Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

04/20 Links Pt2: Scientists: Israel proves every developed country can subdue COVID with vaccines; Has anti-Israel discourse taken over the United States?; In Student Governments, Jews and Zionists Need Not Apply

From Ian:

Scientists: Israel proves every developed country can subdue COVID with vaccines

Prominent scientists say the transformation of Israel from a COVID-19 hotspot to a vaccination success story underlines that any developed country can subdue the virus.

They estimate that a relatively small number of vaccinations are needed to take a country out of crisis mode. The moment that half of the population aged 60-plus is inoculated, authorities can expect a dramatic drop in cases and hospitals are safe from being overwhelmed, they conclude.

The claims come from authors of a detailed report, published as a peer-reviewed article in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, on just how dire a COVID situation Israel faced in the early weeks of the vaccination campaign, especially as the new, highly infectious British variant was on the rampage.

“Israel was facing a range of factors that made the situation here particularly difficult, and if it succeeded despite all of this, and we could achieve a rapid decline in cases, then any developed country can,” Prof. Dan Yamin of Tel Aviv University told The Times of Israel.

He said that most other Western countries are in a better situation as they embark, or prepare to embark, on their vaccination programs, and therefore can be particularly confident upon seeing Israel’s infection, hospitalization, and death rates hit rock bottom.

His data suggests that vaccines quickly saved “hundreds of lives” in Israel, and his statistical analysis shows that the health service was swiftly protected from meltdown as a critical mass of 60-plus received vaccines.

Israel to Buy Millions of Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Doses

Israel signed a deal to buy millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc through 2022, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

The new vaccinations will be suitable to protect people against different variants of the coronavirus, Netanyahu said in a statement.

He said he hopes to sign a similar deal to purchase the Moderna Inc vaccine.

“This means that very soon we will have more than enough vaccines, both for adults and children,” he said.

Late on Monday, Israel’s Walla news website reported that Israel signed a deal with Moderna as well, although officials were not immediately reachable to confirm the report.

With about 81% of citizens or residents over 16 — the age group eligible for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in Israel — having received both doses, infections and hospitalizations are down sharply.

Israel closes down remaining COVID wards as infection drops

Israel on Monday closed down its two remaining coronavirus wards nearly one year after they were initially opened, as COVID-19 infection rate continues to decline.

The country began closing down its coronavirus wards some weeks ago when Israel's high-speed vaccinations campaign began to bear fruit with declining number of new COVID cases.

COVID wards at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera and Baruch Padeh Medical Center in Tiberias had remained the only two that were still operating. Both were finally shuttered on Monday, with remaining patients being moved for treatment in the internal medicine wards.

At the peak of the pandemic, Hadera's hospital operated three dedicated COVID wards, but over the past few days there have been no more than seven patients - on average - needing treatment.

"I am pleased to announce we are closing down the last active COVID ward," the hospital director, Dr. Mickey Dudkiewicz, said. "We will now be able to allocate staff to deal with the increasing needs of our internal medicine departments, which remained understaffed because of the pandemic," he said.

"If a need arises, we will re-open the wards but hope that there will be no such need," he added.

During the funeral for Mohammad Hejazi, the deputy commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force who died under mysterious circumstances on Sunday, an interesting statement was made by a prominent mourner.

Hejazi's commander, Brigadier General Ismail Qaani, said "the resistance fronts today in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the sons of the resistance elsewhere take a big step every day in confronting enemies, including the United States and Israel, and they will continue to do so until they reach a world government."

A world government? Those are some pretty ambitious plans!

I found a 2013 article in the same news site that said:

Ali Motahari, the deputy in the Islamic Consultative Assembly in Iran, said: "We believe that Islam will rule the world and a single world government will be formed, but this does not mean that Iran wants to extend hegemony and power over all countries of the world by force, because this is illogical and impossible, but the world must understand Iran's message and the Islamic revolution."

Prominent Iranian cleric Ayatollah Hossan Ansarian wrote an entire article on the topic. He explains that the world government of the future will be Shiite, based on the messianic belief of the Mahdi, and it would be a strong central government that is "coherent, effective, capable and complete with efficient administration." Obviously, the only people who can run such a government are Shiite Muslims, which would be the world religion under this system.

