Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, April 05, 2021

04/05 Links Pt2: The Jerusalem Declaration’s Bogus Definition of Anti-Semitism; Israel-bashing disguised as Jewish studies; Yad Vashem online exhibit emphasizes the power of family

From Ian:

Gerald Steinberg: The Jerusalem Declaration’s Bogus Definition of Anti-Semitism

By politicizing and undermining this consensus on anti-Semitism, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism and the wider counter-International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance campaigns are opening the door for even more violence targeting Israeli and Jewish institutions.

In 2016, following major attacks targeting Jewish and Israeli targets around the world, and based on earlier text adopted by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, the government-based International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) published a two-page working definition of anti-Semitism. This initiative was designed to fill the vacuum that fostered ineffective policies and willful blindness in countering the sources of hate crimes directed specifically at Jews.

The authors included a number of examples, some of which relate to Israel and the “new” anti-Zionist form of anti-Semitism, which, along with traditional sources, uses the hate-inducing language and images of the Soviet era. These include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,” applying double standards not “demanded of any other democratic nation,” using symbols “associated with classic anti-Semitism…to characterize Israel or Israelis” or comparing “contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

Since 2016, this document has been formally adopted by thirty governments, mainly in Europe, North America, and Australia, as well as by international institutions. In addition, a number of parliaments and municipalities have endorsed the text, and, in many cases, universities and other important frameworks use the definition in the form of guidelines for assessing antisemitic behavior.

But for some ideological activists—particularly Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) supporters—the Israel-related examples of anti-Semitism are unacceptable and are portrayed, or distorted, as attempts to “silence criticism” of Israeli policies, or even as “threats to democracy.” Under the banner of “progressive values,” influential groups that frequently critique Israel—including J-Street, the New Israel Fund, and American Friends of Peace Now—pushed the claim that the “codification of the IHRA working definition,” specifically its “contemporary examples,” create the potential for misuse to “suppress legitimate free speech” and prevent “criticism of Israeli government actions.”

And in Germany, of all places, a group of self-described “cultural leaders” associated with the far Left launched a highly publicized effort to rescind the Bundestag resolution that adopted the working definition and referred to BDS as a form of anti-Semitism. This group includes Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, who uses her position as head of the Center for Research on Antisemitism in Berlin to promote demonization of Israel, As Professor Jeffrey Herf has written, her center strictly avoids dealing with virulent anti-Zionism of the Soviet and East German regimes, as well as the Islamist contribution.

Reinforcing these efforts, and overlapping in a number of areas, another professionally promoted public relations campaign to undermine the IHRA consensus was launched under the heading of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA). Falsely claiming support from “leading scholars of antisemitism,” the funding source is carefully hidden, and the website—created at the last minute, with anonymous ownership—is registered in Iceland. (As is often the case, the progressive democratic values claimed by this group do not extend to funding transparency.) Ostensibly developed under the auspices of the highly ideological Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, three of the eight “coordinators” including Schüler-Springorum, as well as a number of signatories, were also leaders of the German campaign. It is not surprising that the JDA manifesto repeats much of the language in the other attacks. It is also possible that they arranged the funding.

Israel-bashing disguised as Jewish studies

It may not be news anymore when a Jewish professor bashes Israel. But there should still be outrage when a respected US Jewish academic journal publishes a virulent attack on Israel disguised as scholarship.

The journal in question, American Jewish History, is published by the American Jewish Historical Society, a distinguished scholarly organization. Its latest issue features heavily footnoted essays on topics like healthcare workers on the Lower East Side in the early 1900s and the debate among Orthodox Jews over family planning in the 1950s.

And then, sticking out like a sore thumb is Michael Fischbach's tirade against Israel, presented as a normal, scholarly book review.

Fischbach is a professor of history at Virginia's Randolph-Macon College.

He writes that the "settler movement creating a Jewish state out of 77% of Palestine/Israel" caused "the permanent exile of 80% of those who had lived there."

