Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

The moral obligation for Israel vaccinating its citizens ahead of Palestinians

Most of the critics of Israel's vaccination program are asserting a moral argument: that Israel is "withholding" vaccines from people who could be saved and hoarding the valuable vaccines for its own selfish purposes.

Most of Israel's defenders are arguing not from a moral but a legal and fact-based perspective: that Israel is not obligated to provide vaccines to the Palestinians under existing agreements, and besides, the Palestinians have not asked Israel for more than a handful of vaccines to begin with, plus Israel is cooperating with Palestinian officials in everything they are asking for.

Needless to say, the moral argument, painting Israel as a cold, miserly nation, is more compelling to journalists and anti-Israel NGOs than the actual facts and Israel's legal obligations.

However, Israel indeed has not only a moral right but a moral obligation to inoculate its own citizens first. And it is exactly the same reason why every nation on Earth is prioritizing populations who are more at risk above those who are not.

According to the latest figures, Israel's COVID-19 infection rate is the 10th highest in the world: 67,317 per million people. By contrast, the Palestinians are ranked #59, with an infection rate far less than half of Israel's: 30,259.

Comparing the death rates from COVID-19 shows a similar disparity: Israel's is 493, which the Palestinians (with far fewer medical resources to keep critical cases alive) is only 349.

Israel has 1,207 critical cases - while Palestinians have only 61.

Israel had 27 deaths yesterday, while Palestinians had five.

Israel has every interest in making sure that Palestinians don't get COVID-19, but its moral priority is to inoculate its own citizens first. It is a race against time, because the new strains of COVID-19 that are rampant in Israel are spreading faster than even the vaccination rate, despite a three week lockdown. The number of active cases continues to rise, and the number of serious cases has not gone down. The first dose of vaccine is not as effective as was advertised so the second vaccine is of critical importance and priority.

Of course Israel should prioritize Israelis - they are the population that is most at risk! If somehow Israel could provide as many vaccines to Palestinians as the critics demand, the number of Israelis who would die would be much higher than the number of Palestinians who might be saved.

Those who are claiming that Israel is immoral for vaccinating Israelis first are not saying that Palestinian lives matter - they are saying that Israeli lives do not matter.

They are the immoral ones.

Palestinian Authority TV says the Holocaust was punishment for "Zionist wickedness"

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the Palestinian Authority has decided to celebrate it in its own Jew-hating way.

An official Palestinian TV show, "From the Israeli Archive," translates some Israeli TV documentaries for Palestinian audiences. This week, they showed (and also mistranslated) an episode from the 1981 Israeli Zionist history documentary "Pillar of Fire" which described the rise of Nazism and its effects on the Jews of Germany.

In the introduction to the episode, the Palestinian host said that the Holocaust was punishment for Zionist wickedness.

From Palestinian Media Watch:

Official PA TV host: “In this episode, whose title is “Hitler’s Rise to Power in ‎Germany,” we’ll talk about the very sensitive periods between 1929 and 1935. ‎This is the period in which Zionism was diminished and nearly ended and ‎disappeared… The preparations began leading to World War II in Europe, and ‎this is the period in which the Zionist movement paid the price for its ‎conspiracies and wickedness, there in the European states.”‎

[Official PA TV, From the Israeli Archive, Jan. 23, 2021]‎

This shows not only how antisemitic the Palestinian Authority is, but also how self-centered they are to think that "Zionist crimes" were what Nazis were fighting when they murdered six million Jews.

Here is the English episode of Pillar of Fire that corresponds to the episode shown.

Palestinians dust off a 2018 "peace plan," where only Israel has to give up anything, to the UN Security Council

Now that Joe Biden is President, Mahmoud Abbas is trying to set the clock back to the Obama era by pretending to act like he wants peace and hoping that the world will go back to castigating Israel and praising him.

The PA's foreign minister spoke before the UN Security Council and managed to get the usual suspects to praise the Palestinians and slam Israel.

The reason for the meeting was for the PA to push a 2018 "peace plan" that they put together as a response to the Trump recognition of Jerusalem. They are now treating this plan, where they are not expected to give anything up, as a serious proposal to try to regain some momentum and act as if they are interested in peace.

