Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 17, 2020

12/17 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Trump's Legacy of Peace; Iran's Plan to Topple Arab Leaders; With arms embargo lifted, Iran races to upgrade its arsenal

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Trump's Legacy of Peace

For 72 years, U.S. presidents sought to achieve peace between Israel and the Arab world. For 72 years, they largely failed.

What for so long eluded presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama seems to have come effortlessly to President Donald Trump. In the space of just four months, together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has achieved four peace deals between Israel and Arab states—twice the number achieved by all his predecessors combined. Last Thursday, Trump announced Morocco has joined the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Sudan in the Abraham Accords normalization agreements with Israel. Three or four more Arab states are likely to join the circle of peace in Trump's final weeks in office.

Not only has Trump brought more peace to the Middle East, more comprehensively and faster than all of his predecessors combined, but he made it look easy. Israel's ties with its Abraham Accords partners are expanding massively by the day. Tourists from the UAE are streaming into the country. And with one in seven Israeli Jews descended from the Moroccan diaspora, the potential for business and cultural ties between Israel and Morocco is almost limitless.

Trump's sundry Middle East peace deals are humiliating for his predecessors. Not only did they fail where Trump has succeeded, but they insisted that his achievements were impossible.

For instance, John Kerry, who as Barack Obama's secretary of state oversaw the administration's failed Middle East peace efforts, insisted back in 2016: "There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world."

Speaking at the Brookings Institution, Kerry continued emphatically: "I want to make that very clear with all of you. I've heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, 'Well, the Arab world is a different place now. We just have to reach out to them. We can work some things with the Arab world and we'll deal with the Palestinians.' No. No, no, no and no. ...There will be no advanced and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace. Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality."

The "several prominent politicians in Israel" certainly included Netanyahu. It was during the Obama administration that Netanyahu began developing close strategic ties with a number of Arab states—particularly Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The sides came together due to mutual distress over the negative impact of Obama's Middle East policies.

What was it about Obama's policies that brought them together?

Jonathan S. Tobin: In praise of diplomatic quid pro quos

The ability of the Trump foreign-policy team to succeed in doing something its predecessors failed to do was based on two factors. One was that its members were not blinded by ideology when it came to Israel and the Palestinians, as were the Obama, Clinton and both Bush administrations. The other was that they took a more openly transactional approach to diplomacy.

The foreign-policy establishment likes to dress up agreements based on mutual interests in high-sounding language about principles. But the Trump team, which was composed to a large extent of people like White House senior adviser/presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner with a background in real estate, didn't get bogged down in such meaningless and ultimately counterproductive exercises, and stuck to dealing with the world as it is rather than as they'd like it to be. They strove to make deals that made sense for both sides. And as a result of what some consider a crass rather than a principled approach, they advanced the cause of peace far more than any of the experts who mocked them as shallow amateurs.

With American foreign policy about to fall back into the hands of Obama alumni, some are lamenting the Trump administration's achievements in expanding the circle of governments with normal relations with Israel as boxing them and ignoring their obsession with forcing a two-state solution that the Palestinians don't want. Instead, the Biden team should learn from their predecessors. More Trump-style quid pro quos – and less magical thinking and expert ideological condescension from Washington – will make the world a safer place.

What Happens to Israel When Democrats Are in the White House?

Biden and his team have been harshly critical of Trump’s symbolic efforts to tilt U.S. policy toward the Jewish state, such as moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and allowing the word “Jerusalem” to appear on the passports of Jews born in that city. But symbolic actions can have tangible effects. The muted reaction to the embassy move throughout the Middle East revealed the hollowness of the long-standing threat that the “Arab street” would greet any thaw with Israel with violence and revolution. Given how low the cost was, and the fact that the embassy move was directed by U.S. law, it is hard to imagine that a President Biden would expend any political capital on an effort to return the embassy to Tel Aviv. And indeed, Biden has indicated he does not plan to do so.

Another traditional lever used against Israel is U.S. military aid. Biden has both supported aid and threatened cutting it to Israel in the past, but aid to Israel is a bipartisan policy. The current levels are set out in a Memorandum of Understanding established under the Obama administration, and the Biden team has said it does not plan to make that aid conditional. Even more telling, U.S. aid is no longer the existential necessity for Israel that it once was—so threatening to limit it no longer provides the leverage over Israeli decision-making that it once did.

But it is very likely that the Biden administration will put more rhetorical pressure on Israel to strike a deal with the Palestinians. It’s not clear, however, what policy leverage the U.S. has to push Israel in this regard while the Middle East landscape is changing—or whether the Palestinians will even consider some kind of a deal in any case. Still, Biden could, as Obama did, support UN resolutions critical of Israel. He could also sternly lecture Israeli officials, as he has intermittently throughout his career. Biden is on the record unambiguously about restoring the U.S.–Iran nuclear deal.

Looking at all of this, one can discern the outlines of a policy framework toward Israel—call it Bidenism. It will be supportive of continued aid to Israel and unlikely to publicly question the wisdom of such aid. Rhetorically, Biden will repeatedly present himself as a friend of Israel and of Prime Minister Netanyahu, even as he questions whether Netanyahu is too far to the right and as he exerts private pressure for concessions with the Palestinians.

Bidenism will seek a return to the problematic Iran deal in some form but will continue to profess its concerns about Iran getting nuclear weapons and will be unlikely to try to stop Israel from allying with Sunni Gulf states as a counterweight to Iran. Bidenism will not seek to move the U.S. Embassy from Jerusalem—but it won’t encourage other nations to move their embassies from Tel Aviv. And Bidenism will likely be muddled when it comes to the woke left’s intersectional hostility toward Israel—willing to condemn certain outrageous and anti-Semitic statements but ever careful not to offend and, on occasion, will even apologize if its condemnations produce too much blowback.

Israel’s relationship with the outgoing administration was extraordinary. We shall not see its like again. The question going forward is whether the Biden administration will take the recent successes into account as it makes its own way in the Middle East—or whether the powerful urge to restore the status quo ante of the Obama administration will set the course for the next four years.

The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) is a neutral and independent third party whose mission it is to track, expose, and combat misinformation, deception, manipulation, and hate across social media channels.

