Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, June 22, 2015

Book review: Michael Oren's "Ally"

"Ally," Michael Oren's new book in the headlines, is not the book you expect it to be.

Especially if you have been reading Michael Oren's daily articles to promote his book - most notably his article in the Wall Street Journal last week, that began:

‘Nobody has a monopoly on making mistakes.” When I was Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2009 to the end of 2013, that was my standard response to reporters asking who bore the greatest responsibility—President Barack Obama or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—for the crisis in U.S.-Israel relations.

I never felt like I was lying when I said it. But, in truth, while neither leader monopolized mistakes, only one leader made them deliberately.

I read his book with this sentence in mind. How did he back up his statement? I'd like to know the inside story of how President Obama purposefully distanced himself from supporting Israel.

Oren mentions plenty of events that showed that President Obama wanted to kowtow to the Muslim world. He mentions that Obama chose to call Mahmoud Abbas before then prime minister Ehud Olmert upon entering office. He talked about how Obama's much heralded speech in Cairo tied Israel to the Holocaust rather than thousands of years of history in the land, and then chose not to visit Israel but went to Buchenwald instead as if to underscore the point. He talks about how Obama ignored the Bush/Sharon letter of understanding that Israel would hold onto major settlement blocs and instead steamrolled his way to declaring that the "1967 lines" were the basis for negotiations - and how that emboldened the Palestinian negotiators to be more intransigent and less likely to seek a negotiated agreement. But none of this is a smoking gun. On the contrary, Oren describes Obama's later speeches to AIPAC and his later visit to Israel in glowing terms, filled with optimism that Obama had finally understood what had eluded him about Israel in his early years in office - and that he had something to do with it.

Then, in the last chapter, with Oren leaving his position, things turn for the worse again. Netanyahu speaks in front of Congress and Iran fools American negotiators. Without Oren, we are led to believe, things are going to pot again.

In fact, and I hate to say this, "Ally" is not so much a description of how Obama betrayed the US-Israel relationship as much as how Michael Oren has transformed from an esteemed historian who is scrupulous in his dedication to truth...to a diplomat who reluctantly understands that he sometimes has to bend the truth...to a politician who disregards the truth to reach his goals...to a salesman trying to pump up his book to a potential audience by deceiving the public as to what the book is about.

I am profoundly disappointed.

A small anecdote towards the end of the book, when Oren has decided to run for Knesset in the Kulanu party, is what disillusioned me most. He talks about Netanyahu's supposedly racist rant on the day of the election - and takes it at face value, so much so that he says he was proud that his party denounced it. Even though, he says, he had never heard Bibi say anything that could be construed as prejudiced in the slightest.

Oren, the former historian, and who only a few months earlier would have checked out the context and defended Bibi, had turned into a politician who didn't even bother to read the other Facebook posts that were written that day on Netanyahu's page that explained what he meant, and that were more consistent with the Bibi that Oren knew so well.

But now he was Michael Oren, politician and rival to the Likud, so his former dedication to the truth became a casualty to politics.

The bulk of the book, of course, describes Oren's experiences as ambassador, and the difficulty of the job (and it is indeed a superhuman position.) Oren is self-deprecating and it is mostly an enjoyable read. While the best anecdotes have already been published in the media, there are still some choice stories. Oren knows he has to mention his family to make it more personal but he generally keeps their stories at arm's length, even though his wife suffered both breast cancer and a burst appendix while he was ambassador.

What about his insights into Obama? He certainly believes that Obama is naive about the Middle East. He even quotes, ironically, three separate Obama speeches where the president said "I'm not naive."

In fact, the best way to describe the impression that Oren has of President Obama's views of Israel comes from a more recent statement of Obama himself, speaking to Jeffrey Goldberg:

And I care deeply about preserving that Jewish democracy, because when I think about how I came to know Israel, it was based on images of … kibbutzim, and Moshe Dayan, and Golda Meir, and the sense that not only are we creating a safe Jewish homeland, but also we are remaking the world. We’re repairing it. We are going to do it the right way.

This is like saying that Americans are nostalgic for the version of America shown on Ozzie and Harriet. An idealized world where black people could only hope to get jobs as Pullman porters, where women who went to work were considered a little abnormal, where mental health issues were causes of great shame. Wasn't that great?

Israel in the 1950s and 1960s is no less idealized, and was no less flawed. It was a nation with a second class Sephardic community. It was also a time when Israel's Arab population were indeed discriminated against by law (until 1966, they were under martial law.) Moshe Dayan happily stole priceless archaeological treasures. And, of course, Israel was under constant threat to its very existence.

Nostalgia for the Israel of yesteryear reflects nothing less than sheer naivete - a naivete that much of the liberal Jewish population in America seems to share today.