The "peace plan" includes:

An international peace conference led by the permanent members of the Security Council and the Quartet.

Accepting the State of Palestine as a full member of the United Nations

Mutual recognition between the State of Palestine and the State of Israel based on the "1967 borders."

An international multilateral mechanism to assist the two sides to resolve all permanent status issues within a specified time period with guarantees for implementation.

During the period of negotiations, stopping all settlement activities including East Jerusalem.

Freezing the US decision recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Implement the Arab Peace Initiative and no Arab nation can make peace until that is implemented.

"State of Palestine" capital is in East Jerusalem.

An international peace force to assist.

"A just and agreed solution to the Palestinian refugee issue on the basis of Resolution 194."

Continued international commitment to support UNRWA "until the refugee issue is resolved."

This is warmed over versions of Palestinian demands for years, where instead of Palestinians making actual compromises, they sit back and let the international community pressure Israel into making concession after concession on everything - Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, borders.

They are clearly hoping that the Biden administration will back them up.

01/26 Links Pt2: What the War Over the IHRA Definition Obscures; The uncomfortable truth about BLM, Malcolm X and anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Jeff Jacoby: The politics of an Auschwitz survivor’s son

Equally menacing is an obsession with race and racial distinctions. Hitler’s Germany deemed “Aryans” the highest race and Jews the lowest. In their fanaticism on the subject, the Nazis demonized Jews, denied them legal rights, deprived them of their livelihoods, drove them from their homes, and finally destroyed them by the millions. As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I consider all racial categories fundamentally illegitimate. I abhor the labeling and sorting of Americans by race. “Classifications and distinctions based on race or color,” argued the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in a 1947 brief, “have no moral or legal validity in our society.” That has always been my position. It makes me heartsick that 50 years after the civil rights movement, America’s leading institutions have become more race-obsessed than ever.

I’m sure that some of the stands I take in public-policy debates have been influenced by my experience growing up with a father who survived the death camps and being raised in a community that was home to other survivors. I fervently opposed the Bush administration’s reliance on torture to extract information from Al Qaeda detainees, for example. I have always condemned the scapegoating of immigrants, whether it came from the left or from the right. I have no patience with foreign-policy “realists” who downplay human rights in dealing with other governments.

Above and beyond politics, however, my lifelong awareness of the Holocaust has made it impossible for me not to know that human goodness is fragile. It doesn’t come naturally but must be honed and practiced, etched into our nature one good deed at a time. Civility and civilization are only veneers, stretched like a bandage over an ugly wound. More easily than we like to think, that bandage can be pulled off, exposing the putrescence beneath. It was pulled off in Europe in the middle of the 20th century, and the consequences were diabolical — for the world, for the Jews, for my father and his family. Those consequences are never far from my mind. They shape my thinking to this day.

After converting to Judaism, I was surrounded by neo-Nazis - Opinion

When we talked about it over scoops of ice cream later that night, he told me it was surprising to have experienced neo-Nazis in Iceland, a country famous for its equality and peaceful society, but he didn’t reveal having felt anything beyond the surprise.

I took this experience home with me though, and it helped me understand the gravity of my conversion. It was the first time that fear made me reconsider my conversion and the choices I was making in my public Jewish life. It was the first time I truly looked inward and asked myself the hard question required of converts: Was I ready to accept the realities of anti-Semitism?

I also asked myself the question so many of my friends had asked already: As a gay man, why would I want to add an additional target on my back?

I used to find the imagery of a target on someone’s back too grotesque and melodramatic for the context of a religious conversion, but since my encounter with presumed neo-Nazis in the hot tub that day, the question has become even more reasonable. On top of all-too-common news of anti-Semitic threats and vandalism, there have been synagogue shootings and Jewish-oriented hate crimes around the world.