One cannot analyze Iran without understanding the role of the Mahdi in its politics, and the desire for reaching this Shiite utopia in its decision-making.

Anything that hastens the return of the Mahdi is by definition desirable - and that might include a nuclear bomb on the major obstacle to this dream.

At first glance, this article at Religion Dispatches at first looks like a parody of wokespeak. It includes paragraphs like this:

The language and, we argue, the conceptual categories in which the discourse on Jewish continuity traffics, even by its critics, remain beholden to essentializing cisheteronormative and binary-gendered frameworks. The discourse continues to reduce and reproduce an uninterrogated reliance on reproductive models that privilege monogamy, marriage, and the state, alongside marginalizing conceptions of “community,” “leadership,” and binary sexgendered divisions of labor, especially reproductive labor.

While it is easy to laugh at this substitution of nonsense for clear writing, the actual arguments of the two authors is much more dangerous.

Their jumping off point is a recent Forward article that says that a tiny number of people are attempting to bring back Steven Cohen into mainstream discourse on Jewish community issues. Cohen was forced to resign from his position at Hebrew Union College after it was revealed that he had engaged in a decades long pattern of sexual harassment.

It is clear that most Jews in Jewish studies are aghast and upset at any hint of rehabilitating Cohen. But the authors, being bigots, generalize the minority to the majority of Jews and accuse anyone who agrees with Cohen that keeping the Jewish people alive is important is complicit not only in his crimes but they are also misogynist, racist, and every other crime one can be.

For example, here is their proof of the racism of people interested in Jewish continuity:

A case in point is the ways in which racism is smuggled into the project of Jewish continuity.

Racism is discernible in the construction of an idea of “Jewishness” as inherently distinct from and preferable to other groups or ethno-religious affiliations. It’s more explicitly visible in Jewish continuity discourses that focus less on Jewish cultural-ritual practices and meaning-making but more on embodied individuals and collectivized populations. Rather than studying how people live Jewish lives, the emphasis is on the numbers of bodies that “count” as Jewish. More disturbing still are the legacies of scientific racism evident in the language of “intermarriage,” “in-marriage,” and “out-marriage.”

Not to invoke Godwin's law, but if you say that Jews marrying Jews is racist, you are saying that Jews are a race. I thought that thinking was considered antisemitic long ago, but what do I know?

(I am quite skeptical about the claim that people who are interested in Jewish continuity studies only care about Jewish "bodies" and nothing about how people live Jewish lives.)

Here's an experiment: Ask 10 of the Jewiest Jews you can find, the ones with black hats and beards, get them drunk, and ask them if they would prefer that their daughter marry a white gentile or a Black Jew.

There are no links to the assertion that Jews who prefer to see the Jewish people survive are racists. The bigots who wrote the article are defining them that way. While there is of course racism among Jews, that hardly makes these lies truthful.

Has anyone ever said that Amish are racist for preferring to marry other Amish? No, only Jews manage to get that label.

The authors seem to be interested in settling scores and pretending to be superior to ordinary scholars who care about things like facts and data, which, they assert, "reconfirms hegemonic norms." By contrast, the authors' work is so amazingly brilliant that most other scholars cannot even understand them:

Consider, for example, that both of us have been pressed to defend the relevance and applicability of our respective work. We’re aware that the intention is not to indict our research per se, but to question the thinking and inquiry that we practice. It’s always difficult for us to answer this query because, like many of our colleagues, our projects are invested in disrupting precisely such knee jerk thinking, including the very presumption of “relevance” that underwrites the question.

In short, these are egomaniacs and bigots who think that they are better than everyone else.

(h/t EBoZ)

04/20 Links Pt1: Minivan Driver Arrested in Hit-and-Run Assault on Brooklyn Hasidim; Sarah Halimi Atrocity — There Is No Law Without Justice; Israeli Military Officials Unite in Opposition to Biden Admin’s Iran Deal

From Ian:

Minivan Driver Arrested After ‘Horrific’ Hit-and-Run Assault on Brooklyn Hasidim

New York police have arrested the driver responsible for a deliberate hit-and-run attack Saturday on five Brooklyn Hasidim, the New York Daily News reported Monday.