This is the best description I can give for how Michael Oren thinks of Obama in this book, quite a difference from how he described him last week in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. The book most emphatically says that Obama is not anti-Israel, especially the Obama towards the end of Oren's time as ambassador. Oren describes an Obama who didn't hesitate to help his idealized Israel in danger - from the raging Carmel forest fire or the crisis in the Egyptian embassy. But Obama would not show interest in the real Israel - the Israel that voted for Netanyahu so many times.

Oren himself notes early on that Obama's positive gestures towards Israel were received as "chibbuk," a hug that was not meant to show affection but was rather meant to immobilize. That explains the money Obama throws at Israel for defense as well as the leaks from the White House on Israel bombing Syria - the administration spent more energy in blocking an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities than it did on stopping Iran from getting a bomb.

In the end, extreme naivete is arguably just as dangerous as malice, especially when coupled with egoism. I don't see Obama having learned anything from his years in office concerning Israel except for optics (he no longer ties Israel to the Holocaust in speeches, for example.)

Oren's book does have value. Although he is more centrist than Netanyahu he offers a pretty good defense for Israel keeping settlement blocs, and he describes countless examples of how he defended Israel from clueless media and other diplomats. He offers a rare glimpse into the world of diplomacy which is certainly valuable. But it is still a disappointment to me.

Wikileaks memo shows quid pro quo between Saudis and Russia on UNHRC

From Wikileaks, one of the new Saudi cables released this weekend:

The UNHRC ounds like a really ethical organization, doesn't it?

UN Watch has lots <a href="http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2015/06/21/leaked-cables-saudi-arabia-russia-traded-votes-for-unhrc-seats/">more. </a>

(h/t Hillel Neuer)

How Jews are portrayed in Ramadan miniseries "Jewish Quarter"

From episode 3 of Egyptian Ramadan miniseries "Jewish Quarter":

The prayers and blessings sound about 60% gibberish.

06/21 Links: Who was Danny Ganon?; Border policeman stabbed outside Jerusalem’s Old City

From Ian:

Who was Danny Ganon?

Such is the routine we have fallen into in the Holy Land. The media were all over this latest terror attack. They reported what happened and a couple of sound bite heavy statements made by politicians.
But they said little about Danny.
I didn’t know Danny. The first I heard of him was when his life was taken so cruelly.
I know he was from Lod, one of five brothers. His uncle was reported as saying the following about him:
Danny was the best kid in the world. A flower. He was the family’s support column,”
I’d like to know more about him. I’d like to know more than how he died. I’d like to know how he lived.
It’s too easy for a life lost to become a statistic. Israel has lost over two dozen sons and daughters to terror in the last year alone. Who were they? What were their dreams and aspirations? What did their world look like? Who loved them, who did they love? What did they love?
We should do more to talk about the way victims of terror lived and not just about the way they died.

Israeli killed in West Bank shooting attack laid to rest

About one thousand people were attendance when Gonen was laid to rest, among them a friend of his, Netanel Hadad, who was wounded in the attack.
In her eulogy, his mother, Devora Gonen, praised her son’s integrity and his love of the land.
“Danny, my dear, beloved son,” she said. “I cannot believe that we’re standing here now and talking about you in the past tense. You were a source of immense pride for me, a pillar to your brother and sisters. You were a devoted son to me, and when I needed it, a friend too. And you supported me in everything. You lived your life as a free Jew in your country. You loved the land and you loved the truth. The truth was your banner and you lived by it.”
Gonen, 25, was an electrical engineering student and the eldest of five siblings.

Murdered Hiker's Mother Rejects Fear Mongering

Devorah Gonen, the mother of slain 25 year-old hiker Danny Gonen who was murdered in cold blood on Friday, has rejected all statements calling to avoid the region where her son was killed.
"This is the land of Israel - what do I have to fear?" Gonen's mother said in an interview with Army Radio. "We should not be afraid, those who need to be afraid are those who will be taken care of by security forces and the people."
Gonen had been hiking in the Dolev area, in Judea and Samaria - but Devorah insisted that last Friday was the same as any other Friday hike.
"So this Friday it was in Dolev - last Friday he hiked in place A and the Friday before that in place B," she said.
"Does that mean I have to be afraid living in Lod, as well as afraid visiting my in-laws in Beit El? No, we have nothing to be afraid of."

Danny Gonen’s Family to Donate Organs

The family of terror victim Danny Gonen who was murdered on Friday afternoon by Arab terrorists near Dolev — has donated some of his organs for transplant recipients in Israel.
Gonen had signed the “ADI” organ donation card (which also allows for transplant after coordination with a religious authority) and his family complied with his wishes for his organs to be donated.
May his memory be a blessing… and may G-d avenge his death.

Photos you will NEVER see in the mainstream media

Both these pictures were taken on Friday, showing Israeli police helping elderly Muslims go to the mosque for Ramadan prayers.

Here are IDF Ramadan greetings to the Muslims in the territories.

