Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, March 05, 2021

03/05 Links Pt2: The grotesque myth of Jewish privilege; Netanyahu slams ‘SNL’ joke about COVID-19 vaccine efforts; BDS Cornel West and Stealth Anti-Semitism at Harvard

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The brouhaha over defining Jews as an ethnic minority

The real confusion, as the beleaguered Cohen observed on "Politics Live," arises because many people believe Judaism to be instead merely a religion.

They fail to grasp that it encompasses not just religious faith but peoplehood and that in ancient times, the Jewish people also constituted a nation in their own Jewish kingdom. The failure to understand this, coupled with the mistaken view that Judaism is merely a private, confessional faith like Christianity, is partly why so many people believe the Jews are interlopers in Israel.

It's why they make the false distinction between Zionism, which they condemn as a colonialist political ideology, and Judaism, which they fawningly sentimentalize, disdain or disregard altogether as merely a religion. The fact that this leaves secular Jews stranded in no-man's-land is why those Jews in particular desperately hang on to the ethnic minority label as their badge of identity.

Rather than acknowledge the unique characteristics of the Jewish people as a source of benefit to the wider world, the difficulty of fitting them into generally accepted categories unfortunately encourages suspicion and fear.

In the West, many assume that ethnic minorities must be dark-skinned and somehow "foreign." So the fact that most Western Jews are pale-skinned means they don't fit the template of an ethnic minority. And the notion that Judaism is both religion and peoplehood feeds the paranoid suspicions of the anti-Semite that the Jews are slippery customers who change their shape at will and thus hide in plain sight.

Jewishness is difficult to define at the best of times. Anti-Semitism is not only now running rampant in the West; worse still, both this victimization and the nature of Jewish distinctiveness itself are being widely ignored or rendered invisible.

So it's hardly surprising that the questioning of the Jews' minority status that erupted this week has rubbed already exposed Jewish nerves raw.

The grotesque myth of Jewish privilege

The BBC’s flagship politics programme, Politics Live, featured a bizarre debate on Monday on the topic of whether or not Jews are an ethnic minority. Apparently, this was open to question because some Jews have reached positions of power and influence.

I am genuinely saddened that the following needs explaining – but it clearly does: groups do not cease to be ethnic minorities as they become more affluent and upwardly mobile. It may be inconvenient to simplistic identitarian narratives, which present society as a story of majority-on-minority structural oppression. But being materially deprived is not a necessary condition for being categorised as an ethnic-minority group. And successful, high-achieving individuals can still face real-life discrimination on the basis of their membership of an ethnic-minority group.

When discussing so-called Jewish privilege, it is important to note that elements of the UK’s Jewish population are relatively deprived. In recent times, the rate of child poverty and material deprivation has grown at an alarming rate within Britain’s strictly Orthodox Haredi communities. Studies have put this down to a ‘potentially toxic mix’ of large families and a relative lack of focus on secular educational qualifications, in favour of a highly observant religious lifestyle which is distanced from modern technology. Orthodox Haredi children are far from likely to be living a life of privilege. Yet the notion of ‘Jewish privilege’ shows us that these forms of child poverty are not commonly known and are barely discussed.

Irrespective of socio-economic status, Jewish populations at large have been subjected to the political mainstreaming of anti-Semitic beliefs. The election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party will forever be a stain on modern British political history. Labour was once a natural party for many of Britain’s Jews. But Jewish politicians such as Luciana Berger and Louise Ellman left the party due to anti-Semitism. Ellman served as MP for Liverpool Riverside for 22 years and was a Labour Party member for 55 years.

These failings resulted in the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – a body created under a Labour government – finding the party responsible for three breaches of the 2010 Equality Act: political interference in anti-Semitism complaints, failure to provide adequate training to those handling anti-Semitism complaints, and harassment. Before Labour’s disastrous performance in the 2019 General Election, a survey revealed that 47 per cent of British Jews would seriously consider leaving the UK if Corbyn became prime minister.

Israeli PM Netanyahu slams ‘SNL’ joke about COVID-19 vaccine efforts

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed a “Saturday Night Live” skit that claimed that Israel only vaccinated “the Jewish half” of its population.

“This is just outrageous,” Netanyahu said during an interview Thursday on “Fox & Friends” when asked about the cringe-worthy comedy routine.

“It’s so false.”

“In fact, I brought vaccines and went especially to the Arab communities, the Arab citizens of Israel, and vaccinated as many as we can. I must have gone to half a dozen Arab communities already, talked with the mayors there, brought the leaders, brought the doctors there – Arab doctors,” he said.

The segment last month on the show’s “Weekend Update” prompted accusations that the joke was anti-Semitic and sparked protests outside the NBC studios.

“Israel is reporting that they’ve vaccinated half of their population. I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half,” Michael Che said.

Former state Assemblyman Dov Hikind was among those blasting Che at the time for the skit’s ignorance.

