Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, April 07, 2021

The bad news and the good news in the fight against antisemitism in 2020

Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry has issued an extract of its annual report on antisemitism.

Its main findings are that during 2020, violent antisemitic incidents were reduced because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but much Jew-hatred migrated online and specifically to the darknet where it is more difficult to monitor and combat. The most notable antisemitism for the year was blaming Jews for the pandemic itself, as well as comparing the pandemic or vaccines to the Holocaust. There were other important events like the far-Left groups using anti-racism riots as an excuse for antisemitism and BDS, EU's Court of Justice in Luxembourg permitting states to ban kosher and halal slaughter, and the increase of mostly right-wing antisemitism in Germany especially attacks on Holocaust memorials.

The news isn't all bad, though. The report mentions promising events of 2020 in the battle against Jew-hatred, which would typically not be mentioned in the media. Here are the highlights:

First, more special envoys, responsible for combating antisemitism, were appointed in several countries, like the Netherlands, Romania and Canada, and the envoy of the US State Department was promoted to the rank of Ambassador. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed Miguel Moratinos as UN Focal Point for combating antisemitism.

Second, the Working Definition of Antisemitism was adopted during 2020 by a growing number of countries, universities, sports clubs, municipalities and local councils, and this trend continues in 2021. The Kantor Center is currently mapping the adoption of the Definition worldwide, and the total number exceeds 450. Recently Bahrein also adopted the Definition, and most important: it was adopted by the Global Imams Council, following the signing of the Abraham Accords.38 The EU published a detailed handbook recommending a correct and comprehensive use of the Definition, as part of a more general decision to recognize the battle against antisemitism as a clause in its political plans.

Third, allocation of funds for protecting Jewish communities: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, former President Donald Trump, Germany's Office of the Interior, the Sachsen-Anhalt state where the city of Halle is located, the Austrian government – have all announced that they would increase their existing funding or allocate new funds to the protection and development of security means for the Jewish communities.

Fourth, Jewish education and Jewish life: Morocco has announced that it would include chapters on the history and culture of Moroccan Jews in its curriculums. Germany plans a series of events in 2021, to celebrate 1700 years of Jewish life in Germany, including the battle against antisemitism. Former President Trump approved the Never Again Education Act, authorizing the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington D.C. to promote the teaching and awareness of the Holocaust. The European Council regards antisemitism as an "attack on European values", and indicates the need to combat it decisively.

There has been progress in developing tools enabling the detection of antisemitic discourse on the internet, based on the Working Definition. Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs has developed the Antisemitic Cyber Monitoring System, which identifies antisemitic expressions in several languages on several networks, and in 2020 even began to monitor websites in the darknet, which are more difficult to access. However, despite repeated declarations on the part of the leading services, and some progress made so far, there is still a long way to go...Financial interests, the ignorance of younger generations about antisemitism, the Holocaust and the situation in the Middle East, the wish to address broad audiences and create visibility for the companies, still prevent full progress in removing antisemitic content from open networks.

Dr. Ramy Abdu is the founder and chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based NGO.

The organization is viciously anti-Israel, but this tweet from Abdu on Tuesday takes the cake.

Yesterday we discussed Israel's release of DFLP terrorist Rushdi Abu Mokh, who was part of a cell that kidnapped, tortured, mutilated and murdered 19 year old Moshe Tamam. He was given a hero's welcome in his home town, and Arab village in Israel.

Ramy Abdu was also enamored of this terrorist, tweeting this:

Aw, the poor terrorist wasn't released before his mother died! How cruel that Israel kept a person who helped castrate and gouge out the eyes of a Jew in prison!

Needless to say, torture and mutilation and murder and kidnapping and hostage taking are all violations of international humanitarian law - but this founder of a "human rights monitor" has no problem with any of those things when done by a Palestinian against a Jew.

He only shows sympathy for the monstrous terrorist and doesn't even admit that there was a victim.

We already knew that the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has nothing to do with human rights and only uses that issue as a weapon against the Jewish state. But rarely do we see such naked hypocrisy from the founder of a human rights NGO.