The NCRI just released a report on online antisemitic conspiracy theories that has the best methodology I've yet seen in quantifying trends on social media, including graphics:

In order to reveal the coded language and double meanings of anti-Jewish conspiracy memes across four online platforms, we used a mixture of open source (manual) social media investigation, machine learning/natural language processing, algorithms for facial recognition, optical character recognition, timeline analysis, and a hashtag frequency and ranking analysis. For our dataset, we collected over 237 million comments, from three extremist communities:4chan, Gab, Reddit’s The_Donald, as well as from Twitter, and 10 million meme-images from these communities. Our Twitter sample of memes was collected only from Russian trolls.

The report is very fair in identifying right- and left-wing antisemitism, and it describes when criticism of Israel veers into antisemitic territory. It includes this brilliant description of antisemitism, and how its popular memes can be traced back to Biblical Pharaoh in Egypt:

Antisemitism is the most enduring, intact and widely circulated conspiracy theory of all time. It can also be viewed as a collection of conspiracy theories that are always adaptable to any group’s fears and moral concerns. Beginning with the biblical narrative and continuing throughout history, up to and including today, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories comprise a set of themes including (but not limited to) deception and pretense; global dominance; dual loyalty; greed; betrayal; genocidal bloodlust; supernatural evil; appropriation of land, identity, and privilege; and the replacement of those in power with Jews and other immigrants and minorities. Our opening epigraph lays out an ancient blueprint for antisemitic themes—themes that our computational analysis finds on social media today.

From Exodus 1:8, for example:

A new king [political leadership] arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph [the Jewish alien who became a powerful and influential government insider]. And he said to his people [spreading antisemitic disinformation], “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us [fear of a Jewish conspiracy to control Egypt]. Let us [leadership and populace] deal shrewdly with them, so that they [Jewish outsiders living among us] may not increase [fear of replacement]; otherwise in the event of war [us versus them] they [outsiders] may join our enemies [fear of Jews colluding with foreigners] in fighting against us [fear of genocide] and rise from the ground [displeasure at the idea of Jews rising above their marginalized and oppressed status.]

The authors then map these conspiracy theory memes across different antisemitic groups, in the best charts I've ever seen on this topic:

This chart shows the (total) overlap of these conspiracy theories between the Right and the Left as well as with Islamists:

The paper is filled with cogent observations.

Here is a brief, excellent description of why calling Israel an apartheid state is antisemitism:

An analysis of hashtags associated with “apartheid” on Twitter from November 4th–November18th found Israel/Palestine to be single largest association for the term for Twitter overall during this time period. Apartheid is defined as the systematic deprivation by the state of the rights and protections from its resident citizens based on ethnic features. The status of the West Bank is under dispute and the Palestinians who reside there are not citizens of Israel—the label of apartheid is thus, at best, controversial and contested in this circumstance. At worst, it is plausibly viewed as the rhetoric of demonization and denunciation.

However, while accusations of apartheid are not necessarily evidence of antisemitic discrimination, millions of Roma who are citizens in Western industrialized countries suffer from systemic discrimination in education and housing and suffer in refugee camps across Europe—a condition the Open Society Foundation’s director of Roma affairs terms an “undeclared apartheid.” Similarly, the Muslim Rohingya in Mayanmar suffer recognizable conditions of apartheid and currently investigations into genocide are under way. Yet in connection to apartheid, these groups don’t even merit honorable mention on Twitter. This suggests that the use of apartheid finds a ready, political market—not for those concerned with apartheid, but for feeding what Jeffery Goldberg terms a “pornographic interest”in Jewish moral failure.

Here is the beginning of the paper's conclusion:

Both “Soros” and “Israel” appear to be signals that emerge during transitions of power to delineate ingroups and outgroups. To extremists on the far right, Soros is an exemplar of the evils of globalism, international corruption, and Jewish corporate influence, and represents a moral threat. Invoking the Soros conspiracy theory signals moral virtue to white supremacists and members of other like-minded groups. To extremists on the far left, Israel is an exemplar of oppression, racism, white supremacy, and colonialism, and represents a moral threat. Invoking the Israeli conspiracy theory signals moral virtue to social justice advocates and members of other like-minded groups.

People can have reasonable disagreements with the ways in which George Soros has used his vast wealth to advance politically progressive causes, and can legitimately criticize the ways in which the government of Israel has managed its relationships with and treatment of the Palestinian population. Nonetheless, by capitalizing on these reasonable and legitimate criticisms and disagreements, propagandists paint Jews as players in conspiracy theories that disseminate anti-Jewish disinformation and spread antisemitism online. The best propaganda often is based on distortions of truths thereby giving it a facade of credibility. The Jew, whether represented as a person or nation, is the exemplar of moral pollution and is used to both embody moral threat, and through the choice of Jewish individual or State, signal the ingroup to which a person belongs.

It also includes recommendations that include this very important point about the potential pitfalls of how ethnic studies curricula can unwittingly be used to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories:

Our current environment is one in which many school systems are developing ethnic studiescurricula. It is essential that, at a minimum, lessons about Jews do not disseminate antisemitic themes of Jewish privilege and power. Instead, lesson plans must help students recognize antisemitic disinformation and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories around “privilege.” The Jewish intersection is the intersection for which the discussion of privilege itself heralds catastrophic and genocidal historical outcomes. Understanding the long history of these themes in undermining not just the acceptance of Jews as equal members of society, but the acceptance of differences in general, can enrich the conversation about privilege and the virtues and values of a liberal, pluralist democracy.

This is a very important work of scholarship on antisemitism in only 25 pages, including appendices. It is a must-read.

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EU upholds right of states to effectively ban Jewish ritual slaughter - sanctioning discrimination using the law. (But hunting is perfectly OK.)

A Belgian law that prohibits slaughter of animals without stunning - which renders any slaughter afterwards to be meaningless from the perspective of Jewish law -was upheld by the Court of Justice of the European Union today.

Its legal reasoning is a textbook example of how to be biased while using the law to justify it.