“But Michael Che or whoever wrote that ‘joke’ is obviously also ignorant of fact that Israel has Arab citizens who’ve received the vaccine according to the same qualifications as Jews!,” he wrote on Twitter.

Why do medical dramas perpetuate stereotypes of Orthodox Jews? - opinion

Why are these shows glorifying medical malpractice and the denial of religious rights? “House” outright equates being religious with mental illness, and a throwaway line in the “Grey’s Anatomy” episode asks why anybody would bother with Orthodoxy — “why couldn’t you be plain old Reform like everyone else we know?” In each case, Orthodoxy is portrayed as unreasonable, as a conflict that must be overcome.

So many things about these episodes make me angry. Why do none of these Jewish characters ever call and consult their rabbis? That would be the first thing most frum people would do when facing a complicated medical or ethical issue. And why are these shows making broad, sweeping, uninformed claims about things like kashrut or the use of birth control in religious communities?

These examples aren’t as dangerous as the clip from “Nurses,” which portrays religious Jews as horribly Islamophobic and misogynistic — a storyline that surely doesn’t help Hasidim in a climate that is already so hostile toward them. But each of these episodes frame Orthodoxy as backward and unwilling to change, and frame Orthodox people as fanatics willing to die for their bigoted beliefs.

The writers fail to understand Orthodox Judaism while relying on Orthodox Jews as a cheap plot device. Maybe they look at the huge number of mitzvot (commandments) that are observed by Orthodox Jews and conclude that it’s a rigid, unchangeable structure. They don’t understand that breaking Shabbat to save a life is not only allowed but mandatory.

In our tradition, there are only three sins you must die for committing: idolatry, murder and adultery. The concept of pikuach nefesh (saving a life) overrides virtually every commandment. Judaism values the sanctity of human life over almost everything else. Your rabbi would encourage you to take a porcine valve or the bone graft. My mother likes to quote one of her favorite rabbis quite regularly. She says: We’re meant to live by our Judaism, not die by it. It’s about time these TV shows got that memo.

I understand the need to write good TV and create conflict. I understand (although do not agree with) the desire for out-of-the-box, exotic characters. But if you cannot construct a story without misunderstanding and misrepresenting an entire demographic of people, then it’s simply a story you have no right to tell.

Israel had no problem vaccinating Palestinians the same as Israeli citizens during 1970 cholera outbreak

In 1970, there were cholera outbreaks throughout the Middle East, and that included Israel and Gaza.

In August, to forestall any outbreak, Israel required any Palestinians who were traveling to and from Jordan to be inoculated.

But the disease did make it in, with sometimes fatal results.

When things got bad in Gaza, Israel vaccinated every single person in UNRWA camps.

JTA, December 4, 1970:

Four new cholera cases were diagnosed in the Gaza Strip today, bringing the number of cases registered with health officials to 152. Public Health authorities characterized the cholera situation in the Gaza Strip as extremely serious. All the 200,000 refugees living in camps have been inoculated but even inoculated persons have contracted the disease. Health officials noted that the serum against cholera is not 100 percent effective. The officials stated that they cannot apply the methods that have been so successful in Jerusalem to the Gaza Strip because it has proved impossible to trace and isolate all possible contacts of every cholera infected person. As a result, there are latent cholera carriers in refugee camps who cannot be diagnosed because they have been inoculated, but who pass the germs on until they find a person whose inoculation was unsuccessful. Health authorities are now trying to devise various ways and means to get the cholera in the Gaza Strip under control.

Israel consulted with WHO in order to come up with the best ideas, and it implemented them. Because only Israel was responsible for the well-being of the Palestinian Arabs, so it was obvious that this was Israel's responsibility.

If Israel's position nowadays is "vaccine apartheid," then all the more so should Israel have not cared in 1970!

But of course the only problem today is the false accusations, not Israel's actions, which are fully in line with both international law and morality.

03/05 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Biden abandons Middle East peace; French police prevent stabbing attack at Jewish school in Marseille; No Justice for Women Killed in Gaza

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Biden abandons Middle East peace

The Trump administration was on the verge of securing a peace agreement between Israel and Indonesia in its final weeks in office, according to a former senior Trump administration official involved in the efforts. The official divulged that the negotiations between Israel and the world's most populous Muslim state were run by then-President Donald Trump's senior adviser Jared Kushner and Adam Boehler, then-head of the US's International Development Finance Corporation.

Israel was represented by then-Ambassador Ron Dermer and Indonesia by Minister Mohamed Lutfi. To secure peace, Boehler told Bloomberg News last December, the US would be willing to provide Indonesia with an additional "one or two billion dollars" in aid. Indonesia was interesting in Israeli technology and even wanted the Technion to open a campus in Jakarta. It wanted visa-free travel to the Jewish state and Arab and US investment in its sovereign wealth fund. Israel wanted Indonesia to end its economic boycott of the Jewish state. Direct flights from Tel Aviv to Bali were on the table.