The minivan driver was caught on camera intentionally backing up into five pedestrians in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, striking the victims twice and initially lingering on the scene before ultimately speeding away.

“Horrific antisemitic attack in Williamsburg,” tweeted the American Jewish Committee. “A driver pulls over, waits for a group of Jewish men to cross the street, and intentionally hits them twice with his car. We stand in full solidarity with the victims and thank @NYPD90Pct for the swift arrest of a suspect.”

The NYPD reportedly nabbed the suspect — Shokhobiddin Bakhritdinovon, 26 — on Sunday, after his car was spotted by members of Shomrim, a neighborhood watch group.
Update:https://t.co/15k90e6KJo
— WILLIAMSBURG NEWS (@WMSBG) April 18, 2021

The Daily News reporting that the victims were five male relatives ranging in age from 11 to 82, with the oldest individual requiring medical attention for a foot injury.

Sarah Halimi Atrocity — There Is No Law Without Justice

By saying that Sarah Halimi’s willful, hate-filled murderer is not responsible for his crimes, the Cour de Cassation has definitively deprived Sarah’s family of a trial essential to their mourning, but also the People of France of a necessary trial of antisemitism.

To put it simply, murdering Jews is no longer a criminal act in France if the killer can make a certain case to the court system.

By basing its decision on Article 122-1, Paragraph 1 of the Penal Code — which does not make a distinction according to the origin of the mental disorder used as an excuse — the Cour de Cassation has used the law to deprive the French people of justice.

The magistrates of the Cour de Cassation lacked courage and showed cowardice. Rather than take the courageous responsibility of a landmark decision, they passed that task to the legislators.

In addition, expert psychiatrists disagreed about the killer’s mental state, and if he should have escaped accountability. Without unanimity between the different experts, the doubt should have benefited the victim, not the accused.

The verdict, whatever it would have been, would at least have been delivered in the name of the French people. Montesquieu tells us that, “A thing is not right because it is law, but it must be law because it is just.”

The French people have been denied justice at the expense of “the law.”

The author is the President of Crif.

The Murder of Jewish French Woman Sarah Halimi: Brother Reacts to Verdict of Killer

In April 1941, 70 US senators joined in calling for "every possible encouragement to the movement for the restoration of the Jews in Palestine" as being the "declared policy of the United States," and offering support to the re-establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, in an effort spearheaded by Senator Robert F . Wagner, chairman of the American Palestine Committee .

The declaration noted:

280,000 refugees came into Palestine since the advent of the Nazi regime in Germany in 1933. The unprecedented work of rehabilitation of the Holy Land and the restoration of a people has proceeded uninterruptedly and is continuing even now despite war conditions.

Palestine has been recognized and set apart by Great Britain with the approval of the United States and other nations as a haven for the Jewish people, and refugees are streaming to its shores despite restrictive measures recently enforced by the Administration of that country.

The tragic plight of refugees fleeing from persecution and finding no home, a situation brought so dramatically to the attention of the world by the sinking of refugee ships with their human cargo, must compel our attention and strengthen our resolve to extend every possible encouragement to the movement for the restoration of the Jews in Palestine as a great humanitarian effort and in accordance with the spirit of biblical prophecy.

US State Department archives describe the reaction to this declaration by diplomats in Turkey and Britain. They say that letting Jews remain under Nazi rule is the lesser evil compared to upsetting Arabs.

On April 21, A Mr. Butler of the British Embassy, acting on behalf of British ambassador Lord Halifax, met with US Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles. Welles wrote:

Mr. Butler first spoke of the great concern occasioned the Embassy by the announcement of the dinner which was to be held in Washington on April 30 under the aegis of Senator Wagner and some other equally prominent Senators and of Mr. William Green of the American Federation of Labor at which Doctor Weizmann is due to speak in behalf of the Zionist movement in Palestine.
The British Embassy feels that German propaganda is now directed in the Arab world towards making it appear that the British Government is completely under the domination of the United States and that the United States would force Great Britain at the end of the war, if Great Britain is victorious, to open up all of Palestine to Jewish resettlement. The British Government believes that this is an exceedingly dangerous form of propaganda and that if speeches are now made in the United States by prominent persons high in the Government advocating the immediate opening up of Palestine to the Jewish resettlement planners in the event of a British victory, very great unrest will be created in the Arab world, particularly in Iraq, where a highly critical situation already exists. The British Government urged that the Executive branch of this Government do what it could to make this situation clear to the sponsors of the dinner.
I said that I would be very glad to look into the matter and that I would let Mr. Butler know in the immediate future what steps, if any, could be taken in that direction.

