Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, February 13, 2021

02/13 Links: Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Jew Who Ran Away; Pfizer CEO shares his family's tragic story during the Holocaust; Don’t stop JNF from doing its job;

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Jew Who Ran Away

Forty years ago this month, a small movie was released in England by the name of Chariots of Fire. One year later, it won the Oscar for Best Picture, defeating the out-and-out favorite, Warren Beatty’s Reds. Both were about real people; Reds tells the story of leftist journalist John Reed while Chariots is a portrait of two British runners who competed in the 1924 Olympics. Strikingly, the Academy ultimately honored a film that celebrates Christian faith and religious liberty rather than Beatty’s multi-hour tribute to a famous American Communist.

The two runners we see in Chariots are a Jew named Harold Abrahams and a devout Christian named Eric Liddell. Abrahams is a Cambridge student angered by the subtle anti-Semitism he experiences; he determines that he will “take them on, one by one, and run them off their feet.” Liddell, in contrast, competes in adherence to the advice of his missionary father: “Run in God’s name, and let the world stand back and wonder.” The two are set against each other in the hundred-yard dash to determine who will be “the fastest man on earth,” but the qualifying heat is on a Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, and Liddell refuses to run.

I have long been obsessed with the film; I have read what I can about its historical background, corresponded with its producer, and attended a staged 2012 version in the London theater. The recent death of Ben Cross, who played Abrahams, inspired me to return to it again. And the more I watch it, the more I have come to understand the terrible Jewish irony that lies at its heart.

In the film, Abrahams’s response to anti-Semitism is not Jewish pride but assimilation. We see him ebulliently belting out lyrics from the ultimate British musical, HMS Pinafore: “In spite of all temptations / to belong to other nations / he remains an Englishman.” When he is confronted at Cambridge by anti-Semitic dons who accuse him of interest only in his own glory, Abrahams indignantly insists: “I am a Cambridge man first and last, I am an Englishman first and last; what I have achieved, and what I intend to achieve is for my family, for my university, and for my country.”

All this accords with the real life of Harold Abrahams. In an interesting doctoral dissertation on “Jews and British Sport,” David Gareth Dee notes that “Abrahams claimed the most important factor in Jewish sporting success was a willingness to ‘Anglicise’ and to move away from one’s religion.” In the 1920s, the precise moment in which the film is set, Abrahams wrote an article in an Anglo-Jewish publication encouraging English Jews to ignore Jewish Sabbath restrictions in order to compete.

Pfizer CEO shares his family's tragic story during the Holocaust

Pfizer CEO Dr. Albert Bourla joined the Sephardic Heritage International on January 28th for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, where he shared his Greek Sephardic family's story of tragedy and survival during the Holocaust.

"It’s a story that had a great impact on my life and my view of the world, and it is a story that, for the first time today, I share publicly," said Bourla during the January 28 virtual event. "Many Holocaust survivors never spoke to their children of the horrors they endured," he added.

Bourla's parents were of 2,000 survivors from a community of 50,000 nearly eradicated by the Holocaust in Thessaloniki, Greece where he was born. He began by retelling the story of his father.

"My father's family, like so many others, had been forced from their homes and taken to a crowded house within one of the Jewish ghettos," recounted Bourla. "It was a house they had to share with several other Jewish families. They could circulate in and out of the ghetto as long as they were wearing the yellow star."

"But one day in March 1943, the ghetto was surrounded by occupational forces and the exit was blocked. My father and his brother (my uncle) were outside when it happened. Their father (my grandfather) met them outside, told them what was happening and asked them to leave the ghetto and hide because he had to go back inside as his wife and two other children were home. So later that day, my grandfather, Abraham Bourla, his wife Rachel, his daughter Graziella and his youngest son David were taken to a camp outside the train station and from there, left for Auschwitz. My father and uncle never saw them again," Bourla recounted.

Coronavirus: Infection down, vaccination up - cabinet to meet Sunday

The coronavirus cabinet will meet Sunday to discuss the next phase of the country’s exit strategy, as the infection rate continues to decline, and the number of people vaccinated is on the rise.

The next phase of the exit strategy is expected to include street shops, as well as a number of other arenas that could be open only to people who have been vaccinated or recovered from coronavirus.

Those areas include shopping malls, cultural and sporting events, hotel (rooms only) and gyms.

“If all goes well, we hope we can open street shops and malls, and start carefully opening cultural shows for which entry will only be allowed for green passport holders,” Health Ministry Director-General Chezy Levy said in a weekend interview with KAN.

The Health Ministry has targeted February 23 as the start of the next phase of its plan, requiring a staged exit as was hoped for in the past, so that the impact of reliefs can be monitored. Levy said that the country will only fully understand the results of the various reliefs rolled out last week in about 10 days.

“I would recommend continuing to open carefully and thoughtfully,” he said.

This is very, very concerning:

WOW: @PressSec refuses to say that Israel is an American ally.

There is literally no excuse for this. And might explain why Biden hasn't called Netanyahu yet. pic.twitter.com/EfMJNN9Ssh
— John Cooper (@thejcoop) February 12, 2021

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki gave a vague, rambling answer Friday when asked at a briefing to reporters whether the Biden administration considers Saudi Arabia and Israel to be “important allies.”