The advantages of peace between Israel and Indonesia for both sides are self-evident. But such a peace would also pay a huge dividend to the US in its burgeoning cold war with China. An expanded strategic and economic partnership with the archipelago and ASEAN member would be a setback for China's efforts to dominate the South China Sea, particularly with Indonesia playing a role in an Islamic-Israeli alliance led by the US.

"We got the ball on Indonesia and Israel to the first-yard line," the official explained. Unfortunately, the Biden administration has dropped the ball on the ground and walked off the field.

On the surface, the Biden administration is interested in promoting peace. President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have praised the Abraham Accords, as well they should.

For 26 years, the Arab conflict with Israel was ignored and left to fester. Then suddenly, in Trump's last year in office, the situation was reversed as four Arab states rapidly normalized their ties with Israel. Expanding the accords to Indonesia, with its massive population and strategic location outside the Middle East would transform a strategic regional shift into a game-changer throughout Asia.

But despite the strategic logic of expanding the Abraham Accords and the praise Biden and Blinken have given them, starting in its first week in office, the new administration's actions have served to undermine the accords by removing their American foundations.

No Justice for Women Killed in Gaza

The Family and Child Protection Department seeks to protect women who are subject to violence that poses a threat to their lives, by sending them to care centres or safe houses, until proper solutions have been found and reconciliation ensures they are not harmed.

Barsh attributes domestic violence and family disputes to the abuse of drugs on the part of the aggressors. She says society in Gaza is conservative, and crime is not a common occurrence. She adds that not all murders have motives, as in some cases people are killed by stray bullets.

The deaths of women in mysterious conditions in Gaza are ongoing. In every story of a new victim, there are details that people know nothing of except for what is said in the first hours following the crime.

Between the questions ‘Why was she killed?’ and ‘Did she deserve to die?’, the victims die twice, while the killers walk the streets with impunity thanks to a law that pulls their necks out of the gallows, and a society that accepts them again and sometimes hails them as heroes.

Every year, the number of missing women increases; some are murdered, some are said to have committed suicide, others die from a stray bullet or in mysterious circumstances. After the first news on the fate of the killer, the wave of public anger against them subsides. This continues in a vicious circle.

For the past ten years, women’s institutions in Palestine have demanded the enactment of a family protection law in the Palestinian Territories. However, this is strongly objected to by some lawyers and members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, who have signed a petition rejecting the law. There have also been demonstrations rejecting it by some communities in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

This opens the door to doubts about the seriousness of the denouncements of the killing of women on the ground of defending honour, and the rejection of violence against women.

French police prevent stabbing attack at Jewish school in Marseille

French police arrested a man who tried carrying out a stabbing attack at a Jewish school in Marseille, France on Friday morning, French media reported.

The attacker was turned away by the Yavne School security, made up of parents who serve as security on a volunteer basis, the Jewish Agency noted. The institution was immediately locked down with the students inside to ensure their safety. A police patrol car has been set up in front of the school building.

French police forces were alerted immediately, and instructed Jewish sites throughout the city to tighten security in light of the attempted attack.

After turned away from the school, the attacker tried to stab Jewish shoppers at a kosher supermarket in the city, where he was once again prevented from attacking anyone by the same security personnel.

"While the coronavirus has silenced the world in many ways, it has not silenced antisemitism, or the resulting danger for Jews," said Chairman of the Jewish Agency Isaac Herzog.

#Marseille Interpellation de l'assaillant armé de l'école juive et l'épicer cacher pic.twitter.com/oNGJTiGvMy
— Pierre Sautarel (@FrDesouche) March 5, 2021

Leftist antisemitism illustrated: Jewish Currents embarks on a Nazi-like attack on "Jewish Power"

The editor of Jewish Currents tweeted, "At @JewishCurrents, we are launching a dedicated investigative reporting fund to do hold Jewish institutional power to account."

The article he links to says that the target of these one-sided "investigations" include:

Jewish communal funding, Jewish communal institutional accountability
Israel/Palestine and its intersection with US politics and Jewish communal politics
Dark money organizations
Israel-advocacy lobbying
#MeToo in the Jewish community or progressive spaces

It is pretty clear that the point of this initiative is to find dirt about Jews and Jewish institutions. The type of dirt isn't important as long as the targets are Jews and purported "Jewish power."

And the purpose of the investigations isn't to help fix any problems inside those institutions, but to publicize Jewish evil as widely as possible:

Your story should attempt to:

Hold those in power accountable by investigating important issues that are not covered, or not covered sufficiently, elsewhere.
Effect change in public attitude, policy, and conversation via your reporting.
Generate news-cycles based on those reports.

This is virtually identical to these guys who protest "Jewish power" and Israel outside a Maryland synagogue every week, but in a somewhat more respectable way:

The myth of Jewish institutional power and assumed corruption is really a slightly warmed over version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And today's far-Left "As-A-Jews" enthusiastically embrace the worst antisemitic philosophies of the past century.

