim that Jesus was a Palestinian (Arab?) wins hands down. Yasser Arafat’s PR, Hannan Ashrawi, disclosed the astounding fact to the Washington Jewish Week on February 22, 2001. No one blinked. She was not the first or the last to bring Christ into play. It is done annually. “Every Christmas, Palestine celebrates the birth of one of its own,” proclaimed a PLO’s statement at Christmas time. I don’t know if anyone has made Jesus into a Muslim, but the PLO seems to leave that possibility wide open.

Hate is one of the more perverse emotions. More than it destroys the subject of hate it destroys the hater. In party politics hatred can harm a whole country. Antisemitism in fact could be at the bedrock of South Africa’s collapse into a failed state.

Hell, though, is not the end of the world. Life in a failed state is not entirely bad. You have to deal with elements more or less stable, more or less controllable, more or less mad. Only one thing really matters – to recognise the curse that brought you to hell and what will keep you there unless you learn that those who curse Israel will be cursed.

Haters REALLY hate Jews being called indigenous to Israel

This thread was widely circulated (including by the usual “Jewish” anti-Zionist accounts) on Twitter:

Funny, I thought that the idea of Jews being indigenous to Israel was a little older than Black Lives Matter. But I’m willing to check my facts.

From “The Survey of Western Palestine: Special papers on topography, archaeology, manners and customs, etc.” by Palestine Exploration Fund · 1881:

Notice how the authors, who are Christian, aren’t willing to call Christians indigenous to the Holy Land (let alone Muslims) - only Jews.

And this part is a nice overall description of the land before modern Zionism:

For Jews, identifying as “white” is not always helpful (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

While writing a recent post on Jews: From Asiatic, Mongoloid, Slavonic, Low-Level Caucasians To Privileged White Supremacists, I came across this on Twitter:

As it turns out, it's a hoax.

But that does not mean that the 'whiteness' of Asian Americans is not an issue.

Yes Magazine, features an article asking the same question Are Asian Americans White? Or People of Color? The answer, of course, is no, Asian Americans are not 'white'. But apparently, you might have thought they are.

Why?

Because "on average Asian Americans are among the most successful in the United States," though there are major differences, depending on the particular segment of the Asian-American population. The underlying assumption being that lack of success for a "person of color" might be due to racism -- and that success itself is a sign of integration and with it, "becoming white."

That would certainly seem to indicate that Jews are white, based on their financial success and apparent integration into society. (And let's not start with the percentage of Nobel Prizes that Jews are awarded).

But more importantly, the article bases Asian American status as People of Color squarely on how they are treated. Regardless of the prosperity of the more successful Asian Americans, the problem of racial discrimination remains:

Asian Americans continue to experience discrimination, hate crimes and racial violence, xenophobia, concerning levels of racial/ethnic bullying in schools, and other indicators of racial marginalization in the U.S.

But if hate crimes and violence are the proof that Asian Americans are not integrated and therefore not 'white', then surely Jews pass that same test with flying colors.

If Muslims are not considered integrated enough to be 'white,' why should Jews -- who regularly suffer more hate crimes each year according to the FBI -- be considered white?

Yet Jews are considered 'white' -- and white supremacists, at that.
Something doesn't add up.

Michael Lerner approached this issue from another angle when he wrote in The Village Voice in 1993:

In the context of American politics, to be “white” means to be a beneficiary of the past 500 years of European exploration and exploitation of the rest of the world — and hence to “owe” something to those who have been exploited. So when Jews are treated as white in the United States, the assessment is not a crude physical one but a judgment of Jewish culture and civilization, history and destiny.

When Rome sent the majority of the indigenous Jews out of their native land, many found their way to Europe. Jews did not share in that exploitation, they were the victims of it -- not to mention those Jews who remained and witnessed the Islamic invasion that came later.

The Spanish, who were explorers and colonizers. Does that mean they are...'white'?
What about the Italians, who did their share of exploration and exploitation?

For that matter, what about Muslims, who invaded: Syria, Egypt, North Africa and then-Palestine (all then under Christendom) as well as Spain, Portugal, France, Sicily, Rome, Russia (under the Tartars), Anatolia, Constantinople, and the Balkan peninsula. [see: Bernard Lewis, "What Went Wrong" (p.4ff)]

It still doesn't add up.

