Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 02, 2015

02/02 Links Pt2: German judge rules: Anti-Zionism is code for anti-Semitism

From Ian:

German judge rules: Anti-Zionism is code for anti-Semitism

The wheels of justice move slowly, but they are inching forward in Germany. In a unprecedented case heard half a year after these violent anti-Israel demonstrations, last week in Essen, German Judge Gauri Sastry convicted 24-year-old Taylan Can for incitement against an ethnic minority for events at a July 18, 2014, anti-Israel demonstration in the town.
Eyewitness accounts report hostile anti-Israel chants and stones thrown from the anti-Israel camp to the smaller group of Israel supporters. According to the Anti-Defamation League, a breakaway group headed toward a local synagogue, intending to attack it.
A YouTube video of the demonstration shows fields of Palestinian flags and Turkish flags, and a motley group of young men running and chanting “Adolf Hitler” and “Death to the Jews.” In the video, popular Essen Muslim rapper Sinan-G speaks to the camera explaining this is a counter-demonstration against the Jews. “The Jews insulted us, man, this is crazy stuff,” he said.
Despite the large police presence, the crowd was clearly out of control. According to Die Welt, police arrested 49 protesters. Forty-five cases were dismissed in December.
Born in Germany to a Turkish family, Can is well-known for his anti-Israel activism. According to Die Welt, Can was caught on tape at a Copenhagen protest shouting into a borrowed police megaphone, “Death to the Jews,” “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas chamber.”
At his Essen hearing this winter Can was prosecuted for his use of the term “Zionist” as incitement against a minority.
During the hearing, Can claimed he was not an anti-Semite and had nothing against the Jewish people but only against the Zionist state. In response, Judge Sastry is quoted by Die Welt saying, “‘Zionist’ is the language of anti-Semites, the code for ‘Jew.'”

Getting Anti-Semitism Wrong at the United Nations

You have to hand it to the United Nations, I guess. It’s hard to think of another body that would organize a special meeting on the subject of rising anti-Semitism with anti-Semites not just in attendance, but making speeches as well.
For good measure, Levy also expertly dispensed with some of the myths that surround the current debate on anti-Semitism, notably the contention that Jew-hatred would go away if only the Palestinians had a state of their own. “Even if the Palestinians had a state, as is their right—even then, alas, this enigmatic and old hatred would not dissipate one iota,” Levy declared, as the assembled delegates scratched their heads in puzzlement and, one might add, a degree of nervousness.
But did Levy’s message—essentially, that anti-Zionism, the denial of the right of national self-determination to the Jewish people, is the principal pillar upon which today’s anti-Semitism rests—get through?
Sadly, it didn’t. After Levy left the podium, we were treated to a seemingly endless stream of anodyne statements from the various delegations, with a couple of noble exceptions—Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor, who had the guts to say that anti-Semitism “can even be found in the halls of U.N., disguised as humanitarian concern,” and American Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, who reminded those delegates sitting in the General Assembly that Holocaust denial remains a staple of official media across the Middle East and North Africa.
The lasting impression, however, was left by Arab and Muslim delegates, most of whom pushed the insidious—and deeply stupid—myth that because the Palestinians are “Semites,” they cannot be anti-Semitic. As far as I’m aware, no one countered these remarks by pointing out that first, there is no such nationality or ethnicity as a “Semite,” and second, that the term “anti-Semitism” was devised by anti-Semites to give their loathing of the Jews scientific respectability.

NGO Monitor: NGO Monitor to UN "Schabas Commission": Adhere to Fact-Finding Standards

In a report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council's Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict ("the COI"), NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute, warned the COI of the implications of failing to apply the principles of objectivity, non-selectivity, balance, and universality, and the history of the HRC's disregard for legal and ethical standards. The submission also noted that the UN projected a $3 million budget for the politically motivated investigation of Israel. William Schabas, the head of the Commission, in alliance with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the Palestinian Authority, seek to use the CIO as part of the campaign seeking to exploit the International Criminal Court (ICC) for "lawfare" attacks against Israel.
"While the Government of Israel has justifiably decided not to participate in another biased UN pseudo-investigation, as members of Israeli civil society we have a duty to communicate our concerns to the UN," said Anne Herzberg, NGO Monitor's Legal Advisor. "Our submission is a forceful reminder to the Schabas Commission: In order to avoid the abject failures of the past, particularly the 2009 Goldstone Report, the principles of impartiality, objectivity, and transparency must be applied. Unfortunately, we have no evidence or reason to expect that this COI will be any different from its predecessors in these core dimensions."
NGO Monitor's 79-page analysis documents numerous violations by NGOs and UN bodies of fact-finding standards and best practices. By design, UNHRC missions almost exclusively focus on the actions of Israel, while repeated and major violations committed by Palestinian actors or against Israeli citizens are all but ignored. Moreover, few, if any, mechanisms exist within the HRC (and the other UN) frameworks to verify and evaluate the allegations proffered by participating NGOs, resulting in a contravention of impartiality, objectivity, and non-selectivity.