#Ramadan Kareem from Major General Yoav 'Poli' Mordechai
Posted by COGAT - Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories on Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Credit; Israel News Flash, COGAT

To State Department, graffiti by Jews is equivalent to murders by Arabs

The latest State Department terrorism report for 2014 reveals an obvious bias in choosing which acts qualify as terrorism in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

Here is what it wrote about attacks in those areas:

Extremist Palestinians and Israeli settlers continued to conduct acts of violence in the West Bank. For the first time since 2008, Palestinians kidnapped and killed Israeli citizens in the West Bank. The UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs reported 330 attacks by extremist Israeli settlers that resulted in Palestinian injuries or property damage. In Jerusalem, there was an uptick in violence relative to 2013, including two vehicular attacks against crowds of civilians. Extremist Israeli settlers abducted and murdered a Palestinian teenager in June. A Palestinian stabbed and injured an Israeli in the back in November. In May, in an apparent “price tag” attack, Israeli extremists vandalized the Vatican-owned Notre Dame Center, where they daubed “Death to Arabs and Christians and all those who hate Israel.”

Additional 2014 incidents in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem included:

In January, violent extremist Israeli settlers spray painted “revenge by blood” on and set fire to a mosque in the West Bank.

In January, ISA arrested a group of al-Qa’ida (AQ) sympathizers in East Jerusalem which was allegedly planning several attacks.

In May, St. George Romanian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem was defaced with the expressions “Jesus is Garbage” and “King David for the Jews.” On another street in Jerusalem, authorities found graffiti stating “Death to Arabs.”

In June, two Palestinians kidnapped and killed three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank. During an attempt to apprehend the suspected perpetrators, the IDF shot and killed them. An Israeli court indicted a third individual suspected of planning the attack.

In July, three Israelis kidnapped and killed a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem. An Israeli court indicted three individuals who confessed to carrying out the attack.

In July, an Israeli settler drove by and fired a gun into a protest near Nablus, killing one Palestinian.

In October, a Palestinian crashed his vehicle into a crowd of people and into a Jerusalem Light Rail train as it was passing a light rail stop, killing an American-citizen infant, a foreign national, and injuring approximately nine others, according to media. The driver, who Israeli authorities suspected of being Hamas-affiliated, died from wounds sustained during Israeli National Police’s (INP) attempt to apprehend him.

In October, a Palestinian critically injured an Israeli-American in Jerusalem while attempting to assassinate him. The INP shot and killed the suspected shooter, a known PIJ associate, during a raid to apprehend him.

In October and December, violent extremists bombed the French Cultural Center in Gaza. There were no reports of injuries in October and there was one injury in December.

In October and November, Israeli security forces arrested five residents of Tulkarem for planning to execute a suicide bombing in the Tel Aviv area as well as several other terror attacks, such as shootings, detonating a bomb in a bus crowded with soldiers, and abducting a soldier.

In November, two Palestinians reportedly affiliated with the PFLP entered a synagogue and attacked Israelis with guns, knives, and axes, killing five people, including three American citizens, and injuring over a dozen. INP shot and killed the perpetrators while the attack was ongoing.

In November, Israeli extremists vandalized and set fire to the Max Rayne Hand-in-Hand School, a bilingual center for Jewish-Arab education. ISA arrested three suspects, who were indicted by Israeli courts in December.

In November, a Palestinian stabbed and killed an Israeli and injured two others near the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut.

Israeli security agencies reportedly thwarted several additional planned terrorist attacks in the West Bank, including a Hamas plan to launch a rocket-propelled grenade at the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs’ vehicle. Security services also prevented Hamas plans to attack Israeli towns and settlements, and to launch an attack on a stadium in Jerusalem.

In December, a Palestinian threw acid at an Israeli family and another Israeli, injuring six, near a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The IDF arrested the attacker.

With two (or three) exceptions, all of the Jewish "terror" attacks were not aimed at people, but buildings. This in no way is meant to minimize the seriousness of anti-Muslim and anti-Christian hate crimes, but it shows that the goalposts are quite different between what is considered to be terrorism for Jews and for Arabs.

One of the two exceptions are the horrific murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, which was universally condemned as terror by Israeli Jews (and only one of whose murderers is a "settler.")

The other exception that the State Department considers terror is outrageous. A woman whose car was being pelted by rocks fired in self-defense, she said into the air, killing Khaled Odeh. To flatly claim that this was a terror attack is a travesty.

The Report also mentions a June abduction and murder of a Palestinian teen by "extremist Israeli settlers" , but I cannot find any report about this. B'Tselem doesn't mention it. It appears that the report is counting the July murder of Abu Khdeir twice.