Obviously, it all depends on whose rules you are following, and now that Jews live in a time when people are drawing up sides to see who qualifies for People of Color -- Jews are again being excluded, despite a history, culture, religion and language that demonstrates a separate ethnicity, and the fact Jews are anything but 'white'.

In an op-ed in the LA Times last year, an African American woman suggested doing away with the term "person of color" altogether:

The terms “women of color” and “people of color” are meant to be inclusive. But, from my perspective, they only help to leave black people behind — specifically black women. While every minority group faces its own challenges in America, a “one size fits all” mentality toward diversity erases the specific needs of the most vulnerable communities. [emphasis added]

Considering how Jews ended up being the odd man out, one would have to agree.

She goes on to write that this is not to deny the important implication of People of Color for common solidarity and struggle --

But even more important is doing the hard work of understanding and fighting to overcome the distinct layers of injustice that face people of different identities — and different layers within those identities. A black person has different challenges than someone who is both Muslim and black, and a black, Muslim woman has different challenges still. Parsing the implications of these differences, instead of flattening them, is what it means to be “intersectional,” an important but widely misunderstood concept — even by the liberals who use it most. Intersectionality is not about building the biggest interracial team possible. It’s about catering to the individual needs of different communities to make sure no one is left behind.

Put this way, intersectionality is not a weapon to be used against Jews, but a group that Jews can not only be a part of but also contribute to -- just as Jews contributed to the black community, long before Black Lives Matter became a weapon to attack the Jewish community today.

But that still leaves the problem of Jewish identity, and the need to recognize and embrace that Jewish identity. At a time when Jews are surrounded by those who want to define for Jews:

o What does and does not qualify as antisemitism
o What Zionism really means
o What a Jew is

-- at a time like this, there is a need to strengthen ties, not only with Israel, but with the Jewish community.

Other ethnic groups talk about the importance of their identity. Jews should too.

Returning to the article in Yes Magazine:

identifying as Asian American is not a biological destiny or question of geography, which would suggest a passive orientation (i.e. individuals are born Asian) rather than an active choice to identify in solidarity against matrices of oppression. [emphasis added]

For many of these ethnic groups, their identity is an active choice in the solidarity of their identity against what they see as US colonialism and racism.

For Jews, the danger may be more than that.

It is in seeing their Jewishness as simply a matter of birth. Considering Jews are historically threatened by both assimilation and discrimination, Jewish identity is more than an issue of solidarity. It is a question of survival.

And there are Jews for whom simply identifying as 'white' is not a guarantee of survival.

Intersectionality is being weaponized against Jews.
But instead of a threat, it should be a warning and maybe even an opportunity for Jews to get their act together.

07/06 Links Pt1: Kontorovich: ‘Annexation’ Prevents Palestinians from Ethnically Cleansing Jews; Palestinians vexed by Arab leaders' apathy over Israeli sovereignty bid

From Ian:

The Jewish People's Rights

A fundamental principle which is so lacking in the current discourse about sovereignty was highlighted by Israeli poet Naomi Shemer writing in Ma'ariv in December 1975.

"The Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people...regardless of conditions or temporary ownership of territory, regardless of the essence of a passing rule or a question such as how many Jews are living in the Land of Israel at any given moment."

That, if you will, is the unwritten constitution of the State of Israel, the one that begins with "Go from your country...to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1) and continues on to "the hope that is 2,000 years old" and the genetic code of "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem."
Even the League of Nations recognized that genome 100 years ago as "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" and "the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country" and the Jewish right to "settle in any place in the west of Palestine, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea."

Security is important but doesn't come before everything else. David Ben-Gurion didn't address the question when he insisted on holding onto far-flung settlements in the Jerusalem hills and in the Negev and the western Galilee.

We might be here today because of might, but even before that, because we have a right to be.

Exclusive: Expert Says ‘Annexation’ Prevents Palestinians from Ethnically Cleansing Jews

Israel’s plan to apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank puts an end to the “morally repugnant” notion — endorsed by all U.S. administrations except Trump’s – that Jews need to be ethnically cleansed from the territory, preeminent legal expert Eugene Kontorovich told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview.

“The Obama administration took the position that peace with the Palestinians requires Israel to pre-ethnically cleanse the territory,” Kontorovich said.

The Trump administration had the “moral clarity” to recognize that the “removal of the Jewish people [from West Bank settlements] as an Israeli obligation in a peace accord is morally reprehensible,” Kontorovich noted.