Haaretz can't believe some West Bank Arabs prefer Israeli rule

Amira Hass in Ha'aretz is incredulous:

H., 24 years old, works at the SodaStream plant in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone. We met at his family’s home in a village near Ramallah. Nine people live off his salary (the Israeli minimum wage, nearly $1,200 a month).

His brother Abed was there too; he’s once again looking for work in the industrial zone that’s part of the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement bloc – even though he doesn’t understand why his salary slip always listed a higher amount than what he had actually been paid.

L., from a village in the western West Bank, is around 20 and did six months in an Israeli prison after being caught two or three times working without a permit in Israel. He now works in a store in Ramallah for one-third the (low) salary he made in Israel. He fantasizes about ways to return.

M., in his 50s from the village of Deir Istiya, is sorry he no longer works in the settlement supermarket where he worked for many years. Toward the end of the second intifada the rules were changed, Palestinians were not permitted to work there, so he found work in Israel.

It is good work, relatively, a bit more than the minimum wage. But he now has to leave home at 3 A.M. to make it through the checkpoint and arrive on time, while for the settlement he could leave at 6:30 A.M. and get to work in 15 minutes.

And the owner was nice, he stresses. He still calls – and they don’t rehash the anger over the land the settlements stole. Young people in the family work in the industrial zone of the settlement of Barkan.

As M. puts it: “Without Israel I couldn’t support my family and achieve what I’ve achieved” – a house, education for his children, a plot of land for his son to build a house on, and so on. ...

H., because he is only 24, says: “If only the [direct Israeli] occupation would return. It was better before the PA – there was freedom of movement.” He can’t remember how it was back then.

But for Israel’s convenience, he – like many others – is mistaken and blames the closures on the PA, not on Israel. An Israeli official told me this week (and, it seemed, took pleasure in the telling) that this is what he hears from Palestinians – that they miss Israeli rule. I can say to both of them that in Romania there are people who miss Ceausescu.

How come in this article Hass identifies all of the people only by their initials?

Because if they say their pro-Israel opinions publicly under that benevolent Arab rule, they could get killed!

Hass unknowingly proves their point for them - Israeli rule, even if they are not citizens, is better than Arab rule.

Chris Gunness trolling for dead babies to star in Pallywood production

Check out this tweet from UNRWA's Chris Gunness:

Can anyone put me in touch with a family in Gaza where a child died of hyperthermia? Thanks. @ChrisGunness
— Chris Gunness (@ChrisGunness) February 2, 2015

(That's hypothermia, not hyperthermia, Chris. You're welcome.)

There have been reports of a few children who "froze to death" in Gaza this winter. Their real causes of death are not so clear; for example a two-month old was diagnosed with COPD which is aggravated by cold weather but not caused by it. The specific causes of death for the other infants were not released so it is hard to know whether they died from hypothermia or something else.

Gunness is not interested in such trivia. He wants a dead body and crying parents. Gunness wants to use dead babies for fundraising.

This tweet sounds like pre-production for the next UNRWA Pallywood production.

Don't believe me? Check out this ridiculously staged video that UNRWA released three days ago on the topic of cold (in this case, in Syria):

Yeah, that doesn't look or sound staged at all!

It is also really interesting that the UNRWA spokesperson cannot locate any UNRWA employee in Gaza to find the appropriate dead baby props for him. He must have tried before resorting to using Twitter to find the dead infants. Because so many Gazans in freezing temperatures are still plugged into Twitter.