“Can you please just give us a broad sense of what the administration is trying to achieve in the Middle East?” a reporter asked — in follow-up to an earlier question asking why President Biden has yet to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“For example,” the reporter asked, “does the administration still consider the Saudis and the Israelis important allies?

Rather than saying simply, “Yes,” Psaki gave this answer, according to a White House transcript of the late-afternoon briefing.

“Well, you know, again, I think we — there are ongoing processes and internal interagency processes — one that we, I think, confirmed an interagency meeting just last week — to discuss a range of issues in the Middle East.

“We’re — we’ve only been here three and a half weeks, and I think I’m going to let those policy processes see themselves through before we give, kind of, a complete laydown of what our national security approaches will be to a range of issues,” she added.

On two consecutive days, Psaki said that the US has an important relationship with Israel. On Thursday:

The President looks forward to speaking with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He’s obviously somebody that he has a longstanding relationship with. And obviously there’s a important relationship that the United States has with Israel on the security front and as a key partner in the region

And on Friday:

It is not an intentional diss. Prime Minister Netanyahu is someone the President has known for some time. Obviously, we have a long and important relationship with Israel, and the President has known him and has been working on a range of issues that there’s a mutual commitment to for some time.

I don't think that it is a big deal that Biden hasn't called Netanyahu, but the inability to say that Israel is an ally is mind-boggling. Even if she didn't want to answer the same question about Saudi Arabia so she avoided answering about Israel, it is a big deal, because this points to Biden as being the third term of Obama, and the idea that the White House believes that a tilt towards Iran and away from US allies is a good idea is a very bad harbinger for the next four years.

Note also that even President Obama had no problem saying that the US was a strong ally of Israel.

I fully expect Psaki to walk this back on Monday but that will be looked upon as firefighting, not policy.

02/12 Links Pt2: Overwrought Nazi Analogies for Me, but Not for Thee?; Why George Washington Is a Hero to the Jews; Three BDS resolutions defeated at FSU

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: Overwrought Nazi Analogies for Me, but Not for Thee?

More generally, the American Left has spent large swaths of the past four years hysterically comparing then-President Donald Trump, whose daughter is an Orthodox Jew and who is likely the most aggressively pro-Jewish president in American history, to Adolf Hitler. It would be trite, not to mention impossible, to enumerate all the examples. The armchair sloganeering and rote analogizing were truly ubiquitous across CNN, MSNBC and the other myriad bastions of progressive media or cultural clout. It became old hat to compare Antifa, properly understood as a domestic terror organization, to the valiant American patriots who stormed the beach of Normandy on D-Day—thus equating the Trump administration with the Third Reich.

But even more egregious was then-President-elect Joe Biden's post-Capitol riot comparison of Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)—brilliant constitutional attorneys in their previous careers who, in challenging part of the 2020 Electoral College results, did something Democrats have done each time a Republican has won the presidency this century—to infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, a man who arguably has more Jewish blood on his hands than anyone besides Hitler and Heinrich Himmler themselves. Speaking two days after the Capitol riot, Biden expressly invoked Goebbels' name and accused Cruz and Hawley of helping to spread the "big lie." (Cruz, it should be noted, is by word and deed likely the single most philo-Semitic and pro-Israel member of either house of Congress.) The smear was quickly parroted by other national Democratic leaders.

Biden's slur was, in a nutshell, revolting. It is, or at least ought to be, far beneath the dignity of the leader of the free world to casually besmirch high-ranking political foes as active, literal Nazis. But Biden's remarkable Freudian slip did not occur in a vacuum; rather, it was the natural culmination of a years-long leftist campaign, which commenced in the pre-Trump era but rapidly accelerated during the 45th president's tumultuous tenure, to equate conservatism with Nazism. Perhaps some on the Left earnestly believe this, and some believe it to merely be tactically helpful. It is unclear.

What is clear is how deeply shameful the whole spectacle is. And not just shameful, but deeply hypocritical, to boot. Just ask Gina Carano, who was canceled for a post that was relatively subdued compared with Biden's abhorrent slander. Conservatives might be forgiven for wondering if Biden himself should be canceled next.

Seth Frantzman: Isi Leibler: Saving Soviet Jews and helping Israeli-Asian ties

There are many miracles that have helped propel the Jewish people through history. A look at the rise of Israel and the rescue of the Jewish people are current examples of miracles, says Isi Leibler, a central figure in modern Jewish history over the last six decades. “Nobody believed this could be possible,” Leibler, who was born in 1934 in Antwerp, said in a recent video interview from Jerusalem.

When he speaks about the impossible, he harkens back often to the rescue of Soviet Jews. “People said maybe we could get 10,000 out,” he recalls. “But over a million came out. It was a modern-day Exodus.”

For Leibler, who has been many things – businessman, activist, writer, personal statesman, campaigner for numerous crucial causes, intermediary – the rescue of the Jews of the Soviet Union was a key cause for decades. In 1964, he was given the opportunity to write about Soviet Jews for Arena, a left-leaning periodical, according to an account in Suzanne Rutland’s recent Lone Voice: The Wars of Isi Leibler. He was supposed to write only a few thousand words but instead wrote 30,000. Every writer knows the nightmare that comes next, having to cut down the manuscript. But Leibler plowed on and self-published the piece as Soviet Jewry and Human Rights.