Contrary to the report's attempts to inflate the number of Jewish terror attacks, the report minimizes Arab terror attacks. According to the Shin Bet, there were well over a hundred terror attacks every month of the year, mostly Molotov cocktails and IEDs, that do not rise to the level of terrorism in the State Department report. Here is the graph from November and December alone:

The bias is even more apparent if you consider that there have been scores of incidents of deliberate attacks against the most important Jewish cemetery in the world, which don't merit a mention, while graffiti by Jews is highlighted

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

The EU doesn't like when foreign governments fund their NGOs. Really.

From Reuters, May 8:

[Ayelet] Shaked also wants to check the Supreme Court's power and restrict donations from foreign governments to non-governmental organizations in Israel.

For foreign diplomats, that raises as many concerns about the direction Israel is moving in as the expansion of settlements on land the Palestinians seek for a state -- a profound, long-standing bone of contention.

"The red lines for us aren't just about settlements," said the ambassador of one EU member state.

"When you look at some of the legislation being proposed, it is very worrying. It is anti-democratic and looks designed to shut down criticism. It's the sort of thing you normally see coming out of Russia."

Hundreds of millions of euros flow into anti-Israel NGOs.

The EU logic against transparency or limits on donations to NGOs only applies to Israel, as we can see from this resolution from the European Parliament:

The EU must critically re-assess its relations with Russia, which are profoundly damaged by Russia's deliberate violation of democratic principles, fundamental values and international law with its violent action and destabilisation of its neighbours , MEPs said on Wednesday. The EU must now devise a soft-power contingency plan to counter Russia’s aggressive and divisive policies, they said.

“With its aggression against Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, the Russian leadership has put our relations at a crossroads. It is up to the Kremlin to decide now which way it will go – cooperation or deepening alienation,” said the EP rapporteur, Gabrielius Landsbergis (EPP, LT). “I am convinced that the Russian people, as all of us, want peace, not war. A change in Russia can, and will, come from within. Meanwhile we must send a strong message to the Russian leadership that we stand united with the victims of its aggression and those who stand for the values the EU is founded on,” he added.

The resolution he steered through Parliament was passed by 494 votes to 135, with 69 abstentions.

Here is one of the provisions of that resolution:

Put an end to Russia’s interference in EU democracies

MEPs are also alarmed that Russia is positioning itself as a challenger of the international democratic community and its law-based order and is supporting and financing radical and extremist parties in the EU. They call for a coordinated mechanism to be set up by the Commission and EU member states to monitor financial, political or technical assistance provided by Russia to political parties and other organisations in the EU and to assess its influence over political life and public opinion. The Commission should also propose legislation ensuring the full transparency of political funding and financing of political parties in the EU by stakeholders outside it, MEPs say.

It sounds like the EU is concerned that Russia may be funding pro-Russian organizations in the EU. This "transparency" would then turn into bans.

What is the difference, exactly, between the EU's resolution and what Shaked wants to do?

Oh, yes. One of them protects Jews.

(h/t Slava)

An easy UN lie to debunk

The UN Human Rights Council issued a press release on Friday. Here's how it starts:

GENEVA (19 June 2015) – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Makarim Wibisono, today expressed deep concern about the human rights situation of Palestinians living under the 48-year-long Israeli occupation.

“Accounts show that occupation policies constrain Palestinian life and push Palestinians to leave their land and homes, especially in area C of the West Bank, and East Jerusalem,” said the expert after his second mission to the region.

-
Let's see how effective these supposed policies are.

Here is a graph of the population of Jerusalem, Arab and Jewish, over the past 90 years or so:

Not only has there never been as many Arabs living in Jerusalem as today, but the proportion of Arabs to Jews has been steadily increasing since 1967 from 26% to 36%.

How about Area C? Accurate figures are hard to come by, but let's see how Amira Hass reported it last year in Haaretz:

Some 300,000 Palestinians live in Area C, the part of the West Bank under full Israeli control, according to new data published Tuesday by a UN body. That figure is considerably higher than 150,000 to 180,000 Palestinians said to live in the area, according to a 2008 estimate by the Israeli NGO, Bimkom, Planners for Planning Rights.

The UNHRC is, once again, lying.

Why no one cares that the UN effortlessly lies is an entirely different question.

(h/t Mitchell)

Professor Andew Pessin is a Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College. He studied at Yale and earned a PhD at Columbia University. He is the author of five books, including most recently Uncommon Sense: The Strangest Ideas From The Smartest Philosophers. He is also friendly to the Jewish State of Israel and in opposition to political Islam for reasons having to do with social justice and human rights.

Professor Rabab Abdulhadi is an Associate Professor of Race and Resistance Studies at the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. She studied at Yale and earned a PhD from that university. She is the author of many papers and a contributor and co-editor to the recent Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging (Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East). She is also unfriendly to the Jewish State of Israel and highly critical of Zionism for reasons having to do with social justice and human rights.

Both of these professors are sometimes thought of as controversial for reasons concerning the Arab-Israel conflict - although one is more the political activist than the other - and both were recently involved in difficulties within their respective universities over that conflict.