02/02 Links Pt1: Palestinian students honor terrorist Dalal Mughrabi who murdered 37

From Ian:

WP Editorial: Sharing the blame for Gaza’s tragic cycle

International donors — above all, the Arab states — have meanwhile held back the reconstruction funding they pledged. The result was that the U.N. refugee relief agency in Gaza was forced to suspend payments to families last week. Its director, Robert Turner, issued a statement saying that “people are desperate and the international community cannot even provide the bare minimum — for example a repaired home in winter — let alone a lifting of the blockade, access to markets or freedom of movement.”
U.N. officials, like much of the rest of the world, are quick to blame Israel for this horrific situation, even though Egypt’s border “blockade” is tighter. It’s certainly striking that while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to consider the danger of Iran so serious that it justifies his violation of diplomatic protocol to address a joint meeting of Congress, he appears to have no policy for Gaza — the source of the most lethal attacks on Israelis in recent years.
Israel, however, can hardly be expected to facilitate Hamas’s relentless preparations for more war, to which concrete and other reconstruction materials have been diverted in the past. An Israeli official told Mr. Booth that Gazan workshops were “assembling new rockets as fast as they can” and that the strip’s militias would be fully rearmed and trained within months. Sadly, that is likely to be the next time the world pays heed to Gaza — when war with Israel again erupts.

Hamas, not Israel, is responsible for suffering in Gaza

Oregonian guest columnists Ned Rosch and Maxine Fookson write a plaintive cry on behalf of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, describing Gazans heart-wrenching situation, suffering the consequence of this past summer's Hamas-Israel conflict — the third since 2009. They blame Israel for the terrible situation of these Palestinians. But Israel is no more to blame for the suffering of the Gazans than the Allies were to blame for the terrible suffering of civilians in Nazi Germany as they bombed German cities, or for the suffering of Serbian civilians when the United States bombed Serbia to stop the attempted genocide in Bosnia.
Hamas kidnapped three Israeli teens this summer and then began firing waves of missiles into Israel, targeting Israeli civilians. In the week after the teens' murdered bodies were found, Hamas fired 180 missiles at Israeli towns and cities, including Tel Aviv, and attempted twice to invade Israel through tunnels it built into Israel. For the third time in six years, Israel was forced to protect its citizens by force.
Hamas' elected term ended five years ago. The U.S., European Union and Japan all recognize it as a terrorist organization. Jordan bans its leaders. Its charter calls for the murder of Jews everywhere and the "obliteration" of Israel through "jihad."

Iran may already have its bomb, but it is not nuclear

Thanks to events over the past weeks, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, aligned with Iran and supplied and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, have seized the Red Sea port of Hodeida, a mere 30 kilometers from Djibouti. For the first time Saudi Arabia’s archrival now has the ability to control the Mandeb Strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean. Iran now is as close as it has ever been to controlling the strategic link between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. Through it, three million barrels of oil pass daily.
Straits in the Middle East are more than geographical features. They are nothing less than lifelines for the region’s countries. The blocking of the Straits of Tiran by Egypt triggered the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Iran has in the past threatened to block the Straits of Hormuz if it was attacked by the West. The access to the Red Sea by Iran’s allies makes the threat of an effective use of sanctions against Iran smaller. Iran is poised to push back the West in the nuclear negotiations.
President Obama’s strategy of focusing on Iran’s nuclear ambitions ignores Tehran’s overall objective of asserting itself as the regional superpower. Failure to deal with the threat of an Iranian takeover of Yemen has now contributed to vastly increasing the cards that the Iranian regime can play. Further complacency will make it even more difficult to tackle this ever-increasing threat to regional and global stability.

Palestinian students admire terrorist Dalal Mughrabi who lead killing of 37

Dalal Mughrabi, the terrorist who led the most lethal attack against Israel, in which 37 people were murdered in 1978, was born in January and her date of birth has been celebrated and honorably noted by Abbas' Fatah movement and others.
Awdah TV, whose General Supervisor is Fatah's spokesman Ahmad Assaf, broadcast at length from a party celebrating the terrorist's birthday. Fatah's logo was displayed on stage.
"Martyr Dalal Mughrabi raised the Palestinian flag from the heart of occupied Palestine," stated the Awdah reporter. "On her birthday we renew the promise to her and its fulfillment. Martyr Dalal Mughrabi will remain a path for the next generations to follow." [Fatah-run Awdah TV and Awdah TV Facebook, Jan. 3, 2015]

Fatah TV broadcasts video celebrating terrorist Dalal Mughrabi on her birthday

Mahmoud Abbas embraces a mass murderer, no one cares

From Reuters, January 30:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (L) greets Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir at the opening ceremony of the 24th Ordinary session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) at the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, January 30, 2015.

Bashir is the only current head of state for whom there is an arrest warrant by the ICC on counts of war crimes (pillaging and intentionally directing attacks against civilians) and crimes against humanity (murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape).

Mahmoud Abbas, that well-regarded peacemaker, has absolutely no problem with literally embracing a war criminal who has been accused by the US of being involved in genocide.