But I suppose it is all mere criticism of Israel.

I wonder how an investigation into David Klion's affiliations would come out. He has been an active Twitter member since 2009, but he has erased all of his tweets before 2020. What is he hiding?

(Since Jewish Currents is paying $1 a word for these "investigations," this essay exposing a "Jewish" institution as functionally antisemitic should be worth over $250.)

For decades, Air Sinai has operated with only one route: between Cairo to Tel Aviv. It is a subsidiary of EgyptAir that was created for that one purpose.

Fearful of criticism from its fellow Arab countries, Egypt didn't want to see its flagship airline visible at Ben Gurion Airport. AirSinai was created in 1982 specifically to avoid having EgyptAir fly to Israel. Their planes have no markings at all - no logo, no flag.

It was a clear message that Egypt is embarrassed at having any relations with Israel at all.

But now that Israel's airport is receiving flights from the UAE, Bahrain and soon Morocco, EgyptAir has changed its tune.

EgyptAir is set to meet with Israeli officials next week to discuss having direct flights under the EgyptAir name, and to triple the number of daily round trips from one a day to three. It will also now offer connecting flights for Israelis to destinations worldwide from Cairo, which could not be booked through AirSinai.

This is another small but significant way that the agreements between Israel and four Arab countries last year are having very real and major effects in the rest of the Arab world.

Israel's cold peace with Egypt and Jordan never had those effects. They were looked upon in the Arab world as arm twisting by the US at best, treasonous at worst.

But this new wave of agreements has broken the Arab consensus at officially hating and marginalizing Israel.

The peace dividend can only come when both sides truly want peace. Egypt may be finally getting that message, only forty years too late.

From the UN Development Programme:

One of the major issues affecting water utilities in the State of Palestine, and developing countries, in general, is the considerable difference between the amount of water supplied into the distribution system and the amount of water billed to consumers - or Non-Revenue Water (NRW). NRW is attributed to either real losses related to water leakage during pumping, storage and transmission in network pipes or apparent losses due to theft or illegal connections, metering inaccuracies or unbilled consumption.

According to the Water Sector Regulatory Council (WSRC) in the State of Palestine, the average rate of 33% NRW accounts for US$45 million of more than 85 million cubic meters of fresh water lost annually that would have been utilized to relieve part of water scarcity and insufficient supply.

If they are losing 33% of their water because of leaks and other inefficiencies, that means that fixing those problems would increase the amount of drinking water available by 50%.

If only they had some experts nearby that they could ask to help them....

In an area where water is “liquid gold”, they use high tech monitoring to discover leaks in water systems so that they can be found soon and fixed. Water system leaks can occur at any point from main feeder lines to distribution and service pipes that convey water to homes and businesses. Leaks can range from tiny (at the time) pressure leaks to large cracks and can add up quickly. For example, a one-eight inch crack in a pipe at 60 pounds of pressure can lose more than 3800 gallons per day. Because of this, water leakage rates around the world are high (In the UK, it is estimated that water losses are more than 3 billion liters per day). Israelis have invented and applied technology to find and stop leaks when they are small. This commitment accounts for Israel’s leakage rate of 7-8% on average, the lowest in the world.

Israel has a number of companies that specialize in detecting and preventing water leaks. If the Palestinians would ask, they could get eager graduate students from Israel more than willing to work with them to fix their issues.

But they won't. The reason is the same as the reason that they are not asking Israel for COVID-19 vaccines - because asking for help from the people they tell their kids are genocidal racists is shameful.

People who say that Israel is the reason there is no peace in the Middle East don't want to know the truth: the Palestinians do not want peace, they do not want "normalization," they do not want Israel to help them in any way whatsoever unless it can be painted as a concession from the Jews.

(h/t Irene)

03/04 Links Pt2: J Street and the Problem of Palestinian Anti-Semitism; Marc Lamont Hill’s Vile Antisemitism and Duplicitous New Book; Netanyahu on COVID in Israel: It’s behind us

From Ian:

J Street and the Problem of Palestinian Anti-Semitism

J Street's May 2018 condemnation of Abbas was a rare and impressive criticism of a figure whom J Street had almost never previously criticized. Publicly challenging a leader whose policies you generally support is never easy. At the time, some skeptics, myself included, wondered if the condemnation was sincere, or was just a quick gesture intended to make J Street look reasonable but with no intention of actually confronting Palestinian anti-Semitism.

If J Street wants the Jewish community to believe that its opposition to Palestinian anti-Semitism is sincere, it must insist that Abbas officially recant his speech, withdraw his anti-Semitic book from circulation, and eliminate anti-Semitic statements from the PA-controlled media and schools.