On April 22, the Turkish ambassador to the US made a visit to the State Department as well:

While calling today on another matter the Turkish Ambassador said that he had been rather disturbed by a newspaper report to the effect that seventy United States Senators had joined in making a declaration calling for "every possible encouragement to the movement for the restoration of the Jews in Palestine". The Ambassador said that in his opinion such activities were particularly harmful to the British cause in the Near East and might also be expected to have unfavorable repercussions for the Jews themselves.

Ambassador added that his Government had had long experience in dealing with the Arabs and knew their mentality thoroughly. There was not the slightest question in his mind that activities in the United States favoring further Jewish immigration into and control of Palestine were used by the Axis Powers in their propaganda with the Arab countries. Every such activity as that of the American Palestine Committee only further inflamed Arab opinion and increased the difficulties of the British in the vital area of the Near East.
I told the Ambassador that of course the Senators and Members of Congress were quite free to join any committee which they pleased and that obviously the executive branch of the Government had no control over. such activities.
...The Ambassador went on to say that any activities which served to inflame the Arabs in the Near East and to add to the difficulties of the British were naturally. of great interest to his own Government, which was in alliance with Great Britain He added that the question indeed went beyond the Arab countries and affected India as well. He said that he had many close friends among the Indian Moslems and that he could give me his solemn assurance that the Moslem group in India upon, whom Great Britain depended for support in that country could be only adversely affected by statements such as that made by the seventy Senators. He said that it was unnecessary for him to stress the importance to Great Britain of the loyal Moslems of India and the unfortunate repercussions that might ensue if they felt that their coreligionists in Palestine were not being given equitable treatment.

Notice how the diplomat tried to say that it would be better for Jews to stay in Europe to be slaughtered than for it to appear that the US supports their moving to safety.

When given a choice of dead Jews or angry Arabs and Muslims, polite diplomats prefer dead Jews.

Was Quds Force deputy "heart attack" really an assassination by Iran?

As soon as the news was announced that Mohammad Hejazi, the deputy commander of Iran's elite Quds Force died of a heart attack, there was intense skepticism whether that was the true cause of death.

One prominent Iranian tweeted that Hejazi did not die of a heart attack, but his post was removed almost immediately.

Now, Ava Today says that he might have been murdered by Iran - as a suspected Israeli spy!

Two sources inside IRGC told Avatoday that Hejazi’s death is suspicious among his circle as they knew he was being monitored by the regime for the last 10 days.

According to one of the sources, “IRGC was suspicious of several of its members who were close to Hejazi to have a role in last week's explosion in Natanz nuclear site.”

“Also, several members of Lebanese Hezbollah who were Israeli insiders, were close to Hejazi,” the sources said.

I have no idea of any of this is true.

If Israel is recruiting agents at that high a level in Iran, that would be amazing. And if Iran only suspects that so many of its top officials are really Israeli spies, that is a good thing, too.

Hebrew media has been documenting a large increase in attacks by Arabs on religious Jews in Israel - with the videos being uploaded to TikTok with humorous music.

We showed one example earlier this week, where a group of Arabs videoed a premeditated attack on a religions Jew on the light rail. But there have been many more.

Here are three videos of Arabs knocking off the hats from religious Jews.

חשבתם שילמדו לקח בעקבות הסרטון של ההוא שסטר לבחור ישיבה?
הנה שוב תיעוד מאתמול, ערבים בירושלים מבהילים ומעיפים לבחורי ישיבות את הכובע סתם להנאתם. pic.twitter.com/PkdoV0NlVk
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 16, 2021

הנה עוד מטרנד ביזוי היהודים בטיקטוק, ערבים זורקים לחרדי את הכובע בירושלים. pic.twitter.com/y02N9kS1s6
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 17, 2021

Arabs throwing stones at religious Jews in Jerusalem, and then making fun of one of the victims.