This happened three days ago, and no media outlet felt that this is newsworthy. Which goes to show how much the media bends over backwards to give Mahmoud Abbas a pass, in order to keep alive the fiction that he is a moderate, peace-loving leader.

(h/t Ido Daniel)

Muslim women harass Jew for drinking water on Temple Mount (video)

This is happening more often:

I wonder if they would react the same for a presumably Christian diplomat, from, say, Great Britain, if he wanted to drink water? Is this only an anti-Jewish thing? Or would they allow the diplomat to drink because they know that he is probably on their side in making the Temple Mount free of Jews?

A Facebook page called "Liberate Stamford Hill" is holding a rally in London, ostensibly against a Jewish Neighborhood Watch-type group:

LIBERATE STAMFORD HILL:
Against Anti-White Oppression

Sunday, March 22nd (1400-1600hrs): Assemble at Clapton Common in Stamford Hill, Hackney.

We are demonstrating against the illegal and unlawful Shomrim Police that are enforcing talmudic law on British streets. These armed thugs are impersonating our police yet they have not been arrested in doing so, in fact, they are supported by the Metropolitan police. In Stamford Hill, Whites are openly spat at in the street and made to feel as if they are Second-Class citizens in their own country, we say ENOUGH White Man, It's time we fightback!

Recently, signs were placed around Stamford Hill that told Women to walk on the opposite side of the road to men, this form of Talmudic law is worse than Sharia law and yet nobody is confronting it!

Join us on March 22nd, 2015 at 1400 Hours where we will demonstrate against the Shomrim Police of Stamford Hill.

Shomrim members are trained by and cooperate with the London police. There is nothing secretive about them and in the wake of the HyperCacher massacre they have stepped up their patrols - to protect Jews against the very people who are now demonstrating against them.

(The signs they are referring to were put in place during a Jewish celebration and were not meant as a demand for the general public to adhere to.)

Even though this Facebook page pretends that they have some legitimate grievances against Shomrim, the other posts there and comments show that this is nothing but pure hatred of Jews.

Neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer (not linking to it) makes that clear:

The yids are flipping their lids over a planned anti-Jew rally next month in London, and as of right now attendance is required for all Daily Stormer readers who live within striking distance.

On March 22nd, in the highly Jewed-out neighborhood of Stamford Hill, those fed-up with the Jew control of the once-proud nation of Britain will meet to stand against the parasite and demand he leave the country.

The protest is being organized by the heroic Jew-fighter Joshua Bonehill.

Bonehill is a proud Jew-hater:

I want to draw your attention to the on-going foreign occupation of a White district in London. Stamford Hill, a district of London, based in North Hackney under the parliamentary control of prolific Labour Party Racist, Diane Abbott, has been taken from the White man and occupied by the foreign Jewish enemy. Stamford Hill was once an ancient Anglo-Saxon settlement where the White man flourished in his rightfully owned lands, now today we see an occupation force of approximately 50,000 Jews occupying this land. If the sheer number of Non-White immigrants was not bad enough, the Jewish occupiers of Stamford Hill have now established their own Police Force to which is known to them as the “Shomrim Police”. This undemocratic and false police force wear uniforms supplied to them by the Metropolitan Police, they receive training from the Metropolitan police and are supported by the Labour Party MP, Diane Abbott.

The Shomrim Police enforce their own evil Talmudic Jewish Law...

Due to the Jewish program of Eugenics, the Jews of Stamford Hill are breeding at an alarming rate, further expanding their criminal territory into other London boroughs. There have been reports of White people having to sell up their homes and move out of London because the Jews have harassed them, with allegedly Anti-White campaigns of hatred and racism. I use Stamford Hill as an example of the Jewish Problem, but one must understand that this is repeated up and down this country, in every major city and town.

I just checked the calendar, and, yes, this is 2015.

(h/t O)

Photo of PA prime minister with Israeli beverages upsets PalArabs (update)

A photograph of Rami Hamdallah, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, has created controversy - because it includes Israeli water and juice:

Hamdallah was visiting the courthouse at Yatta, south of Hebron, and the photo was published on the website of the Supreme Judicial Council.

Social media users slammed Hamdallah for consuming Israeli products. They also accused him of hypocrisy because evidently the "unity government" attacked Hamas for allowing Israeli products into Gaza a few days ago.