The opinion frames the tension between animal and religious rights correctly:

This question leads the Court, for the third time, 2 to seek a balance between freedom of religion, guaranteed by Article 10 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (‘the Charter’), and animal welfare, as set out in Article 13 TFEU and given specific expression to in Regulation No 1099/2009.

Then is describes the logic of the ruling:

As regards, specifically, the question whether the decree respects those fundamental rights, the Court points out that ritual slaughter falls within the scope of the freedom to manifest religion, guaranteed in Article 10(1) of the Charter. By requiring, in the context of ritual slaughter, reversible stunning, contrary to the religious precepts of Jewish and Muslim believers, the decree thus entails a limitation on the exercise of the right of those believers to the freedom to manifest their religion. In order to assess whether such a limitation is permissible, the Court finds, first of all, that the interference with the freedom to manifest religion resulting from the decree is indeed provided for by law and, moreover, respects the essence of Article 10 of the Charter, since it is limited to one aspect of the specific ritual act of slaughter, and that act of slaughter is not, by contrast, prohibited as such.

This is blatant doubletalk. It is like saying, "We aren't prohibiting Jews from going to synagogue on their Sabbath - we just require them to drive there. So we really aren't violating freedom of religion."

In its examination of the proportionality of the limitation, the Court concludes that the measures contained in the decree allow a fair balance to be struck between the importance attached to animal welfare and the freedom of Jewish and Muslim believers to manifest their religion. In that regard, it states, first, that the obligation to use reversible stunning is appropriate for achieving the objective of promoting animal welfare. Secondly, as regards the necessity of the interference, the Court emphasises that the EU legislature intended to give each Member State a broad discretion in the context of the need to reconcile the protection of the welfare of animals when they are killed and respect for the freedom to manifest religion. As it is, a scientific consensus has emerged that prior stunning is the optimal means of reducing the animal’s suffering at the time of killing. Thirdly, as regards the proportionality of that interference, the Court observes, first of all, that the Flemish legislature relied on scientific research and that it sought to give preference to the most up-to-date method of killing that is authorised. It points out, next, that that legislature forms part of an evolving societal and legislative context, which is characterised by an increasing awareness of the issue of animal welfare.

Quick question: if animal welfare is of such paramount importance, then shouldn't all animal slaughter be banned? Isn't raising animals specifically for being slaughtered, no matter how humanely, a violation of the so-moral European sensitivity to animal welfare?

In short, why is it OK to limit the ability of Jews and Muslims to eat meat and not all Belgians?

The ruling is implicitly drawing the line that the way Christians raise and eat animals is moral, and the way Jews and Muslims do the same thing is immoral, based on a "science" that says that one method is somewhat more humane. How much more - 10%? 40%? It doesn't matter, as long as European Christians can continue to enjoy their Christmas ham. Banning that is unthinkable.

And it is not as if Belgian slaughterhouses that use stunning are humane. This article and video shows one that is horrific - and legal, of course, under moral Belgian laws. (The screenshot on the right shows a pig getting repeatedly stunned because the first time didn't actually cause unconsciousness.)

That proves as much as anything that animal rights are not at all what animates these restrictions on ritual slaughter.

The hypocrisy doesn't end there.

The court ruling states that animal welfare is of paramount importance - there's science behind the use of stunning as being the best method for slaughtering. We must minimize animal pain, and it is worth inconveniencing Jews and Muslims to uphold that moral imperative!

But then the last part of the ruling shows that animal welfare is suddenly not nearly as important as the previous paragraph implies:

In addition, the Court upholds the validity of Regulation No 1099/2009 in the light of the principles of equality, non-discrimination and cultural, religious and linguistic diversity, as guaranteed by the Charter. The fact that Regulation No 1099/2009 authorises Member States to take measures such as compulsory stunning in the context of ritual slaughter, but contains no similar provision governing the killing of animals in the context of hunting and recreational fishing activities or during cultural or sporting events, is not contrary to those principles.

In that regard, the Court points out that cultural and sporting events result at most in a marginal production of meat which is not economically significant. Consequently, such events cannot reasonably be understood as a food production activity, which justifies their being treated differently from slaughtering. The Court draws the same conclusion with regard to hunting and recreational fishing activities. Those activities take place in a context where conditions for killing are very different from those employed for farmed animals.

Hunting is different - it isn't food production, so European Christians can torture animals all they want as long as they call it recreational.

Suddenly, science and morality and animal rights don't matter. There are technical reasons that humanely slaughtering an animal with a knife sharp enough to cut a hair lengthwise is proscribed, while shooting an animal in the leg and letting it bleed out for hours is perfectly OK.

Perhaps the solution is for Belgian Jews to turn ritual slaughter into a sport, where teams of shochtim compete to see which one can slaughter the most animals in an hour and families can cheer them on. After all, killing animals is fine for recreational purposes, right? The entrance fee would be high but the meat would be given to the audience for free afterwards.

Would the EU allow that activity, or would it come up with a technical distinction allowing killing animals with bullets and disallowing anything the Jews could eat? This ruling already shows the answer - Jewish and Muslim rights are less important than the rights of good, white Europeans to enjoy their hunting and their meat.

Whether the excuses given for discrimination are based on pseudo-science or on "law," in the end they are all nothing but excuses for what is fundamentally bigotry.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Al Manar, a Hezbollah mouthpiece in Lebanon, writes:

Netanyahu Blackmails Lebanon, Warns Int’l Oil Firms against Investing in Lebanese Seashore before Border Talks Reach Solution: Haaretz
The Zionist newspaper Haaretz reported that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned the international oil firms against signing any investment contracts with the Lebanese authorities to excavate the seashore gas resources before the indirect UN-sponsored talks between Lebanon and the Zionist entity reach an agreement on the marine demarcation.

Netanyahu tried to blackmail the Lebanese authorities by saying that it is illogical for Lebanon to keep tens of billion dollars unused amid its economic crisis.

Lebanon needs money. It cannot get any energy revenue from sites that are in dispute because no energy company will spend millions to drill in an area where they might not have permission.

All of this is obvious, but Hezbollah calls it "blackmail."

And why can they not agree? The next paragraph explains it all:

Five rounds of indirect UN-sponsored talks between Lebanon and the Zionist enemy have been held in order to reach a final marine demarcation; however, the Israeli insistence on depriving Lebanon of around 2300 square kilometers of its territorial waters pushed the Lebanese delegation to reject any solution that denies the national rights.

