Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, December 13, 2020

12/13 Links: There is no room for Israel in the lies of the Nakba narrative; A Nobel Peace Prize for President Trump and His Majesty King Mohammed VI?

From Ian:

David Collier: There is no room for Israel in the lies of the Nakba narrative

Questions for the Rabbi and Jewish News I ask the Rabbi and Jewish News a simple question: Can you point me to the Nakba narrative that you consider to be true? If Hotovely cannot call it a lie, what is it specifically that she cannot question?

Is it the Nakba narrative of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign? The Nakba narrative of the BDS Central Committee? Or the one promoted by Fatah or the PFLP? Is it perhaps the Nakba narrative of Hamas? Ilan Pappe’s conspiracy theory? I’ve read the books and have seen the story told to students on campus. It is an antisemitic pack of lies. Is it this narrative you want us to believe?

Which one? Don’t just tell us we cannot question it – point specifically to the one you categorically believe to be true. Until you can do this – and I won’t hold my breath, nobody has a right to tell us not to call it out for what it is – a pack of lies. The Nakba narrative and Holocaust equation

The Nakba narrative was designed to equate itself to the Holocaust. You can visibly see the Holocaust denying discourse surrounding those who question the historicity of the Nakba narrative events. See these two images:

Nakba narrative denial There is nothing accidental about this equation. The Nakba is as bad as the Holocaust which makes it an untouchable historical event and Zionists are therefore as bad as the Nazis. Na’amod who won’t tell us what the Nakba even is, ethically compare questioning the event to Holocaust denial. The paper above it was the online TRT outlet – a Turkish state-owned channel. The false narrative is designed to self-protect and we are told that if we question their lies, then we are as bad as Holocaust deniers. This strategy is dangerous and sickening.

Anti Board of Deputies punchbag and the survival of the diaspora Some of this is the Jewish hard-left picking up anything to throw at the BOD. Hotovely provides a convenient punchbag and they can and will attack any community body that platforms her. It is something we will see frequently during her time of service in the UK. Hotovely is the Israeli Ambassador. Her role is to represent Israel. It is absolutely vital that the lies of the Nakba are confronted. As certain left wing groups are spreading such a false narrative within the Jewish community, it was right and proper for Hotovely to use the platform of the Board of Deputies to address this.

When I talk about the Nakba in this fashion – some in the community feel real discomfort – but there is no denial here that the Arabs suffered loss. This conflation is part of a politically correct cultural conditioning and we have to break through these walls. These ahistorical lies MUST be opposed. Zionism cannot exist within the Nakba narrative. It is a simple equation. If secular diaspora Jewry swallows the false narrative of our enemie , then secular diaspora is burning the only ship holding itself afloat. This ahistorical hard-left poison must not be allowed to filter into the mainstream.

Seth Frantzman: Will UAE be safer and more tolerant for Jews than most of Europe?

Hanukkah celebrations in Dubai last week and the national efforts to support tolerance and coexistence in the United Arab Emirates have created a reality in which Jews are more welcomed and safe in the UAE than in Europe.

Many friends and contacts I have spoken to say they were surprised by the feeling walking around the Emirates’ most populous city over the last week wearing a kippah, something they would be hesitant to do in many places in Europe.

This is a testament to the reality of most Western democracies: It’s dangerous to be a Jew in Europe. Jewish schools are attacked and Jews with a kippah are assaulted. It happens almost every day throughout Western Europe and the US, where in some places half of all religious hate crimes target Jews.

Today, Jews are safer in the UAE than in most European countries and most American states. We measure antisemitism in most Western countries by how many thousands of attacks there are – that’s the reality. In most European countries, intolerance towards Jews is widespread, and growing.

A Nobel Peace Prize for President Trump and His Majesty King Mohammed VI?

Salmi Gailani, who was born in 1991, the year of the ceasefire, "blames the U.N. for the fact that for 30 years, Western Sahara has been a frozen conflict.... '30 years is long enough to place ballot boxes,' he said." — Euronews, November 17, 2020.