The new biography of Leibler, which this interview is based on, took 20 years to complete and is the masterpiece of Rutland, a professor at the University of Sydney.

Why George Washington Is a Hero to the Jews

Even before the first president’s famous epistle to the Touro Synagogue, “to bigotry no sanction; to persecution no assistance,” the Jews of America knew that Washington was their man. He invited the rabbi of New York’s Shearith Israel Congregation to act as a formal clergyman at the first Inauguration. This marked the first time since the ancient fall of Jerusalem that a Jewish minister performed in an official capacity for a head of state.

In this vein, in August 1789, Congregation Kahal Kadosh Beth Shalome in Richmond, Virginia, opened the celebration of its new synagogue constitution with the toast: “The President of the United States, may his administration secure to the citizens of America the Liberty obtained by his valor.”

During the American Revolution, in the winter camps at Valley Forge, a Jewish immigrant from Prussia, Michael Hart, was a corporal in the Continental Army. His daughter wrote the following in her diary about her father’s wartime service: “Let it be remembered that Michael Hart was a Jew, practically, pious, a Jew reverencing and strictly observant of the Sabbath and Festivals; dietary laws were also adhered to, although he was compelled to be his own Shochet. Mark well that he, Washington … even during a short sojourn became for the hour the guest of the worthy Jew.”

So large has Washington loomed in Jewish hearts that this tale, absent details of the only kosher meal he is known to have had, morphed into folklore unlike any other. One iteration reads: “It is mid-winter at Valley Forge. Everyone is cold. Frostbite is widespread. Everyone has given up hope. George Washington is depressed. One night, looking for inspiration, George goes for a walk through the camp. He finds one Jewish member of the Continental Army lighting the haunkkiya … the soldier explains Hanukkah, Judah Maccabee, and everything to George, who re-finds his courage in the process — enough to stand up when the boat crosses the Delaware. Later, the first President sends our Jewish soldier a silver Menorah … as a gift of appreciation, along with a letter which says, ‘Judaism has a lot to offer the world. You should be proud to be a Jew.’”

The alert reader will note that the Delaware Crossing occurred a year before Valley Forge, one of many reasons to doubt the story’s veracity. But never mind that. This Monday, as we honor the man who has long been an inspiration to the Jews, let’s celebrate Washington’s life, legacy, and ideals. As Purim approaches with its account of the political fragility Jews have endured through the ages, let’s dedicate ourselves to the memory of that great statesman who reigns unparalleled in the annals of history for securing Jewish freedom, safety, prosperity, and the rights of all Americans. Happy President’s Day!

A number of newspapers had this story in the summer of 1920, which seems a lot like what happened in the UAE exactly a hundred years later.

Even more remarkably, in 1923 that same newspaper started issuing a weekly Hebrew supplement, "HsShofer." The newspaper said it "hopes thereby to create a better understanding and more friendly relations between the Jews and the Arabs."

02/12 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: The ICC's European puppet masters; Phillips: The absurd malevolence of the International Criminal Court; The “State of Palestine” remains a United Nations mirage

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The ICC's European puppet masters

More than 60% of the ICC's budget is funded by European governments. Germany is generally the ICC's largest or second largest funder. A German government representative quoted in a Reuters' report of Israel's request said that Germany "couldn't imagine" scaling back, much less defunding of the political court.

So without the actions of European governments like Germany, Holland, Switzerland, France, Norway, Britain and Sweden, and without the EU as a whole – the ICC would never have opened its bigoted proceedings against Israel, the purpose of which is to reject Israel's right to exist. At every point, the Europeans had the power to prevent or end the ICC's bigoted treatment of the Jewish state. And at every point, the Europeans took active steps to ensure that the targeting would continue. Indeed, by funding and directing the efforts of the likes of NGOs Breaking the Silence and Al-Dameer, (which is affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group), the Europeans were the puppet masters directing the passion play.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas criticized the ICC's ruling move in a statement he put out shortly after it was announced. Maas didn't condemn the immorality of pursuing fake war crimes allegations against an innocent nation. Rather, Maas's criticism focused on the fact that despite the efforts of the ICC and the UN, the fact remains that "Palestine" is not a state. "The court has no jurisdiction," he tweeted, "because of the absence of the element of Palestinian statehood required by international law."

This is, to be sure, the key legal problem with the ICC's ruling. But the much larger problem with the judges' decision is that the investigation is a politically motivated effort to cause material harm to Israel, as the Jewish state. Israel abides scrupulously by the rules of war, and everyone knows that. The reason German politicians like Maas should oppose the ruling is because the court's behavior is part of a larger effort to undermine international acceptance of the Jewish people's right to their state. But then, as a major funder of both the ICC and the NGOs behind the fictitious, libelous allegations, and as a state that failed to oppose the Palestinians' legally groundless bids for the status of state at the ICC and the UN, Maas clearly doesn't have a problem with the immorality of the enterprise. To the contrary, he is playing a key role in moving it forward.