ערבים זורקים אבנים על חרדי בליל שבת ומעלים לטיקטוק, דבר שכבר הפך לטרנד בימים האחרונים.
pic.twitter.com/kQdtkIpe0r
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 17, 2021

הבן אדם פשוט מדמם, יכל להיגמר באסון, מטורף. pic.twitter.com/6hl2IbFNfH
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 17, 2021

Attacking a Jew on a bicycle.

שמישהו יעצור את הטירוף הזה כבר שחלילה לא יגמר באסון בסוף.

(קרדיט: @yedidya_epshtei)pic.twitter.com/ugnRYjRKBz
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 19, 2021

Laughing about making a religious man flinch.

עוד מטרור הטיקטוק, מנופאי ערבי מפחיד יהודים בפתח תקווה ומעלה לטיקטוק עם כותרת "הצלחתי להפחיד יהודים". pic.twitter.com/eIvH7Ma56h
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 19, 2021

Chanting "Allahu Akbar" while Jews are praying the silent Amida prayer.

בזמן שהם מתפללים תפילת שמונה עשרה הערבים הולכים ומכבים להם את המנגל וצועקים אללה אכבר, למה? סתם בשביל הכיף.#טרור_הטיקטוק pic.twitter.com/4mWMuEY1e5
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 18, 2021

This is pure antisemitism, Nazi style humiliation of Jews.

It isn't only TikTok. Arabs have been using social media elsewhere to show off their ability to terrorize and humiliate religious Jews. Earlier this year, a pair of Palestinian skateboarders filmed themselves zooming through Jewish neighborhoods in Antwerp with Palestinian flags on the Sabbath, harassing the Jews they passed by.

People who film themselves will do more and more outrageous stunts to gain views - and the built-in Jew-hatred of these TikTok devotees makes the haredim an obvious target.

This won't stop from people complaining about it. It won't stop from articles in the media. The only way it will stop - whether in Jerusalem, Antwerp or Blacks attacking Jews in Brooklyn - is if religious Jews themselves start defending themselves and beating these guys up.

The modern Nazis choose their victims specifically because they are not fighters. It is way past time for them to learn to defend themselves, not only for themselves personally, but because that will stop these Jew-haters before they start escalating to murder videos.

These disgusting events usually happen in heavily haredi Jewish neighborhoods. A small crowd of Jews can do a great deal of damage to their attackers if they wanted, and it would stop the epidemic cold.

Convincing them to act that way will be an uphill battle, but it is necessary.

04/19 Links Pt2: Macron calls for change in law following Sarah Halimi ruling; When did Palestine become Palestine?; Why do Jewish academic centers smear Israel?

From Ian:

France's Macron calls for change in law following Sarah Halimi ruling

French President Emmanuel Macron has called for a change in the law after the highest French court of appeals last week ruled the murderer of Sarah Halimi could not be held criminally accountable for his actions since he took cannabis before he committed the crime.

“Deciding to take drugs and then ‘becoming mad’ should not in my eyes remove your criminal responsibility,” Macron told Le Figaro in an interview published Sunday.

“On this topic, I would like the minister of justice to submit a change to the law as soon as possible,” he said.

“It is not for me to comment on a court decision, but I would like to tell the family, relatives of the victim and all fellow citizens of the Jewish faith who were awaiting this trial of my warm support and the determination of the Republic to protect them,” Macron said.

The French Jewish community was angered by the Court of Cassation’s ruling.

In April 2017, Kobili Traoré, a 27-year-old Muslim man, beat Halimi, his 65-year-old Jewish neighbor, while screaming “Allahu Akhbar” and antisemitic slogans before throwing her out of the window of her third-floor apartment.

A lower court ruled in December 2019 that Traore was not criminally responsible for his actions since his heavy intake of cannabis had compromised his “discernment,” or consciousness.

When it comes to Jews, everyone always has their excuses Kenneth.

For example - if this exact same thing had happened in Israel - you wouldn't call it antisemitism either.