The international community has been trying to broker a peace for the Western Sahara for 30 years. Some observers, however, suggest that "if the Polisario Front were to have sovereignty over the Western Sahara, it would mean that Algeria was effectively surrounding Morocco."

Along with last week's the triumph for President Trump and King Mohammed VI, there have also been charges that Morocco could have joined the Abraham Accords without the US recognizing Morocco's sovereignty over the Western Sahara. So far, however, no one has quite said how.

Cartoons of the Day: Desert Island Progressives

Continuing my series of re-captioning single-panel cartoons:

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Morocco to teach Jewish history in schools - Palestinians report it as "Zionist" history

AFP reported:

Jewish history and culture in Morocco will soon be part of the school curriculum — a “first” in the region and in the North African country, where Islam is the state religion.

The decision “has the impact of a tsunami,” said Serge Berdugo, secretary-general of the Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco.

It “is a first in the Arab world,” he told AFP from Casablanca.

The decision to add Jewish history and culture to lessons was discreetly launched before the diplomatic deal was announced.

Part of an ongoing revamp of Morocco’s school curriculum since 2014, the lessons will be included from next term for children in their final year of primary school, aged 11, the education ministry said.

The move aims to “highlight Morocco’s diverse identity,” according to Fouad Chafiqi, head of academic programs at the ministry.

Yet when this story was reported in Palestinian Arabic media, there was a crucial change:

In a first precedent in the Arab world, Zionist history will be part of the curriculum in Morocco.

For decades, Arabs have pretended that they have no problems with Jews, only Zionists. Yet here, the Palestinians at least show that they don't distinguish between the two.

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The PLO is more careful now about condemning the latest Arab state to normalize relations with Israel

When the UAE announced its desire to normalize its relations with Israel, senior PLO and PA officials, including Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Rudineh and Saeb Erekat, were quick to condemn and denounce it.

The level of officials to issue statements has gone down with each subsequent announcement.

For Bahrain, it was Ahmad Majdalani, social affairs minister in the Palestinian Authority.

For Sudan, it was Wasel Abu Youssef, a senior member of the PLO.

Popular Struggle Front logo

For Morocco, it was Tayseer Khaled, a member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, plus a couple of statements from minor factions of the PLO that no one ever hears from, the Popular Struggle Front and the Palestinian Democratic Union.

After the disaster of realizing that the Arab League would rather support the UAE than the Palestinians, the Palestinian leadership has decided that public condemnations of fellow Arab states from their highest levels actually hurts them.

They still issue the condemnations, but the language is more muted and the spokespeople are less and less prominent.

I'm looking forward to seeing who condemns Bhutan.

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12/12 Links: Israel normalizes ties with Bhutan; How the Trump administration banished the ghosts blocking the path to peace; Washington Wizards launch new Israeli Twitter account

Israel normalizes ties with Bhutan

Israel established full diplomatic relations with Bhutan for the first time on Saturday night.

Ambassador to India Ron Malka and his Bhutanese counterpart Vetsop Namgyel signed the final agreement normalizing ties on Saturday night. The countries’ foreign ministries held secret talks over the past year towards the goal of forging official ties, which included delegations between the two capitals Jerusalem and Thimphu.

The effort to make relations between the two countries was not connected to the Abraham Accords, in which four Arab countries – United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco – normalized ties with Israel in as many months, with American mediation. In fact, Bhutan does not even have official diplomatic relations with the US.

Bhutan is a Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, bordering on India and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It has gone to great lengths to keep itself isolated from the rest of the world in order to avoid outside influences and to preserve its culture and natural resources. The country limits tourism, especially from outside South Asia.

The landlocked country has formal diplomatic relations with only 53 other countries – a list that does not include the US, UK, France or Russia – and has embassies in only seven of them.

Neither does the country have ties with China, having closed its border to the country on its north after China’s 1959 invasion of Tibet.

