Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, June 19, 2021

06/19 Links: Is There a Future for Young Jewish Families in Los Angeles?; Palestinians call for probe into ‘vaccine scandal’; Is it racist to confront a suicide bomber?

From Ian:

Is There a Future for Young Jewish Families in Los Angeles?

Since I’m more involved in the Jewish community rather than the artist community these days, I worry about the Jewish future of Los Angeles. When I go to synagogue, I notice there are more baby boomers and gen Xers than millennials and gen Zers. Baby boomers tell me how concerned they are about my generation since it’s so unaffordable here. I am too.

Sadly, I don’t believe that the Jewish community has much of a future here with the way things are going. Aside from the fact that we can’t purchase property here and start building generational wealth for our children, it doesn’t seem like the non-Jews like us very much. It’s not only frightening that Jews are randomly getting attacked on the streets and synagogues are being vandalized, but also that antisemitism is now being institutionalized. Just look at how the LA teachers’ union is supporting anti-Israel boycotts. It’s peculiar how they don’t boycott China for interning Uyghurs in camps or Iran for killing gay men. Somehow, everyone and their mother have an opinion on Israel. But that’s beside the point.

The nonsense in LA and California in general is at an all-time high. On a typical Shabbat, my husband, daughter and I have to walk through homeless encampments that smell like marijuana and human feces to get to shul. The homeless encampments are allowed to stay there, but if you build your fence a little too high to protect your family, the city’s going to fine you. What did LA residents do to deserve this kind of punishment, aside from paying our taxes and abiding the law?

All this being said, I love California so much that I’m willing to stay until I can’t anymore. When I was a depressed 14-year-old in my hometown, Baltimore, my mom sent me to a hippie summer camp in Northern California. It cured my teen depression and gave me a whole new positive outlook on life. I vowed to move to California one day because I had such fond memories of this state. As soon as I finally arrived here from New York nine years ago, I instantly felt happier.

The Jewish community here is beautiful, the scenery is incredible, the kosher food is the best in the country and the successful people are inspirational. I’m sure that because I’m a content person in general, I would be happy in other places, but probably not as happy.

For now, like many people my age, I’m pulling a “let’s wait and see,” hoping the future gets better, praying for a miracle and having faith in G-d that no matter what, I’ll be OK.

Palestinian protesters: “we don’t want 2 states we want all of it”

How has that worked out for them so far? Let’s review:

??Partition plan
??1948
??1967
??First intifada
??Second intifada
??2008, 2012, 2014, 2021

Maybe wanna rethink that strategy?

pic.twitter.com/5LBlNgsDDt
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) June 19, 2021

From a 1971 Communist film. A Japanese Red Army terrorist describes the deluded worldview that animates contemporary antisemitism, or antizionism; Then, and now, Israel is framed as an enemy of global revolutionary struggle.

3 years later, JRA murdered 26 Christians in Israel: pic.twitter.com/5eRfwJp6mu
— The Conspiracy Libel (@ConspiracyLibel) June 18, 2021

Palestinians call for probe into ‘vaccine scandal’

Palestinians are calling for the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry into the Pfizer vaccine agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Despite the PA government’s decision late Friday to cancel the agreement, many Palestinians denounced the deal as a “big scandal” and called for holding those responsible to account.

Under the terms of the deal, announced on Friday morning, Israel would give more than one million soon-to-expire Pfizer doses to the PA. In return, Israel would receive later this year the same number of vaccines that were purchased by the PA.

Some Palestinians initially criticized the PA for striking the deal with Israel on the pretext that it was a form of “normalization with the Israeli occupation.”

But upon learning that the Israeli-supplied vaccines were about to expire, many Palestinians condemned the PA and accused it of “tampering” with the health of the Palestinian people.

The PA’s decision to cancel the deal has failed to calm many Palestinians.

Several Palestinians denounced the deal as a “political, health and moral scandal” and said that the vaccines could have endangered the lives of thousands of people.

06/18 Links Pt2: How the Media Ignore Jew-Haters; Palestinians reject 1 million Israeli COVID vaccines; EU releases delayed report on incitement, anti-Semitism in Palestinian textbooks

From Ian:

Christine Rosen: How the Media Ignore Jew-Haters

In the wake of George Floyd’s killing in 2020, Google issued a lengthy statement outlining its commitments to racial equity in hiring and promotion as well as the money and support it had promised to the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet Google has said nothing about the recent spike in anti-Semitic violence, including brutal beatings of Jews on the streets of American cities, despite the fact that Jews are the targets of hate crimes in the U.S. far more frequently than other racial or religious groups.

Part of that has to do with the fact that Google’s workforce is progressive, particularly on matters related to Israel: According to The Verge, some members of the Jewish group at Google to whom Bobb privately apologized claim that the group itself “was not a safe space to express anti-Zionist beliefs,” and they formed their own anti-Israel splinter group. That group demanded that Pichai make a public statement condemning Israel’s response to the recent Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel that would include “direct recognition of the harm done to Palestinians by Israeli military and gang violence.” Not surprisingly, no pressure was placed on Pichai to condemn Hamas’s terrorism, which directly targeted Israeli civilians. The letter further demanded funding for Palestinian causes and “termination of contracts with institutions that support Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, such as the Israeli Defense Forces.”