At the time of this writing, we are dealing with the aftermath of domestic terrorists storming and overtaking the U.S. Capitol building. Some rioters waved Confederate flags, others held signs referencing the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory QAnon. Others wore sweatshirts that read things like “Camp Auschwitz,” an obvious glorification of the Holocaust. During the pro-Trump “Save America” rally leading up to the storming of the Capitol building, a Republican congresswoman, Mary Miller, even quoted Hitler.

While I wait for my city’s mikvah to reopen after being closed due to COVID-19 in order to finalize my conversion, I find myself revisiting the same question I asked myself back in Reykjavík: Is my conversion a smart choice?

In the two years that have passed since soaking in a hot tub with neo-Nazis, I have to admit that my certainty in my desire to convert has taken a few blows. But what keeps me pushing toward the mikvah, however, is that when I’m asked if I’m Jewish, I always say yes.

The uncomfortable truth about BLM, Malcolm X and anti-Semitism

Fifty-five years ago, Martin Luther King delivered a speech to 50,000 Americans in which he demanded justice for persecuted Jews behind the Iron Curtain.

‘The absence of opportunity to associate as Jews in the enjoyment of Jewish culture and religious experience becomes a severe limitation upon the individual,’ he said. ‘Negros can well understand and sympathise with this problem.’

He then stated, in typically uncompromising style, that Jewish history and culture were ‘part of everyone’s heritage, whether he be Jewish, Christian or Moslem.’ He concluded:

‘We cannot sit complacently by the wayside while our Jewish brothers in the Soviet Union face the possible extinction of their cultural and spiritual life. Those that sit at rest, while others take pains, are tender turtles, and buy their quiet with disgrace.’

This speech – released last week by the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCEJ) to mark Martin Luther King Day, and coming just days before we remember the Holocaust – feels particularly poignant in the newly radicalised atmosphere of 2021. Today's activists in the Black Lives Matter movement would be wise to remember King's words.

During the Los Angeles riots over the killing of George Floyd, Jewish shops were destroyed, synagogues were sprayed with ‘free Palestine’ graffiti, and a statue of a Swedish diplomat who had saved Hungarian Jews from the Nazis was defaced with anti-Semitic slogans.

In France, a Black Lives Matter rally descended into cries of ‘dirty Jews’, echoing the anti-Semitic chants that filled the same streets during the Dreyfus affair a century ago. Shortly afterwards, the #Jewishprivilege Twitter hashtag sought to lump Jews together with the forces of oppression – until it was subverted by Jews posting accounts of the persecution suffered by their families. Jewish privilege indeed.

Cartoon of the Day: Some of my best friends....

Continuing my series of recaptioning cartoons....

Some recent pro-Israel memes from EoZ

Here are some memes I've posted on Twitter recently.

01/26 Links Pt1: Daniel Pipes: The Israel lobby is good for America; UAE, Bahrain: We need ‘unified voice’ with Israel on Iran’s missiles, nukes

From Ian:

Daniel Pipes: The Israel lobby is good for America

Israelis and Palestinians each call on the enthusiastic support of a great hinterland. Israelis have the Jewish diaspora, especially its rich and powerful leaders, from Chaim Weizmann to Sheldon Adelson, as well as a worldwide network of Christian supporters, from Lord Palmerston and William Blackstone to Clark Clifford and Nikki Haley. In parallel part, Palestinians have counted on Arab, Muslim, European and Communist states such as, respectively, Egypt, Iran, Sweden and the Soviet Union, as well as growing support from the global left, exemplified by former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Indeed, as Steven J. Rosen has shown, “the Arab road to Washington runs through Paris, London and Berlin.”

Through the past century, those hinterlands have grown and roughly balanced each other. Both came into existence during World War I, when British Zionists pressured their government to support a Jewish national home in Palestine, as Arab leaders extracted promises from Britain about Palestine before helping its war effort. During World War II, Western Jews and their allies applied desperate pressure on the British government to open immigration to Palestine for Jewish refugees, as Arab rulers threatened to sabotage Britain’s war efforts if it permitted that immigration.