August 2019: Kingdom of Bhutan: Israel’s new friend in the Himalayas?

At first glance, the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Bhutan — two small Asian countries separated by nearly 5,300 kilometers of bone-dry deserts and snow-capped mountains — appear to have little in common besides the fact they occupy the same continent.

Highly urbanized Israel, no bigger than New Jersey, is one of the most wired countries on Earth. Of its nine million inhabitants; 88% have smartphones and 75% are Jews. Immensely popular with tourists, Israel will receive 4.7 million foreigners of all religions this year.

Isolated Bhutan, by contrast, is nearly twice Israel’s size but has barely 800,000 people, all of them Buddhists. Fewer than 200,000 tourists annually visit this Himalayan Shangri-La, which as late as 1980 had just 1,200 phone lines in service. Television came to Bhutan only in 1999.

Despite mutual feelings of admiration, the two countries don’t have diplomatic relations … not yet. But the day that happens, Yeshey Tshogyal — who prefers to see similarities instead of differences — would make an ideal choice as the Forbidden Kingdom’s first ambassador to Israel.

“The people here are very warm and welcoming. They’re also open-minded, at least the ones I’ve met,” the 22-year-old told me in Tel Aviv just before her flight back to New York, where she’s pursuing a double major in psychology and intercultural communications at Baruch College.

Last week, Yeshey wrapped up a two-month internship at the Israel-Asia Center, a nonprofit organization based in Jerusalem.

Seth Mandel: How the Trump administration banished the ghosts blocking the path to peace

In July 2009, President Barack Obama met with Jewish leaders at the White House. America, he told them, had been mistaken in trying to adhere to its goal of “no daylight” with Israel. During the previous eight years of the George W. Bush administration, Obama told Jewish leaders, “There was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.” Obama wanted to put some space between the U.S. and Israel, and proceeded to do exactly that. His experiment was a flop: He was the least successful president regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict since the end of the Cold War.

Trump sought to correct this. He recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. Embassy there. Trump also had the U.S. recognize Israeli sovereignty over its Golan Heights in the north. When Friedman was announced as the pick for ambassador to Israel, liberal figures insisted he was too pro-Israel and too supportive of what they viewed as the Israeli Right. But success followed.

Kushner, thus, began his push for peace with the wind at his back: Pundits and so-called “experts” had all promised there would be bloodshed from Trump’s Jerusalem moves, but none had materialized because they fundamentally misunderstood the region’s politics. The Palestinians rejected Kushner’s “economic peace” model out of hand, just as they have rejected every peace plan before it. But it turned out he had some surprising takers.

The Palestinians’ legitimate drive for statehood and self-determination had taken on an outsize role in the region’s affairs. Ramallah effectively was given a veto over Arab normalization with Israel. But when Trump called their bluff over Jerusalem, it shattered the myth that you had to go through the Palestinians if you wanted public cooperation and reconciliation with Israel. Trump’s decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal also showed America’s Sunni Gulf allies that he could be trusted to restore the bonds broken by Obama’s attempts to favor Iran over traditional allies.

Much like the ancient ghosts of ethnic conflict that haunt the Balkans, the Middle East was a place where the Palestinians didn’t hold the only veto; history had one too. But the Trump administration approached it with an unsentimental proposal: Don’t be ruled by inherited rivalries and the trauma of the past; if you have the chance to make your lives better right now, take it. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain did, striking recognition deals that include trade and civil aviation plus joint efforts to combat anti-Semitism. Sudan joined the party, agreeing to normalize relations with Israel and having the U.S. remove it from a list of terror-sponsoring states. On Dec. 10, Morocco entered the normalization-with-Israel parade in return for the U.S.’s recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony.

None of this is to say this tack will always work — it won’t. But in several fraught regions weighed down by the bloodshed of history, it offered a path out of the desert. Future administrations, very much including the incoming Biden White House, should study these lessons carefully, adding one more tool to America’s diplomatic arsenal.