Google’s inconsistent application of its own supposed principles of diversity and inclusion should be more widely known, but the mainstream media long ago accepted uncritically the notion that anything labeled an effort at fostering diversity cannot and should not be questioned—unless the diversity is ideological. Thus James Damore, a white man, is fair game for dismissal by Google for criticizing diversity dogma, and his story is widely discussed; Kamau Bobb, a black man, remains protected by his institution for his anti-Semitism, and his behavior is barely mentioned in the press. Which is why, as of this writing, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and most other mainstream-media outlets that avidly covered the Damore case have completely ignored the Kamau Bobb story. They employ their own Kamau Bobbs, and that is sufficient for them to cast a blind eye on the matter.

Although appeals to “diversity” are ubiquitous in corporate America, there is little consensus among Americans about what, exactly, diversity means—and little incentive on the part of woke executives or the mainstream media to find out. As the internal contradictions of intersectionality continue to reveal themselves, perhaps the media could spend less time on self-congratulatory reporting of its own “moral clarity” on race and more actual reporting on the hypocrisies embedded in our culture’s pursuit of those things that Kamau Bobb’s former title claimed he represented: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Seth Mandel: The Jews Who Are Complicit in Jew-Hatred

It was an astonishingly vile and aggressive coordinated attack against the Jewish group. The ADL was silent. JDCA was silent. The Democratic Party sided with the Squad. The Jewish community had been abandoned to the rise of the dominant left-of-center ideology according to which Jews are part of a white power structure of which Israel is a prime example.

Corbyn’s attempt to separate the Jews from the Jewish state in the UK failed miserably. But the Squad’s efforts to do the same here are not failing. And it’s not just in the halls of Congress. The New Yorker’s Helen Rosner suggested it would be a good tactic not to beat up Jews, as part of an overall strategy to undermine Israel’s legitimacy. (This after the New Yorker’s union put out a statement of solidarity with the Palestinians that included the phrase “from the river to the sea.”) Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times wrote a column with a headline so instantly infamous that the Times eventually and quietly changed it: “Attacks on Jews Over Israel Are a Gift to the Right.”

Meanwhile, the comedian Sarah Silverman objected to attacks on Jews in Los Angeles not on the grounds that they were evil acts of anti-Semitic violence but rather because “WE ARE NOT ISRAEL.” For his part, Kenneth Roth, the obsessively anti-Israel executive director of Human Rights Watch, declared, “It is WRONG to equate the Jewish people with the apartheid and deadly bombardment of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government.”

Throwing fellow Jews to the wolves is abominable moral behavior. Delicately excising the name and words of a chic Democratic politician from a list of anti-Semitic statements to protect her—or to protect the organization you run from her wrath—constitutes an act of complicity in the violence that ensued in whatever small measure from her remarks. And the man who was thus complicit—Jonathan Greenblatt—had the nerve to act surprised. The anti-Semitic street violence in America is “literally happening from coast to coast, and spreading like wildfire,” Greenblatt told the Times. “The sheer audacity of these attacks feels very different.”

It feels different because it feels so familiar. And if the American Jewish community is to survive, it must start acting like it. And we must start by cleaning our own corrupted house.

Liel Leibovitz: No, Jews Aren’t White

A modicum of immersion in Jewish life would save these Jews from the maws of their own obliviousness. But herein lies their second misfortune: Religion, to them, has become not the communal pursuit of study and practice, as it had been for Jews since at least Moses, but one more lifestyle decision among many. For the most part, the modern progressive Jew is Jewish the same way she’s vegan, say, or a socialist, or a fan of matcha lattes. Like nearly a third of American adults, she likely defines herself as spiritual but not religious, ignoring the fact that religion emerged in precisely the same way across cultures and continents precisely because humans realized that spiritual stirrings alone were meaningless unless tethered to the ground by rituals that had to be performed together with other people.

The young secular Jews who identify as white have none of that. As they are not likely to belong to a synagogue or a faith community, they practice their Judaism as they do their aversion to gluten, privately and sporadically, as the mood suits them. It’s much easier than accepting the yoke of obligations—from holding space with other Jews you may not like to performing practices, like keeping kosher, you may not fully understand—but it also offers far less protection against being swallowed by the tide of a hostile culture.

Which brings us to misfortune number three: Being all too human, progressive Jews are eager to belong to something. And because their own parents spent decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars telling them that the greatest good is to be found in the quad of an Ivy League school or the sparkling boardroom of a Fortune 100 company or any of the other temples of the all-American meritocracy, they are happy to pay any price to fit in among the swells.