In fact, you probably wouldn't mention it at all.
— David Collier (@mishtal) April 19, 2021

Martin Sherman: When did Palestine become Palestine?

With Joe Biden in the White House, the question of Palestinian statehood is now back on the international agenda, after being largely sidelined under the Trump administration.

For decades, the discourse on the “Palestinian issue” has been dominated by the Palestinian-Arabs contention that Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. “The West Bank”) has long been their ancient homeland.

Preaching Genocide
However, many would probably be interested—and certainly very surprised—to learn just when realization dawned on the Palestinian-Arabs that this territory supposedly comprised their yearned-for motherland.

Indeed, long before Israel held a square inch of “the West Bank”—before there was any “occupation” or “settlements”—the Arabs claimed all the territory of pre-1967 Israel i.e. within the Green Line—as “Palestinian” territory and threatened to reclaim it by force of arms, and annihilate all its Jewish inhabitants.

Thus, in March 1965, over two years prior to the 1967 Six-Day War—after which the “West Bank” came under Israeli administration—Egyptian President, Gamal Abdul Nasser threatened, with chilling genocidal malevolence: "We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand, we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood".

No less blood-curdling were the words of Yassir Arafat’s predecessor as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Ahmed Shukeiry, who on the very eve of the Six-Day War—in a somewhat premature flush of triumph—crowed:

“D Day is approaching. The Arabs have waited 19 years for this and will not flinch from the war of liberation…This is a fight for the homeland – it is either us or the Israelis. There is no middle road. The Jews of Palestine will have to leave.[but] is my impression that none of them will survive...We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants and as for the survivors — if there are any — the boats are ready to deport them.”

“…Jordanians & Palestinians are considered … one people."

Significantly, the first version of the Palestinian National Covenant was formulated three years before the Six-Day War—in May 1964—in East Jerusalem (then under Jordanian control).

In it, the Palestinian-Arabs explicitly foreswear any sovereign claim to the “West Bank” (or to Gaza):

At NY Times, Myth of Edward Said’s Jerusalem Home Is Tenacious

A book review in The New York Times’ print edition yesterday (“The provocative polymath,” page BR17, and online here) repeats an error about Edward Said’s childhood that The New York Times twice previously corrected, most recently on March 25.

Ayten Tartici errs, writing about Said:
At the time [1986], he had not been back to the place of his birth, what was then Mandatory Palestine, since fleeing in December 1947 at the age of 12.

While Said was born in Jerusalem in 1935, his family left for Cairo at a very young age, and that is where he spent his childhood — not in Mandatory Palestine. He did not “flee” Palestine, a falsehood about his life story that he told “as an allegory of the Palestinian people,” as the late scholar Justus Weiner, who uncovered the truth about Said’s biography, said.

As the March 25, 2021 Times correction, about a separate Times review of Timothy Brennan’s book about Said (“Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said”), states:
An earlier version of this review misidentified the city that was Edward Said’s childhood home and misstated details about Jerusalem’s division into Jewish and Arab areas. Although Said was born in Jerusalem, his family’s home was Cairo; they did not move from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was not partitioned into Jewish and Arab halves in 1947. In 1949, control of the city was divided as part of an armistice.

When the digital article was amended March 25, the false claim that “Said’s family moved to Cairo in 1947 after the United Nations divided Jerusalem into Jewish and Arab halves” was replaced with accurate information: “Said grew up in Cairo.”

Previously, on Oct. 1, 2003,The Times published the following correction regarding Said’s obituary:
An obituary on Friday about Edward W. Said, the Columbia University literary scholar and advocate of a Palestinian state, misidentified the city that was his childhood home and misstated the date of Jerusalem’s partition into Jewish and Arab areas. Although Mr. Said was born in Jerusalem, in 1935, his family’s home was Cairo; they did not move from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was partitioned in 1949, not 1947.

According to British Mandate records, Said’s parents neither owned nor rented the Jerusalem dwelling that he at times falsely portrayed as his childhood home.

An Islamist is left speechless after a Zionist educates him about Jewish refugees from the Arab world. pic.twitter.com/txUkvL9MSw
— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) April 18, 2021

Elder Comix redux!