After the war, American Zionists moved to the forefront, as independent Arab states tripled in number. Zionists successfully lobbied President Harry S. Truman to recognize the State of Israel in 1948, as five Arab states invaded the nascent polity. Each side learned from the other: Israelis developed a powerful army, as Arabs won increasing clout in Western politics, media and education. Each side developed and refined techniques for extracting funds from its hinterland, whether the United Jewish Appeal or Saudi, Kuwaiti and other government donations.

Repeatedly, when Israel’s enemies attack, its American friends defend. Arab states boycotted U.S. firms invested in Israel; Israel’s friends won legislation making complying with such boycotts illegal. Arab states withheld oil supplies; Zionists pushed against capitulation to such pressure. Arab states rounded up overwhelming majorities in international organizations; Israel’s friends did likewise in Congress. Each hinterland fights for its cause. Each provides diplomatic support, financial aid and armaments.

In other words, American Zionists serve as a principal counterpart to anti-Zionist foreign states. The Zionists pressure Washington from within, the states do so from without. It’s a significant difference but ultimately a technical one.

Thus, the Israel lobby does not impede the formulation of an objective foreign policy but constructively offsets anti-Israel influence. Arguing for Israel is not just protected under the First Amendment and entirely legitimate, it informs and improves American policy formulation by countering foreign influences. The Israel lobby, therefore, is good for America.

IDF Cheif Kochavi: Return to Iran 2015 nuclear deal is strategic mistake

A return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, or a "slightly improved" deal would be a an operational and strategic mistake for the world, IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi warned on Tuesday

He said that Iran’s advance centrifuge progress and jumps in enriching uranium could eventually bring it to be "only weeks" away from a nuclear bomb.

The deal would still allow the Islamic Republic to break out to a nuclear weapon in 2030 when the agreement expires. The IDF chief said that the US and others must maintain all sanctions and pressure now as Tehran is at its weakest and closest to making real concessions.

In addition, he said that Israel’s strikes in Syria and other undefined parts of the Middle East had created the greatest deterrence Israel has ever known against its enemies.

Moreover, he said that the normalization trend is isolating Iran in ways that it never expected and was not prepared for.

UAE, Bahrain: We need ‘unified voice’ with Israel on Iran’s missiles, nukes

The Islamic Republic’s foreign minister warned last week that his country would not accept changes to the terms of the 2015 pact, which currently does not deal with Iran’s missile program or regional proxies.

“We must respond to Iran’s missile program,” Alzayani continued, “its support for proxies in the region, and its interference in the domestic affairs of states across the region, in order to bring about a broader peace and stability for the Middle East.”

The JCPOA was signed by Iran and six world powers known as the P5+1 in 2015. Then-president Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the deal in 2018, opting instead for a “maximum pressure” sanctions effort.

One of the JCPOA’s “failures,” argued UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash on Tuesday, was the “absence of a regional voice therein.”

Iran drafted conditions for returning to compliance with the nuclear deal, one of which is that no new signatories — understood to mean Arab Gulf states — may be added to the agreement.

Since 2019, Tehran has suspended its compliance with most of the limits set by the agreement in response to Washington’s abandonment of sanctions relief and the failure of other parties to the deal to make up for it. It is now enriching uranium to 20 percent, just a short step away from weapons-grade levels.

Israel, UAE, and Bahrain all seek to dissuade the Biden administration from returning to the JCPOA in its original form.

1000 Irish artists no one ever heard of are boycotting Israel

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign is celebrating that after ten years, they have found over 1000 Irish artists who pledge not to perform in Israel.

They don't seem to be exactly A-listers.

I assume that the people on this poster are the biggest stars on the list.

I didn't check them all but I couldn't find any that had more than 10,000 followers on Twitter.

More proof BDS is antisemitic (and Ilhan Omar is a liar)

There was a Twitter spat between BDS supporters and Democratic Majority for Israel:

Many people responded to Hill and Omar pointing out quotes from BDS leaders that showed that they oppose the existence of the Jewish state altogether, and the claim that BDS has no position on the ultimate solution is specious since one basic tenet is to support "return" which would flood Israel with Arabs specifically to end it as a Jewish state.

I've also argued that BDS is antisemitic because the BDS movement targets only Jewish owned businesses in Israel and the territories, and ignores those owned by Israeli Arabs.