If you grew up in a household where Shabbat candles were rarely if ever lit and no one bothered reading a page of Talmud, but where SAT scores were obsessed over and Penn and Princeton stickers, coffee mugs, and sweatshirts ordered as soon as those thick admission envelopes arrived in the mail, you would understandably pay any price to stay in the good graces of the priestly class that maintains these hallowed institutions. So if the priests demand that you identify as white and say a little prayer of repentance for your sins, well, isn’t that a small price to pay for the American dream?

That nothing good ever came to the Jews from groveling, that we survived—indeed, thrived—precisely because we refused to compromise our beliefs, is lost on these lost souls. In their airless world, nothing is true and nothing is permitted except for parroting the articles of faith passed down by those who hold power. Thankfully, as some Jews continue to torment themselves by trying to fit in with a milieu that will never accept them for who they are, most young Jews are traveling in the exact opposite direction. According to the latest Pew Survey, released earlier this year, only 3 percent of Jews 65 and older define themselves as observant, while among adults under 30, the number skyrockets to 17 percent. This means that many among the coming generation of American Jews have no use for obscene formulations like “Jews are white.” They have only one identity marker, the only one they ever had, the only one that matters: Jews are Jews.

The Palestinian cause is "just" - and other memes

I had just about enough of seeing anti-Israel people downplay the danger of Gaza rockets or incendiary devices.

Also:

06/18 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: Palestinianism opening up new Nazi front against Jews; HRW, Other NGOs Join "Apartheid" Event, Along with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, PFLP

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Palestinianism opening up new Nazi front against Jews

Furthermore, both the Palestinian cause and Palestinian “identity” itself are based on the attempted theft and appropriation of the historic homeland and history of the Jews— the indigenous people of the land of Israel.

So it’s not just that the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel are fundamentally anti-Jew. What’s not properly understood is that Palestinianism is antisemitism.

Western liberals who support the Palestinian cause are supporting a profoundly anti-Jewish agenda, not only to steal the land of the Jewish people but to wipe out their history and thus their identity.

Far more ominously, this is also the passionately held default narrative for millions of Muslims who have settled in Britain and other western countries.

As they become more assimilated, and their children enter the professions and political life — in itself a welcome development in terms of social acceptance — they are unfortunately seeding this poisonous narrative throughout British society.

A lethal obsession once confined to the far left is now gaining enormous cultural traction through the number of British Muslims developing public influence (with the sterling exception of those few British Muslims who take a brave and principled public stand against Jew-hatred). But anyone who dares point this out is denounced as a racist and Islamophobe.

This strategy of cultural manipulation and intimidation threatens to push British politicians into hostility towards Israel. It is actively imperilling the security of British Jews. And it is undermining the integrity and values of Britain itself, as its cultural leaders increasingly kow-tow to its dictates through ignorance, ideology or fear. And America is going in the same direction.

Palestinianism is no longer just about the Middle East. It’s now providing cultural rocket boosters behind both antisemitism and Islamisation in the west.

The Mossad chief got it wrong

Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen is not naive. As one might expect, he is suspicious by nature and cynical due to his vocation.

Yet, in his first interview after leaving the intelligence agency, he conceded that he wrongly assessed that Hamas was looking for some sort of deal with Israel. He even revealed his almost-theological mistake, saying, “I wanted to believe” and “I believed wholeheartedly.”

He explained: “I thought we had an arrangement. I wanted to believe that because of all the effort we put into bringing about times of peace that we desperately need here [in Israel] and there [in Gaza]. … I admit I believed, wholeheartedly believed that if the residents of the Gaza Strip saw their wellbeing improve … their motivation for crises and wars would decrease. It seems I was wrong. I was wrong.” Jews have been making this mistake for over a century. In the early statehood years, Moshe Sharett, who would become the second prime minister of Israel, explained that Zionism was built entirely on national consciousness, not on getting Jews to feel that they are better off. Yet, when it came to Arabs that lived in Israel, it expected them to voice their opinions on the economy and progress, entirely ignoring the national problem.

“We said: We are bringing them a blessing. … We expected them to sell their national birthright in this land for the proverbial mess of socioeconomic pottage. … There is an assumption, explicit or not, that since the Arabs are in an economically, socially and culturally disadvantageous position, they only focus on sustenance and on the mundane … [that] they have no understanding of national values. [Such an argument] gives rise to negative inclinations that stem from the insulting feeling that we see them as inferior human beings, who are not enthused over national identity and all they seek is food and medical services,” he said.

Ben-Dror Yemini: Israel must return to sanity on Gaza

According to Yigal Carmon, the president and cofounder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Hamas’ success is so extensive that it has "managed to limit the IDF's capabilities, and turn every Israeli military victory into another political loss."

The real challenge facing Prime Minister Natali Bennett’s nascent government is to change this worrying paradigm.

Currently, the hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the south live in constant fear due to Hamas, with only an occasional reprieve from the rocket fire and arson attacks to provide any comfort and peace of mind.

Apparently though, this dreadful existence is not enough to convince Israel’s decision-makers that they have to deal with the challenge of Hamas.

When Western armies confront organizations such as the Taliban and ISIS, they know it is imperative they avoid harming the civilian population as much as possible.