In a way, the ICC's efforts to harm the Jewish state is a modern-day version of the Dreyfus trial. The Dreyfus trial was an anti-Semitic reaction against France's decision to grant the full rights of citizenship to French Jews in the framework of the Emancipation. Anti-Semitic officers in the French General Staff needed a scapegoat to blame for acts of treason they had committed. By choosing Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew, for the role, the officers enjoyed the cover and support of powerful anti-Semitic clerics, anti-Semitic intellectuals and newspaper publishers, and anti-Semitic politicians. All of the figures involved realized that by framing Dreyfus "the Jew," they advanced their efforts to discredit the idea that Jews could be full partners in French public life.

The big difference between the people that produced and directed the blood libel against Dreyfus 125 years ago and the people that are producing and directing the blood libel against Israel today is that in France at the turn of the 20th century, people were proud to attack Jews openly. Today, their contemporary successors prefer a passive aggressive approach. They pretend to oppose the efforts to delegitimize and criminalize the Jewish state while they pay for and direct them.

Melanie Phillips: The absurd malevolence of the International Criminal Court

Yet western liberals maintain that the Palestinian cause is a worthy one. That’s why the US Secretary of State Tony Blinken says the Palestinians are “entitled” to a state.

It is in fact hard to envisage any group that’s less entitled than the Palestinians, who are not only bent upon colonial occupation of Israel but support the murder of Israelis and preach deranged hatred against Jews.

Meanwhile, the British government continues to peddle the legal fiction that Israel is in illegal occupation of the “Palestinian” territories.

The west’s support of such falsehoods and injustice has incentivised the Palestinians’ rejectionism, terrorism and war against Israel. It has further encouraged them to try to bring about Israel’s destruction through “lawfare,” the strategy of deploying international law as a weapon of destruction and of which their case before the ICC is a major offensive front.

But there’s a deeper issue still which will make both the British and the Biden administration reluctant to admit the fundamental nature of the ICC’s flaws.

This is their commitment to the ideology behind its foundation — the belief that crystallised after the Holocaust that there had to be a way of bringing to justice human rights abusers who were immune from redress in their own countries. This impulse fuelled the post-war development of international law and trans-national legal tribunals.

But laws draw their legitimacy from being passed by nations rooted in specific institutions, history and culture. Without the anchor of national jurisdiction, laws can turn into instruments of capricious political power.

The ICC has no such national jurisdiction but is made up of many nations. That’s why, from its inception, it was in essence a political court.

That’s why it’s an existential foe of Israel — the principal target of some of the world’s many human rights abusers who have grasped that international law provides them with a potent weapon.

And these make common cause with American Democrats and the western political establishment through their belief in liberal universalism, the doctrine that trans-national institutions trump the authority of national ones.

The legal and moral illiteracy of the ICC’s ruling is not a temporary blip. It follows from the campaign that lies at the very core of liberal universalist beliefs: to negate the authority of the sovereign nation.

As early opponents of international law realised, however, only a sovereign nation can properly defend itself. That’s why Israel knows it must always rely only on itself. It’s a lesson that many liberal western politicians have yet to realise.

David Singer: The “State of Palestine” remains a United Nations mirage

The International Criminal Court (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber 1 decision that the ICC has jurisdiction to investigate alleged war crimes committed in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem has infuriated Israel – but should bring no joy to Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) or the United Nations which continues to support the PLO’s claim for the creation of a second Arab State in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan.

The ICC Prosecutor believes:
‘there is a reasonable basis to believe that members of Hamas and Palestinian armed groups […] committed the war crimes of: intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects (articles 8(2)(b)(i)-(ii), or 8(2)(e)(i)); using protected persons as shields (article 8(2)(b)(xxiii)); wilfully depriving protected persons of the rights of fair and regular trial (articles 8(2)(a)(vi) or 8(2)(c)(iv)) and wilful killing (articles 8(2)(a)(i), or 8(2)(c)(i)); and torture or inhuman treatment (article 8(2)(a)(ii), or 8(2)(c)(i)) and/or outrages upon personal dignity (articles 8(2)(b)(xxi), or 8(2)(c)(ii))’ (para 94)

The Prosecutor further concluded in para 94 that these potential cases would be currently admissible for prosecution once jurisdiction was established.

The Court noted:
“The identification of potential cases by the Prosecutor and her evolving investigation, which is likely to be protracted and resource-intensive, entails that the question of jurisdiction under consideration has concrete ramifications for the further conduct of the proceedings. The initiation of an investigation by the Prosecutor also means that States Parties are under the obligation to cooperate with the Court pursuant to part 9 of the Statute. It is, therefore, all the more necessary to place the present proceedings on a sound jurisdictional footing as early as possible.”(para 86)

The PLO and Hamas will be kept very busy answering the ICC Prosecutor’s enquiries regarding those Palestinian war crimes identified in para 94.

The Court further emphasised that:
“the present decision is strictly limited to the question of jurisdiction set forth in the Prosecutor’s Request and does not entail any determination on the border disputes between Palestine and Israel. The present decision shall thus not be construed as determining, prejudicing, impacting on, or otherwise affecting any other legal matter arising from the events in the Situation in Palestine either under the Statute or any other field of international law.”(para 60)

Any expectation Israel will return to the negotiating table after the PLO’s flirtation with the ICC is hard to visualise.