The Supreme Judicial Council website then replaced the photograph with another that did not show the offending beverages. I cannot tell if the bottles were removed before this image was taken or if they were Photoshopped out. My bet is Photoshop since if this second image was available when the article was written they would have used it. Also, the new image was created 8 hours after the initial image was.

Looks like a very good image editing job, though.

UPDATE: Video (h/t Bob Knot)

UNESCO study confirms Arab nations - and many others - don't teach the Holocaust

UNESCO just published a report on how textbooks teach, or don't teach, the Holocaust in countries worldwide.

The summary map showing the level of Holocaust education in each country is here:

Areas that did not even mention the Holocaust even implicitly (light beige) include Angola, Antigua & Barbuda, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Benin, Bolivia, Brunei, Cameroon, Dominica, Egypt, Fiji, Ghana, Guyana, Iceland, Micronesia (Federated States of), Iraq, Jamaica, (Kosovo)**, Lebanon, Nepal, New Zealand (!), "Palestine," Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Seychelles, Thailand, and Zambia.

Nations that only mentioned World War II or Nazism without mentioning the Holocaust (light orange)include Algeria, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Burkina Faso, China, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Gambia, Georgia, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Lesotho, Malaysia, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Norway, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Republic of Korea, Rwanda, Scotland, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Switzerland (Jura, Lausanne), Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Yemen, Zimbabwe.

Many Muslim nations that probably do not teach the Holocaust did not submit textbooks for this study (white), including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, , Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and many others.

Interestingly, the US state of Maryland is the only one called out for not teaching the Holocaust as its own topic and instead only as part of a more generalized human rights curriculum.

Introducing the First International Ayatollah Khamenei Cartoon and Poster Contest

(As a response to this...)

I am pleased to announce the First International Ayatollah Khamenei Cartoon and Poster Contest.

The goal of the contest is to make fun of the Supreme Leader of Iran in as original (and preferably offensive) way as possible.

Any theme is fair game. Artwork that has a high likelihood of giving him a fatal heart attack will have the best chance of winning. (But try to ensure that it could be shown on a family blog.)

First prize winner will receive $50, second prize $25.

Here are examples I quickly made up:

I encourage people to take their favorite submissions and to spam Khamenei's Twitter, Facebook and other social media accounts.

Deadline for submission is February 28.

Submit your artwork by linking to it from the comments of this post.

Hasby Award: Best Pro-Israel Video

The nominees for the Best Pro-Israel Video Hasby Award are:

Why I Support Israel, Pat Condell

Caroline Glick tells off Danish Ambassador

Ami Horowitz at Berkeley

Hamas, Ari Lesser

10 minutes about living on the Gaza border, Dana Bar-On

And the winner is....

02/01 Links: Rabbi Sacks: The Return of Anti-Semitism; HC: World better without Balfour

From Ian:

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: The Return of Anti-Semitism

Last Tuesday, a group of Holocaust survivors, by now gaunt and frail, made their way back to Auschwitz, the West’s symbol of evil—back to the slave-labor side of the vast complex, with its mocking inscription Arbeit Macht Frei (“Work makes you free”), and back to the death camp, where a million and a quarter human beings, most of them Jews, were gassed, burned and turned to ash. They were there to commemorate the day, 70 years ago, when Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and saw, for the first time, the true dimensions of the greatest crime since human beings first set foot on Earth.
The moment would have been emotional at the best of times, but this year brought an especially disturbing undercurrent. The Book of Genesis says that, when God told Abraham what would happen to his descendants, a “fear of great darkness” fell over him. Something of that fear haunted the survivors this week, who have witnessed the return of anti-Semitism to Europe after 70 years of political leaders constant avowals of “Never again.” As they finished saying Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for mourners, one man cried out, “I don’t want to come here again.” Everyone knew what he meant. For once, the fear was not only about the past but also about the future.
The murder of Jewish shoppers at a Parisian kosher supermarket three weeks ago, after the killing of 12 people at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, sent shivers down the spines of many Jews, not because it was the first such event but because it has become part of a pattern. In 2014, four were killed at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. In 2012, a rabbi and three young children were murdered at a Jewish school in Toulouse. In 2008 in Mumbai, four terrorists separated themselves from a larger group killing people in the city’s cafes and hotels and made their way to a small Orthodox Jewish center, where they murdered its young rabbi and his pregnant wife after torturing and mutilating them. As the Sunday Times of London reported about the attack, “the terrorists would be told by their handlers in Pakistan that the lives of Jews were worth 50 times those of non-Jews.”