The IDF must take even more care to avoid civilian casualties, given the fact that every Palestinian child who tragically dies in such confrontations (and even some who do not) eventually winds up on the front page of The New York Times.

A French president or German chancellor would never demand that the U.S. halt its operations against the Taliban because of civilian casualties. They are content, however, to do just that when it comes to Israel - and the U.S president may even join them in their demand. Some might call this discrimination or even anti-Semitism, but it is nonetheless the reality in which we live - and Hamas’ primary power in its war on Israel.

In order to effectively tackle this challenge, Israel cannot return to the policies of former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who allowed Qatar to transfer huge sums to Gaza every month and without oversight.

Photos of pre-teens registering for Hamas terrorist summer camp

Here are photos from the Hamas Al Qassam Brigades terrorist website showing children as young as nine years old queuing up to sign up for terror camp to be recruited into Hamas.

According to Hamas:

These camps aim to ignite the flame of jihad in the generation of liberation, sow Islamic values and prepare the expected victory army for the liberation of Palestine, God willing.

Notice how Hamas uses a submachine gun as a prop to attract recruits.

Hamas is solely responsible for the deaths along Al Wehda street

The New York Times reviews the incident that killed the most civilians in the May fighting, the collapse of the Abul Ouf Building where 22 innocent Palestinians died.

Already the subhead shows the bias:

As the article shows, Israel didn't bomb the apartment building - if that was the target, the IDF would have issued a warning.

In an interview, an Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, said that on the morning of May 16, several Israeli aircraft fired 11 missiles along a 200-yard stretch of Al Wahda Street, aiming to destroy a tunnel and command center beneath it. Drone video filmed soon afterward by the Israeli military showed a row of craters left in the road by GPS-guided bombs.

But while most of the adjacent buildings remained standing, the Abul Ouf Building collapsed in what the official described as “a freak event.”

The military had not known the exact location of the command center, nor how far it extended under nearby buildings, Colonel Conricus said. When the bombs exploded deep underground, they unexpectedly dislodged the Abul Ouf Building’s foundations, he added.

The Independent, which reported about this on May 24, confirmed this:

When questioned about the purpose of the attack, the Israeli army said Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza, bears responsibility for “intentionally locating its military infrastructure under civilian houses, thus exposing civilians to danger”.

It said a “preliminary” investigation into the attack found that Israeli aircraft struck “underground military infrastructure” that was located under the road.

“The underground military facilities collapsed causing the foundations of the civilian houses above them to collapse as well leading to unintended casualties,” a statement read.

Hamas built tunnels directly underneath buildings. When the tunnel walls collapsed, the buildings above did as well.

Ridiculously, the NYT publishes Hamas' denial that their tunnels are underneath civilian centers:

Hamas has acknowledged building a network of tunnels under Gaza for military purposes, but in a news conference on May 26, Yahya Sinwar, leader of the Hamas political wing in Gaza, denied that any of them lay under civilian areas, dismissing the accusation as “baseless.”

However, the United Nations believes Hamas built at least one military tunnel under a U.N. school.

Yet Hamas has claimed that it has built 500 kilometers of tunnels in Gaza - and none of it beneath civilian centers?

One other detail about Wehda Street that the Independent mentions, but not the New York Times:

The air raids turned one of the busiest streets in Gaza, and the main access point to the strip’s chief hospital al-Shifa, into a crater-marked moonscape.

It is well known that Hamas has a major headquarters in the basement of the Shifa hospital. This strongly indicates that Hamas has tunnels leading from the hospital itself to the rest of the "metro" network. (Wikipedia confirms that Shifa is at the end of Wehda Street.)

The NYT pretends to be evenhanded in discussing whether war crimes were committed:

Rights experts said the use of such powerful weapons in a dense urban environment put civilian lives at risk and was a possible war crime. And if Hamas installed military facilities underneath residential areas, that too is prohibited under the laws of war.

Based on just the reporting in that article, it is clear that Israel did not commit any war crimes. Most of the buildings along the route did not collapse, and clearly the Israeli military commanders did not expect the Abul Ouf building to be destroyed. To be a war crime, it must be determined that the military knew it was likely that there would be unacceptable civilian casualties, which is clearly not the case here.

And if it is known that Hamas has crucial military targets literally underneath civilians, it does not mean those targets are protected under international law. They can be targeted, carefully, in ways that minimize the danger to civilians - which is exactly what Israel did.

Hamas, by building an extensive tunnel network directly underneath thousands of innocent people, is completely and wholly responsible for any loss of life from their tunnels being targeted. And the media simply does not get it.

For the past two weeks, anti-Israel protesters have been trying to stop Israeli shipping company Zim from unloading cargo in North America.

In Seattle, the protests have been organized by Falastiniyat, which describes itself as "a grassroots collective of diasporic Palestinian feminists in Seattle living & organizing at the intersection of gender justice and anti-colonialism."