(h/t Ian)

04/06 Links Pt2: The Wicked Lie of ‘Medical Apartheid’; Why can’t we talk about ideology’s role when killers aren’t white?; Israeli data shows world's Jewish population now as high as in 1925

From Ian:

Emily Schrader: New 'Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism' definition unneeded - opinion

In recent weeks, a new definition of antisemitism has popped up, titled the “Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism,” aimed at undermining the widely accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Association definition. But at a time of rising antisemitic incidents around the world, in particular those in the name of “anti-Zionism not antisemitism,” we don’t need another definition of antisemitism, and certainly not by some of the same groups who are making antisemitism a political issue like the fringe groups IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace.

The new definition, signed onto by 200 academics, criticizes the IHRA definition by claiming it is overly broad not in the definition itself, but “in its use.” The IHRA definition is used as a tool for the US government, the EU and 30 other nations to help them define and recognize antisemitic incidents. It is also widely accepted by numerous academic institutions, sports teams and even private companies. It is unique in that it outlines specific examples of what antisemitism looks like today – from classical antisemitic tropes, to comparing the Jewish state to Nazis, to demanding Jews abroad answer for the policies of Israel, to using “Zionism” as a replacement word for Jews. Naturally, this concerns not only classical antisemites, but also modern ones who have made it a priority to demonize and defame Zionists.

The controversy over the IHRA definition has arisen as a result of several fringe Jewish groups launching a campaign against IHRA, falsely claiming it “censors” free speech and that it “silences” Palestinian advocacy. This is not only untrue, but tremendously offensive to pro-Palestinian activists in claiming they cannot advocate for Palestinians without being antisemitic. Additionally, IHRA does not advocate any form of censorship. If it is used as such, that’s not a problem of the definition but the person or institution misapplying it.

Scholars of antisemitism and advocates for the JDA – Joshua Shanes and Dov Waxman – wrote in Slate, “the IHRA definition – specifically some of its examples pertaining to Israel – has been misused to target pro-Palestinian advocacy,” meaning that even advocates and signatories to the JDA admit that the IHRA definition itself does not, in fact, advocate censorship or unfair targeting. Yet at a time when one in four American Jews have experienced antisemitism, these scholars choose to throw their weight behind dividing the community over a new definition of antisemitism that lends credence to extremist groups?

It should also be noted that among the signatories of the JDA are Peter Beinart, who routinely uses his platform to demonize both Israel and Zionists; Naomi Chazan, the former president of the left-wing New Israel Fund and Richard Falk, who served as the UN special rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories.” Falk, a conspiracy theorist who believes 9/11 was an inside job, has been widely criticized for his comments on both Israel and Jews, including but not limited to: claiming that Israel was planning a Holocaust of the Palestinians, claiming the US government and Jews were conspiring to take Palestinian land and publishing antisemitic cartoons on his blog, where he defended outrageous antisemitic authors, including those supporting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

More Than 350 Academics Sign Letter Supporting IHRA

More than 350 academics, professionals and intellectuals worldwide signed a letter supporting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

The letter, which was signed by UCLA Computer Science Professor Judea Pearl, University of Ottawa Holocaust History Professor Jan Grabowski and McGill University Professor Gil Troy, stated that while all of the various scholars hold differing political viewpoints, they all believe that the IHRA definition is an “invaluable tool” in combating the rise of anti-Semitism globally.

“This new antisemitism has its roots in a noxious mixture of classical, modern racial, Islamic and Soviet anti-Zionist antisemitism,” the letter stated. “It marks out the Jewish state as uniquely demonic, deserving of boycott and opprobrium. In a world full of states and national movements, it calls for the dismantling and ultimately violent destruction of the State of Israel. This antisemitism justifies the harassment, exclusion and ostracism of Israelis and Jews worldwide. It continues centuries old traditions of boycotting, rejecting and shunning Jews.”

The Vaccine Blood Libel: The Wicked Lie of ‘Medical Apartheid’

An egregious lie has been making the rounds lately. It is a timeworn smear against the Jewish people in a modern guise.

The ancient blood libel—“Jews are poisoners,” used to stoke antisemitic violence through the ages, from the Black Death to tainted wells—has reappeared. This time, it is the claim that Israel is denying COVID-19 vaccinations to its non-Jewish citizens and to the residents of the not-yet-sovereign Palestinian Authority. This lie is the same as its predecessors.

Yet the vaccine slander is being widely disseminated by Israel’s enemies, especially on college campuses. On March 2, for example, the Palestine Solidarity Committee held a teach-in at the University of Texas at Austin alleging “medical apartheid” not only as part of Israel’s COVID-19 response but in the ability of pregnant Palestinian women to access hospitals, allegedly leading to roadside deaths related to childbirth.