“The Arab countries have made clear that they will not make peace with Israel without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That’s not where their loyalties lie. That’s not where their politics are.” - @JohnKerry 12/28/2016 https://t.co/LUQzsQpasq pic.twitter.com/nCz68u2cJd
— David Shor (@DYShor) December 11, 2020

Chanukah music videos night 3: Maccabeats Candlelight 2020 plus Hanukkah Rap "Get Excited" (Josh Raderman)

Here is the annual Maccabeats Chanukah music video, this year a song parody of BTS.

Bonus:

This has a distinctly Denver vibe...

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12/11 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: The new Greeks; David Collier: Glasgow University publishes antisemitic conspiracy theory; Idan Raichel joins Andrea Bocelli in Dubai

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The new Greeks

While many American Jews were scared that Netanyahu's courageous challenge of Obama's central foreign policy would provoke anti-Semitism, in fact, it empowered many Americans to oppose the deal. Republicans rallied against it. Every Republican presidential candidate in 2016 pledged to abandon the deal, and President Donald Trump kept his promise.

By being a leader, Netanyahu also empowered the American Jewish community to defy Obama, even as he and his advisors channeled anti-Semitism by demonizing the deal's opponents as being in the pockets of nefarious donors and foreign interests.

AIPAC launched a major campaign to oppose the nuclear deal in Congress and tens of thousands of otherwise uninvolved American Jews attended demonstrations across the US to voice their opposition to the deal that paved the way for Iran to become a nuclear power.

Netanyahu explained that in dealing with leaders like Obama, with whom he had profound disagreements, "You seek compromise where you can, but you have to avoid compromise where you can't and you have to distinguish between the two and that's what I tried to do."

This lesson in leadership is perhaps the key message of our time. Like the Greeks of yesteryear, the progressive elites today insist that, to be accepted in polite society, Jews have to give up an essential part of their identity – and their civil rights. The Greeks demanded that the Jews give up the Torah. The progressives demand they give up their Jewish peoplehood. These are things that cannot be compromised, only fought, even when those demanding their forfeiture are Jews themselves.

Commentary Magazine Podcast [Israel bit starts 16min]: Will Biden Screw Up the Middle East?

Dan Senor, co-author of Start-Up Nation and host of the new “Post Corona” podcast, joins us today to talk about the electoral college and who intimidated whom (answer: Democrats sought to intimidate Trump electors in 2016) and how the transformative Abraham Accords might be derailed by a Biden administration just as Bibi Netanyahu finds himself in existential trouble as his trial is getting ready to begin. Give a listen.

David Collier: Glasgow University publishes antisemitic conspiracy theory

Glasgow University is ranked as a top UK university. The University is a member of the Russell Group. It runs a platform called esharp which is an ‘international online journal for postgraduate research.’ The University is very proud of the outlet. It states that all the paper are ‘double blind peer reviewed’. The university claims that the ‘rigorous and constructive process is designed to enhance the worth of postgraduate and postdoctoral work.’

A paper on the ‘Israel lobby’ appeared in issue 25 volume 1 (June 2017). It was written by Jane Jackman, an academic product of the universities of Durham and Exeter. There isn’t much to be found about Jackman online. She spoke at events in Exeter and SOAS and was an active member of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES). In 2017 Jackman was being supervised by Willaim Gallois at Exeter. Unsurprisingly, the conspiracy theorist and ‘liar’ Ilan Pappe was a co-supervisor.

There is almost no sign of public activity from Jackman on social media. There is an inactive Twitter account in her name, which only follows accounts linked to Israeli advocacy or the fight against antisemitism. Given her academic focus on the ‘Israel lobby’, it is a safe bet to assume it is hers. She did spend some considerable time commenting on blogs and articles, including mine.

Jackman’s paper was titled ‘Advocating Occupation: Outsourcing Zionist Propaganda in the UK‘. The key thrust of the argument is that people like myself (I feature prominently) have been recruited by Israel to spread disinformation. I have studied the entire article. My key questions would be –

How did Glasgow University ever permit this to appear in their journal? How is it possible that this was peer reviewed?