President Donald Trump’s so-called Vision for Peace sees Israel annexing 30 percent of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley. It also delineates a demilitarized Palestinian state established on most of the West Bank with parts of eastern Jerusalem that are outside the Israeli security fence as its capital.

If Israel goes ahead with the plans, the Palestinian leadership warned that it would unilaterally declare a state based on the pre-1967 lines.

According to Kontorovich, a law professor who serves as the director of the Center for the Middle East and International Law at George Mason University Scalia Law School, all peace proposals – except Trump’s – that have been put forward over the years since Israel liberated the West Bank from Jordanian occupation in the 1967 defensive war have been based on the erroneous idea that Jewish presence there is illegal and needs to be reversed.

Those proposals called on Israel to “maintain the area from which Jordan ethnically cleansed Jews in 1948 as a perpetual judenrein zone,” he said, using Nazi terminology for the exclusion of Jews.

While no Israeli government has ever proposed evacuating Palestinians from the area, he said, “expelling Jews is the minimum demand for any Palestinian negotiations.”

It is incumbent upon Israel to apply Israeli law over the area, as indeed should have been done 53 years ago after the Six Day War, the law professor told Breitbart.

The belief in Israel at the time was that it was only a temporary situation and the Jewish state would imminently come to a peace agreement with the Palestinians, he explained. But the Palestinians rejected all Israeli offers so instead, close to half a million settlers have had to live for decades under Kafkaesque bureaucracy relating to obscure Ottoman laws ruling the area.

Proving beyond doubt the error of those who claim Israeli settlements are illegal. Such claims are invariably based on an anti-Israel political agenda rather than legal facts. https://t.co/sz2TlOFmYL
— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) July 6, 2020

David Singer: Is it “Annexation” or “Restoring Jewish Sovereignty”?

Students at Australia’s largest Jewish Day School – Moriah College – can be excused for being completely confused as to whether Israel’s proposed application of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria constitutes “annexation” or “restoring Jewish sovereignty” in the Jewish people’s biblical heartland after 3000 years.

There is a big difference – as College Principal Rabbi Yehoshua Smukler’s article “The myth of Israeli annexation” informed Moriah students:
“To use the term ‘Annexation’ in relation to Judea and Samaria is misleading. ‘Annexation’, a term applied to the forcible seizing of land or territory and annexing it into one’s own country or bringing it under its rule. It implies Israel is about to ‘seize control’ of areas that don’t already belong to Israel and that it doesn’t currently govern. This is simply untrue. Let’s look at the history.”

Regrettably the Principal’s look at history did not mention that:
- Judea and Samaria were designated by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922 as part of the territory within which the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted
- the United Nations description of this territory as “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is false and misleading
- Jewish rights to “close settlement” in Judea and Samaria under article 6 of the Mandate are preserved by article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

The BBC reported:

Italian police have seized what they believe is a world-record haul of 14 tonnes of amphetamines they suspect were made in Syria to finance the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).

About 84 million counterfeit Captagon pills worth an estimated €1bn ($1.1bn; £0.9bn) were found in containers at the port of Salerno.

They were hidden inside large drums of paper and gear wheels.

Officers are looking into whether local Camorra crime groups are involved.

Captagon is a brand name for the synthetic stimulant fenethylline. It was originally used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, but many countries banned it during the 1980s because of its addictive properties.

Now, counterfeit Captagon is reportedly one of the most popular drugs among affluent youths in the Middle East, particularly in Gulf Arab states.

The drug has also been consumed by combatants in the civil war in Syria, including IS militants, who value its ability to inhibit fear and ward off tiredness.

Syria is believed to be the biggest producer and exporter of counterfeit Captagon.

Lebanon’s Al Modon says that Hezbollah is known to be a major partner with Syria for distributing this illegal drug.

The production and smuggling of drugs from Syria to the countries of the world is not limited to the partnership between the Assad regime and the Lebanese Hezbollah, which has long sales in this field; it is widely believed that the Russian mafia is in close relationship with such operations that used to flood the European market with drugs coming from India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and currently from Syria and Lebanon. This is after the Russian mafia benefited from the Russian influence, which has become strong on the eastern and southern Mediterranean coasts, and the costs of producing and shipping drugs from Syria to Europe have decreased.