A quick glance through their Instagram page shows that these so-called feminists have not once protested against Palestinian laws that are specifically against women. This shows that these "progressive" groups are hypocrites, with no interest in actually helping Palestinian women and whose obsession with Israel - the most liberal state in the region - is thinly veiled Jew-hatred.

Aisha Mansour from Falastiniyat, said, "we’re just trying to tell our ports, stop taking anything from Israel.”

But the Zim ship wasn't unloading anything from Israel. In fact, the shipment that these bigots have been so keen to block includes medical and personal protective equipment that it picked up from South Korea and China last month.

And while Zim was founded and has headquarters in Israel, it is a public company.

Beyond that, the Zim San Diego ship that is docked at Seattle is sailing under the Liberian flag. None of the workers on the ship are Israeli. The recipients of the cargo aren't Israeli.

When international shipping is disrupted, it hurts a lot of people, including the dockworkers, as well as the other shipping companies whose own shipments are delayed by these protests, and their own customers.

The bigots who claim, incredibly, that they are pro-Palestinian don't care about all the people that they hurt. As long as some Israelis are losing money, then it is all worthwhile to them to hurt hundreds or thousands of other people whose livelihoods and jobs depend on international commerce.

That is what hate looks like. This hate has nothing to do with Palestinian solidarity - it is aimed at Jews in Israel.

After a standoff of over a week, police arrested 10 protesters and the cargo is now being unloaded safely.

The Northwest Seaport Alliance issued this statement, pointing out that freedom of expression is not the same thing as disrupting people's livelihoods:

The Northwest Seaport Alliance respects the expression of first amendment rights and prioritizes the safety of both workers at our properties and those exercising their free speech rights.

The NWSA is the fourth-largest international seaport in the United States and keeping lanes of commerce open to international trade is essential to our region and country.

The ZIM San Diego is part of a regular service that calls Terminal 18, carrying routine import cargo from Asia, including medical and PPE equipment and picking up export cargo from our Washington exporters. Local retailers and businesses across the Midwest rely on the import cargo delivered by vessels to our terminals.

Port of Seattle Police and Seattle Police Department have worked to provide a safe zone for protestors to ensure individual expression is protected while maintaining access to Terminal 18 to allow scheduled operations to continue.

Law enforcement provided multiple warnings to individuals obstructing the right of way and made approximately ten arrests of individuals who refused to comply and continued to obstruct roadways. We continue to monitor the situation as port operations return to normal.

The NWSA remains committed to close coordination with all stakeholders to ensure a safe environment for all.

06/17 Links Pt2: Sometimes it takes a few pogroms; 200 Rabbis blast Pelosi's failure to strongly reprimand Ilhan Omar; Noa Tishby tackles Bella Hadid's latest anti-Israel rant

From Ian:

MEMRI: Shaheen Nassar Of The Council On American-Islamic Relations Los Angeles (CAIR-LA): The 'European Jewish Colonizers' In Palestine Converted To Judaism In The Middle Ages, Have No Connection To Ancient Israelites; Antisemitism Is A Way Of Persecuting A Group For Falsely Claiming To Descend From Historic Palestine

Director of policy and advocacy for the Los Angeles branch of The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR LA), Shaheen Nassar, said that antisemitism is a uniquely European phenomenon, and it was a way of persecuting a group of people for the "false historical accusation" that they are the descendants of the people of historic Palestine. He made his remarks during a lecture held at the Islamic Society of Orange County, which was posted on the IOSC Masjid YouTube channel on June 11, 2021. Nassar explained that Muslims and Arabs are Semites, and that "most historians recognize" that the vast majority of European Jews and the "European Jewish colonizers" in Palestine are Europeans who converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages, and it is in fact Palestinians who most likely to have the blood of the Israelites running through their veins. He added that it is ironic that while Zionism is a "supremacist ideology," Jews are also the target of antisemitism, which he conceded is a "real thing." He went on to explain that white supremacists hold Jewish, Muslim, and Palestinian lives in equal contempt.

Antisemitism "Was A Way Of Persecuting A Group Of People... For The False Historical Allegation That They Descended From Historic Palestine"

Shaheen Nassar: "Palestinians and Arabs are Semites themselves. Antisemitism is, throughout much of history, a uniquely European phenomena. It was essentially a way of saying... it was a way of persecuting a group of people for the false history accusation, this false historical allegation, that they had descended from historic Palestine. The reality of course, as most historians recognize, is much of European Jews and much of the European Jewish colonizers of Palestine are all descendants of medieval converts to Judaism, and that realistically the blood of the ancient Israelites most likely flows in the blood of Palestinians.

"Zionism Is A supremacist Ideology... There's No Direct Blood Relation Between The Ancient Israelites And The European Colonizers"

"If Zionism is a supremacist ideology, isn't it ironic that also Jews are the targets. And by the way this is legitimate, antisemitism is a real thing. I may not necessarily agree with its relevance to the issue of Palestine, but antisemitism is a very real thing, and there are white supremacists out there who hold Jewish lives and Muslim lives and Palestinian lives with equal contempt.