Ruth Wisse, a scholar of Jewish history and culture, writes about what she sees as The Dark Side of Holocaust Education, that teaching about the Holocaust might not be the cure for antisemitism that some think it is. One of the reasons for Wisse's skepticism is the way that the teaching of the Holocaust has been universalized to include all victims of persecution.

And that is a trend that took a giant leap forward when Jimmy Carter was president.

Wisse points to Carter's surprising support for the construction of the Holocaust Museum -- surprising on account of his support for a Palestinian state and the sale of F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. In fact, when the suggestion was first made to Carter, in 1977, to establish the museum, the idea went nowhere. It was not until the following year after the suggestion was made a second time that

Carter surprised a group of rabbis he was meeting in the Rose Garden by saying he had decided to appoint a commission to explore the construction of a Holocaust memorial.

A presidential aide suggested that the commission overseeing the project should not be composed only of Jews. It had to have members who represented all those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Otherwise, Congress wouldn't support it. For example, the aide insisted that the membership had to include Lithuanians because they were members of the resistance -- ignoring the fact that the Lithuanians had been a part of the problem.

Wisse comments:

One should have appreciated the leverage this gave him to steer its mission in the universalizing direction he preferred.

Eventually, Elie Weisel quit the committee because it became too politicized. And as it turned out, the only limit on universality was Carter's insistence that when it came to funding, that would have to come primarily from the Jewish community alone.

This universalization of Jewish persecution is still alive and well.

In January 2019, New York Democratic representative Carol Maloney introduced the "Never Again Education Act," which was passed near-unanimously by both the House and Senate. On May 29, 2020, the bill was signed into law by Trump, authorizing $2 million annually in support of Holocaust education for 5 years.

But just 3 months after Maloney introduced the bill, Democrats in Congress responded to antisemitic comments by Ilhan Omar by putting together a resolution condemning antisemitism generally, along with anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry against other minorities as well.

Now, the generalizing of antisemitism is being taken one step further, that anyone can speak about and define antisemitism.

In 2017, The New School invited Linda Sarsour to be on its panel to discuss antisemitism. In case you may have forgotten, that would be --

Linda Sarsour, who opined that “nothing is creepier than Zionism,” praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and believes one cannot support the right of Jews to a homeland of their own and still be a feminist.

Perhaps they were just looking for the voice of experience.

Of course, if you can advise Jews on what is and isn't antisemitism, there is no reason to stop there:

In fact, why should Sarsour be the only non-Jew who can lecture Jews on what is -- and isn't -- antisemitism:

Who could have picked a more qualified group:

Appearing on the panel will be Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who supports a “one-state solution” in which Israel is replaced by an Arab state; Peter Beinart, the only Jewish panelist, who has openly rejected the existence of Israel in its current form; Marc Lamont Hill, who has publicly recited the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”; and Barbara Ransby, an academic who supports the antisemitic BDS movement.

And when the topic was described as dismantling antisemitism, the goal is to dismantle the claim of antisemitism:

The panel, billed as “Dismantling Antisemitism, Winning Justice,” claims in the event description that, “Antisemitism is used to manufacture division and fear. While anyone can fuel it, antisemitism always benefits the politicians who rely on division and fear for their power.”

“We will explore how to fight back against antisemitism and against those that seek to wield charges of antisemitism to undermine progressive movements for justice,” it states.??

Normally, identity politics dictates that members of a targeted group have shared life experiences which provide them with a special insight and understanding that outsiders don't fully understand when it comes to the racism that group suffers.

But if that does not apply to Jews, maybe it is no longer a thing. If non-Jews can now define antisemitism, maybe in this progressive age of intersectionality now all persecuted groups fully understand and identify with all other persecuted groups.

Not according to Sarsour.

When Marc Lamont Hill started tweeting earlier this week about BDS, he went so far as to claim that even the Palestinian Arabs themselves who work for Israelis and enjoy superior wages favor boycotts against Israel.

Anila Ali, a Democratic activist and a Muslim, challenged him to debate the issue, a challenge Hill declined.

Elder of Ziyon notes that Sarsour piped in.

She's not Palestinian and she will never speak for us.

But Sarsour would have no problem with Ali speaking for Jews.

So according to identity politics, when minorities cry racism -- they are to be believed.

Yet when it comes to Jews, when they cry racism -- they are up to something.

And what could be more sneaky and underhanded than to describe what antisemitism looks like using the IHRA working definition of antisemitism?

Rejecting a formal definition of antisemitism are those -- not even necessarily non-Jewish -- who warn Jews to just cut it out, because unlike those minorities whose claims of racism are initially assumed to be true,

By contrast, the Livingstone Formulation, named in 2006 after the then Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, is the standard articulation of the opposite assumption. The Livingstone Formulation says that when people raise the issue of antisemitism, they are probably doing so in bad faith in a dishonest effort to silence legitimate criticism of Israel. It warns us to be suspicious of Jewish claims to have experienced antisemitism. It warns us to begin with the sceptical assumption that such claims are often sneaky tricks to gain the upper hand for Israel in debates with supporters of the Palestinians. And this is the substantial position of the ‘call to reject’ the IHRA definition of antisemitism. [emphasis added]

Jews just cannot win:

o Discussion of Jewish persecution must include all persecutions

o Anyone can discuss and define antisemitism

o When Jews insist they must define what antisemitism is, it's a trick

o Antisemitism is being used as a way to deflect criticism of Israel

o Anyone can define antisemitism, but not anyone can define how other minorities feel

o Intersectionality is universal and encompasses all races, classes and genders into common discrimination -- except for Jews.