But the Arabs were given 78 percent of the area – the eastern two-thirds of the country – in 1922. The fact that they chose to call it "Transjordan," and then "Jordan," doesn't change the fact that at the time everyone, including the League of Nations, saw it as one, physical territorial entity. In 1948, Israel was established in just a portion of the remaining 22%, not the whole 22%.

His accusation that Israel "permanently exiled 80% of the Palestinian Arabs" is nonsense. Just read Benny Morris' book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Even Morris, who was a partisan of the far-left when he wrote it, acknowledged that the vast majority of the Arabs left the country voluntarily to get away from the battlefields. Those battlefields existed because the Palestinian Arabs, aided by five Arab armies, launched a war of aggression against the Jews. And most of the Arabs who left the country went just a few miles to the east or to Gaza (which is how they ended up under Israeli rule in 1967). It's not like they were "exiled" to Timbuktu.

Fischbach presents Israel's very creation as an act of terrible injustice. He charges that the Jews who built modern-day Israel were "replacing the vast majority of the locals in the process"; in other words, the Zionist pioneers were thieving foreigners and the Arabs were the "locals." In reality, a large portion of the Arabs in western Palestine were recent illegal immigrants from Syria, Egypt and Transjordan.

Continuing, the scholar declares that it's unfair "to berate Palestinians for their 'irredentism' and 'radical nostalgia of return', absent tangible diplomatic steps to address their grievances. … Palestinians seek a modicum of justice, and until then will continue to demand both their right to return and their right to mourn."

Yesterday, for Easter, Hamas praised the Christian community of Gaza.

A member of Hamas' International Relations Office, Dr. Basem Naeem, issued a statement on Sunday evening:

On the occasion of Easter, we wish the Christians in general, and in Palestine in particular, a happy holiday full of goodness and blessing."

We pray that when the next Easter comes, Jerusalem will be liberated.

We express our pride in the religious, cultural and social diversity that the Palestinian people have enjoyed for hundreds of years, which is based on partnership, peaceful coexistence and national responsibility.

We also express our pride in the Christian community in Gaza, which is small in number and large in value and influence, and which enjoys our pride, appreciation and full support.

In 2007, there were 3000 Christians in Gaza. After twelve years of Hamas rule, there are less than a thousand today. (The Muslim population increased by about 35-40% in that time.)

Christians often get permission to visit Bethlehem or Jerusalem on Christian holidays, and many never return. But to the media they say things are great!

As with Jews, the Islamists love them - as long as they know their place as good little dhimmis who are happy with the occasional murder or pogrom.

04/05 Links Pt1: The False Claim that Israel Is Bound to Lose Either Its Jewish or Democratic Identities; Afghanistan’s Last Known Jew Leaves for Israel; Loyalty of last Yemen Jews repaid with expulsion

From Ian:

JCPA: The False Claim that Israel Is Bound to Lose Either Its Jewish or Democratic Identities

Most Israelis consider warnings about the inevitable need to choose between being Jewish or being democratic and the urgent messages to Israel to save itself as misguided, dangerous, patronizing, condescending, and undemocratic, as well as indicative of gross ignorance of the situation in Israel and disregard for the rights of the Jewish people. These messages are seen by most Israelis as offensive, hostile, anti-Zionist, and even anti-Semitic. Most Israeli voters lean more and more toward parties that reject these exhortations.

Most Israelis would gladly change the status quo by reaching an agreement with the Palestinians, but they insist on an agreement that includes Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, as well as one that really addresses Israel's security concerns. Virtually no one in Israel envisages a situation where Israel takes complete control and extends its sovereignty over the densely populated Palestinian areas. Most of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza already live under Palestinian rule, and no one intends to dismantle the two entities that govern them.

The main obstacle to reaching a settlement to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is the Palestinian narrative. According to this narrative, the struggle against Zionism until its demise is the core identity of the Palestinian people. Israel does not deny that the Palestinian people have rights, and it is ready to share the land with them, but it does not regard the West Bank as "Occupied Palestinian Territory." For Israel, and according to the Oslo Accords, these are disputed lands, subject to negotiation of their permanent status.