"A lot of the people that were massacring Palestinians, the people that I mentioned who would kill, in such horrific and gruesome ways, Palestinian children, committed acts of sexual violence... These death squads, the Irgun, the Hagana, the Black Hand, they would later evolve into the modern Israeli defense forces.

"There's no direct blood relation between the ancient Israelites and the European colonizers."

Shaheen Nassar of CAIR LA: Arabs Are Semites, While Most European Jews Converted in the Middle Ages; Antisemitism Is a Phenomenon of Persecuting a Group that Falsely Claims to Descent from Historic Palestine pic.twitter.com/f982v2zii7
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) June 17, 2021

Sometimes it takes a few pogroms

In my book, The Ideological Path to Submission... and what we can do about it (Mantua Books), I agree with the approach of Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum to distinguish between Muslims who can adjust to lives of freedom, responsibility, women’s rights, rights of other religions including Judaism and non-violence, and other Muslims, usually called Islamists who seek Jihad, conquest, a world-wide Caliphate, forced conversions, Sharia Law and violence. My book deals mainly with Islam in America, Canada and Europe, but I hold the same distinctions must apply to Islamic Israelis.

The only Muslims that should live in Israel are those non-Islamists who accept the virtue of the Jews, the Torah and that the Qur’an says that the land of Israel is for the Jews.

Sometimes it takes a few pogroms to drive home the problem and the solution alike.

The Russian and Ukrainian pogroms in the early 19th century were the determining factor for Russian Jews to depart Russia and the Ukraine for America. A lot of Jews paid with their lives so that others would understand that the time had come to leave.

My father’s cousin, upon liberation from Auschwitz, decided to go back home to Lodz Poland. He and others were met with a violent pogrom from the Poles who did not want the Jews back. After a few years, he and his new wife made Aliyah.

Pogroms against Jews in contemporary Europe and the danger that riots in America might turn into pogroms will induce Diaspora Jews to make Aliyah. But they must see an Israel that understands that Arab Israelis must not only be cleansed of guns and other weapons, but must clearly support reformist Islam and not Islamism. At a time when Muslims up 20% of Israel’s population, it is essential to adopt this paradigm about Muslim neighbours and co-workers.

The mini-pogroms that started a couple of weeks ago must make it clear to both antisemites and Jews everywhere that the best thing for all concerned is a division between modernist more liberal Islam and the Islamists, and only the former should populate Israel, and perhaps the rest of the West. Those who follow radical hegemonic Islamism might stay in one of the numerous Islamic theocracies.

Sometimes it takes a few pogroms.

How antisemitism links various world conflicts

The pro-Armenian lobby, meanwhile, has a chronic antisemitism problem that is exposed through its social media activity. In tweets promoting the theme of "Christian Artsakh" during March 2020, the ANCA described Nagorno-Karabakh as "an ancient #Christian land, modern democratic republic, and home to 1st Century holy sites – under attack by #Azerbaijan's oil-rich #Aliyev dictatorship." The ANCA repeatedly used the same language to target supporters of Azerbaijan such as Jewish lawmaker Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.). In addition to weaponizing Christianity for political purposes, the ANCA promoted anti-Semitic tropes – including by tweeting a painting of the arrest of Jesus, invoking the myth that Jews killed Jesus, and a photo of silver coins, conjuring the antisemitic conspiracy theory of Jewish control over financial markets and governments.

This activity is not surprising when considering that, according to an Anti-Defamation League study, Armenians believe a variety of antisemitic stereotypes are "probably true" – and that they agree with those tropes at an even higher rate (58%) than Iranians (56%).

Armenian antisemitism is also apparent in the country's history of glorifying Nazi collaborators such as Garegin Nzhdeh, commander of the Armenian Legion, a unit that rounded up Jews and resistance fighters and marched them to concentration camps. Nzhdeh is honored through statues, streets, or memorials in nearly 20 Armenian municipalities.

A third parallel between the Israeli-Palestinian and Armenia-Azerbaijan conflicts pertains to the violent nature of protests taking place abroad. Much like Jews were physically attacked by pro-Palestinian protesters in major US cities last month, Armenian protesters attacked a group of two-dozen Azerbaijanis in Los Angeles in July 2020, causing injuries that required urgent medical care and prompting a hate-crime investigation into the incident.

For Israel, which maintains deep ties with Azerbaijan but at times projects a neutral or silent stance toward the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, the takeaway for the new government should be clear: stand with Azerbaijan, a crucial Muslim-majority ally, and stand against Armenian antisemitism. US Jews should arrive at the same conclusion, understanding that antisemitism coming from pro-Palestinian activists and pro-Armenian activists are branches of the same tree.

Secret WWII Jewish British Military Commandos Finally Come Out of the Shadows

X Troop is the fiercest British World War II commando force you have likely never heard of.

Formally known as “No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando, 3 Troop,” its 87 members were mainly Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria who were hell-bent on exacting revenge on the Nazis who had destroyed their families and home communities. Some commandos were themselves survivors of incarceration in Nazi concentration camps.