Maybe not all progressives are as anti-racist as they think they are.

Times of Israel reports:

Security prisoner Marwan Barghouti, widely seen as a rival to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is considering running in the scheduled Palestinian presidential elections, a close associate of his confirmed Thursday.

“Our comrade Marwan is considering the possibility, but he has not yet made a decision either way,” former Palestinian legislator Qaddura Fares said in a phone call.

Barghouti, who was a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terror group, has claimed that he is against killing Israeli civilians inside the Green Line, as if that makes him a moral person. However, he was convicted of doing exactly that - directing the shooting and grenade attack at the Tel Aviv Seafood Market that killed 3, as well as being behind the murders of Yoela Chen and Greek-Orthodox monk Georgios Tsibouktzakis.

He was also convicted of being behind a failed suicide bombing attack at the Malha Mall in Jerusalem.

There is no doubt that he is a terrorist, a murderer, and someone who targets civilians.

Yet according to the latest Palestinian polls, if he would run for president of the Palestinian Authority, he would win.

If Barghouti would form his own political party, more Palestinians would vote for his list than Fatah. If he ran against Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, he would win 61% to 37%. In a three way race, Barghouti would receive 41%, Haniyeh 32% and Abbas 25%.

The two most popular Palestinian politicians are best known as leaders of terror groups and the most popular one was convicted of five murders.

Western media is very reluctant to mention the popularity of terrorists among the Palestinian public. They don't want to paint Palestinians as terror supporters.

But the numbers are there - and they are. The two-state solution that moderate Americans and Europeans push would include one state that celebrates and supports terror. That inconvenient fact is swept under the rug by Western news media and politicians.

News articles claim Gaza gets far less electricity than it really does

There have been a spate of articles in different sites over the past week about a new solar energy project in Gaza, based on a press release by the University of Birmingham.

The articles include this quote:

Project leader Dr Raya Al-Dadah, Reader in Sustainable Energy Technologies at the University of Birmingham, comments, “Just 38% of Gaza’s electricity needs currently are met. People receive less than six hours of power per day, leaving hospitals providing only critical functions such as intensive care units. Coupled with continuous conflict, the energy crisis causes high levels of stress that affect physical, mental health and well-being.”

Forbes originally kept that quote in its article as well - and then edited the highlighted part out when it was pointed out to them.

Because it is a lie.

According to the UN OCHA-OPT, Gaza gets 14 hours of electricity a day, and that number has been continuously improving for years.

No one doubts that Gaza has a serious gap between its electricity needs and its supply. The bulk of Gaza's electricity still comes from Israeli power lines. NGOs will issue reports about how Israel is supposedly withholding electricity - B'Tselem wrote an article in October that implies that Gaza gets only four hours a day based on a small time period in the summer when Israel closed the Kerem Shalom crossing because of bomb attacks (and even then it received six hours according to OCHA, showing B'Tselem's eagerness to lie.)

But why would the head of the solar energy project lie so baldly about how much electricity Gaza gets?

No one can know for sure, but it is no surprise that she is a Palestinian herself..

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

Cartoon of the Day: No bias against Iranian nukes, please

02/11 Links Pt2: Natan Sharansky: The Doublethinkers; Black History Month: Dr. King, Black Lives Matter… and Israel; Steven Spielberg wins Israel’s Genesis Prize

From Ian:

Natan Sharansky with Gil Troy: The Doublethinkers

It was easy enough to remind myself and them who was really free and who is a scared doublethinker. All I had to do was tell some joke about the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. Thank God, there were plenty of yarns about his arrogance, his crudeness, his senility. One kidded about him forcing Soviet cosmonauts to outdo the American astronauts who landed on the moon by rocketing to the sun, then reassuring them they wouldn’t be incinerated because they’d be launched during the night. As I’d tell my interrogators a joke, I’d laugh. And, as normal Soviet doublethinkers themselves, they would want to laugh. But they couldn’t, especially if two of them were there together. Laughter would end their careers.

So they’d covered up that temporary glint in their eyes with a tantrum. They’d pound the table, shouting, “HOW DARE YOU?”

“Look,” I’d say to them calmly, “you can’t even smile when you want to smile. And you claim that I’m in prison and you’re free?”

I did this to irritate them, because they spent so much time trying to irritate me. But, mainly, I was reminding myself that I was free, as long as I could laugh or cry in accordance with my own feelings.

Over the last three decades in freedom, I have noticed that—with apologies to Tolstoy—every dictatorship is oppressive in its own way, but the doublethinkers’ mental gymnastics are all alike. The feeling of release from the fear and giddy relief when crossing the line from doublethink to democratic dissent is also universal across cultures. This understanding prompted the Town Square Test I use to distinguish between free societies and fear societies: Can you express your individual views loudly, in public, without fear of being punished legally, formally, in any way? If yes, you live in a free society; if not, you’re in a fear society.