The paper isn’t just laden with conspiracy, antisemitism and errors – much of the time the reference material does not even support what the article is suggesting. The work is beyond shoddy. Jackman makes unsupportable outlandish statements, that are far more fitting for gutter press journalism such as the Independent than an academic journal. The paper frequently contradicts its own logic. This is in no way an academic piece of work. It should be hung on the walls at Glasgow university as a reminder of the shame that they ever allowed this to be published. The only justification for ‘peer reviewers’ to have accepted this piece is that they agreed with its content and wanted it published. The entire process is rife with heavy antisemitism. Who were the editors that sat around a table and accepted this submission?

Cary Nelson: Who Is Harming Palestinian Academic Freedom?

Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities, by Cary Nelson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2020)

It is fundamental and axiomatic on the international left, an unexamined article of faith, that the State of Israel suppresses the academic freedom of Palestinian students and faculty. Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities, a new 180-page book by Cary Nelson sets out for the first time to ask what evidence supports this claim and determine whether or not it is true. The evidence gathered here shows that Palestinian students and faculty in fact do not have the protections they need to exercise freedom of speech; indeed they are coerced and threatened to conform. But it is not Israelis who do so.

An excerpt from the book is below: From 1978 to 1991, Professor Sari Nusseibeh taught philosophy at Birzeit University on the West Bank. He had studied at Oxford and received a doctorate in Islamic Philosophy from Harvard. In September 1987, at the end of a lecture on John Locke, he learned that a group of masked students armed with clubs were outside his classroom seeking “a traitor” — whom he shortly learned was himself. Keeping his colleagues at bay with knives, they beat him “with fists, clubs, a broken bottle, and penknives.” Thanks to adrenaline, he was able to escape his attackers, though “my heart was pounding hard enough to pop my eardrums.” His colleagues, now free to help, drove him to the hospital where his forehead wound was stitched up and his broken arm set. The reaction of the university and the public was essentially non-existent. He had been identified as a traitor for participating in discussions of Israeli-Palestinian possibilities for peace.

Nusseibeh’s narrative is far from unique. When higher education institutions worldwide carry the name “college” or “university,” we often assume that these institutions are roughly similar everywhere. It’s true that an accounting or engineering course in one country will resemble courses in the same subject elsewhere. But a Religion course in a theocracy that imposes a state religion on its people will be different from a course of that same name in countries where religious and democratic freedoms prevail. Similarly, a course on Government or Politics in a dictatorship will not resemble comparably named courses elsewhere.

Chanukah music videos night 2: Stevie Wonder Chanukah mash-up (Shir Soul) plus bonus: Azi Schwartz medley

Continuing our tradition of bringing you brand new Chanukah music videos each night of the holiday....

Plus, here is Azi Schwartz singing a number of Chanukah songs to different popular tunes.

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12/11 Links Pt1: A rich Jewish past, and present: Why Israel’s deal with Morocco is so resonant; Abbas’ Fatah threatens Arabs selling land to Jews in Jerusalem

From Ian:

Raphael Ahren: A rich Jewish past, and present: Why Israel’s deal with Morocco is so resonant

Thursday’s surprise announcement about Morocco agreeing to establish diplomatic relations with Israel was not a Hannukah miracle, as many Israeli politicians gushed when they lit their holiday candles, though the timing was indeed brightly appropriate. Rather, it had been a long time coming, as the North African kingdom has deep cultural and religious ties with the Jewish state, and had long been expected to join the current wave of Arab countries normalizing ties with Israel.

As opposed to Egypt and Jordan, which signed peace treaties with Israel decades ago, and in contrast to the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, three Arab nations that normalized relations with Israel this year, Morocco and Israel have a profound and ancient Jewish connection, and the Moroccan Jewish community, though small, still thrives today.