Information shows that Samer al-Assad, Bashar's cousin, is primarily responsible for the manufacture and trade of drugs, and runs the system's operations in cooperation with Hezbollah and the Russian mafia.

This confirms the third face of Hezbollah, alongside its two known faces in Lebanon: the political side , and the military-security side.The third side is the manufacturing of Captagon, cultivating the plants from which drugs are made, trafficking cocaine and heroin, and smuggling goods, medicines and food through dozens of land crossings between Syria and Lebanon, and through the Beirut Port and Rafic Hariri Airport, and money laundering.

The article goes on to compare how Hezbollah is like the other organized crime cartels worldwide; hiding their activities under social programs, using strong family and ethnic connections to maintain an atmosphere of secrecy, flourishing in weak states.

The cowardice of the socialist Left on Farrakhan’s antisemitism

As I showed yesterday, Louis Farrakhan gave a nationally-televised speech, promoted by Diddy, that has at least a half dozen antisemitic parts. (I didn’t include them all – he also said that he told God to give Floria the coronavirus because Cuba’s Jews fled to Florida and hurts US relations with that country. Really.)

What did the socialist Left, which pretends to be so much against antisemitism, say?

Nothing. Nada. Gornisht. Zip.

Instead, IfNotNow posted an old clip of a Jew interrupting a Nazi party event in New York, pretending to be as brave as he was.

I pointed out that they aren’t brave – they are cowards.

And you are SILENT when Louis Farrakhan spouts the exact same kind of hate. You MINIMIZE when Roger Waters says the same thing. You HATE when Jews defend themselves. Stop pretending you give a damn about antisemitism. You enable it, you @IfNotNowOrg hypocrites.

Ooooh, you are against Nazis. How brave. What about when your political allies are antisemites? Then you turn into cowardly silent sheep. Screaming you care about "justice" and "racism" but allowing your pals to crap all over Jews. You are contemptible.

Your hate for Nazis doesn't overcome your tolerance for a Nazi admirer.

Here's the biggest piece of hypocrisy imaginable from people who are silent (or tacitly encourage) antisemitism from Arabs and Nation of Islam and Leftists.
When you actually grow some balls, give real Jews a call. Until then, don't pretend you represent any of us.

Of course, they didn’t answer. They cannot. They know they are cowards, pretending that fighting against Zionists – who won’t do anything to them – is bravery. If they would speak out against the Nation of Islam or Roger Waters, though, people on their side will denigrate them and they cannot even handle insults from their compatriots.

How very brave they are. They choose to condone antisemitism rather than risk their position as solidly socialist anti-Zionist and “woke.”

The few times that they've mentioned Farrakhan it has always been in the context of downplaying his antisemitism and its importance. One example:

Not once have they condemned Farrakhan without “context” meant to minimize his hate and danger.

The Jersey City murderers who espoused Farrakhan’s philosophy didn’t move them at all.

No, they don’t care about antisemitism unless they can associate it with the Right. Which means they don’t care about antisemitism, only about their own standing in their anti-Israel community.

Arab antisemitism? Black antisemitism? Leftist antisemitism? Not a word. But they are so assertive in countering the neo-Nazis, pretending that they are somehow showing some mettle by doing that.

Really pathetic.

And the same goes for all the people who insist they are against antisemitism as well as Zionism. In the end the Linda Sarsours and Ali Abunimahs and Rashida Tlaibs are all on the same side as the Arab, and black, and Leftist antisemites.

They let their own Jew-hatred slip through often enough.

(h/t kweansmom)

World War Z was (as I recall) a zombie apocalypse movie starring Brad Pitt. At one point in the movie, Jerusalem is seen as the safest place to be because Israelis built a wall around the city to protect themselves from the zombies. Jews and Arabs were safe inside Jerusalem and at one point, they started to sing together, which inflamed the zombies to overrun the wall and get the peaceful Arabs and Jews.

According to this academic paper by Haneen Shafeeq Ghabra & Marouf A. Hasian of Kuwait University and University of Utah, this is really a lesson in how Palestinians are the monsters.