There is however one other fundamental reason BDS is antisemitic.

The BDSers love to pretend that the movement started in 2005 with a "call from Palestinian civil society." Pro-Israel groups point out that BDS was a direct result of the antisemitic 2001 UN Conference against Racism, held in Durban.

But BDS comes directly from Arab boycotts of Jews that have been declared for over a hundred years.

The earliest I could find was from 1909 in Hebron, when Arabs there decided to boycott Jewish merchants, followed by another in 1914. The Hebron Jewish community had lived there continuously since Biblical times, so they could hardly be described as Zionist invaders.

These anti-Jewish boycotts continued through the decades:

Boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses in Mandatory Palestine were organised by Arab leaders starting in 1922 in an attempt to damage the Jewish population of Palestine economically, especially during periods of communal strife between Jews and Arabs.[5] The original boycott forswore with any Jewish-owned business operating in Mandatory Palestine. Palestinian Arabs "who were found to have broken the boycott ... were physically attacked by their brethren and their merchandise damaged" when Palestinian Arabs rioted in Jerusalem in 1929.[6] Another, stricter boycott was imposed on Jewish businesses in following the riots that called on all of the Arabs in the region to abide by its terms. The Arab Executive Committee of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress called for a boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933 and in 1934, the Arab Labor Federation conducted a boycott as well as an organized picketing of Jewish businesses. In 1936, the Palestinian Arab leadership called on another boycott and threatened those who did not respect the boycott with violence

The 1945 Arab League boycott wasn't shy about saying that its targets were Jews. Its declaration stated, "Products of Palestinian Jews are to be considered undesirable in Arab countries."

Even after Israel was reborn, the Arab boycott was explicitly antisemitic. The Saudis and other Gulf Arabs, with their new oil wealth, were eager to use their economic power to boycott not only Israel but even US businesses owned by Jews. (Bnai Brith Messenger, 1956)

This explicitly antisemitic boycott continued through the 1970s (NYT, February 8, 1975)

Arab states were so eager to extend their boycott that they even started threatening any Arabs would would shop at high-end London stores owned by Jews:

Marks and Spencer department stores and Selfridges department store are undeterred by the news that they are to be picketed by patrols trying to enforce a boycott by Arabs because of their Jewish ownership and connections with Israel.

The Arab boycott conference meeting at Aleih, near Beirut, yesterday decided to keep a close watch on Arab visitors abroad. Observers of different Arab nationalities “who can discreetly spot their countrymen” will be posted in front of or inside “blacklisted” stores in Britain and other parts of Europe.

By the turn of the century, the idea of the boycott had already morphed into what looks like BDS nowadays. This 2002 Muslim News article (UK) bridges the antisemitic Arab boycott with the liberal language of BDS - three years before BDS was supposedly "launched."

Even BDS adherents acknowledge that the movement is related to the previous Arab boycotts. This 169-page white paper hosted on the BDSMovement site goes through the history of Arab boycotts, carefully excising any mention of "Jews" as the target and pretending that the boycott began only after Israel's establishment.

BDS did not sprout from out of nowhere. It came directly from this explicitly and proudly antisemitic background. Erasing the word "Jewish" from their literature doesn't make it any less antisemitic than it was in the 1920s, 1940s and 1970s.

Al Hayat Press Agency, an independent Palestinian news site (not the same as Al Hayat al Jadida,) writes about how President Biden is just as bad a Zionist as Donald Trump - because so many of his picks are Jewish.

Arabs and Muslims, especially the Palestinians, were very happy with the victory of US President Joe Biden, but the truth soon became clear, that Biden is Trump's brother with another yellow face!. Most of those who he nominated for positions are Jews !!