When I say "recant," I don't mean a mealy mouthed statement like the one Abbas issued in 2018, following the international uproar over his anti-Semitic remarks. "If people were offended by my statement in front of the PNC, especially people of the Jewish faith, I apologize to them," Abbas said. That wasn't a genuine apology. Not even close. The problem with Abbas's speech was not that some people took offense (as if they were being thin-skinned and overreacting); the problem was that what Abbas said about Jews was wrong, vile, and bigoted. That's what Abbas has to admit, and recant.

Admitting he was wrong is vitally important, in order to send a message to the Palestinian public that the anti-Semitic lies they have been hearing all these years – in their leader's speeches and books, and in their media and schools – were wrong.

Only when the Palestinians, starting with their leaders, genuinely give up their anti-Semitism, can we take seriously claims by Dylan Williams and J Street that "moderate Palestinian leaders" exist with whom the United States should interact.

Easy way to prove that. The Democrat-controlled House should take up and pass Sen. Cruz's antisemitism resolution from the 116th Congress, which the Senate passed unanimously, that singularly condemns antisemitism as a unique manifestation of hatred. https://t.co/Bzg1nWFxkH
— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) March 4, 2021

Steven Emerson: Marc Lamont Hill’s Vile Antisemitism and Duplicitous New Book

Hill has only leaned in further to antisemitic conspiracy theories, such as repeatedly invoking the inflammatory and false accusation that a police exchange program between Israel and the United States leads to police killings of Black people in America. In 2018, he said: “But again, there’s a relationship between the two. The New York City Police — they’re killing us. But they’re being trained by Israeli security forces. [Host: “Really?”] Yes! They’re being trained — New York City Police and in other cities as well. So there’s a connection between the two.”

In October, the IPT exposed this narrative about police exchanges as a big lie, in the IPT series called “House of Lies.”

It’s also a claim that even an ideological ally of Hill — Jewish Voice for Peace — now says is antisemitic, and even admits to being inaccurate: “Suggesting that Israel is the start or source of American police violence or racism shifts the blame from the United States to Israel. … It also furthers an antisemitic ideology … Taking police exchanges out of context provides fodder for those racist and antisemitic tropes.”

All of this context makes it abundantly clear that Hill’s call for “a free Palestine, from the river to the sea” is a call to erase the Jewish state of Israel.

Hill now finds his infamous UN comments a joking matter — publicly, at least, so as to distract from the true meaning of his comments and to diminish the cause of his firing from CNN. At an April 2019 talk he gave at the University of Houston, he said: “I said, ‘we must do what justice requires.’ And justice requires ‘a free Palestine.’ Then there was like six other words. I can’t remember what they were…(laughs) ‘From the window to the wall…’ I don’t know. (laughs). And this idea of ‘from the river to the sea’ became the whole story.”

For good reason.

Hill’s record unambiguously shows that he has not stopped advocating for the destruction of Israel. He just tries to camouflage his antisemitism through a campaign of lying and denial, disguising his scandalous hatred of Jews in the form of a policy book that even “reputable reviewer” Kirkus Reviews falls for when praising his book as a “clear and evenhanded analysis.”

No.

As former US ambassador to Israel (under the Obama administration) Daniel Shapiro tweeted when he first heard Hill’s “from the river to the sea” comments in 2018: “This is disgusting. Calling for the elimination of Israel is anti-Semitic…”

Hill’s book is duplicity at its finest.

Beginning of a new era in Israeli-Arab relations?

On October 2, 1947, weeks before the partition vote that would signal the beginning of an Arab war against the Jews of Palestine, Ben Gurion wrote, “This is our native land; it is not as birds of passage that we return to it. But it is situated in an area engulfed by Arabic-speaking peoples, mainly followers of Islam. Now, if ever, we must do more than make peace with them; we must achieve collaboration and alliance on equal terms …. Talk of Arab Jewish amity sounds fantastic, for the Arabs do not wish it… they want to treat us as they do the Jews of Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus. (Nevertheless) history has … set conditions … which will compel Arab and Jew to work together…

For most of the past seven decades, Ben Gurion’s words have seemed hopelessly optimistic as one war followed another and Arab acceptance of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state seemed forever out of reach. But in spite of ongoing conflict, there are signs that the situation may be starting to change.

Reasons for cynicism have been many. While Israel’s cold peace with Egypt and Jordan has held, all attempts to come to terms with the Palestinian Arabs have foundered in bloodshed and mutual recrimination. For those of us who believed that a new era was at hand in 1993 as Yasser Arafat and Yitzchak Rabin shook hands on the white house lawn, the disillusionment has been particularly bitter. The murder of Yitzchak Rabin and the upsurge of terrorism emerging from the Palestinian Territories after 2000 were coupled with the Durban declaration and a renewed attempt to convince the world that Zionism was colonialist and racist and to turn Israel into an international pariah.