The abstract:

The authors deploy a critical cultural critique that extends the work of monstrosity scholars and other researchers who are interested in the application of zombie apocalypse analyses to critiques of contemporary nationalistic and social controversies. World War Z sets in motion a series of cinematic dynamics that invite audiences to consider how Israeli securitization of Jerusalem might serve as the world's best hope for containing the zombie apocalypse. By decoding the “monstering” features World War Z, the authors note the heuristic value of understanding how the rhetoric of autoimmunity influences mediated perceptions of Israeli and Palestinian conflicts.

The paper says:

We contend that through cinematic modes of monstering and discourses of autoimmunity, World War Z assuages Israeli and Western anxieties by creating characters clearly modeled on Western imaginings of Palestinian terrorists.

Clearly!

By choosing to put on display monstering images of zombies scaling walls, and by choosing to geopolitical situate the potential “cures” for this zombie apocalypse in Israel, the producers and promoters of World War Z are explicitly or implicitly suggesting that Palestinian dissenters, or indigenous “others,” constitute biopolitical threats that can be quarantined or contained by those who know how to battle zombies.

Except that the monsters were not quarantined – the humans (Arabs and Jews) were. But, hey, they only get that part 100% wrong.

The authors quote serious movie critics: Arabs who tweeted their reviews.

Avinash Tharoor, in one Tweet, said to “forget the zombies,” because the “most unrealistic thing about World War Z was Israel inviting in displaced Palestinians.” ⁵⁸ Another blogger, writing from United Arab Emirates, complained that the film went from being “action film into Zionism pornography an hour into the film.” ⁵⁹ Rania Khalek seemed to echo these types of remarks when she tweeted that in World War Z, Israel’s “apartheid” wall apparently “helps keep out a massive horde of zombies.”

Here’s a nice part:

Viewers are asked to suspend belief and forget about how Israeli checkpoints, gates, and grids become the “forensic architecture” that dismantle the social fabric of this region. ⁷⁶ In World War Z, the checkpoints are configured as “salvation” gates, perhaps intended to appeal to the Judeo-Christian sentiments of viewing audiences who are taught on Saturdays and Sundays to believe that Israelis are a “chosen people,” and that Jerusalem belongs to those who fought off the infidels.

In reality, Israeli checkpoints are used to remind Palestinians of their subordinate power positions and their second-class status as dispossessed people.

And the checkpoints at Israeli malls and supermarkets? Are they also meant to demean Palestinians, or to, you know, stop bomb attacks?

What about the fact that the movie makes it very clear that Arabs and Israelis are on the same side and the zombies help unite them? Why, of course,!

The camera focuses on Muslims praying, Israelis and Palestinians chanting together as they wave both Israeli and Palestinian flags, and all of this can be viewed as cinematic form of hasbara (Israeli diplomacy) that elides, counters, or neutralizes the positions of those want to underscore the apartheid nature of Palestinian othering.

The final scene in Jerusalem is described in a truly twisted way:

One of the most intriguing parts of World War Z comes when all of the chanting and flag-waving appears to infuriate the zombies, who overwhelm the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that are there to protect the people from the zombies. As the camera moves beyond the wall, into Palestinian territory, we begin to hear grunting while dozens of monstrous bodies scurry toward the wall. Thousands of zombies are moving in dead-like piles as they breach the Israeli wall. Gerry, along with another Mossad agent, flees the country, barely making it out alive. It no coincidence that the viewer is not afforded space to sympathize with the zombies who symbolically may represent the Palestinians who threaten the security of Israel or the Palestinian terrorists who belong to organizations like Hamas. Situated thanatopolitically in the body of the zombies, the Palestinians, and their demographic threats, can be contained—at least at long as filmgoers, and Israelis, understand the necessitous nature of biosecuritizing walls.

A zombie film that doesn’t humanize the zombies is obviously showing its hate for Palestinians!

The only racists here are the academic authors, who are the only people on Earth who look at the swarming monsters in the film and automatically say – yup, those are Palestinians.

EoZTV: Legal scholar Avi Bell on “annexation”

My 24th pandemic interview was with Professor Avi Bell, who has written widely on legal topics concerning Israel. He described why Israel is de facto and de jure legal sovereign over Judea and Samaria today using the principle of uti possidetis juris , why Palestinians in Area C would be thrilled by this “civilianization” of parts of the territories, and what is likely to happen next. Avi also demolished the “apartheid” argument, the “demographic” argument, the politicization of the ICC and Europe’s role.

See the whole thing here, and browse through my other many interviews on TheElderOfZiyon YouTube channel.