In the West today, the pressure to conform doesn’t come from the totalitarian top—our political leaders are not Stalinist dictators. Instead, it comes from the fanatics around us, in our neighborhoods, at school, at work, often using the prospect of Twitter-shaming to bully people into silence—or a fake, politically-correct compliance. Recent polls suggest that nearly two-thirds of Americans report self-censoring about politics at least occasionally, essentially becoming a nation of doublethinkers despite the magnificent constitutional protections for free thought and expression enshrined in the Bill of Rights

To preserve our integrity and our souls, the quality of our political debate and the creativity so essential to our cultural life, we need a Twitter Test challenging bottom-up cultural totalitarianism that is spreading throughout free societies. That test asks: In the democratic society in which you live, can you express your individual views loudly, in public and in private, on social media and at rallies, without fear of being shamed, excommunicated, or cancelled? Ultimately, whether you will live as a democratic doublethinker doesn’t depend on the authorities or on the corporations that run social media platforms: it depends on you. Each of us individually decides whether we want to submit to the crippling indignity of doublethink, or break the chains that keep us from expressing our own thoughts, and becoming whole.

#OnThisDay 1986, 'Prisoner of Zion' @NatanSharansky became a free man upon his release from Soviet gulag, where he spent 9 years!

As a fellow ‘Refusenik’, Natan Sharansky is a tremendous source of inspiration & personal hero of mine, the very epitome of a modern proud Zionist. pic.twitter.com/q5IZkLXNHG
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) February 11, 2021

Coffin Problems

Luck was a defining factor in determining the fate of many in the Soviet Union, and it is the common vein that unites the subjects of this story. Yet the stories recounted here are not representative. Such stories can never be completely told because the Soviet system intentionally left much undocumented. Critical marks on examinations were often written in erasable pencil. Written exams were eschewed in favor of oral ones. Some who lived through the period do not feel they have anything to add; others may find the experience too painful to contemplate, much less talk about. Even among the small cohort described here, there is consensus on a few things but not on many others.

Kac quit his job in 1976 and applied for an exit visa to Israel. He received permission to leave quickly. He secured a position immediately at MIT where he remains today. Zelmanov eventually secured a role at Novosibirsk State and left in 1990. For his breakthrough work on a century-old problem, he was awarded a Fields Medal in 1994—the mathematical equivalent of a Nobel Prize.

Eliashberg was less lucky. He became a refusenik after his visa request was denied in 1979. He had returned to Leningrad before applying, and was forced to support himself at various temporary jobs. This promising mathematician found himself working as a night watchman at a car garage in the city. One of his friends put his own career on the line in order to secure for Eliashberg a job in an accounting software company. He remained there until 1987, when he was finally able to leave the Soviet Union. He was not sure if he would be able to rehabilitate himself as a mathematician. But he succeeded. In the decades since, he has won many of the most prestigious awards in mathematics including the Veblen, Crafoord, and Wolf prizes. Today, he is on the mathematics faculty at Stanford.

For her part, Julia Rashba recalled a poignant moment in the elevator with the MGU examiner who had failed her on the entrance exam. In many ways, she felt unprepared for what had just happened to her. She had experienced anti-Semitism in her childhood with bullies and cruel taunts. Once, as a little girl, she ran away from a day camp where the bullying was too much. She was not aware that the sorts of anti-Semitism that lived in adult institutions would be less benign. She was raised, however, to believe that even in such a discriminatory system, where her own father had experienced nearly insurmountable travails to rise to the top of the Soviet physics establishment—that she needed only to work hard and act with integrity and things should work out.

They had not. The examination she “failed” was not even for medical school, it was for a chemistry program that offered some biomedical tracks. She had hoped that she could contribute to medicine as a scientific researcher, even if she would not be allowed to be a clinician. The system would not even allow this tenuous finger hold on her dream. She recalls that the examiner, perhaps seeking absolution for the shame of what he had just done, quietly apologized and asked for her forgiveness. She refused.

Eli Lake: America in the World: Sheltering in Place

That exchange tells us a lot about the Quincy Institute. The think tank’s foreign policy agenda and arguments echo the anti-interventionism of the 1930s. Most of its scholars are more worried about the exaggeration of threats posed by America’s adversaries than the actual regimes doing the actual threatening. In May, for example, Rachel Esplin Odell, a Quincy fellow, complained that Senator Romney was overstating the threat of China’s military expansion and unfairly blaming the state for the outbreak of the coronavirus: “The great irony of China’s military modernization is that it was in large part a response to America’s own grand strategy of military domination after the Cold War.” In this, of course, it resembled most everything else.

The institute has hired staff that come out of the anti-neoconservative movement of the 2000s. Here we come to a delicate matter. The anti-neoconservatives of that era flirted with and at times embraced an IR sort of anti-Semitism: the obsession with Israel and its influence on American statecraft. Like the America Firsters, the anti-neoconservatives worry about the power of a special interest — the Jewish one — dragging the country into another war. A few examples will suffice. In 2018, Eli Clifton, the director of Quincy’s “democratizing foreign policy” program, wrote a post for the blog of Jim Lobe, the editor of the institute’s journal Responsible Statecraft, that three Jewish billionaires — Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Marcus, and Paul Singer — “paved the way” for Trump’s decision to withdraw from Obama’s Iran nuclear deal through their generous political donations. It is certainly fair to report on the influence of money in politics, but given Trump’s well-known contempt for the Iran deal, Clifton’s formulation had an odor of something darker.