Now, in just a few months, we have seen dramatic and encouraging developments in Israeli Arab relations. The normalization agreement with the United Arab Emirates has led with lightning speed to booming economic and political contacts. The dissatisfaction of Israeli Arabs with the Joint List as articulated by the Mayor of Nazareth has been fuelled in part by their stand against the UAE peace agreement, which is popular with many of their Israeli Arab supporters. As the new ambassador from the United Arab Emirates takes up his post and Israelis prepare once again to go to the polls, perhaps at long last we are seeing the beginning of that era of Arab Israeli collaboration foreseen by David Ben Gurion.

Bibi Mulls Courting Israeli Left By Emulating Biden, Sniffing Women's Hair (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Caesarea, March 4 - Israel's incumbent prime minister floated the idea today of appealing to segments beyond his traditional right-wing base by adopting some behaviors of the center-left American president, such as standing behind women on stage at public functions and immersing his nose in their coif to inhale the scent of their shampoo.

Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud hinted in an interview at his seaside home in this ancient Herodian city Wednesday that his electoral approach has shifted in this campaign, including an unprecedented effort to reach out to Arab citizens, and in the concluding weeks of the campaign he intends to expand that outside-the-box thinking to include left-wing voters by imitating Joe Biden's women's-hair-sniffing displays. The elections are scheduled for March 26, the fourth such contest in two years.

"We obviously need to avoid the paralysis and despair that come with an inconclusive election outcome," explained the premier, who has now served longer than any other in Israel's history. "That will require changing the way things are done to attract votes. My policies have actually been more or less indistinguishable from a left-wing government: I haven't confronted the growing hegemony of the courts and prosecution; I haven't made good on promises to demolish illegal villages; I haven't addressed discriminatory enforcement in different demographic sectors, favoring non-Jews over Jews; I haven't done anything about tens of thousands of illegal migrants from Africa; I've instructed the military to take a soft approach to Hamas violence; I've continued to allow the terrorism-inciting, violence-glorifying Palestinian Authority to receive tax revenues and goods."

"In short," he continued, "it's clearly not my policies these voters oppose, so maybe it's my personal behavior. But if I were to adopt some of the unmistakable affectations of, say, the current American president, a Democrat, that might resonate better with otherwise-left-wing members of the electorate, and the mandate to form a government under my leadership this time around will prove more convincing and longer-lasting. I've known Joe for a long time and been able to see him in action, in addition to all the footage available of him, and I have to say I'm leaning towards the whole sniffing-women's-hair tendency has a special hold on my imagination." No Israeli government has lasted its full term in decades.

Netanyahu revealed he has mooted other "Bidenisms" he can also adopt to serve the same purpose, such as putting illegal migrants in cramped quarters and calling them "overflow facilities" and "definitely not cages."

(h/t Zvi)

03/04 Links Pt1: ICC undermines its own legitimacy; Blinken: US stands with Israel, ICC lacks jurisdiction to hold investigation; Nikki Haley: Joe Biden Is Going Backward at the United Nations

From Ian:

ICC undermines its own legitimacy

It is not justice the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda is after. Are there not enough real war crimes around the world? Hamas has sworn in its treaty to eradicate Israel down to the very last Jew. It launches tens of thousands of missiles at our citizens and uses its citizens as human shields, yet only Israel is barred from defending itself. The Palestinian Authority supports our killers with its budgets, a sort of family insurance for all those who want to harm us, but Israel is the problem. This is a moral disgrace under legal cover.

For months, the Foreign Ministry, including all of its emissaries and ambassadors, as well as the Prime Minister's Office have been working to blunt the outrageous determination by two justices at The Hague against the minority opinion of the head of the tribunal that played into the hands of a prosecutor overly eager to build her reputation at Israel's expense. Even when the court ruled it had the jurisdiction to open a war crimes investigation against Israel, and although we told policymakers in Italy that Bensouda had not yet decided to open an investigation, something that was true at the time, I said in deliberations at the Israeli Embassy in Italy it was clear she would announce the opening of an investigation precisely because Bensouda was nearing the end of her tenure. This was also the reason she chose not to handle other cases pertaining to Nigeria and Ukraine. Bensouda had to think of her next career move, and hatred of Israel has always been a good catalyst for advancing one's career.

The ICC drew its moral authority from the reason for its establishment following the atrocities of World War II and the genuine crimes carried out against our people. This decision harms its legitimacy and the reasons for which it was established because it is a politicization of the court and morality to be used against Israel.

The ICC's crude interference in Israel's affairs when Israel is not a member-state and Palestinian affairs when they do not have a state is an attempt to force the semblance of a solution on a yearslong conflict that has left cultural, religious, and historical scars. The cruel irony is that now, at a time when moderate Arab states have understood they cannot give in to the Palestinian refusal to move forward on the normalization of ties with Middle Eastern states when all that is needed is confidence-building steps, in walks the ICC and gives the warmongers who reject peace a prize.