Also in March, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) Chicago held a three-day campaign called “End Medical Apartheid,” alleging that Israel denies Palestinians proper health treatment, drawing parallels to healthcare inequities for non-white Chicagoans. Likewise, SJP at the University of Maryland held an open Zoom call to share the claim of “medical apartheid.”

One misleading claim pushed by the medical apartheid libel is that Israel is responsible for, but has failed, to vaccinate all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Similar assertions have been advanced in The New York Times and on MSNBC, as well as by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The Vermont senator called it “outrageous” for Israel to send vaccines to its allies before the Palestinian population is fully vaccinated. One writer in The Forward alleged that Israel is “classifying people by ethnic identity—and allocating a life-saving resource accordingly”—a slander that The Forward later retracted.

Jonathan S. Tobin: Why can’t we talk about ideology’s role when killers aren’t white?

Though Green’s problems didn’t begin with a belief that Farrakhan was “Jesus, the Messiah,” the Nation of Islam’s paranoiac, anti-white and anti-Semitic ideology may have tipped him into taking violent action.

A lack of corroborating evidence didn’t stop the elite blue-check class from attributing the Atlanta killings to white supremacy. Yet those same talking heads appear to be completely uninterested in whether Farrakhan’s bigotry may have been a factor in Green’s motivations. see also

True, the presence of Farrakhan’s hateful ideology in his life shouldn’t lead us to brush aside Green’s illness. But we also shouldn’t quickly consign to the memory-hole the killer’s interest in the Nation of Islam.

Our media betters wouldn’t hesitate to focus exclusively on white racist groups if Green had been one of their adherents. But the Nation of Islam receives different treatment.

The New York Times, for example, almost instantly cast doubt on any links between Farrakhan’s hate and violence. The paper quoted an “expert” who dismissed the connection, noting that the Nation of Islam has a lower “body count” than white racists.

The problem here isn’t just that society still doesn’t prioritize helping the mentally ill. Our mainstream media and pop culture continue to give a pass to Farrakhan, a man with a following of hundreds of thousands. With statistics showing that most hate crimes against Jews and Asians are committed by African Americans, it’s time to start treating his widespread influence as a serious problem.

Yet the Grammy telecast recently featured the Farrakhan supporter and Black Lives Matter advocate Tamika Mallory, and mainstream political figures like former President Bill Clinton have no problem sharing a stage with the Farrakhan.

As the probe proceeds, it may well turn out that Farrakhan’s hate triggered Green’s final descent into violent madness. The old bigot doesn’t deserve the free pass he still receives from a media establishment that believes racism is worth discussing only when it comes from one direction.

Of course, I'm referring to this, which was a Zionist poster that Palestinians now claim shows that there was an Arab Palestinian state before 1948.

From Palestinian Media Watch:

Official PA TV host: “How was the expulsion (i.e., the Nazi genocide) of the Jews carried out? German [Nazi] Minister of Propaganda Goebbels, together with Hitler, disseminated that the Jews are like rats: They spread diseases, rob the wealth of Germany, and must be expelled... They reached the land of Palestine hungry, sick, lacking everything, infected with typhus and malaria. We gave them fresh water to drink and fed them oranges, and they betrayed the hand that was extended to help them....In Palestine there were only very few Jews who arrived fleeing diseases, hunger, and fear. The people of Palestine welcomed them at the ports of Haifa and Jaffa, and they began to live here. But in 1929 [the Arabs] discovered that they were not people escaping who wanted to find refuge among the Palestinian people, but rather they are a colonialist project that wants to kill the Palestinians.”

Were Jews welcomed by Arabs before 1929?

Well, not according to Arab media at the time.

"Sowt Ashaab," quoted in the Palestine Bulletin of February 25, 1925, complains that Britain and the US restrict Jewish immigration, but the British authorities in Palestine continue to encourage Jews to immigrate. "When will England close the doors to Jewish immigration to Palestine? All Palestinian Arabs ask that question," it wrote.

In May, the paper quoted "Filastin" about the dangers of selling land to Jews in Qalqilya:

The October 21, 1925 edition quoted another Arab paper, Carmel, decrying the fact that some Arabs are selling and renting real estate to the Jews that are supposedly being welcomed. (Notice that they say that the threat is not only to Palestinian Arabs but to the entire Arab world.)