The difference is that while SFSU stood behind Professor Abdulhadi, Connecticut College was far less supportive of Professor Pessin.

The question is "why?"

Understanding the answer to that question depends upon not only understanding the specific differences between the two controversies, but also the ideological atmosphere within American academia concerning the Arab-Israel conflict.

The short answer is that Abdulhadi is highly critical of Israel during a period of rising anti-Semitic anti-Zionism in the West and, therefore - given this political moment - receives financial and moral backing in the academe.

Pessin, on the other hand, is highly critical of Hamas, an organization that calls specifically for the genocide of the Jewish people and he is, therefore, reviled as a "racist."

Let's dig into the specifics.

Professor Andrew Pessin

On August 11, 2014, during the midst of the Israeli military push-back, Operation Protective Edge, Pessin posted the following on his Facebook page as part of a larger discussion concerning Hamas and the other genocidally-inclined rocketeers in Gaza who had been giving little Israeli kids post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) over the course of the preceding years.

Pessin compared Hamas to a "rabid pit bull chained in a cage."

For this he was excoriated as a racist not only by hard-left students in organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, but also by faculty.

The fact of the matter is that Pessin was referring to Hamas and other such violent Islamist organizations operating within Gaza.

The ironic thing is that it is not he who is conflating all Gazans with terrorists, but his allegedly "anti-racist" detractors who are doing so.

Pessin's Facebook page, above, needs to be understood within the larger conversation.

He was not referring to Palestinian-Arabs, nor Gazans, in general. He was speaking quite specifically about the kinds of Islamists who call directly for the genocide of the Jews, as Hamas does in its charter, a document that is not quoted nearly enough, but reads in part:

Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised.

As David Bernstein writes in the Washington Post:

I have seen his previous Facebook posts on the Gaza war last Summer, and they are full of criticism of Hamas, and don’t say anything nasty about Palestinians more generally, suggesting that he was, in fact, referring to Hamas.

I have seen those Facebook posts, as well, and concur.

Professor Rabab Abdulhadi

Professor Abdulhadi's circumstances are a tad different and I have previously written about her and my disappointment with San Francisco State University.

Abdulhadi was the faculty adviser to the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) at a time when the SFSU president of that organization, Mohammed G. Hammad, took to social media in order to threaten violence against Jews.

As he held aloft blade in a "selfie," this is what he wrote:

I'm sitting here looking through pictures of that f—ing scum (name removed to protect the soldier) … Anyone who thinks there can be peace with animals like this is absolutely delusional, and the only ‘peace’ I’m interested in is the head of this f—ing scum on a plate, as well as the heads of all others like her, and all others who support the IDF. The Liberation of Palestine can only come through the destruction and decimation of this Israeli plague and it can’t possibly come soon enough.

It is not Abdulhadi's fault, of course, that some of her students want to kill Jews for political reasons.

She just happened to be standing nearby.

She was also the adviser to GUPS during the celebration of a mural to the late anti-Semitic professor, Edward Said, on that campus, wherein members of GUPS, and other student organizations, held aloft signs reading, "My heroes have always killed colonizers."

Just who these "colonizers" in need of killing are is speculative, but I feel reasonably certain that when students associated with the General Union of Palestine Students hold up little signs calling for the murder of "colonizers" that they are not referring to the Amish.

How Connecticut College Responded to Pessin:

Pessin, as a consequence of opposing Hamas, was subject to a campaign of defamation that became international. He was initially condemned as a "racist" or "Islamophobe" by a former student, Lamiya Khandaker who previously founded a branch of Students for Justice in Palestine at Brooklyn Technical High School and is quoted as saying:

I truly believe that if more American citizens gain more knowledge on this conflict, then we can pressure our government to do something, and if necessary, break our bond with Israel.

Break our bond with Israel.

Other students, following Khandaker's lead, wrote into the school newspaper that “Professor Pessin directly condoned the extermination of a people. A member of our community has called for the systematic abuse, killing, and hate of another people.” As David Bernstein notes, writing in the Washington Post, such a charge is probably libelous. If that is the case, it would also be actionable.

Pessin, however, probably just hoping that the non-controversy would go away so that he could do his actual work in peace, made the mistake of apologizing.

Bernstein tells us:

The result was an international controversy that included threats against Pessin and his family, knee-jerk reactions from academic departments throughout Connecticut College denouncing their colleague’s purported racism, denunciation without investigation by the usual suspects in the world of academic philosophy, and a school-sponsored “community conversation on free speech, equity and inclusion” that was so “inclusive” that the two Jewish students who spoke who criticized the Pessin witchhunt were, depending on the account, either booed or at least “met with derision.”