When negotiations began, the disputed are was 860 square kilometers. Now, after several rounds of talks, Lebanon - instead of working towards compromise - changed its mind and decided to claim an additional 1440 km sq from Israel!

The Lebanese are attempting to claim some areas where Israel is already drilling, to help their bargaining position. They are the ones engaging in blackmail!

As always, Arab claims against Israel are projections of what the Arabs are doing themselves. And as has been the case with Israel enemies, their hate is so pathological that they happily would hurt themselves for the small chance of hurting Israel.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Are Israeli Jews “Betraying” Americans by Liking Trump? (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

Here we go again. Another yawning gulf between Israelis and American Jews, “a rupture that threatens Jews everywhere, the trust between Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, and in the long run, Israel,” say Evan Morris and Dennis Jett.
It’s not bad enough that the Israeli religious establishment does not show respect for Reform “Judaism,” or that we can’t appreciate how much Barack Obama really “[had] our back,” or that we keep electing “right-wing” governments with Bibi Netanyahu as PM, or that we keep failing to understand how an enemy state in mortar range of our center of population and our single international airport would actually be good for us.
It’s much worse than any of that. In fact, we are “going off the rails” and have “betrayed our American cousins.”
We did this by preferring Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
Oh sure, Trump did what no American president cared to do, carried out the will of the Congress and moved the embassy to the capital of the Jewish state. Clinton, Bush, and Obama loved to talk about our “unbreakable relationship,” but when it came down to the legitimacy of our presence in Jerusalem, they religiously signed that waiver every six months. Trump even instructed the oft-antisemitic State Department to allow those born in Jerusalem to have “Jerusalem, Israel” on their passports. Compare that to the Obama Administration’s refusal to say what country Jerusalem was in – they even scrubbed “Jerusalem, Israel” from official websites.
No big deal, Morris and Jett said. “Trump is not a reliable ally and could never be … Given the right circumstance or perceived slight, Trump would turn on Israel.” So then Trump went and recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and sponsored the development of a peace plan that was for the first time based on reality, rather than Henry Kissinger’s 1974 promise to the Arabs to reverse the result of the 1967 war.
Trump did even more. He spurned the view that the Palestinians should be given unlimited aid regardless of their behavior, and enforced the Taylor Force act that demanded aid be reduced when it was used to pay terrorists. He ended the perpetual support for the descendants of the Arab refugees of 1948, and disproved the idea – expressed by John Kerry (ironic video) in 2016 – that appeasement of the Palestinians was a precondition for normalization with the larger Arab world.
And now, although already a lame duck, Trump continues to promote normalization between Israel and multiple Arab and Muslim countries. We’re still waiting for him to “turn on us.” Are you surprised that Israelis overwhelmingly prefer Trump to Biden, who promises to re-enter the Iran deal and go back to giving the Palestinians a free pass in an interminable “peace process?” How could it be otherwise?
Nevertheless Morris and Jett insist that Trump is Bad For The Jews. They say he represents “emerging Fascism.” And how do we know this? Because Trump “alternately excused and encouraged” “the white supremacists that marched in Charlottesville.” In fact, he did no such thing. The accusation is a perfect example of the Big Lie technique: it has been repeated countless times, and has now entered the realm of conventional wisdom. But it still isn’t true.
Morris and Jett say Trump supporters “promulgate conspiracy theories based on antisemitic lies.” Maybe some do, just like some of the remarkably vicious members of the American Left who are on the other side. Israelis are not in touch with the details of American politics, nor do we follow the swirling winds of accusations thrown at each other by the two sides. But I have yet to hear anything antisemitic from Trump himself.
Antisemitism is clearly burgeoning in America, and that is rightly a serious concern for American Jews. But the attempt to blame Trump for it – while ignoring the anti-Trump extremists like the Pittsburgh shooter, the Farrakhanists, the Black Hebrews, and the misozionist Left – is dangerously mistaken, despite its wholesale adoption by the Trump-hostile media.
Apparently Morris and Jett think as little of Netanyahu as they do of Trump, calling our PM “boorish” for waiting about 12 hours after other foreign leaders to congratulate Biden on the election. This is the cheapest shot imaginable, considering that the official announcement came on Shabbat, 7 November, and Netanyahu tweeted his congratulations on Sunday.
The piece concludes with an accusation that Israelis are “willing to ignore the very real threat to our democracy, to our way of life and safety, just to help advance [their] own parochial needs.” I admit to being struck almost dumb by this. The Iran deal and the conflict with the Palestinians could have existential consequences for Israel. America has enormous power and influence, which its presidents often wield in our region, sometimes to our great disadvantage, as in the case of President Obama. Israel, on the other hand, has little power to influence America; PM Netanyahu pulled out all the stops to derail the pernicious Iran deal, without success. Perhaps our concerns are “parochial,” but they are quite serious. And I remind them that Donald Trump received more votes than any previous American presidential candidate, even if he did not win the election.* So the vileness of Trump is not a forgone conclusion.
The entire article has an unfriendly, even threatening tone, as if to suggest that if we don’t fall in line with the 77% of American Jews who voted for Biden, we’ll be sorry.
The two authors are not just a pair of idiots, as the content of the article suggests. Morris is a specialist in biomedical engineering and radiology and a psychiatrist who teaches at Yale. Jett is a former ambassador who had a long career with the US State Department, and now teaches International Affairs at Penn State. Both were Fulbright scholars who worked in Israel.
But they share the arrogance of Americans who don’t understand the interests and apprehensions of Israelis, and who would prefer that we play our role as a banana republic that is an American satellite, quietly.
_________________________
* No, I’m not going to comment on whether the election was fair.