Afghanistan’s Last Known Jew Leaves for Israel

The last known Jew living in Afghanistan is reported to be leaving for Israel, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“I’m going to watch TV in Israel to find out what’s going to happen in Afghanistan,” Zabulon Simantov told Arab News on Sunday.

Zabulon Simantov, 61, has announced that he will be immigrating in the fall to join his wife and their two daughters, who have lived in Israel since 1998.

Simantov chose to stay in Afghanistan to take care of the only synagogue, located in Kabul.

“I managed to protect the Kabul synagogue like a lion,” he told Arab News.

Simantov, a carpet and jewelry seller, was born in Herat, a city that was home to hundreds of Jews decades ago.

He then moved to Kabul before fleeing to Tajikistan in 1992, and then returned to live in the Afghan capital.

Following Simantov’s departure, the synagogue will close, marking the end of Jewish life in the country, which began at least 2,000 years ago.

The Afghan Jewish community is one of the oldest in Central Asia, once numbering over 80,000 members.

In 1951 the Jews were allowed to leave the country, and the majority flew to Israel. Over 10,000 Afghan Jews or their descendants currently live in Israel.

Loyalty of last Yemen Jews repaid with expulsion

The scholar SD Goiten once described Yemen’s Jews as the most Arab and Jewish of Jews. Rabbi Yahya has insisted that he is Arab before he is Jewish. He has bent over backward to show his willingness to integrate into Muslim Yemen. He has tried to fight for Jews to have seats in Parliament, said that Jewish children should go to Muslim schools, and even said he believed in Muhammad as much as Moses.

There is a name for this kind of behavior: Stockholm syndrome, or to use a word familiar to the Jewish-Muslim lexicon, dhimmi syndrome. Dhimmi describes not only the subjugated status of Jews and Christians under Islam, but a survival strategy employing flattery and appeasement.

Beleaguered Jews in Arab or Muslim countries have long expressed their hostility to Israel and loyalty to their countries of birth. Where has it got them in the long run? A one-way ticket out of the country. There are no communities left in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Libya or Algeria. In Iraq, a Jew died recently, bringing the number down to three.

It is heartening that countries like the United Arab Emirates and Morocco have chosen a different path, “normalizing” with Israel and encouraging the growth of local Jewish communities. But where are the expressions of consternation, where are the protests, the petitions, the governments and NGOs calling out those Muslim countries which have ethnically cleansed their Jews? The silence is deafening.

A series of stories in the past few weeks highlight the end of the Jewish communities in various Muslim and Arab nations.

There are now only four Jews left in Iraq, none of whom wish to be identified. There used to be 150,000.

Only six Jews remain in Yemen after 13 Jews were forced out recently - even though they were reportedly staunchly against moving to Israel. There used to be over 60,000.

The last Jew in Afghanistan is leaving, who kept watch over the empty synagogue which will now close forever. That community dates to the 7th century CE.

There are only about 10 elderly Jews left in Egypt (from 75,000 in 1948.) Less than 200 in Algeria (140,000) . An estimated 30 in Lebanon. from 24,000 in 1948. Close to zero in Syria (30,000.) Zero in Libya (formerly 38,000.) Zero in Jordan. Close to zero under the Palestinian Authority.

Morocco, which is celebrated for its tolerance towards Jews, has only about 3000 Jews remaining from a community that used to number 250,000. Similarly, Tunisia's Jewish population has plummeted from over 100,000 to 1500, and it is considered to be friendly to Jews as well. Iran trumpets its tolerance towards Jews, but 75% of Jews fled after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The relationship between Muslim antisemitism and friendliness towards Israel is impossible to ignore. Some Muslim countries that have warm relations with Israel, like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, also have thriving Jewish communities. The Jewish communities in the Gulf are starting to re-emerge publicly after the signing of the Abraham Accords.