04/06 Links Pt1: Strained Saudi-US ties will likely bring Gulf kingdom closer to Israel; Sudan Repeals Law Mandating Boycott of Israel; Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Starts Direct Passenger Flights to Israel

From Ian:

Strained Saudi-US ties will likely bring Gulf kingdom closer to Israel

This will, on the one hand, bring Saudi Arabia closer to Israel, he added, since Riyadh will not feel that it can trust Washington as much. On the other hand, the lack of U.S. backing and ongoing U.S. pressure will cause Saudi Arabia to be cautious about doing this publicly.

These developments “encourage the Iranians to increase their daring with negative consequences for regional stability. However, the Iranians have prioritized the goal of reaching a nuclear agreement at the moment. After that, everything will be open,” said Zisser.

‘Aim to achieve a greater balance of power in the Middle East’

Professor Benny Miller, an expert on international relations from the School of Political Sciences at the University of Haifa, told JNS that the Biden administration will show “much greater sensitivity to the Saudi human-rights violations than [former President Donald] Trump, and to some extent, will go beyond Obama in ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.”

However, he added, “the commitment of the U.S. security umbrella in relation to external threats—Iran—will persist.”

The Saudis, in turn, “will have an incentive to ‘compensate’ for their human-rights violations by upgrading their relations with Israel,” continued Miller. “At the same time, this issue [the normalization of Israeli-Saudi ties], even if welcomed by Biden, will not have the high urgency it had under Trump before the 2020 elections.”

In terms of regional security, “while Trump tried to create a ‘hegemonic’ alliance of Israelis and Arabs vis-à-vis a much weakened Iran, Biden—like Obama, in this sense—will aim to achieve a greater balance of power in the Middle East between the Israel-Arab alliance vs. Iran, but this also heavily depends on the Iranian response,” assessed Miller. “If Iran continues to endorse a hardline and aggressiveness, Biden will give more support to the Israel-Arab alliance.”

“The key objective of the administration will be to stabilize the region,” he added, “so as to enable a gradual U.S. disengagement from the region militarily, and so that the U.S. will be able to focus on its foreign policy issue—the competition with China.”

Report: Sudan Repeals Law Mandating Boycott of Israel

The Sudanese government has decided to repeal its law that mandates boycotting Israel, six months after it reached a normalization agreement with the Jewish state.

Israeli daily Maariv reported that the decision was announced by the Sudanese government Tuesday.

Israel and Sudan officially normalized relations on Oct. 23, 2020, following up on the decision by the UAE and Bahrain to sign the Abraham Accords the month before. To facilitate the deal, the US removed Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. Sudan also paid reparations to US terror victims in the amount of $335 million.

Sudan’s boycott law was originally enacted in 1958, and applied to all diplomatic, economic, and trade relations with the Jewish state.

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid tweeted that all but one of Sudan’s cabinet ministers voted in favor of repealing the law, but that it must now receive further governmental approval, including from Sudan’s parliament.

The decision follows close contacts between Israel and Sudan, who consulted on the precise wording of their agreement to begin full diplomatic relations — a major part of which was Israel’s desire to see the boycott law repealed.

Ironically, as more and more Arab countries are repealing their boycott of Israel, die-hard ideologues in the West like HRW's Ken Roth feverishly lobby the UN Human Rights Council to expand its boycott blacklist of Israeli companies. https://t.co/QxCsjAFmGm
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) April 6, 2021

Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Starts Direct Passenger Flights to Israel

Abu Dhabi state carrier Etihad Airways began direct commercial passenger flights from the United Arab Emirates capital to Tel Aviv in Israel — the latest direct air link between the two countries that established diplomatic relations last year.

UAE Ambassador to Israel Mohamed Al Khaja and Israel’s head of mission to the UAE Eitan Na’eh were on the inaugural flight.

“As our countries recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, we have much to look forward to in commercial, diplomatic, technological, health, and tourism exchanges,” Khaja was quoted as saying by UAE state news agency WAM.

Etihad said it would initially offer two weekly flights between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi, which has placed Israel on its green list of countries, meaning visitors do not need to quarantine due to the coronavirus.

Other UAE and Israeli airlines have launched direct flights.

The Gulf Arab state has become a popular destinations for Israeli tourists even as the coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt travel globally.