12/16 Links Pt2: Why Does the World Ignore Israel’s Need to Prevent Terror Attacks?; The Bundestag, BDS and ex-pat Israelis in Berlin; Jay Leno shares his support and love for Israel

From Ian:

David Collier: Channel 4 – meet the extremists in the ‘Palestinian voices’ news clip

Channel 4 – The PREVENT inversion

One of the most ‘in-your-face’ errors in the piece came when the news item showed a screenshot of part of the PREVENT guidelines. We were shown just a fraction of an image and told these are possible indicators of extremism.
The film omitted or obscured the text below these statements which reads:
"It is not extremist to hold any of these views – provided they are not expressed in a way that harasses others or incites violence – and this is the fundamental point." (2/7) pic.twitter.com/NVwYirrSOp
— William Baldét MBE (@WillBaldet) December 15, 2020

Except in the news item they completely inverted the meaning of the words that were written in the document. As William Baldet MBE, CVE PREVENT Coordinator thoroughly explained on Twitter- to provide the screenshot without any of the text that follows is to completely change the context of the document. Baldet states quite clearly that the slide content has been misrepresented to imply the *opposite* of its intent. The text literally goes on to say that *it is not extremist* to hold these views if they are not expressed in a way that harasses others or incites violence.

Channel 4 goes full racist After talking with the Palestinians in the room, we meet Avi Shlaim, who is introduced as an ‘Israeli historian’. Shlaim lived for about 8 years in Israel and he has lived here for the last 54 years. Whether he also has Israeli citizenship is not relevant – he is British. Is this acceptable now, do we ‘other’ people who were not born here and negate the fact that Shlaim has spent almost all his life here? Shlaim got married in Islington in the 1970s. How British does he have to be before Channel 4 identify him as British? Can you imagine them doing this to someone who has lived in the UK for 50 years, but who also carry a second citizenship such as Indian, Pakistani or Nigerian? It is absolutely outrageous that they chose to play this kind of racist ‘othering’ trick, simply to strengthen their own propaganda.

Why no voices?

Why are there no voices on mainstream TV? I would argue that Palestinian voices are over-represented. ‘Palestine’ certainly gets a disproportionate amount of attention in the press. If only the Uighurs or Rohingya or Syrians – people who are actually persecuted – were given so much time. But if we are to address why these specific people and those like them are not given airtime, it is chiefly because the media outlets know what they are going to say *AND* know much of it is factually incorrect, offensive and often antisemitic.

You cannot blame the BBC, the Telegraph or any of the mainstream outlets for the fact these people were brought up on myths and are actively spreading propaganda and lies. That they take every opportunity that they can to politicise an event. Why on earth should anyone help them spread their lies?

But I suppose that is the question we now must ask Channel 4.

There is only one course of action that must be taken here. Watch the clip then please complain to OFCOM. Make *YOUR* voices heard.

CAA submits complaint to Ofcom over Channel 4’s segment claiming International Definition of Antisemitism “silences” criticism of Israel, with no input from any mainstream Jewish representative

Campaign Against Antisemitism is submitting a complaint to Ofcom regarding a segment on Channel 4 News that aired last night that was devoted to criticism of the International Definition of Antisemitism.

Speakers during the segment repeatedly stated that the Definition “silenced” debate about Israel, which is precisely the “Livingstone Formulation” that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) confirmed was used to victimise Jews in the Labour Party to such an extent that it broke equalities law (Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant in the EHRC’s investigation of the Labour Party). In using this antisemitic formulation, the segment breached Ofcom’s guidance on harm and offence.

The failure to include a single representative from the mainstream Jewish community – in which there is a consensus in favour of widespread adoption of the Definition – represented a failure by Channel 4 News to show due impartiality in its programme, which is also a breach of Ofcom’s guidance.

The segment lasted almost ten minutes.

Covid-19 Was One of the Biomed Industry’s Finest Hours, Says Israeli Silicon Valley Veteran

“It’s been only 11 months since the coronavirus pandemic broke out and we already have vaccines being distributed around the world. There is no doubt, this has been one of the biomed sector’s finest hours,” said Aya Jakobovits, a serial entrepreneur and investor in the life science sector in an interview to CTech. “It really showcased the depth of new technology and its ability to integrate into solutions quickly and effectively. All of a sudden there is a new interest in infectious diseases that arises from the understanding that there will be more pandemics in the future.”

Jakobovits spoke to CTech from Los Angeles, but is a Silicon Valley veteran, having arrived on the West Coast of the US in 1982 for her postdoctoral studies, after completing her first degrees in Israel at the Hebrew University and a PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Since then, she founded and held senior management positions at a series of life science companies, including Adicet Bio, Kite Pharma, Agensys, Abgenix, and Cell Genesys and currently sits on the boards of Adicet Bio, UCLA Technology Development Corporation, and Yeda Research and Development Co. Her accumulated work in bringing novel technologies and therapeutic products to market brought over $14 billion to shareholders.

Jakobovits is one of the main speakers at the J-Ventures annual investor’s conference, which is taking place this week, an organization she joined a year ago and has found to be a fertile hub for the sector.

92% of Israel’s COVID-19 fatalities had existing chronic diseases — report

Over 90 percent of those who have died of coronavirus infection in Israel were suffering from chronic ailments such as heart disease, high blood pressure or diabetes, Haaretz reported Tuesday, citing figures it had obtained from the Health Ministry.

The data also showed that the virus had taken its largest toll on those over 70 years old, who make up 80% of the fatalities.

At the time the figures were produced for the newspaper, there had been 3,004 deaths in Israel from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The total stood at 3,030 on Wednesday evening.

Health officials are warning that the country is plunging into a third wave of infections that by next week will require the government to again clamp down on some aspects of public life, in an effort to stave off what would be a third national lockdown since the virus outbreak began earlier this year.

Of the 3,004 who had died by Tuesday, 2,778 had chronic diseases, or 92% of the total, Haaretz reported.

A breakdown showed 1,019 had high blood pressure (34%), 750 had diabetes (25%), 633 had heart issues (21%), 246 had chronic lung disorders (8%), 99 had suppressed immune systems (3%) and 31 had chronic liver problems (1%).

Age also played a key role, with data showing that the average age of virus victims has been 79, and the median age 81.

With COVID hitting hard, Brazil's Jews look toward Israel

With Brazil being one of the worst-hit nations in the coronavirus pandemic, the Jewish community has had to find ways to cope with the new reality.

Leaders have said that even as they have followed closely close what has been unfolding in Israel, they have also had to reinvent themselves.