I am seeing articles that are sympathetic to Jews occasionally being published in places like Iraq and Egypt, something that was unthinkable not too long ago. Even so, the relationship between how Muslim countries treat their Jews and how they look at Israel is too strong to be ignored.

The people who like to pretend that there is no antisemitism in the Arab and Muslim world only have to look at how the Jewish communities have fared in that world.

In 2006, the Middle East Quartet (the United States, the UN, the EU and Russia) issued a statement saying, "It is the view of the Quartet that all members of a future Palestinian Government must be committed to non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Road Map. "

Hamas, a frontrunner in the planned legislative elections, has made it explicitly clear that it has no intention of adhering to any of these commitments.

Yet none of the Quartet members have objected to Hamas being a member of the future Palestinian government.

The UN issued a statement supporting the elections with no caveat. So has the EU.

The US State Department has thrown up its hands, saying that the US cannot have a say in the Palestinian elections: "Well, the exercise of democratic elections is a matter for the Palestinian people to determine. We note that the U.S. and other key partners in the international community have long been clear about the importance of participants in that democratic process, renouncing violence and renouncing terrorism, recognizing Israel’s right to exist. But Palestinian elections are ultimately a matter for the Palestinian people to decide."

It seems that the principles of non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations - all of which Hamas has explicitly rejected - is no longer important to the Quartet.

Funny how principles can disappear like that.

The most stunning Islamic artifacts are found and preserved in Israel, despite what the Israel haters claim

For nearly twenty years, the standard anti-Israel line has been that Israeli archaeologists ignore Islamic periods - and even destroy Islamic archaeological finds - in order to look only for Jewish artifacts, for political purposes.

Anyone who has walked through the Old City in Jerusalem, or the Israel Museum, or really anywhere in Israel knows that this is nonsense. There are Islamic finds preserved all over the place, including near the holiest Jewish sites.

Now, Haaretz has an article about a cache of gold coins from the Fatimid era that has been found in Caesarea, but it also mentions how Israel is now the epicenter of Islamic archaeology:

The Caesarea hoard displayed at the Israel Museum is one of many discovered in Israel in recent years. In Tiberias a cache of no less than 700 rare bronze tools, and 81 coins from the 9th to 11th centuries was discovered. On the seabed by Caesarea other archaeologists found a hoard of 2,000 gold coins from the 11th century. In Apollonia, just north of Tel Aviv, a cache of 400 Byzantine coins was found: 108 gold coins, 200 Samarian lamps, gold coins and jewelry.

At a construction site in Yavne, builders came across 425 coins made of solid 24-carat gold from the Abbasid period, about 1,100 years ago....

In Ramle, by the White Tower, archaeologists discovered 376 gold coins more than 1,000 years old, weighing 1.6 kilograms. ...

[During the] discovery of the Tiberias hoard ..., the archaeologists uncovered a neighborhood from the Abbasid-Fatimid period (ninth to 11th centuries). And then: in a back room they found a huge pithos, a large clay storage container.
“We were astounded at what we found. We sat all night long, three archaeologists, and counted the amazing contents,” Gutfeld tells: more than 330 bronze lamps; games; musical instruments and cooking gear. All were beautifully decorated.”

The pithos also contained 42 candlesticks of the highest quality of manufacture. “We knew already that there’s one such candlestick in a museum in Kuwait and they’re very proud of it. Imagine what we felt when we found 42 of them,” he says. “That same night we realized that we had found the largest Islamic metal hoard in the world. Suddenly you see proof that Tiberias was a commercial power 1,000 years ago – an important commercial center in the span from Afghanistan in the east to Morocco in the west.”

This new cache is being displayed at the Israel Museum - again showing that if Israel is trying to hide Islamic treasures and history, it is doing a very poor job of it.

04/04 Links: Bret Stephens: Can We Really Picture Auschwitz? EU shamefully “inspired” by Palestinian supporter of terror; Capitol Hill ramming attacker member of antisemitic Nation of Islam org.

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: Can We Really Picture Auschwitz?