Sworn to secrecy about their true identities for their own safety, these brave young men assumed English noms de guerre. Only one person, a secretary at MI5, who worked in the casualty division, had access to the list of the men’s original names and places of origin.

After a year and a half of intensive training in Wales and Scotland, the X Troopers were assigned to the spearhead of Allied forces that invaded Europe and fought into the heart of the Third Reich. Utilizing advanced combat and counterintelligence techniques, and their native German language abilities, they undertook dangerous missions to infiltrate behind enemy lines. In battle, they captured and immediately interrogated the enemy, providing invaluable information to the advancing Allied armies.

The X Troopers never fought as a joint force. They were seconded individually or in small groups to various Allied troops and divisions. Over half of them were killed, wounded or went missing in action.

“Nothing was going to stop them,” said Leah Garrett, author of a new book about this highly selective and motivated unit, whose exploits have largely been lost to history due to their clandestine nature.

The Tikvah Podcast: David Rozenson on How His Family Escaped the Soviet Union and Why He Chose To Return

The Soviet Union was deeply against religion, and in particular was deeply against Judaism, so that the full embrace of Jewish religious observance, or the study of Hebrew, or the slightest approval of Zionism were often seen as criminal offenses against the state. Some Jews, like Natan Sharansky, resisted—brave refuseniks who wouldn’t give in to enforced secularization and who organized underground networks of Jewish life. Eventually, through American and international pressure, the Soviets allowed those desperate Jews to leave. But what of the Jews who didn’t flee, who remained in Russia even after the demise of the Soviet Union? What’s their story?

David Rozenson, the executive director of Beit Avi Chai, a Jewish cultural center in Jerusalem, was born in the Soviet Union before his family escaped to the United States. Years later, as an adult, he returned to Russia and stayed there for years. On this week’s podcast, in conversation with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, he tells his family story, and explains why, despite his family risking so much to leave, he chose to go back and serve the Jews of the former Soviet Union.

Rabbi: Boys Nursing From Women 'Immodest' - Men Must Nurse Them (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

child hiding eyes Jerusalem, June 20 - The leader of a religious community in this holy city has identified a glaring breach of modesty and dignity in everyday child-rearing behavior, in the form of male babies coming into close physical contact with females who suckle them, and has issued a p'sak halokhoh forbidding women from breastfeeding boys. Instead, men must take on the task of generating breastmilk and providing it to the infants.

Rabbi Noteh LeHumra of Congregation Minhag Schtuss gave his ruling Sunday following complaints by several community activists that despite decades of increasing stringency in their practice of Jewish laws governing male-female dynamics, Jewish men still have a yeizter hora, rachmonoh litzlon, that causes them to stumble, not like our pious ancestors who never even had the slightest hirhur aveiroh, but we could never reach that exalted level and need extra protective measures lest we succumb to taivoh. The congregants identified nursing in particular as an unaddressed hazard, and Rabbi LeHumra developed guidelines accordingly.

"B'nois Yisroel," his ruling, appearing on large, adhesive posters on every available public surface, began. "Because of the unrelenting machinations of the yeitzer, it becomes incumbent upon us to adopt extra levels of taharoh and distance from sin. Therefore, be it known that women may only perform 'breastfeeding' or 'nursing' if the baby is a girl. But because we fear that exposure to, and contact with, women, especially certain uncovered parts thereof, lies at the root of our failure so far to vanquish the yeitzer, b'avoinoiseinu horabbim, from now on only men may nurse boys. Perhaps this way, b'siyatoh dishmayoh, our holy sons will remain pure of mind, never having seen or felt anything inappropriate while eating as a baby."

"Our lore contains multiple instances of men becoming able to nurse," continued the notice. "Mordechai nursed the orphan Esther - but that was ok because she became his wife; or the man in the Gemoro Shabbos who experienced the same miracle so he could provide for his children. Through our dedication to our sacred duty, we, too, may be zoikheh to such phenomena."

"Lest the scoffers argue that we do not rely on miracles, look for yourself at the everyday miracles we have come to expect," it went on. "So few of us work, yet miraculously, money keeps flowing into our institutions and yeshivois; so few of us learn a trade or study anything secular, yet somehow, despite choosing a lifestyle of crushing poverty and food insecurity, Hakodoish Borukh Hu keeps finding ways to keep us from malnutrition. He has many emissaries, not just Bituach Leumi, although that has been a mainstay of His largesse in recent decades."

"A final point," the message concluded. "No one may permit himself to voice the thought that since previous generations saw no need to adopt these stringencies, they were careless or, chas v'sholoim, sinful. They were like the very angels compared to us! They had no need for these measures because they were so elevated, they barely had any yeitzer at all! And that's why we've been exiled and persecuted and haven't been redeemed for thousands of years, because [insert rationalization to help explain why such angelic people couldn't bring the Final Redemption, whereas we unworthy shadows of their greatness definitely will]."

06/17 Links Pt1: Sen. Risch Won’t Lift Hold on Palestinian Aid Without Guarantee Taxpayer Money Is Kept From Terrorists; Will every Israeli airstrike now be front page news?