"This was also our way of coping with the new fundraising reality," President of the Jewish Confederation of Brazil and WJC Vice President Fernando Lottenberg told Israel Hayom, recalling that more than many Jews have died from the disease in the country.

Lottenberg, who has a PhD in international public law, has described the impact of the virus on the community as "super dramatic." According to Lottenberg, "During normal times it's hard to maintain contact, but now people keep approaching me and asking whether they can lend a helping hand to the community. Perhaps next year, we will be able to congregate in our synagogues once again and hold the normal meetings, but I hope that we won't forget the positive impact that has been imposed on us due to the pandemic."

He also noted that the Jewish-built hospital in São Paulo has played an important role in highlighting the community's contribution to public health. Rabbi Ezra Dayan, who oversees kashrut supervision in Brazil, says he has been doing his work through Zoom for the past five months. "The biggest challenge is to make sure the kashrut system does not collapse and thank G-d it hasn't. "We supervise hundreds of establishments, and now online supervision is just a fact of life. It's amazing how we can do all this from São Paulo, considering that Brazil is the size of a continent.

Chanukah Music Video night 7: "Am Ne'emanay" (Galeet Dardashti and Divahn) plus a bonus older video from them

The band wrote on Facebook:

Happy almost Hanukah, friends! I'm sharing a clip of "Am Ne'mamay," a Hanukah song from Divahn's new album, Shalhevet (which literally means "flame" in Hebrew). We hoped that our album could offer some light amidst dark times...even before the pandemic! This performance is from our March 7, 2020 album release at Joe's Pub (and the last time we performed together). The song is one of the most popular Chanukah songs among North African Jews. The text was written by the most renowned Morrocan paytan (composer of sacred songs) of his generation, David Buzaglo, and the melody comes from Ya um alabaya (“The girl who wore an abaya”), made famous by Iraqi singer Badria Anwer. Special thanks to Yossi Ohana and Kehillot Sharot for sharing this piyyut with me years ago and to Zafer Tawil for helping me track down the song in Arabic. You can hear/see lyrics/purchase the full song here: https://divahn.bandcamp.com/track/am-neemanay. Enjoy! We hope you'll sing it this year and that it brings you some needed light! "

They had made a different Chanukah-themed music video in 2017, Banu Choshech (We've Come to Chase Away the Darkness):

(h/t Yerushalimey)

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“Settlements” is the chosen subject of many a question posted by the anti-Israel crowd on Quora. The word has been, for ages, a dirty word in the lexicon of the Arab War Against the Jews. And in fact, even among right-wing Israeli Jews, the word “settlements” has fallen into disfavor. We don’t need this word, because it’s enough to say we’re building homes. And every human being has the right to shelter, especially in indigenous territory where previously, no homes existed, land that was returned to Israel when the Jews were attacked and fought back.

We didn’t ask for the wars. We have a right to the land we regained. We have a right to shelter and to build homes on Jewish land. Full stop.

The world, however, believes that Jews have no right to shelter. They call the settlements “illegal.” Because they prefer to think of it this way. And after Europe went ahead and murdered close to 7 million Jews in the Holocaust, they now want us to have no place to go. They want to install the Arabs on our land, strip the Jewish State of its ancient name “Israel,” and revert instead to the insulting Roman designation of “Palestine.” They want to take away Jewish land from the Jews and call it an Arab state.

Just as this antisemitic, anti-Israel crowd has managed to turn reality on its head, robbing Jews of their rights to Jewish land and to shelter, we have a responsibility to restore the narrative of truth, by constantly driving these facts home to the public. Quora is a good place for this. On Quora you have the anti-Israel crowd pushing lies, but you also have people pushing back with the truth.

By way of example, not long ago, I was asked to answer the following question on Quora:

Why are Israeli settlements in the West Bank all over the place? Isn't this dangerous for Israel? Won't this culminate in a binational state as it makes it difficult to partition the land?

There were some pretty detailed responses among the answers, but I kept my own response short and to the point, believing this to be better absorbed by readers, and therefore more efficient than a long and wordy answer:

It’s not the West Bank. No water in sight. It is and has been for thousands of years, Judea and Samaria. It is part of Jewish indigenous territory, and like any other human beings, Jews have a right to shelter. No reason they shouldn’t build homes for themselves or establish towns and cities in their ancient homeland.

It takes very little time to craft a quick response like this and to do so is as important as any other work we can do on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people. Every time someone answers a lie with the truth, the narrative of truth is strengthened and spreads further into the ether that is public opinion. How do we know this work is bearing fruit? The UAE will be importing olive oil and wine from Samaria, and Bahrain was going to label items from Judea and Samaria as “made in Israel” before they retracted that decision, presumably due to pressure from the PA.

At Chanuka time, we remember that the Greeks tried to Hellenize the Jews of Israel, forbidding circumcision, Sabbath observance, and the study of Torah. The Greek occupiers of Jewish land went so far as to sacrifice a pig on the altar of the Holy Temple, profaning everything that is holy to Jews. This is not much different than the way the UN and the EU collude with the PA, Hamas, and other Islamic extremists to drive Jews out of their land, their holy places, and into the sea. The ultimate goal is to separate Jews from their land and from Jewish observance, too. They may see Jewish practice as an affront to their beliefs, seeing as how Christianity and Islam were meant to supplant and obviate the need for Judaism.

Chanuka, however, is a time of miracles. We see our former enemies coming to accept a Jewish presence in the Middle East. We watch as peace accords spring up, new ones almost every week, miracles in our own time. There are good and practical reasons for making peace with Israel. But the accords and newly formed diplomatic ties are also an acknowledgement of reality: the Arabs lost. The Jews won and turned a barren, forsaken land into a busy and bustling, successful modern state.

The peace accords come from the knowledge that the Jews have more than earned the right to seek shelter: to live in and build homes on Jewish land. That comes from simple people, like you and me, just putting the truth out there, over time. Slowly, slowly, the truth is making inroads, like water dripping on a rock, gnawing away at the hard substance, and cracking it open over time.

Chag Urim Sameach!

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40 EU MPs write letter to ban settlement products. (It sounds more impressive than it is.)