Nine days before the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, Buba and her sister were among the 56,000 prisoners forced to march 35 miles in the dead of winter. As many as 15,000 of those who began the journey from Auschwitz died. The rest, along with Buba and Icu, were put on trains to Germany.

Even with the war all but lost, the Nazi determination to kill Jews didn’t stop.

“The SS had us form a single file,” Buba said of the march. “They eliminated one out of every 10 women. I ran toward Icu so that the same fate would befall us.”

It didn’t. She and Icu were liberated, from Bergen-Belsen, on April 15 by the British Army. No painting of Buba’s haunts me more than the one of her alone, her head in her emaciated arms, the barbed wire still in front, the chimney, still burning, not far behind. Image

“I wondered what to do with my newly granted freedom,” Buba thought. “My world had been demolished.” What better way than this image to help me understand how little life could mean to someone who had lost so much?

Buba put down her paint brushes a few years ago. She is now 95, one of only 2,000 or so Auschwitz survivors still living. Her husband, Luis, who survived Mauthausen, is 99. Both of them embody what, for me, it means to be Jewish: a member of a religion that cherishes life and memory alike, and believes that we live best, and understand best, when we remember well.

In this month of Holocaust remembrance, it’s worth pausing to consider how one brave woman’s memory, and art, help us to see what we must never forget.

US scraps Trump’s sanctions against ICC prosecutor who is probing Israel

US President Joe Biden has revoked sanctions on top officials at the International Criminal Court that were imposed under the Trump administration, the State Department announced Friday.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the economic sanctions imposed on ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and a top aide in 2019 “were inappropriate and ineffective,” and were therefore lifted.

The Hague-based court is probing alleged war crimes in Afghanistan by Afghan forces, the Taliban and US military. It also recently opened a probe into alleged war crimes by US ally Israel and Palestinian terror groups. Neither the US nor Israel are members of the ICC.

“We continue to disagree strongly with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghanistan and Palestinian situations. We maintain our longstanding objection to the court’s efforts to assert jurisdiction over personnel of non-states parties such as the United States and Israel,” Blinken said.

He added: “We believe, however, that our concerns about these cases would be better addressed through engagement with all stakeholders in the ICC process rather than through the imposition of sanctions.”

ICC hopes for ‘new phase’ as Biden lifts sanctions on prosecutor probing Israel

The International Criminal Court welcomed US President Joe Biden’s lifting of sanctions imposed by former US president Donald Trump on the tribunal’s prosecutor, saying it signalled a new era of cooperation with Washington.

The Trump administration imposed the financial sanctions and a visa ban on Fatou Bensouda and another senior court official last year after she launched an investigation into alleged war crimes by US military personnel in Afghanistan.

The head of the group representing The Hague-based court’s member countries expressed “deep appreciation” for the Biden administration move Friday, which comes as the administration seeks a more cooperative approach on a dispute that has alienated allies.

“I welcome this decision which contributes to strengthening the work of the court and, more generally, to promoting a rules-based international order,” Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi, head of the Association of States Parties to the ICC, said in a statement.

House Republicans urge Biden to curb ties with PA over ICC complaint

A group of 25 House Republicans sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urging them to curb ties with the Palestinian Authority over its complaint against Israel at the International Criminal Court.

“We are writing to implore the White House and the State Department to uphold longstanding law regarding the threat posed to American soldiers and our allies by the misuse of the International Criminal Court,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, spearheaded by Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina.

When Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, it included language forbidding funding assistance for the PA if it were to initiate an ICC judicially authorized investigation, or if it were to actively support such an investigation into alleged crimes committed against the Palestinians by Israel, the letter said.

“We believe that this type of unilateral lawfare flies in the face of American objectives to help both parties achieve a negotiated, lasting, and comprehensive peace,” the lawmakers wrote. “Such language clearly warned of the ramifications should such action be taken and has been a part of our appropriations process since 2014, with massive bipartisan consensus every year.”