IsraellyCool: History Channel Knows How To Have A Lot Fewer Problems And Jews

Well, yes, if by “problems” you mean Jews (and Christians) then yes, I’m sure there would be fewer Jews in the middle east today were it not for the existence of little Israel, the only oasis of sanity in the Middle East today.
Here’s where that line was taken from: a trailer for a forthcoming History Channel look at WW1.
Aside from the nonsense about Britain and France breaking up the Arab states: what Arab states? Britain and France CREATED the Arab states. As Anjem Choudry said in his interview a couple of weeks ago with Voice of Israel, modern nation states are an anathema to Islam. The Ottoman empire was a loosely governed amalgam of tribal areas.
It’s not too much of a stretch to say that the only recognisable nation today that should have been created is Israel! If anything created a lot of problems, it was the overlaying of Arab nationalism onto an Islamic base: perhaps they should have left the Arabs as highly fractured, waring fiefdoms and not encouraged to band together in nations at all. Because the only thing Arab nations have ever agreed on is hating Israel (and the Jews who run it).

Trailer about WW1: world better without Balfour

The Hypocrisy of Iran's Holocaust Cartoon Contest

The purpose of the contest, according to the organizers, is to highlight Western hypocrisy over the value of free speech. Following the attack on Charlie Hebdo, people around the world expressed solidarity through the ubiquitous "Je Suis Charlie" slogan, indicating a defense of the newspaper's right to satirize religious piety. Critics of the newspaper, though, pointed out that Muslims weren't offended by Charlie Hebdo's irreverent speech. They were instead insulted that white Parisians mocked religious values held by France's immigrant population, a group that has long been marginalized within French society. And according to Massoud Shojai Tabatabai, one of the organizers of the 2006 conference, the Western commitment to free speech doesn't always include denying the Holocaust, which remains a criminal offense in countries like Austria.
"Why is it acceptable in Western countries to draw any caricature of the Prophet Mohammed, yet as soon as there are any questions or doubts raised about the Holocaust, fines and jail sentences are handed down?" Tabatabai told the Observer that year.
But there's a difference between drawing an offensive caricature and participating in the negation of an established historical fact. And while Holocaust denial didn't begin with Iran, Tehran's contribution to the practice has been especially shameful. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president from 2005 to 2013, claimed that the Holocaust was a "myth" designed to protect the existence of Israel. In 2006, the year of the first cartoon contest, Tehran sponsored an international conference to "review the global vision of the Holocaust." Ahmadenijad's successor Hassan Rouhani acknowledged and condemned the Holocaust upon taking office in 2013, but neither he nor his suave, U.S.-educated Foreign Minister Mohammed Javaid Zarif have expressed regret for their country's role in its denial. Ayatollah Khameini, Iran's Supreme Leader and the man who controls the country's foreign policy, has called the Holocaust a "distorted historical event."

I must admit, there is often something very touching about heartfelt expressions of Jewish anti-Zionism.

On Daily Kos (a significant left-leaning political blog) we recently saw another soulful "diary" calling for the dissolution of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. As is sometimes the case, this one came from a fellow Jew... a very sad fellow Jew.

Jewish anti-Zionism often has a pathos to it.

It tends to have a kind of self-indulgent, guilt-ridden, weepy quality.

It enacts or portrays the supposed torment of a Jewish soul before a non-Jewish audience comfortable with Jewish weakness and entirely uncomfortable with Jewish strength.

My suspicion is that such portrayals are sincere and that there is a definite throwing oneself upon the mercy of the court quality to it all. The saintly David Harris-Gershon fairly ooozed this sort-of righteous self-flagellation as he fretted about what gift he should purchase for the children of the terrorist who murdered two of his friends and who almost murdered his wife in the cafeteria of Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

You know how this goes. When your typical Jewish anti-Zionist was young he was allegedly filled with the heroic spirit of Moshe Dayan and David ben Gurion. But now the Arabs, and their western allies, have shown him the error of his ways and he is willing to publicly rend his shirt and acknowledge his immoral mistake.

We have one such example up at Daily Kos written by Burtfrombrooklyn entitled, Israel and the paradox of theocracy.

After much soul-searching over many decades, he tells the world:

I've come around to a belief in a one-state solution. But that new state could no longer be a Jewish state...

Burt, a middle aged Jew who has never set foot in Israel has decided, on moral grounds - no less - that Israel should no longer exist as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

Why?

He writes:

In maintaining its status as a Jewish state, how can it also stay true to its founding vision of a society that offers equal rights and protections to all citizens, not just Jews?