40 members of the European Parliament signed a letter on Tuesday demanding that settlement products be banned from entering the European Union market.

Here it is:

How big a deal is this?

The European Parliament has 705 members. This letter was signed by 40.

It has 27 member states. The people here belong to 14 of them.

Every single party represented here is Left or far-Left.

Instead of looking like a grassroots effort to sway the EU Trade Commissioner, this looks like it is fringe.

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12/16 Links Pt1: Sohrab Ahmari: Trump’s peace deals mean the anti-Israel boycott movement is dead; Gulf normalization isn’t about fearing Iran, it’s about embracing Israel

From Ian:

Sohrab Ahmari: Trump’s peace deals mean the anti-Israel boycott movement is dead

The BDSers achieved a measure of success, in Europe especially. Performing artists would often cancel concerts in Israel under BDS pressure — and sometimes lead the charge, as in the case of the likes of Tilda Swinton, Roger Waters and Coldplay’s Chris Martin. European theaters would refuse to host Jewish (not even Israeli) film festivals, even as BDSers preposterously insisted that their movement isn’t anti-Semitic. Western universities or individual departments would mount academic boycotts of Israel. Then, last year, in perhaps the most alarming move, the European Court of Justice ruled that EU states must label West Bank products as “made in settlements.”

Was Israel’s economy ever in serious peril? Probably not. Europe remains the Jewish state’s biggest trade partner, though boycotts and labeling could bite if widened to include firms that operate in Israel or Palestinian territories. The real danger, however, was moral-cum-political. If BDS succeeded, it would make permanent Israel’s status as an abnormal country, rather than a normal fixture of the Mideast map. That would demoralize the Israeli people and compound the hostility they already face in global forums like the United Nations.

Well, so much for all that. Today, a little more than a year since the EU labeling decision, you can find Israeli products — prominently displayed, sometimes with Israeli flags to promote them — on the shelves of grocery stores in the United Arab Emirates.

How far can BDS go in a world where once-sworn enemies of the Jewish state enjoy Israeli citrus products and myriad cultural exchanges? Who exactly do Western champions of the Arabs represent, when the Arabs themselves want to live peacefully alongside Israel and accept the Jewish state’s fundamental legitimacy? Isn’t it more than a bit condescending for, say, Roger Waters — place of birth: Great Bookham, Surrey, England — to tell Arabs whom they can do business with?

To be clear, I’m not suggesting BDS will disappear tomorrow. The wider Arab world is making peace with Israel, but Palestinian leaders aren’t about to give up what is admittedly a very nice grift: billions of dollars in international aid in exchange for refusing to accept reality. BDS helps lend a veneer of global credibility to their rejectionism. And fanatic college professors and students can always use “anti-Zionism” to mask old-fashioned hatred, singling out one state and one state only — the one that happens to be Jewish — for opprobrium.

But the fact remains that the Abraham Accords have revealed a silly side to the BDS movement: For God’s sake, when Sudan, once one of the world’s most virulently anti-Israel states, has made its peace with Jerusalem, BDS looks like a boutique cause for gentry leftists, the kind who put their pronouns in their Twitter bios. The real world — and the Middle East — have just moved on.

Sudan revokes citizenship of Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, dealing blow to terror groups

In a blow to the Islamic movement in Gaza and other terror organizations, Sudan is revoking the citizenship of former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal along with 3,000 other citizenships that were granted to foreigners, according to several reports in Arab media.

The Sudanese government made this change as part of its being removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, in a clear indication that it will fight terrorism rather than support it. The news was widely reported in Sudan and other Arabic media.

Earlier, Meshaal had expressed his dissatisfaction with the normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel.

After the demise of the previous Sudanese regime, which was supportive of Islamist and terrorist movements including Hamas, the new government has been attempting to change Sudan’s image as a shelter and conduit for terrorists. The revoking of citizenship from foreigners with links to Islamic and terrorist movements is a step in that direction.

Sudan is also now requiring a visa for Syrians before entering the country in order to prevent the flow of terrorists into Sudan.

In recent decades, Sudan was designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States for hosting Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other wanted terrorists. Hamas used the country as a funnel for smuggling Iranian weapons to Palestinians in Gaza between 2009-2012.

Sudan was removed from the list of state sponsors of terror after the new regime has made efforts in combating terrorism in cooperation with the American administration under the supervision of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Gulf normalization isn’t about fearing Iran, it’s about embracing Israel

“You think you have chutzpah? We have chutzpah.”

It was an unexpected line from a senior Emirati official, delivered recently in an off-the-record video conference call between current and former Israeli and Emirati officials.

The conversation had turned to business ties, innovation and the cultural differences between the two countries. The official wanted to explain something important about the new Israeli-Arab normalization agreements that Abu Dhabi had helped start: not only why they are happening, but why they seem so inexplicably warm and genuine.

The United Arab Emirates is most visible in this regard, but it isn’t the only one. Bahrain, too, is investing in a warm peace. And Sudan, while agonizing over the step itself — a breach of decades of ideological commitments vis-à-vis the Palestinians — has shown signs of wanting the normalization to reap more benefits than mere diplomatic contact or its removal from the US terror sponsors list.

There is no shortage of benefits that have accrued to the countries that normalized relations with Israel in the waning days of the Trump administration. The Emiratis asked for F-35s, the Moroccans recognition of their claim over Western Sahara, the Sudanese an end to their 27-year stay on the terror list and protection from lawsuits linked to the previous regime.

Why Didn't The Abraham Accords Happen 25 Years Ago? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

The announcement earlier this month that Israel and Morocco have agreed to establish full diplomatic relations and normalize ties was not a complete surprise. After all, it is no secret that the two countries have had friendly relations with each other for decades.

If anything, the question is what took so long.

But it is not just that Israel and Morocco have been friendly for so long. More than that, the ingredients that made normalization possible under the Abraham Accords were there 25 years ago too, if not longer.

The circumstances that made the Abraham Accords possible now and enabled Trump to do something that previous administrations could not do, and in fact claimed was just not possible -- those circumstances are not really new.

In 1996, historian Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, Senior Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, wrote a paper for The Maghreb Review entitled Israel and Morocco: A Special Relationship. In it, he not only gives the background that led to the establishment of low-level liaison offices in Rabat and Tel Aviv. He also underscores elements that years later would make normalization possible in 2020.