Moreover, “the PA has unequivocally violated the first condition of that provision by, among other things, submitting a formal referral to the ICC in 2018,” they wrote, adding that it also violated the second condition by “repeated submission of purported evidence and materiel to the ICC, and official visits and communications with the ICC Prosecutor and staff, actively in support of the Court’s investigation.”

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach

I will not be online until Sunday night as Passover wraps up.

Have a chag sameach and a Shabbat Shalom!

04/02 Links Pt2: Anti-Semites Should Not Define Anti-Semitism; Saudi FM says ties with Israel would bring ‘tremendous benefit’ to Middle East

From Ian:

Anti-Semites Should Not Define Anti-Semitism

These perpetrators of anti-Israel agitation had been leading a virulent campaign to demonize and delegitimize Israel for years now, and it was astonishing that JVP and these meretricious scholars and students ignored all the factual and shameful chronology (of which they have been central fomenters and cheerleaders in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign), and instead were trying to perpetuate the fantasy that the true threat to Jewish students and other Israel supporters is from the Left’s perennial boogeymen, the lunatic fringe of white power extremists who these willfully-blind activists believe, and want others to believe, were the chief perpetrators of anti-Jewish bigotry.

Similarly, in 2014, 40 professors of Jewish studies published a denunciation of a study that named professors who have been identified as expressing “anti-Israel bias, or possibly even antisemitic rhetoric.”

While the 40 academic “heavyweights” claimed they, of course, rejected anti-Semitism totally as part of teaching, they were equally repelled by the tactics and possible effects of the AMCHA Initiative report, a comprehensive review of the attitudes about Israel of some 200 professors who signed an online petition during the 2014 Gaza incursion that called for an academic boycott against Israeli scholars—academics the petitioners claimed were complicit in the “latest humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel’s new military assault on the Gaza Strip.”

“We believe the professors who have signed this petition may be so biased against the Jewish state that they are unable to teach accurately or fairly about Israel or the Arab-Israel conflict, and may even inject antisemitic tropes into their lectures or class discussion,” wrote Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith, co-founders of the AMCHA Initiative, an organization that tracks incidents of campus anti-Semitism, and authors of the report.

Calling “the actions of AMCHA deplorable,” the indignant professors were insulted by the organization’s “technique of monitoring lectures, symposia and conferences,” something which, they believe, “strains the basic principle of academic freedom on which the American university is built.” That is a rather breathtaking assertion by academics; namely, that it is contrary to the core mission of higher education that ideas and instruction being publicly expressed by professors cannot be examined and judged, and that by even applying some standards of objectivity on a body of teaching by a particular professor “AMCHA’s approach closes off all but the most narrow intellectual directions and,” as academics who do not want the content of their output to actually be examined for the quality of its scholarship are always fond of saying, “has a chilling effect on research and teaching.”

Can anyone believe that had the AMCHA Initiative or other organization issued a report that revealed the existence of endemic racism, or homophobia, or sexism, or Islamophobia in university coursework, and had warned students who might be negatively impacted to steer clear of courses taught by those offending professors, that these same 40 feckless professors would have denounced such reports as potentially having a negative effect on teaching and learning?

No one is telling these toxic Israel-haters to remain silent—or even to not utter anti-Semitic speech. What working definitions such as the IHRA definition and anti-Semitism awareness bills do hope to achieve is to allow those who are pretending only to be anti-Israel but are actually anti-Semitic to be identified as such. The measures are not designed to criminalize or suppress speech, even what we would consider “hate” speech, although going forward Israel-haters may not be able to disguise their anti-Jewish bigotry as successfully as they have when they pretended to care only for the rights of Palestinians and assailed the policies of the Jewish state.

It may be inconvenient and even embarrassing for these Israel-haters to finally be named for they are—radical, misguided activists whose unrelenting campaign of vitriol against the Jewish state and its supporters has regularly morphed into pure anti-Semitism—but their efforts to assign the blame to others for the miasma of dark bigotry on campuses they themselves have helped to create shows how crucial such tools as the IHRA definition are, and why its acceptance and use are important to help eliminate, finally, “the oldest hatred” from institutions of higher education.