استقبال طائرة الاتحاد الاماراتية وترحيب خطوة تدشين خطوط الطيران بين البلدين 🇦🇪🇮🇱pic.twitter.com/JYQegQxTYN
— Lorena Khateeb | لورينا خطيب (@kh_lorena) April 6, 2021

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism would not consider a call to nuke Israel to be antisemitic

Some idiot with a podcast who calls himself Vaush (350K subscribers on YouTube) said that if Israel was destroyed in a nuclear attack, the Middle East would be a more peaceful place.

Here's the moron's video:

I wondered if the desire to annihilate the world's only Jewish state, in the interests of world peace, would be considered antisemitic by the "Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism."

Not at all.

The declaration says, "Evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state [is not antisemitic]. This includes its.... policies and practices, domestic and abroad, such as the conduct of Israel in the West Bank and Gaza, the role Israel plays in the region, or any other way in which, as a state, it influences events in the world."

The imbecile hides his hate behind a façade of caring about Palestinians (even though they would be incinerated,) so - according to the geniuses who spent months putting the Jerusalem Declaration together - nothing about condoning the nuclear holocaust of Israel is antisemitic.

A definition is an algorithm, and one can run test cases through the definition to see what it would say for any arbitrary case. Calling Israelis "Nazis" is not antisemitic according to this definition. Calling for the murder of 7 million Jews to eradicate any vestige of Jewish nationalism from the Middle East doesn't fit that definition.

If even one outcome of an algorithm is spectacularly wrong - if 1+1 results in 29 - then it is obvious that the algorithm is fatally flawed. And this is what the Jerusalem Declaration's definition is.

(Although people have quibbled about some boundary cases in my new definition of antisemitism, I have not yet found a flaw in it.)

On August 6th, 1984, 19 year old soldier Moshe Tamam was hitchhiking home for a weekend leave to spend time with his family in Netanya. He first visited his girlfriend in Tiberias, and then took the bus towards Tel Aviv. At the Beit Leed Junction he got off and hitched a ride with four Israeli-Arabs from Baka El Garbiya.

These Israeli Arabs were members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine who had been tasked with kidnapping an Israeli soldier to smuggle to Syria for a prisoner exchange.

For two days, Moshe Tamam was held in a house on the outskirts of Baka El Garbiya. When the terrorists realized that they could not get him across the border into Syria, they decided to kill him.

First they gouged out Moshe’s eyes, and then they mutilated him by cutting off parts of his body starting with his sexual organs. Finally, they shot him in the chest, and dumped his body in an olive grove near Jenin. Moshe’s mutilated body was discovered on August 10th. The DFLP immediately claimed responsibility for the heinous murder.

One of the murderers, Rushdi Abu Mokh, was just released from prison.

He is being treated as a hero by hundreds of his fellow Arabs - in an Israeli town.

These are Israeli citizens celebrating someone who castrated, blinded and murdered a 19 year old IDF soldier.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa has a glowing tribute to Abu Mokh as well.

According to Arutz Sheva, the reason his life sentence was commuted to 35 years was because Shimon Peres made a deal with the Arab parties for them to support him becoming president.

(h/t T Moran)

During Passover, Bnai Brith tweeted that the Disney Channel had a segment on the holiday that replaced the term "Next Year in Jerusalem" with "Next Year in the Holy Land."

Here's the video:

A presumably Jewish kid explains his favorite part of the Seder is at the end, where his family says "Next Year in the Holy Land." His friends all repeat the phrase.

There is no way that this wasn't deliberate. "Next Year in Jerusalem" is an iconic phrase and the most well-known saying from the Seder. "Next Year in the Holy Land" is clunky sounding.

So what happened?

One can only guess that someone at Disney felt that the phrase "Next Year in Jerusalem" was potentially offensive to some segments of the audience - perhaps thinking that mentioning Jerusalem would be a political statement, or too much a reminder of Donald Trump moving the embassy there, or something that Muslims would object to. Who knows? It was probably a Jewish executive doing his or her version of performative wokeness or proleptic dhimmitude.

And the feelings of Jews being offended that a huge multinational corporation decided to sacrifice a basic tenet of the faith on the altar of some perceived political correctness are, as usual, ignored.

Disney Channel did not respond to any tweets about it nor to Algemeiner's inquiries.

(h/t Honest Reporting)

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.