For example, today a major impetus for the Arab normalization of ties with Israel is the threat of Iran, both because of its status as a state sponsor of terrorism and its efforts towards nuclear weapons.

But back in 1996, Iran was not the threat it is today. So what common interests drew Israel and Morocco together?

Maddy-Weitzman writes:

From the outset of Moroccan independence in 1956 and through subsequent decades, Israel and Morocco identified a number of vital interests common to both sides: their perception of a common threat posed by radical pan-Arabism, epitomized by Gamal 'Abd al-Nasir [Nasser] in Egypt, the Ba'th in Syria and Iraq, and the FLN in Algeria. (p. 36-7)

These radical elements were a threat to the stability of Morocco's monarchy and were antagonistic towards Israel as well.

From Morocco's perspective, it made sense to turn to the West for the economic and military help it needed in order to deal with the challenges to its stability, both in the region and at home. It was in Morocco's interest to turn to the US and "like so many other countries, Morocco concluded that one important road to Washington passed via Jerusalem."

And of course back then too it was in Morocco's interest to get US support on the issue of the Western Sahara.

The goal was more than the cold peace we associate with Egypt and Jordan. According to Weitzman, Morocco's King Hassan II had "a particular vision of renewed Semitic brotherhood, based on an idyllic Jewish-Arab past in Morocco and Muslim Spain, which could contribute to an economic and human renaissance in the contemporary Middle East."

And on the less idyllic and more practical side, then -- like now -- there was the financial boon that could potentially accrue to Morocco as a result of a peace agreement:

The Israeli Export Institute estimated in October 1994 that Israel's export potential to Morocco during the coming three years amounted to $220 million dollars annually, in areas such as agricultural products, irrigation equipment, the building trades, hi-tech electronics, processed foods, and professional services for infrastructure development. In addition, the potential for Morocco serving as a centre for the re-export of Israeli goods to other North African countries was estimated in the tens of millions of dollars. Estimates of the value of Israeli goods reaching to Morocco via third parties and subsidiary companies ranged from $30-100 million annually. (p.45)

Not bad.

Also, in another foreshadowing of what UAE has to gain from a peace agreement, Yedi'ot Aharonot quoted US sources in 1996 that Morocco was looking into Israeli help in upgrading 20 of its F-5 combat jets.

Before Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), Morocco made clear what kind of relations it wanted with Israel. Weitzman lists the kinds of statements made by Morocco during the years 1976 to 1977:

a. the historical affinity between Arabs and Jews as 'sons of Abraham' and 'grandsons of Ishmael and Isaac,' an affinity which could form the basis for the tapping of both sides' capabilities in order to modernize and develop the Middle East;

b. Israel's capabiility for contributing to the modernization and development of the Arab world;

c. the dangers to the Arab world inherent in prolonged conflict;

d. the need for coexistence and integration, which required Israel's withdrawal to the June 1967 boundaries, creation of a Palestinian state, and full peace, recognition and integration between Israel and the Arab states; and

e. the need for dialogue to solve all problems, including dialogue between the PLO and Israel. (p. 41)

One could easily imagine the UAE making these statements -- including its continued commitment to the Palestinian Arabs, but these statements about peace that seem novel even now were being made over 40 years ago.

But no groundbreaking peace treaty between Morocco and Israel happened.

Official trade between the 2 countries amounted to just $2 million.

Why?

One reason might be that Nasser and the other potential threats to Morocco's stability posed a different kind of danger than what Iran does today. Iran is a Muslim state, but not an Arab one. Its brand of Islam fanaticism is very different from the pan-Arabism Nasser advocated as the leader of Egypt. And Iran takes the spread of its influence very seriously.

But more than that, King Hassan II of Morocco saw himself as a facilitator, hosting summits, conferences and Israeli prime ministers -- while at the same time maintaining his image as a leading Arab statesman. In 1967, Morocco sent armed forces to Egypt, although they only got as far as Libya. In 1973, Moroccan forces in Syria participated in the Yom Kippur War. The following year, he hosted the conference that conferred recognition of the PLO.

King Hassan II in 1983. Public domain

He was in no hurry to sign a peace treaty with Israel, preferring a gradual approach.

His son, King Muhammad VI, may be a different story.

The question now is no longer when peace will start, but rather how far will it go.

Dr. Ghazi Hussein wrote an article titled "Genocide and Racism in Zionist Thought and Practice" yesterday.

It includes such gems as this:

The historical roots of terrorism, genocide, extortion, greed, lies and Zionist crimes go back to the teachings established by the writers of the Talmudic Torah and to the founders of the Zionists who added European racism to Judaism, in particular German racism, so they replaced the Aryan in the theory of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche with the Jew, "The Chosen People of God," for whom the world was created and for whom the world was created.

The Zionist entity proceeds from the teachings of Judaism, Zionism and Jewish settler colonialism to justify the practice of genocide, terrorism, racism and Jewish purity as a political doctrine and an official policy in dealing with the Arabs of Muslims and Christians and with Muslims and the rest of the non-Jews (goyim) in the world Thus, they raised the genocide to the level of religious sanctity.

Who is Ghazi Hussein?

He is an antisemite, even quoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and denying the Holocaust.

Yet that doesn't cause him to lose his position as the 82 year old legal advisor and head of administration in the political department of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Damascus.

If Palestinians are as against antisemitism as they claim, why is there not a single negative word about their own officials who regularly peddle Jew-hate?

Back in 1981, he was expelled as the PLO representative in Vienna when he was discovered to have arranged smuggling of a large number of weapons to Austria for the Abu Nidal terror group. It appears that he was at odds with Yasir Arafat for a while, giving Arafat the biggest insult possible: saying he was a Jew from Morocco.

For Palestinians, being a Jew-hater is not considered a negative for one's career. Leftist apologists for Palestinian terror claim that Palestinian Arabs are only anti-Zionist and respect Jews. Yet not only are expressions of Jew hate discouraged in that world, they are rewarded.

And these apologists who claim to be against antisemitism never seem to say a word when their Palestinian friends spout the worst kinds of hate.

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