Caroline Glick: The threats American Jewry refuses to face

After being forced by Covid-19 restrictions to celebrate Passover alone last year, like their Israeli brethren, American Jews were by and large able to celebrate the Passover seder with their friends and families this year. And as in Israel, American Jewish families reveled in their deliverance from loneliness on the Jewish festival of deliverance.

But even the joy of Passover couldn't dispel the twin storm clouds rising around the largest Jewish diaspora.

The first threat is growing Jew-hatred. American Jewish groups are good at fighting white supremacism. Unfortunately, the most dangerous external threat to Jewish life in America doesn't come from neo-Nazis. It comes from their home base.

Along with Hindus, Jewish Americans are the most highly educated religious group in America. American Jews have long assumed that the primary source of anti-Semitism in America is ignorance and that as education levels rise, levels of anti-Semitism would decrease. Given the prevalence of anti-Semitism on university campuses, researchers at the University of Arkansas decided to check this assumption.

Publishing their findings this week in Tablet magazine, they demonstrated just how wrong this assumption has become. Contrary to what Jewish organizations have long claimed, it turns out that the more educated Americans are, the more anti-Semitic they are.

College graduates are five percent more likely to apply anti-Semitic double standards to Jews than Americans who haven't gone to college. Holders of advanced degrees used double standards against Jews 15% more often than respondents without higher educations.

The implications are dire. Academia, American Jewry's home turf for a century and the key to their entry into the American elite – is now hostile territory.

Then there is the media. In the mid-20th century, American Jews were pioneers of the US mass media, entertainment and music industries. Increasingly, however, today they are their punching bag.

Noah Green: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

Noah Green was named as the knife-wielding, now-deceased suspect who rammed a car into a U.S. Capitol barricade, exiting with a knife and killing one Capitol police officer while injuring another.

Green is a Nation of Islam follower, according to a review of his now-deleted Facebook page by Heavy, although police have not specified a motive. On Facebook, as recently as March 2021, the suspect expressed admiration for Elijah Muhammad, the now deceased Nation of Islam leader who was a mentor to Malcolm X. Green referred to himself as “Noah X.”

Saudi FM says ties with Israel would bring ‘tremendous benefit’ to Middle East

Normalization with Israel would bring “tremendous benefit” to the region, the Saudi foreign minister has said, but such an accord with the kingdom would depend on progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Under the Abraham Accords brokered by former US president Donald Trump last year, four Arab countries — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — agreed to normalize ties with the Jewish state.

But Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said Thursday that any deal with Saudi Arabia was “very much dependent on progress with the peace process.”

He noted that normalization had been on the table since the introduction of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative on the condition of reaching resolution with the Palestinians.

“I think normalizing Israel’s status within the region would bring tremendous benefit to the region as a whole,” he said during an interview with CNN.

“It would be extremely helpful both economically but also socially and from a security perspective.”

But such a process “can only be successful if we address the issue of the Palestinians and if we are able to deliver a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders that gives the Palestinians dignity and gives them their rights.”

Normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦 and Israel 🇮🇱 will bring tremendous benefits to region as a whole. We must find path to resolve Palestinian conflict. All Israelis will be welcome in the Kingdom. - KSA Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud h/t @IsraelArabic @CNN pic.twitter.com/ORdEnHse4h
— Avi Kaner (@AviKaner) April 2, 2021

While we are still trying to make sense out of the most recent Israeli elections, indications are that the Palestinian elections that Abbas called for might also fail to provide clear leadership.

Actually, Abbas has found a way to make his elections even more divisive than the Israeli ones.