Asking how Israel can maintain "equal rights and protections," which is to say democracy, while being a Jewish state is no different from asking how France can maintain democracy as a state of the French or Britain as the state of the Brits or Ireland as the state of the Irish.

What makes the Jews so special that there is something inherently inconsistent about Jewish democracy, but not, say, Mexican democracy?

There are two issues of primary importance around this discussion that distinguishes Israel from all other countries. The first is that Israel is held to an anti-Semitic double-standard, which is why it is the only country on the planet wherein millions of people around the world - despite the Holocaust - think that Jews need to return to statelessness and, thus, helplessness.

The second is that the word "Jewish" also refers to the religion, which allows the less well-read to sometimes accuse Israel of being a theocracy.

This is precisely what Burt, from my dear old dad's town of Brooklyn does:

The paradox: how can a government simultaneously be theocratic and humanistic -- committed to being a Jewish state, and committed to being a social democracy that values human and civil rights?

Israel is actually the least religious country in the entire region and was set up quite specifically not to be a theocracy, which is why its legal statutes are not Torah-based. Religious questions sometimes arise in legal proceedings, as they do in the United States, as well, but the last thing that Israel is is a theocracy.

Unlike in Tehran, there is no rule by an authoritarian religious elite.

Therefore, the entire premise of this particular call for robbing Jewish people of even a chance at safety and sovereignty is grounded in dangerous nonsense.

Below are a few comments from beneath the article that will give you a sense of how many of Burt's associates feel:

Thank you for a thoughtful and thought-provoking diary.

I am sorry for the howls of rage that will no doubt fall on your head for having the courage to question whether an Israeli theocracy can be sustained.

by officebss on Wed Jan 28, 2015 at 09:52:17 AM PST

But there is no Israeli theocracy.

theocrats usually believe they are humanists (1+ / 0-)

In fact they believe that only theocrats can be humanists. Their argument is that God desires the good of humanity, therefore to follow God is automatically to do good for humanity.

by Visceral on Wed Jan 28, 2015 at 10:05:38 AM PST

But there is no Israeli theocracy.

Excellent and thought-provoking diary. (3+ / 0-)

I, too am an American-born Jew, 64 years old. You and I share much of the same experience.

Israel as a nation was never a matter of faith, but cultural identity.

I find your solutions very compelling.

by 57andFemale on Wed Jan 28, 2015 at 10:11:07 AM PST

His solutions mean total war.

If one is interested in seeing very many dead people then definitely advance BDS, because if it is successful that will be the outcome.

Furthermore, of course, if Israel is grounded in cultural identity rather than faith, then how could it possibly be a theocracy and, thus, just what does this person find compelling?

What I find compelling is the shear idiocy of any such Solution to the Jewish Problem that requires war against us, which is precisely what anti-Zionism / BDS will need if it is to succeed.

Expulsion of the local Arabs has been part of the Zionist toolbox since Day One, back in the 19th C.

Current Israeli policy is not to evict them all or kill them all outright, but to severely restrict the Arabs' collective airway in hopes that they'll move.

by oblomov on Wed Jan 28, 2015 at 10:45:41 AM PST

oblomov's view is in no way reflective of Israeli history or the history of the Jewish people in the region.

If transference of the Arabs were a general Jewish policy than just why did the Jews beg the Arabs in Haifa to stay during the War for Independence? As David Margolick wrote in a 2008 New York Times book review of historian Benny Morris' 1948: The First Arab-Israel War:

Transfer — or expulsion or ethnic cleansing — was never an explicit part of the Zionist program, even among its more extreme elements, Morris observes. The first Arabs who left their homes did so on their own, expecting to return once the Jews lost or the fighting stopped. The Jewish mayor of Haifa begged Arab residents to stay; Golda Meir, then head of the Jewish Agency Political Department, called the exodus “dreadful” and even likened it to what had befallen the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

When someone like oblomov makes unjust and malicious accusations against Israel he is, essentially, calling for violence against a long persecuted minority. He is, for all intents and purposes, acting in the fashion of a Nazi in the sense that he, like the Nazis did, is spreading hatred toward the Jews in preparation for whatever violence is to come.

The truth is, one cannot despise Israel without despising the Jewish people and wishing us harm.

One cannot stand for social justice while simultaneously pointing the trembling finger of blame at the Jewish people.

Perhaps this is something that needs to be clarified.

Some people, it should be noted, stood up and told this "diarist" that his musings were nonsense, but they represent the distinct minority within most left-leaning venues.