The International Criminal Court Violates Its Statute

At present... the ICC renders itself irrelevant by adjudicating "national jurisdictions" perfectly capable of doing so while refusing to adjudicate or indict the world's worst violators of human rights.

The ICC has already provided its critics with plenty of ammunition to question the Court's legitimacy as a consequence of additional violations of its founding statute. Neither Israel nor the United States ratified the Rome Statute (the ICC's founding treaty). The Court therefore has no jurisdiction whatsoever over the state actions of either country.

State parties dissatisfied with the ICC's dismal record should be encouraged to discontinue financial support for the Court or to withdraw altogether from the Hague-based institution.

Meanwhile, at least four Gulf Arab states and other Muslim-majority countries appear far more concerned, with good reason, about Iran's drive for regional supremacy, while welcoming warming relations with Israel, which will prove a most loyal friend.

JINSA PodCast: The United States, Israel, and the International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court (ICC) recently made several controversial decisions regarding investigations into alleged Israeli and U.S. war crimes.
• How does a case land in the ICC?
• What are the bases of jurisdiction?
• What is the relationship between the authorization to investigate Israel and the authorization to investigate the United States?
• What does the potential politicization of the ICC mean for the realm of international law (including law of armed conflict?)?

Professor Geoffrey Corn of South Texas College of Law Houston joins host Erielle Davidson in an effort to answer these questions.

On this week's @JIPodcast, hosts @jarrodbernstein and @rich_goldberg are joined by @SenGillibrand to discuss her ties to the Jewish community, the recent allegations against Gov. Andrew Cuomo and her approach on Iran.https://t.co/HpuuNUh8pn
— Jewish Insider (@J_Insider) March 4, 2021

In his 1986 capsule review of Raphael Patai's book, The Seed of Abraham: Jews and Arabs in Contact and Conflict, John C. Campbell concludes:

The author draws some personal conclusions of his own that seem unduly optimistic, such as that the Israeli Arabs are moving through evolving cultural values to a status of equal partners in the democratic and liberal state of Israel. [emphasis added]

Is Campbell right?

In his book, Patai writes that Arabs living under foreign rule is not something new. Until World War I, most Arab countries were ruled by the non-Arab Turks, followed afterward by control under the forces of Great Britain, France and Italy in the region.

But in those cases, the Arabs were the majority population.

In Israel, in 1948, the Arabs almost overnight became a minority in a country in which for many centuries they had been the overwhelming majority even though they did not enjoy self-rule. [p. 322]

With the reestablishment of the State of Israel, not only did the Arabs become a minority -- for the first time, Arabs were exposed to the kind of non-Arab influences which few Arabs had ever experienced before.

Patai describes the compulsory education, exposure to Hebrew and integration into the Israeli workforce, as the Arabs commuted to nearby Jewish cities, towns and villages. All this brought improvements to the Arab standard of living -- and also gave the Arabs increased exposure to Israeli society and culture.

In brief, although in no segment of Israeli Arab society had things reached a stage even in the 1980s where one could speak of the onset of Arab deculturation that is, a decline of their national Arab culture, it soon became clear that what was happening was that the Israeli Arabs were rapidly becoming bicultural...At the time of this writing (1985), this process is still in full swing. [p.323]

To get an idea of how the Israeli-Arabs themselves viewed this, Patai quotes from research done by Mark A. Tessler in 1974, published as "The Identity of Religious Minorities in Non-Secular States." Tessler examines Jews in Tunisia and Morocco -- and Arabs in Israel. As a result of his research, Tessler finds Israeli Arabs to be a "non-assimilating" minority with an "unnarrowed cultural distance" between Arabs and Jews in Israel.

Tessler's evaluation is supported by these responses from the 348 Israli Arabs he interviewed:

23% said they feel more comfortable in Israel than they would in an Arab or Palestinian state

30% said it made no difference

55% considered Israel's creation in 1948 to have been illegal

But on the other hand:

53% stated the term "Israeli" described them "very well" or fairly well"

40% said they felt closer to Jews in Israel than to Arabs in distant lands such as Algeria or Morocco

As a measure of the extent of bicultural acculturation:

50% rejected the statement that it was unacceptable for a married woman to go out socially in public without he husband

Most listened to Hebrew radio and television programs as often as Arabic ones.

55% felt it was important for their children to study the history of Judaism

65% felt it was important to study the history of Zionism

78% said they would not object to their children attending a Jewish high school

Tessler writes that "the rejection by many Israeli Arabs of some aspects of traditional Arab culture is unmistakable, suggesting that the distance between Jews and Arabs in Israel is reduced in some areas" -- but then goes on to conclude that "no plausible outcome of the struggle among [the] cultural and religious facts would bring about a situation in which non-Jews can share fully the mission of the state."

But based on the positive side to some of Tessler's results, Patai interjects:

The data presented do not seem to justify this conclusion.