Then there is Trita Parsi, the institute’s Swedish-Iranian vice president, who is best known as the founder of the National Iranian American Council, a group that purports to be a non-partisan advocacy group for Iranian-Americans but has largely focused on softening American policy towards Iran. In 2015, as the Obama administration was rushing to finish the nuclear deal with Iran, his organization took out an ad in the New York Times that asked, “Will Congress side with our president or a foreign leader?” a reference to an upcoming speech before Congress by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The National Iranian American Council’s foray into the dual loyalty canard is ironic considering that Parsi himself has been a go-between for journalists and members of Congress who seek access to Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister.

This obsession with Israeli influence in American foreign policy is a long-standing concern for a segment of foreign policy realists, who believe that states get into trouble when the national interest is distorted by domestic politics — an affliction that is particularly acute in democratic societies which respect the rights of citizens to make their arguments to the public and to petition the government and to form lobbies. The most controversial of the realists’ scapegoating of the domestic determinants of foreign policy was an essay by Stephen Walt and John J. Mearsheimer (both Quincy fellows) that appeared in the London Review of Books in 2005. It argued that American foreign policy in the Middle East has been essentially captured by groups that seek to advance Israel’s national interest at the expense of America’s. “The thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby,’” they wrote. “Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country — in this case, Israel — are essentially identical.”

Walt and Mearsheimer backed away from the most toxic elements of their essay in a subsequent book. The essay sought to explain the Iraq War as an outgrowth of the Israel lobby’s distortion of American foreign policy. The book made a more modest claim about the role it plays in increasing the annual military subsidy to Israel and stoking American bellicosity to Israel’s rivals like Iran. They also took pains to denounce anti-Semitism and acknowledge how Jewish Americans are particularly sensitive to arguments that present their organized political activity as undermining the national interest. Good for them. But the really important point is that events have discredited their claims. The all-powerful “Israel Lobby” was unable to wield its political influence to win the fight against Obama’s Iran deal. It was not able to stop Obama’s public pressuring of Israel to accept a settlement freeze. Decades earlier, it had not been able to thwart Reagan’s sale of AWACs to the Saudis. Anyone who believes in an omnipotent AIPAC is looking for conspiracies.

Impeachment, Matt Duss, what’s going on at the New York Times, the UN Human Rights Council, the ICC & Jerusalem. Our guest: ?@elianayjohnson?. Our best episode yet? You decide. Subscribe to ?@JIPodcast?. https://t.co/5JJ3Gln09D
— Richard Goldberg (@rich_goldberg) February 11, 2021

Gaza Belt Woman Always Has Cookies Baking In Case Of Hamas Tunnel Infiltrators (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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star cookies Kissufim, Southern Israel, February 11 - A resident of this pastoral community near the Islamist-controlled Gaza Strip boasted today that she maintains a stockpile of fresh cakes and pastries just to be prepared for the eventuality of being able to feed terrorists who clambered through underground passages from the neighboring coastal territory to weak mayhem.

Sophia Barnea, 60, told reporters yesterday that she takes pride in her ability to get all of her freelance and homemaking work done and still have time to bake almost every day, in case a terrorist shows up to slaughter civilians and wants a muffin and maybe a cup of tea.

"It's something I make a point of doing," she asserted, gesturing to a platter of still-warm chocolate chip cookies. "If no boys from Hamas or Islamic Jihad stop by that day, I'll eat a few, but I am watching my weight, so the rest go to the nice fellows at the guard booth and the soldiers patrolling between here and the border.

Mrs. Barnea explained that since Nimrod, her husband of 30 years, died three years ago, she has taken to finding other outlets for her nurturing instinct. "I'm allergic to cats, unfortunately," she lamented. "My friend Meira, a few doors down, she has seven or eight cats, but while I see the appeal, I just can't handle the sneezing and the teary eyes it would cause me. So I've chosen to show affection to those who might not get that kind of attention around here. I do hope they like my apple pie."

Her routine calls for a different kind of baked goodie each day. "I have a variety of things I like to make," she explained. "I cycle through them about once every ten or eleven days, but I mix it up a little, not always doing the same thing. Sometimes I switch out apples in the pie in favor of pears, or I'll make oatmeal raisin cookies on a lark if I'm running low on chocolate chips. And now and then I'll whip up a streusel-topped marble coffee cake. You never know when the bloodthirsty gang might show up!"

"If Ahmad or Mustafa or whoever prefers some chocolate chip muffins to whatever I have on hand," Mrs. Barnea continued, "I can ask them to put the massacre on hold until I whip up a batch of chocolate chip muffins real quick. Seriously, it takes more time for the oven to preheat for those than the combined preparation and baking time. And they are just heavenly right out of the oven. I hope the boys appreciate what I do for them. A simple 'thank you' will be enough when the time comes. Such nice terrorist boys."