Last year I made a series of comic panels from frames in old public domain comic books. As always, tey are written from the perspective of the terminally woke.

I don't think these are quite as good, but they aren't bad. Enjoy!

Just some Holocaust denial and anger when Arabs commemorate the Holocaust, on Lebanese Al Mayadeen TV:

Jordanian analyst Muhammad Faraj denounced a Holocaust memorial ceremony held in the UAE, saying that restoring the memory of the Holocaust is a UAE attempt "to cover up the real massacres" perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians and Arabs. He made his remarks in an interview that aired on Mayadeen TV (Lebanon) on April 8, 2021.

Narrator: "Tel Aviv is rejoicing today. For the first time in an Arab country, Holocaust memorial ceremonies were held in the UAE, with the participation of Emiratis and Israelis. They commemorate the so-called Jewish Holocaust, while ignoring the holocaust of the Zionist enemy against the Palestinians."

Muhammad Faraj: "Commemorating the Holocaust is an Emirati attempt to bring the occupiers victimhood to the forefront, in order to cover up the real massacres that were perpetrated against the Palestinians and the Arabs, and which are still taking place here and now.

[...]

"Under no circumstances does Israel have the right to play the victimhood card - especially not here in the East. As the Jordanian poet Assad Qasim said: 'I was not a guard in Auschwitz oh child killer.' The second depiction included in the message [of the ceremony] has to do with the lighting of six candles, symbolizing six million [Jewish victims]. It should be noted that the death toll in World War II was 42 million. Focusing on a specific group is a Zionist strategic policy, with is followed by the UAE today. Another important issue concerns senior writers and historians, such as Roger Garaudy and David Irving, who argued that this number is historically incorrect. Some said that there were only hundreds of thousands, others said that the main cause for these deaths was typhus, and so on. These senior historians and thinkers were persecuted by the Zionist lobby through fierce Zionist propaganda."

Some Arabs are being progressive. Some Arabs, like these, are remaining regressive.

The irony is that self-described "progressive" Westerners support the regressive Arabs.

04/19 Links Pt1: America’s Racial Self-Flagellation at the UN Only Helps Rogue States; In J Street speech, Abbas urges Biden to scrap US law deeming PLO a terror group

From Ian:

America’s Racial Self-Flagellation at the UN Only Helps Rogue States

Racial discrimination against minorities is a chronic sickness in American society.”

“…the challenges facing the United States in human rights are deep-seated. They did not just emerge over the past four years, such as Black Lives Matter.”

“[S]lavery is the original sin of America. It’s weaved white supremacy and black inferiority into our founding documents and principles.”

What distinguishes these relatively similar remarks about America’s flawed past and imperfect present? The first two were delivered by Communist Chinese officials in an effort to embarrass the United States on the world stage. The third is an indictment of the United States by the United States itself.

That particular remark comes from the head of the American mission to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, in a March speech before the UN General Assembly. She recently reiterated the themes of that speech in an address to the non-profit group founded by Rev. Al Sharpton, the National Action Network. “Of course, when we raise issues of equity and justice at the global scale, we have to approach them with humility,” Thomas-Greenfield conceded. “We have to acknowledge that we are an imperfect Union and have been since the beginning.”

Thomas-Greenfield is presently focused on getting the U.S. back into the United Nations Human Rights Council, an organization from which the U.S. withdrew in 2018—and for good reason.

The UNHRC is an organization plagued by corruption. It elevates miscreants like China, Algeria, Congo, Cuba, Pakistan, Venezuela, Russia, and Qatar to membership. It maintains a permanent agenda item—Item Seven—dedicated to the criticism of Israel. It elects people like Richard Falk, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and obsequious apologist for the terror group Hamas, to oversee the situation in the Palestinian territories. It selects individuals like Jean Ziegler, a co-founder and recipient of the preposterous “Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights,” to defend Venezuela’s murderous Maduro regime as a victim of America’s “economic war.” And so on.

In J Street speech, Abbas urges Biden to scrap US law deeming PLO a terror group

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday urged the Biden administration to revoke a US law that deems the Palestinian Liberation Organization and its affiliates a terror group.