According to Patai, the tension between Arab and Jew is aggravated by 3 things:

o The Arab religion, tradition and history have conditioned them to have a disparaging view of Jews as dhimmis
o Never before in Arab history have they lived under Jewish rule
o An Arab's knowledge of the Koran and Islam has taught them that for a Jew to rule over Arabs is against the will of Allah and intolerable

Based on this, we might expect matters to be worse.

Why aren't they?

Arabs are also pragmatists, and, if not in thought and word, certainly in action, have always recognized and accepted the limitations of the possible. [p. 328]

Because of that Arab pragmatism, Patai still cautions that in the event of renewed hostilities, Israeli Arabs would side with their fellow Arabs if given the opportunity, seeing as at the time of the writing of his book, Arabs have still not reconciled themselves to life under Israeli rule. And material improvements to the lives of Israeli Arabs will not necessarily improve matters.

Then what will?

Israeli Arabs will have to absorb enough of the Israeli-Hebrew culture and values to erase from their psyche that age-old Arab contempt for the Jewish dhimmis...It can come about only gradually as a result of the de facto symbiosis of Arabs and Jews. [p.328]

Patai sees the contact of Israeli Arabs with Palestinian Arabs as a major factor preventing "Israelization." This is the second consequence of Israel's victory in the Six Day War, that the presence of these Palestinian Arabs and the challenges of Gaza and the "West Bank" since 1967 serves to radicalize Israeli Arabs. The other problem, which Patai mentions earlier in the book is that while Gaza and the West Bank were under the control of Egypt and Jordan, there were no expressions of independence or of establishing a Palestinian state, knowing that neither Nasser nor King Hussein would take kindly to the idea. The miraculous victory also removed that inhibition on calls for a Palestinian Arab state.

Similarly, as Patai writes in his preface to the 1976 edition of The Arab Mind (p. xxiv-xxv), the fact that Egypt was able to hold its own in the beginning of the 1973 October War, not only gave Sadat the self-confidence to pursue a peace treaty with Israel with honor -- instead of being merely a defeated foe -- but as Patai adds here, it helped create a new generation of Palestinian Arabs who actively supported the PLO.

On that score, evidence that this ominous radicalization of Israeli Arabs that Patai saw may be counterbalanced by surveys of Israeli Arabs in recent years which indicate a decrease in the identification Israeli Arabs feel as Palestinians, as noted in an earlier post, More evidence that fewer Arab Israelis identify as "Palestinian":

Survey	as Israeli	as Israeli- Arab	as Israeli- Palestinian	as Arab- Palestinian	as Arab	as Palestinian	as Religious (Muslim, Christian, Druze)
Smooha I (2012)	---	40%	40%	20%	---	---	---
Smooha II (2014)	---	32%	45%	22%	---	---	---
Shaharit (2017)	20.5%	---	---	---	28.4%	14.6%	35.8
+972 Magazine (2019)	---	46%	19%	---	22%	14%	---
JPPI (2020)	23%	51%	---	---	15%	7%	---

An apparent problem with this chart is that it does not jive with Tessler's survey that back in 1974 53% of Israeli Arabs stated the term "Israeli" described them "very well" or fairly well -- unless you include in the above chart those who see themselves as Israeli-Arab/Israeli Palestinian as well.

Patai sees the situation of Israeli Arabs as not merely a problem that needs to be solved. After all, he is a cultural anthropologist, not an old-school Orientalist.

The Israeli Arabs by acquiring modern Hebrew Israeli culture, are thereby transforming themselves before our very eyes into a radically new coinage in the Arab world: into an Arab people whose cultural physiognomy will have two sides, an Arab and a Hebrew. [p. 329]

Going a step further, he sees a "reversal" of classical Arab history itself. The Koran duality reflects Muhammad's original respect for Jews, whom he hoped to convert -- as well as his later contempt for them when they refused.

But now:

The present-day Israeli Arabs' attitude to contemporary Israel has no choice but proceeds in the opposeite direction, from the tradional Arab contempt for the Jewish dhimmis to a respect for the people of Israel which will inevitably develop as a by-product of the growing Arab familiarity with and understanding of the nonmaterial aspects of Israeli-Hebrew culture. One hardly maintains a contemptuous attitude to a people whose culture one has absorbed and values internalized. [p. 329]

The importance of Patai's analysis is that he provides a view not only of the enormity of what Israeli Arabs are experiencing, but also of the slowly progressing success of their integration into Israeli society, even with the bumps in the road along the way.

These days, we are witnessing this acceptance of Israel on a larger scale that Patai may not have foreseen, with the Abraham Accords and Israel's normalization with the UAE in particular, which we can see goes beyond being a joint defensive pact against Iran.

It is a rocky road, after all -- this is the Middle East after all, and nothing is easy or can be taken for granted.

But the Abraham Accords is leading to a growing relationship that itself is also affecting Israeli Arabs, demonstrating the potential for accepting Israel, not only as a neighbor in the Middle East, but as another home for Arabs in it.