From Ian:

Sen. Risch Won’t Lift Hold on Palestinian Aid Without Guarantee Taxpayer Money Is Kept From Terrorists

Sen. Jim Risch (R., Idaho), ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says he will not cave to demands from Democrats that he lift a congressional hold on a tranche of Palestinian aid money until he is provided with guarantees that the taxpayer funds will not enrich terrorist groups, including Iran-backed Hamas.

House Democrats led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) have been pressuring Risch to lift a hold on some $75 million in aid money in the wake of Hamas’s war last month with Israel. Raskin and 145 other Democrats pressed Risch on the matter in a letter sent earlier this month. They claim the money is needed for humanitarian reconstruction projects in the Gaza Strip, which came under intense fire from Israel as it struck scores of Hamas positions. Risch, who did recently lift his hold on a portion of these funds, maintains the outstanding allocation will aid Palestinian terror groups.

Risch rejected the Democratic pressure campaign on Wednesday in a response letter to the Democrats declaring that he will not release the funds until the Biden administration provides assurances the money will not be diverted to Hamas or be used by the Palestinian government to pay terrorists and their families, according to a copy obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.

Risch’s hardline stance is certain to rankle Democratic lawmakers who claim the money will be spent to address humanitarian needs in the Gaza Strip. As Democrats have broadly supported the Biden administration’s decision to unfreeze U.S. aid to the Palestinian government, potentially in violation of the law, they have also called for U.S. security assistance to Israel to be frozen. The growing divide between the parties on aid to Israel and the Palestinian government has emerged as a flashpoint in the weeks since Israel defended itself against an onslaught of more than 4,000 missiles fired by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups.

"There are multiple holds on the longer-term projects, as they are under review for compliance with the law," Risch wrote. "I hope you and your colleagues are not suggesting we should turn a blind eye to the potential of U.S. funds being used to support terrorism."

Seth Frantzman: Will every Israeli airstrike now be front page news? - analysis

This appears to be a new pattern. The launching of arson balloons is not new, it has been going on for years. Israeli airstrikes in retaliation for these kinds of attacks and others, is also not new. Over the last several years Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have perpetrated many attacks, including firing rockets, using masses of people to attack the security fence around Gaza and launching incendiary balloons. This is in addition to the major attacks that began on May 10 and involved more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israel.

In general Israeli retaliatory strikes did not get major attention. That all changed with the recent conflict. A variety of factors have played into that, not the least of which is an agenda by some groups to try to increase coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This has resulted in attacks on Israel accusing the country of practicing “apartheid” and also the circulation of a letter around media outlets calling for more pro-Palestinian coverage.

The airstrike coverage is disproportionate because similar airstrikes by Turkey on Iraq or even by the US-led Coalition partners against ISIS, receive no coverage. It’s not a comparison, of some coverage compared to less coverage. There is in fact no coverage of Turkey’s widespread airstrikes on northern Iraq’s Kurdish region, which result in casualties and depopulation. The US-led coalition openly tweets about recent operations against ISIS, which get no coverage. Huge bombings and attacks by terrorist groups in Afghanistan and pitched battles with government forces get little to no coverage.

This speaks to a new kind of coverage of Israeli airstrikes and Gaza tensions. It is not clear if this is only the result of the recent war, or if this push for increased coverage will continue. For now, it is clear, that a new paradigm exists focusing on Israeli airstrikes, even if there are no casualties in the strikes. Over the last several years most Israeli strikes on Gaza, and claims of strikes in Syria by foreign reports, received relatively minor attention. Now that spotlight has shifted. It comes with a new Israeli government in office and may affect calculations regarding these strikes.

The Joshua and Caleb Network: Photos of Gaza That You Have NEVER Seen in the Media

If you are familiar with the Gaza Strip, you probably only think of war and carnage. A simple google search however, will show you a drastically different story. On today’s show, Joshua & Luke unpack photos of Gaza that will blow you away.

Are the people of Gaza oppressed? Yes, but the people who are responsible just might shock you.

Also, a quick history lesson on the Gaza Strip beginning in the early 1900s and real facts about the area that might make you rethink your perspective on the middle east.

Hebrew watermelons, then and now

Ninety years ago, Jewish owned farms in Palestine were struggling, and they wanted to make sure that at least Jews would purchase produce from them. So they created an advertising campaign for "Hebrew melons" and told people to look for a distinctive logo before buying:

Now, the Palestinian Authority is trying to ban melons from Israel - "Hebrew melons" are to be boycotted!

On Wednesday, Palestinian customs police - operating at a Palestinian checkpoint that no one ever hears about - seized a truck with 10 tons of watermelons smuggled from Israel.

The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture released this photo of the seizure.

Keep in mind that the 1930s campaign was to encourage buying produce from Jewish farms, but not to boycott Arab produce. The Palestinian Authority bans produce from Jews - because it knows that it cannot rely on patriotism to encourage Palestinians to only buy from Arab farmers.