Moroccan Jewry’s origins date back 2,000 years, to the destruction of the Second Temple and exile. In the modern era, the community reached a high of some 250,000 in the early 1940s, when Sultan Mohammed V resisted Nazi pressure for their deportation. Numbers dwindled with the establishment of Israel, and today only some 2,000-3,000 Jews remain, but hundreds of thousands of Israelis are proud of their Moroccan origins. US President Donald Trump’s senior envoy Jared Kushner on Thursday put that number at “over a million.”

The mimouna party, which the community traditionally celebrates right after Passover ends, has become a fixture on the Israeli cultural calendar, with countless people barbequing in parks and politicians rushing to as many mimouna celebrations as possible, eating mufletot and other Jewish-Moroccan delicacies.

While Israeli tourists have begun discovering the Gulf only very recently, they have been flocking to Rabat, Marrakech, Casablanca, Tangiers and Fez via third countries for many years. Once the two countries establish diplomatic relations and open direct air-links, that number can be expected to increase dramatically.

Following the 1995 Oslo Accords, Morocco and Israel opened mutual “liaison offices,” but they were closed a few years later after the Palestinian Second Intifada broke out in 2000.

Both Moroccan King Mohammed VI and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited the long and deep ties binding Morocco and Israel in their statements on the historic agreement.

Seth Frantzman: Are Morocco-Israel relations a surprise, or natural next step? - analysis

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump is gambling here because President-elect Joe Biden is supposed to take office in a bit over a month. It’s one thing for the US to push peace, because peace is always good, but recognizing Western Sahara will likely anger Team Biden, which is for preserving some of these international multilateral status quo issues.

The general feeling in the UAE and other states in the region, which have been watching peace deals closely, was that when Trump lost the election, many states would wait on peace. The theory was that had Trump won, then Oman, Qatar, Morocco and other states could follow suit. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised eyebrows when he went to Saudi Arabia in November and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi spoke via video at the Manama Dialogue Conference this year.

However, comments by Saudi Arabia’s Turki al-Faisal, a key figure in the kingdom, were critical of Israel at the Manama conference. Was that due to daylight with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or due to a perceived slight by Ashkenazi? The crown prince of Saudi Arabia has appeared keen on warmer relations with Israel for years but has wanted something in return – and is cognizant of Riyadh’s role in the region, the Saudi initiative, the Iranian threat, the changes in the US and also the position of his father, King Salman. These are complex webs of relations and realities that mean one change can lead to a domino effect that leads to peace with countries like Morocco.

These deals can be tenuous. Israel is supposed to send an agriculture delegation to Sudan, but it wonders if Israel and the US are serious. Abu Dhabi also wants Israel to take the Palestinian issue seriously. Morocco will still want more from Israel on the Palestinian issue and its civil society will pressure the government on this issue.

Nevertheless many things are happening in the region. US B-52s have flown to the region as part of a show of force to Iran. Tehran is building tunnels at its Natanz nuclear facility to hide centrifuges. The US is withdrawing from Somalia and the Senate has not blocked the F-35 sale to the UAE.

It’s almost natural that breaking news from Morocco could mean one more deal before the US administration changes.

Moroccan Jews laud peace deal as 'Hanukkah miracle'

President Donald Trump's announcement that Israel and Morocco have agreed to normalize relations may have astounded the world, but the news comes as no surprise to the Jewish community in the north-African country.

"There was a lot of talk about this subject last year," says Kobi Yifrach, an Israeli who has lived in Morocco for the past five years and runs a local museum in Marrakesh.

"There used to be an Israeli Embassy here between 1995 and 2000, and even after that, the relationship between Israel and Morocco remained friendly. Time has finally come to build the relationship [between the two countries]. Until now, it was behind the scenes, and now it's time to bring it to the forefront, with pride and love.

"My Muslims friends have been calling me for hours to congratulate the Jewish community on the announcement," says Jacky Kadosh, leader of the Moroccan Jewish community. "We heard the news immediately after lighting the first Hanukkah candle. It's a Hanukkah miracle."