The bottom line is that those who call for the dissolution of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people or who, in their consideration of the long war against the Jews, either take the Arab side or constantly denigrate the Israeli side, are playing a very sick and dangerous game with the future of your children.

Self-righteous Jews like David Harris-Gershon, who wear the hair shirt and give public testimony to false allegations of Jewish malice, are spreading hatred toward their own people and this certainly goes for someone like the Daily Kos diarist who believes that Israel needs, somehow, to be dismantled.

The elimination of Israel as the Jewish state can only happen through full-on war.

Ultimately, this is what anti-Zionism points toward.

If you think that Israel should not exist as the nation state of the Jewish people... or if you favor the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction the lone, sole Jewish state... or if you think that Israel is a racist, militaristic, imperialist, theocratic, apartheid, colonialist entity... then you are pushing for lots and lots of blood.

But, don't worry, unless you happen to be Jewish - or live in or near Israel - chances are the blood will not be yours.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

McPhail, desecrating Al Aqsa
while discussing how to keep it
Judenfrei

Last week I blogged about a bogus story in Ma'an of how a female "settler" supposedly tried to kidnap an Arab toddler - a story whose only "witnesses" happened to be relatives of and supporters of a murderer?

Besides the story being literally unbelievable to begin with, Israellycool also showed discrepancies in different versions of the story by the same "witnesses."

As usual with Ma'an, no attempt was made to verify this story. No one questions why Ma'an cannot bother sending a reporter to do even a modicum of fact-checking, something that any legitimate newspaper in the world would do before publishing such allegations.

Just as with their long history of stories about wild boars that settlers allegedly raise in order to have them attack Palestinians, and other ludicrous allegations, this ridiculous story is believed by people who are already predisposed to believe anti-Israel libels.

Such as British Consul General in Jerusalem, Alastair McPhail, who uncritically retweeted the story.

McPhail defended his tweet after someone pointed him to my post:

@dunn_martin @elderofziyon @MaanNewsAgency The blog doesn't disprove the article. And there's plenty of video of olive tree destruction.
— Alastair McPhail (@CGAMcPhail) February 1, 2015

I replied, and he responded; here's the thread:

@elderofziyon @dunn_martin @MaanNewsAgency Of course not. But settlers have attacked Palestinians and destroyed crops. That's not disputed.
— Alastair McPhail (@CGAMcPhail) February 1, 2015

@CGAMcPhail and how many toddlers have been kidnapped by settlers? @dunn_martin @MaanNewsAgency
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) February 1, 2015

@elderofziyon @MaanNewsAgency Of course not. But settler violence and crop destruction well documented. UK MPs witnessed latter last year
— Alastair McPhail (@CGAMcPhail) February 1, 2015

.@CGAMcPhail When both stories have the exact same amount of credibility and "eyewitness" proof. @MaanNewsAgency
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) February 1, 2015

.@CGAMcPhail You don't think Israeli media would be all over a story like this if it was credible? @MaanNewsAgency
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) February 1, 2015

McPhail is fixated on my writing that "That's why there are so many stories about thousands of olive trees being destroyed but the only photo accompanying the story is a generic, staged 'Arab woman wailing' photo. I wasn't saying that there is no crop destruction by Jews; I'm saying that it is vastly exaggerated and many of the specific stories have been proven false. (It is very, very hard to uproot an olive tree.)

McPhail has courted controversy before, notably when he wore this keffiyeh that erased Israel and said "Free Palestine". The Islamic charity that published the photo sort-of apologized months later under severe pressure, but McPhail never did.

By the way, Ma'an's comment system is heavily moderated; many of my comments never get posted. However, this antisemitic comment on that article made it through with no problem - and it has remained up many hours after I pointed it out.

Hey, its only an antisemitic blood libel. No need to moderate that!

This is the source that the British consul is trusting when he decides what to retweet.

Tunisian politician, on TV, argues that "Protocols" are a myth

This is rare but welcome:

There have been a couple of other Arabs who have been vocal about the forgery of the "Protocols."

This recent article in Al Araby by Saqr Abu Fakhr goes through the history of the "Protocols" as well as making fun of the Arab conspiracy theories that sprung up around how printers of the "Protocols" were being assassinated by Jews, one of them supposedly by cancer cells introduced into his mucus by Jewish spies.

Another Arab thinker, Dr. Youssef Zeidan, gave a lecture last November also debunking the myth of the "Protocols."

So while the myth is widely accepted as fact in the Arab world, as the host of the Tunisian program proves, at least some Arabs are speaking up.