The Connecticut College history department, not wishing to be outdone by its own students, put out this note as a rebuke to Pessin, which reads in part:

To the Campus Community,

The history department would like to clearly state that we condemn speech filled with bigotry and hate particularly when that speech uses dehumanizing language and incites or celebrates violence and brutality. In response to the many events that transpired on campus prior to and during spring break regarding a Facebook post by a member of our faculty, we join the CCSRE in condemning hate speech.

How SFSU Responded to Abdulhadi:

While many people in the local Jewish community in California, most notably Tammi Benjamin of the AMCHA Initiative and "Dusty" at Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers, objected to this outrageous behavior of students under Abdulhadi's authority or tutelage, the university was largely indifferent to such concerns. Even Professor Fred Astren, the head of the Jewish Studies Department, could not rouse himself to condemn much of this in a public manner, although one presumes that he spoke up behind the scenes.

SFSU, nonetheless, funded a trip for Abdulhadi and a few select students to travel to the "Occupied Palestinian Territories" in order to meet with terrorist plane hijacker, Leila Khaled. This visit was not merely an academic exercise for purposes of research. It was a political trip among student activists with a professor who has a serious bone to pick with the Jewish people in the Middle East and who is not the least bit shy about buddying-up with violently inclined racists like Khaled.

In fact, SFSU even went so far as to reward Abdulhadi by agreeing to partner with An-Najah National University in Nablus which is probably the most anti-Israel / anti-Jewish university on the entire planet. It was students at An-Najah who put together a "grotesque shrine" in celebration of the Sbarro pizza parlor massacre and which the Anti-Defamation League has referred to as a "greenhouse for martyrs."

Abdulhadi, in gratitude to the university, wrote this:

Today San Francisco State University's All University Committee on International Programs unanimously voted to recommend that SF State formally collaborate with An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine. This is the first time that SFSU will collaborate with any university in a Palestinian, Arab or Muslim community.

I am proud, excited and grateful to my colleagues @ An-Najah. It is my honor to be working with you. Thank you Mira Nabulsi for your amazing help in writing and producing the proposal. Thank you Dean Kenneth Monteiro and the College of Ethnic Studies for your consistent and unwavering support.

At The End of the Day

The essential point is that San Francisco State University is standing behind a professor that normalizes terrorism and, ultimately, hatred toward Jews. Connecticut College, on the other hand, both students and faculty, harassed a Jewish professor who opposes anti-Semitism and the spreading of political Islam.

The reason for this is not because of anything peculiar about either institution.

The real problem is not San Francisco State University, nor Connecticut College. The problem is a rising atmosphere of hatred toward the Jewish State of Israel and, thus inevitably, toward the Jewish people, themselves, not only in Europe, but increasingly within the United States.

What we are witnessing, and what these two cases illustrate, is not merely a new phase of Jewish and Israeli relations to western academia and to western culture and civilization. It is, in fact, a new phase in what it means to be "liberal" in the West today.

The western-left is passing down the toilet the very values of social justice and universal human rights that it claims to ground itself within.

The sympathies of western academia will go wherever the combined sensibilities of the professors and the students take it, but when it favors Hamas over the Jews in that part of the world it has forfeited any right to be considered "liberal."

By accepting political Islam it has also betrayed women in the Middle East, Gay people in the Middle East, and Christians in that part of the world. It even has betrayed Muslims in the Middle East to the extent that Muslims are the primary victims of political Islam.

This little story of two professors in the Age of Obama is a story bigger than San Francisco State University and Connecticut College.

It encapsulates a moment of shifting political sands in which the very notion of universal human rights and social justice are being thrown aside in favor of a failing multicultural ideal.

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.

Sorry, I posted this on the wrong day...

06/20 Links: Oren: Why Obama is wrong about Iran being 'rational' on nukes; The "Snap Back" Delusion

From Ian:

Israeli man killed in West Bank terror attack

An Israeli man who was critically injured Friday afternoon in a shooting attack in the West Bank succumbed to his wounds later Friday. He was named as Danny Gonen, 25, from the central city of Lod.
Gonen was shot in the upper body near the settlement of Dolev, northwest of Jerusalem. He was found unconscious and transferred to Tel Hashomer Hospital by IDF helicopter where he died over an hour after the attack.
Gonen was an electrical engineering student and the eldest of five siblings.
A second man, whose identity was not immediately made public, was moderately hurt in the attack and was being treated at Tel Hashomer.
The two men were traveling in their car after visiting a spring near Dolev, when they were flagged down by a Palestinian man, seemingly asking them for assistance. He then pulled a gun out of a bag he was carrying and opened fire on them at point-blank range, mortally wounding Gonen.
“The Palestinian asked for information regarding a nearby spring moments before drawing a gun and shooting the passengers at close range,” according to a statement released by the IDF.