In a video address to the national conference of the left-wing, pro-Israel J Street lobby, Abbas said he looked forward to “develop[ing] and strengthen[ing]” ties with Washington, which Ramallah severed in 2017 after the Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

However, he noted that doing so would require “the elimination of some obstacles, most important of which” was addressing the 1987 Anti-Terrorism Act.

Abbas maintained that the law’s relevance had elapsed, as the PLO and Israel both recognized one another as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples in the 1993 Oslo Accords, with Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Washington subsequently signing agreements to fight terrorism together.

The Times of Israel reported in December that the PA is prepared to alter the way it pays stipends to Palestinian security prisoners, as well as the families of terrorists and others killed by Israelis, in an effort to convince the Biden administration to scrap the law.

Abbas appeared to hint at such plans during his J Street address. The PA president first called for the dovish lobby’s “assistance with the US administration and Congress to repeal all laws that block the road toward enhancing Palestinian-US relations.

“On our part, we will remove all obstacles to achieve this goal,” he added, not specifying which steps the PA plans to take.

No, this is him calling on Congress to repeal the Taylor Force Act so the PA can continue collecting hundreds of millions in American aid while paying terrorists and their families for murdering Americans https://t.co/BeWhe8wMXt
— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) April 18, 2021

Media Silent as Abbas Calls on Biden to Remove PLO’s Terrorist Designation

Abbas’ ‘Sole Path to Achieving Peace’
During his J Street address, Abbas claimed:
We are ready to resume peace negotiations with our Israeli counterpart on the basis of international legitimacy resolution, the signed agreements, and under the auspices of the international Quartet…. We believe that dialogue and negotiations are the sole path to achieving peace.”

Yet, the reality on the ground effectively reduces the probability of this potentiality to almost zero. In this respect, the PA continues to incentivize the murder of Jews with its “Pay-for-Slay” policy, which entails paying “salaries” to those who perpetrate violent attacks — with more money being doled out to terrorists who shed the most blood.

Though every public record of the law requiring that seven percent of the PA’s budget be allocated toward this “Martyrs Fund” was removed in 2018, former Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Avi Dichter, who is fluent in Arabic, has confirmed its existence.

Indeed, it was this PA- mandated rule that led to the passage in 2018 of the Taylor Force Act, which suspended American aid to Ramallah so long as it continued to pay reward terrorism. Congress passed the law following the murder of Taylor Force, a 28-year-old US Army veteran who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian in Tel Aviv.

Turning ‘Palestine’ Into One of the Most Antisemitic Places on Earth
Moreover, Abbas used the opportunity to address some 4,000 people who reportedly registered for J Street’s virtual event to tar Israel, blaming the Jewish state for the failure to implement a two-state solution.

That this is a patently false assertion — especially when considering that Abbas in 2008 rejected a comprehensive peace offer by then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert — is underscored by the PA chief’s rampant antisemitism. Abbas has accused Israeli rabbis of planning to poison Palestinian water wells, and claimed that Jews fabricated their ancient connection to Israel.

In 2018, Abbas argued that the Holocaust was not the end-result of rabid antisemitism but, rather, a response to the financial activities of European Jewry.

It is not surprising, then, that the Anti-Defamation League found that Palestinians in the West Bank are, on the whole, one the most antisemitic people in the world, with more than 90 percent of them harboring racist attitudes toward Jews.

This is from an English-language PLO press release for Palestinian Prisoners Day:

The spread of CORONA-19 [sic] pandemic caused the prisoners' infections rose to (368), as a result of poor health care and protection measures, and a scarcity of protective tools, which led to the death of 4 prisoners inside the Israeli occupation prisons during the year 2020, PNC added.

It is hard to parse the poor English but either the PLO is saying that prisoners died of COVID-19 or of Israeli medical negligence.

Here were the prisoners who died while in Israeli custody in 2020:

Jaber Al-Barghouthi - fell unconscious while in a bathroom

Daoud al-Khatib - heart attack

Sa'di al-Gharabli - 75, cancer and diabetes

Kamal N. Abu-Wa’ar- throat cancer

If the critics can think of ways to keep people with terminal cancer or heart attacks alive, I think that not only Israel would welcome the news, but the entire world.