Instead of just calling for elections, he has called for 3 elections:

o May 22: Elections for the PA Legislative Council (PLC), the lawmaking body
o July 31: Elections for president of the Palestinian Authority
o August 31: Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) parliamentary elections for the Palestinian National Council (PNC)

According to the Associated Press, the divisiveness of the upcoming Palestinian elections goes even further.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, directed by Khalil Shikaki, has done a poll of 1,200 Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. The poll found that if the election for the PLC were held today:

o  43 percent would vote for Fatah
o  30 percent would vote for Hamas
o  18 percent of voters are undecided

But there is more to it than that.

According to Shikaki, the source of Hamas's weakness is the general perception that the group is not up to dealing with the challenges the people face, such as restoring national unity, improving the economy and lifting the blockade of Gaza by both Israel and Egypt. The reputation of the Hamas leadership has suffered from reports of their extravagant lifestyle.

On the other hand, despite being seen as capable of addressing those problems, Fatah's weakness is its lack of unity due to internal rivalries.

And those splits within Fatah are eating away from its potential share of the vote:

a faction led by Mohammed Dahlan, a former senior Fatah leader who had a falling out with Abbas and is based in the United Arab Emirates, would win 10 percent. Nasser al-Kidwa, who was kicked out of Fatah after forming his own list, would win 7 percent. They would mainly draw votes from Fatah, dropping its share to around 30 percent, the poll said. [emphasis added]

Fatah's share of the vote would end up matching the vote that Hamas would get.

There is one name that appears nowhere in the AP's summary of the PCPSR poll: Marawan Barghouti. The PCPSR in fact did make a point of measuring pro-Barghouti sentiment, and if he enters the election, the results would be even more disastrous for Abbas and Fatah:

If Marwan Barghouti forms his own independent list, 28% of the public say they will vote for his list while 22% say they will vote for the official Fatah list formed by president Abbas.

...If Naser al Qidwah forms his own independent list, 7% of the public say they will vote for his list while 30% say they will vote for the official Fatah list. If Marwan Barghouti gives his support to al Qidwah’s list, support for it would rise to 11% and support for Fatah’s would drop to 28%.

Shikaki also makes a point of the volatility of the results of his poll. Unpredictable events could cause a change in public opinion back towards Hamas. For example, if between now and the elections Hamas were to manipulate a prisoner exchange or if Israel were to kill a senior Hamas official -- that would give Hamas a boost. Shikaki is speaking hypothetically -- but who knows.

That of course raises the question of how international opinion would react to a new government that included -- or was even led by -- Hamas. Would the desire for a 2 state solution at any price be the final step in recasting Hamas terrorists as militants?

In its own analysis of the upcoming elections, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace notes some of the machinations going on behind the scenes. For one thing, Hamas has agreed not to run a candidate for president of the PA, making it easier for Abbas to finally add to his terms in office by actually winning a re-election.

In addition, Hamas has been talking with Fatah about creating a joint Hamas-Fatah candidate list that would allow the leaders of the 2 groups to split up the seats in the PLC in advance.

The Carnegie group notes:

Putting aside the fact that it is hardly a democratic practice to limit who can run in elections and divvy up the seats before voting takes place, such moves seem designed to manage, though hardly bridge, the deep Hamas-Fatah political differences that have fractured the Palestinian polity. [emphasis added]

This is a point made by journalist Daoud Kuttab, that, "elections, which were once considered impossible without reconciliation, are now being used to achieve reconciliation."

Maybe.

But consider the long history of failed reconciliations, trying for reconciliation while locked together in this kind of embrace does not fill one with optimism. As Carnegie puts it, "such an arrangement could result in a two-headed leadership incapacitated by divisions" -- and that is assuming that the 2 sides don't try to cut off each other's head.

Carnegie also judges that not all of the 3 elections are likely to even happen. It suggests that the elections for the PLC are the most likely to be held; the presidential elections are actually a little less likely to be held; and the elections for the PNC appear to be the most improbable.

This may account for what they claim is less international interest in the elections as a whole.

They may be right.

For all the talk about a Palestinian state, it is merely seen as an end towards a 2 state solution that will magically bring peace to the region in general and alleviate the problems of the Palestinian Arabs.

The means towards that end don't really seem to concern world opinion.