Michael Oren: Why Obama is wrong about Iran being 'rational' on nukes

Simply put: Those in the “rational” camp see a regime that wants to remain in power and achieve regional hegemony and will therefore cooperate, rather than languish under international sanctions that threaten to deny it both. The other side cannot accept that religious fanatics who deny the Holocaust, blame all evil on the Jews and pledge to annihilate the 6 million of them in Israel can be trusted with a nuclear program capable of producing the world's most destructive weapon in a single year.
The rational/irrational dispute was ever-present in the intimate discussions between the United States and Israel on the Iranian nuclear issue during my term as Israel's ambassador to Washington, from 2009 to the end of 2013. I took part in those talks and was impressed by their candor. Experts assessed the progress in Iran's program: the growing number of centrifuges in its expanding underground facilities, the rising stockpile of enriched uranium that could be used in not one but several bombs, and the time that would be required for Iran to “break out” or “sneak out” from international inspectors and become a nuclear power.
Both nations' technical estimates on Iran largely dovetailed. Where the two sides differed was over the nature of the Islamic Republic. The Americans tended to see Iranian leaders as logical actors who understood that the world would never allow them to attain nuclear weapons and would penalize them mercilessly — even militarily — for any attempt to try.
By contrast, most Israelis viewed the ayatollahs as radical jihadists who claimed they took instructions from the Shiite “Hidden Imam,” tortured homosexuals and executed women accused of adultery, and strove to commit genocide against Jews. Israelis could not rule out the possibility that the Iranians would be willing to sacrifice half of their people as martyrs in a war intended to “wipe Israel off the map.”
The Americans tended to see Iranian leaders as logical actors... By contrast, most Israelis viewed the ayatollahs as radical jihadists. -
As famed Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis once observed, “Mutually assured destruction” for the Iranian regime “is not a deterrent — it's an inducement.”

How Obama Opened His Heart to the ‘Muslim World’

And got it stomped on. Israel’s former ambassador to the United States on the president’s naiveté as peacemaker, blinders to terrorism, and alienation of allies.
Yet, tragically perhaps, Obama — and his outreach to the Muslim world — would not be accepted. With the outbreak of the Arab Spring, the vision of a United States at peace with the Muslim Middle East was supplanted by a patchwork of policies — military intervention in Libya, aerial bombing in Iraq, indifference to Syria, and entanglement with Egypt. Drone strikes, many of them personally approved by the president, killed hundreds of terrorists, but also untold numbers of civilians. Indeed, the killing of a Muslim — Osama bin Laden — rather than reconciling with one, remains one of Obama’s most memorable achievements.
Diplomatically, too, Obama’s outreach to Muslims was largely rebuffed. During his term in office, support for America among the peoples of the Middle East — and especially among Turks and Palestinians — reached an all-time nadir. Back in 2007, President Bush succeeded in convening Israeli and Arab leaders, together with the representatives of some 40 states, at the Annapolis peace conference. In May 2015, Obama had difficulty convincing several Arab leaders to attend a Camp David summit on the Iranian issue. The president who pledged to bring Arabs and Israelis together ultimately did so not through peace, but out of their common anxiety over his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and his determination to reach a nuclear accord with Iran.
Only Iran, in fact, still holds out the promise of sustaining Obama’s initial hopes for a fresh start with Muslims. “[I]f we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion,” he told the New Yorker, “you could see an equilibrium developing between [it and] Sunni … Gulf states.” The assumption that a nuclear deal with Iran will render it “a very successful regional power” capable of healing, rather than inflaming, historic schisms remained central to Obama’s thinking. That assumption was scarcely shared by Sunni Muslims, many of whom watched with deep concern at what they perceived as an emerging U.S.-Iranian alliance.
Six years after offering to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,” President Obama has seen that hand repeatedly shunned by Muslims. His speeches no longer recall his Muslim family members, and only his detractors now mention his middle name. And yet, to a remarkable extent, his policies remain unchanged. He still argues forcibly for the right of Muslim women to wear — rather than refuse to wear — the veil and insists on calling “violent extremists” those who kill in Islam’s name. “All of us have a responsibility to refute the notion that groups like ISIL somehow represent Islam,” he declared in February, using an acronym for the Islamic State. The term “Muslim world” is still part of his vocabulary.
Historians will likely look back at Obama’s policy toward Islam with a combination of curiosity and incredulousness. While some may credit the president for his good intentions, others might fault him for being naïve and detached from a complex and increasingly lethal reality. For the Middle East continues to fracture and pose multiple threats to America and its allies. Even if he succeeds in concluding a nuclear deal with Iran, the expansion of the Islamic State and other jihadi movements will underscore the failure of Obama’s outreach to Muslims. The need to engage them — militarily, culturally, philanthropically, and even theologically — will meanwhile mount. The president’s successor, whether Democrat or Republican, will have to grapple with that reality from the moment she or he enters the White House. The first decision should be to recognize that those who kill in Islam’s name are not mere violent extremists but fanatics driven by a specific religion’s zeal. And their victims are anything but random.