Ilan Hatuel, an Israeli businessman in Morocco who is close to André Azoulay, senior adviser to King Mohammed VI of Morocco, added that the news was accepted in Morocco with "great excitement."

"The royalty has preserved Jewish history in Morocco for over 500 years. We have worked very hard to reach this moment. From now on, there will be direct flights from Marrakesh to Casablanca and Rabat. The Jewish community is in the seventh heaven, and the Moroccans are very excited too," Hatuel said.

Orin Avraham, a local yeshiva student, also spoke of the joyful celebrations that followed the announcement. "The decision will lead to the strengthening of the Jewish community in Morocco." He added that there is no anti-Semitism in the country, saying that "everyone [in Morocco] says 'hello' to the Jews and loves them.

We have previously discussed the Moroccan Observatory Against Normalization with Israel, which has been active for years if not very effective. But it would be featured in Palestinian newspapers as if it was a mainstream group.

As you might expect, they (and similar groups) are a bit unhappy today.

Members of the Moroccan National Working Group to Support the Palestinian People’s Struggle hurried to hold an emergency meeting, immediately after the Royal Court announced the decision to resume official contacts and diplomatic relations with Israel,

The head of the Moroccan Observatory against Normalization, Ahmed Wehman, declared that the National Action Group "categorically rejects any form of normalization with the usurping Zionist entity, which is plotting against Morocco's territorial integrity and social cohesion and is working to break it up on ethnic grounds into 6 entities."

That's a new one!

A 2018 poll showed that 41% of Moroccans favored normalization with Israel - third among Arab countries with no relations at the time, behind Iraq with 43% and the UAE with 42%. Tunisia ranked fourth with 32%, Saudi Arabia behind it with 23% and Algeria with 21%.

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Jeremy Corbyn's Chanukah greeting shows he has no sense of irony or history

Remember when Jeremy Corbyn was exposed saying what the problem was with British Zionists?

As related in a Guardian op-ed:

Yesterday the Daily Mail showed footage of Corbyn addressing the [Palestinian Return Centre] conference, on the topic of British Zionists. He mentions an impassioned speech made at a meeting in parliament about the history of Palestine that was “dutifully recorded by the thankfully silent Zionists who were in the audience” (audience members he presumably knew nothing about). So far so bad. But it gets worse. He goes on to say that these unnamed Zionists in the audience “clearly have two problems. One is they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either … So I think they needed two lessons, which we can perhaps help them with.”

This year, Jeremy Corbyn tweeted Chanukah greetings:

Corbyn, whose hate for Israel and Zionism is uncontested, doesn't seem to know what Chanukah actually celebrates.

NYT, January 2, 1911

Because Chanukah is the most Zionist of holidays, celebrating the recapture of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel by the Jewish people and the defeat of their antisemitic enemies so Jews could rebuild their nation and rededicate their Temple.

Does Corbyn really support that message today?

Apparently, Jeremy Corbyn is the person who has the two problems he claimed British Jews have: he doesn't want to study history and he is clueless how ironic his statement is.

Perhaps we can help him learn those two lessons.

I made a cartoon last night about this:

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Some antisemitic Arabs traumatized over Chanukah wallpaper on Facebook

Palestine Today has an article about how some Arabs are extraordinarily upset over seeing Stars of David and Chanukiahs as Facebook wallpaper backgrounds during Chanukah.

Here's what the "offensive" wallpapers look like:

This person called for a boycott of Facebook over these "Zionist" symbols (autotranslation to English)

This one issued a warning to his readers about accidentally promoting the "symbol of Knesset" and Star of David:

The Palestine Today article notes that it is not easy to see the details of the wallpaper and its horrible Jewish symbols until after one posts on Facebook, which causes great embarrassment to the antisemitic posters.

It takes roughly three seconds to edit a post and change the background, but if someone gets a screenshot in the meanwhile, the shame of promoting a Jewish holiday might be too much for some people to stand!

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