Joe Biden nominated "Rachel Levin" to assume the position of Assistant Secretary of Health and Services, who is Jewish (his gender is changed from male to female), the other Jews in Biden's government as follows:
Director of National Security Jake Sullivan is Jewish
Assistant Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is Jewish
Finance Minister Janet Yellen is Jewish
Deputy Director of Intelligence David Cohen is Jewish
Secretary of State Blinken is Jewish, Deputy Foreign Minister Victoria Nuland is Jewish, Homeland Security Minister Alessando Mayuras is Jew
Chief of Staff Ron Klein is Jewish, the Chairman of the Committee of Economic Advisers Bernstein is Jewish, Director of National Intelligence "Avril Heinz" is Jewish, as is Kamala Harris' husband is Jewish, and Biden's three children are married to Jews.
This is the first time in history that this number of Jews controlled such a large number of positions in an American government.

The author goes on to say that the goal of the Balfour Declaration was "to get rid of the evil of the Jews from Europe and to have them act as a guard dog for their interests in Palestine."

Just because this sounds like Nazi propaganda doesn't mean he's antisemitic.

UPDATE: This meme is now all over Arab antisemitic media. Here's a video from Vetogate on this topic, complete with a US flag with a Magen Dovid.

01/25 Links Pt2: Int'l Holocaust Day: Has the world learned the lessons of the Holocaust?; ‘Vaccine Apartheid’ – blatant blood libel, but too good to resist

From Ian:

Int'l Holocaust Day: Has the world learned the lessons of the Holocaust?

The story of my relatives is that of the Holocaust survivors who moved on to build Israel after most of their families were murdered and villages were destroyed. The Polish family that saved my relatives’ lives is part of the Righteous Among the Nations, those that the State of Israel and the Jewish people respect, honor and thank.

As a Jewish state, we learned our lesson from the Holocaust, but has the rest of the world learned it? Today, as we see movements of racism and antisemitism growing, the threat of hate is our motivation to act.

The Abraham Accords are not just a normalization treaty to build our relationship between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Israel. It is a peace that is based on shared values and a vision of tolerance, with a shared mission to spread the message that this is the only way to fight all kinds of racism, including antisemitism.

"There will be no victory of light over darkness as long as we do not stand for the simple truth that instead of fighting darkness, we must increase light,” Aaron David Gordon said.

The eyes of the entire world are looking at us. This is why we designed the "Leaders of Tomorrow" initiative. Young Emiratis, Bahrainis, Moroccans and Israelis that build trust and friendship, leaving differences aside and focusing on our similarities – we are becoming the light that our families have waited centuries for.

Tefillin Discovered in Hidden Bunker in Warsaw Ghetto

A bunker containing 100-year-old tefillin (phylacteries) hidden from the Nazis in World War II has been discovered in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto.

In recent years, Polish authorities have begun to demolish buildings inside the Warsaw Ghetto to turn them into residential buildings in a process of urban renewal. Following one such demolition, construction workers discovered an entrance to a bunker dug in preparation for the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. One of the Polish construction workers on the site who entered the bunker to clear it out discovered 10 phylacteries that had been hidden behind books and other items.

Hearing of the sensational discovery from their local contacts, European emissaries of the Shem Olam Faith and the Holocaust Institute for Education, Documentation and Research secretly contacted the construction workers. Following lengthy negotiations and a commitment to keep the transaction secret from Polish authorities, the phylacteries were handed over to the emissaries. They recently arrived in Israel, where they were transferred to the institute for disinfection and conservation.

Shem Olam announced it had the phylacteries ahead of a conference it is set to hold to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The virtual conference, which will be open to the public, will include panels on the memory of the Holocaust from an international perspective and will be attended by politicians, spiritual leaders, rabbis and historians from around the world.

According to Shem Olam director Rabbi Avraham Krieger, “The discovery of 10 phylacteries concentrated in one place testifies to the Jewish lifestyle they maintained in the ghetto. Despite the horrors and the cruel reality in which they lived, they continued to observe the customs and tradition they grew up with.”

History Extra podcast: Searching for freedom after the Holocaust

Rosie Whitehouse tells the story of a group of Holocaust survivors who sailed to Palestine in 1946, in defiance of the Royal Navy

Author and journalist Rosie Whitehouse discusses her book The People on the Beach, which tells the story of a group of Holocaust survivors who sailed from Italy to British Mandate for Palestine in 1946, taking on the might of the Royal Navy in the process.