06/19 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Israel’s great opportunity; Husseini's Anti-Semitic Legacy

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel’s great opportunity

On the other hand, even in their weakness the Druse present Israel with a great opportunity.
By helping them we can signal to others – for instance the Kurds – that we can be trusted.
Israel can help the Druse without spending too much time coordinating its steps with the US, because the Druse have no great regional significance. Given our own Druse community, our moral duty and national interest in ensuring their survival is self-evident.
Unlike the Druse, the Kurds are viewed as pivotal regional actors for the US and for other regional powers. Today, the greatest obstacle preventing Israel and the Kurds from working in alliance against common foes is the Obama administration. Under the administration, the strategic assumption of US Middle East policy is that the US should strengthen and curry favor with Iran.
Iran fears an independent Kurdistan in Iraq and Syria because of the likely impact such a state will have on Iran’s large Kurdish minority.
Consequently, the US is refusing to directly arm the Kurds in their war against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Yet in spite of America’s denial of support, the Kurds are pushing forward in their campaign against Islamic State. This week they cut off Islamic State’s supply chains from Turkey to the terrorist group’s capital in Raqqa by taking control over Tel Abayid close to the Turkish border.
If a year and a half from now a new administration in Washington changes the US’s regional policy, and if, during this period, Israel manages to form and maintain an alliance with the Druse, the Kurds will recognize that Israel is willing to do the hard work of building and maintaining alliances again.

Hajj Amin Husseini's Anti-Semitic Legacy

The implications of the mufti's claim that the Jews were successful in killing Muhammad despite God's warning imply that Jews possess the power to defy God's will. Such a blasphemous thought would be worse than Christian accusation of deicide. Jesus overcame death, and by his suffering, death and resurrection brought salvation to his community of believers; however, Muhammad not only remained dead but also failed to appoint his successor due to the rapid progression of his illness and his sudden, untimely demise. Consequently, the umma was split by different claimants to authority, and the dispute eventually led to the fiercest internecine strife in the history of early Islam, known as the fitna.
While the mufti's Palestinian successors would not tire of reiterating this story (as late as November 2013, Palestinian Authority minister of religious affairs Mahmoud Habbash claimed that Yasser Arafat was poisoned by the Jews just as they had poisoned the Prophet Muhammad to death), most contemporary Islamic scholars have a different understanding of this hazardous theology; inasmuch, the accusation that the Jews killed the Prophet has largely faded as a theological theme with mainstream Islamic commentary viewing the Jews, along the Qur'anic derision, as "adh-dhilla wa-l-maskan," translated by Yehoshafat Harkabi as "humiliation and wretchedness." Bernard Lewis further explained:
The outstanding characteristic, therefore, of the Jews as seen and as treated in the classical Islamic world is their unimportance. ... For Muslims, he might be hostile, cunning, and vindictive, but he was weak and ineffectual—an object of ridicule, not fear. This image of weakness and insignificance could only be confirmed by the subsequent history of Jewish life in Muslim lands.
Departing from this conventional view, the mufti did not interpret contemporary events as a new historical phenomenon to which Muslims should respond in a new, ad hoc manner. Instead, he traced Jewish accomplishments of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and the alleged Jewish power and ambitions, to supposed Jewish activities at the time of Muhammad. In doing so, he created a precedent, later followed by prominent Islamic actors in the Middle East and elsewhere, particularly after Israel's stunning military victories over its Arab adversaries. Thus Hamas accuses the Jews of "wiping out the Islamic caliphate" by starting World War I and of starting the French and the communist revolutions, establishing "clandestine organizations" and financial power so as to colonize, exploit, and corrupt countries. Likewise, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Muhammad accused Jews of ruling the world by proxy. Attributing such gargantuan accomplishments to the Jews, many of them at the expense of Muslims, presents a theological innovation with an immediate political consequence. Linking early Islamic with medieval Christian depictions of Jews results in their portrayal as "a demonic entity," thus making their "extermination legitimate."

Richard Behar: When Hitler Keeps Me Awake

I received a request from an award-winning journalist to connect on LinkedIn. He is Islamabad-based, and he describes himself as South Asian Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Post, and a contributor for Al Jazeera, Gulf News and Deutsche Welle. He is also, according to a bio, working for a group called the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong, and he serves as the president of a group called Consortium for Press Freedom (CPF). He defines himself as an expert on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Naturally, I was curious about his accomplishments as a reporter— they include a prestigious journalism honor in 2012 from Syracuse University called the “Mirror Award”—so I spent a few minutes last night exploring him on the Internet. Wish I hadn’t, because what I found kept me dead-awake for hours ruminating about relatives of mine (including foster grandparents) who were murdered in Nazi death camps.
See, the reporter who wants to LinkIn with me, Malik Ayub Khan Sumbal, tweeted something last summer (August 2nd) that feels to me like a kick in the face—only worse; far, far, far worse: “Let me #‎Salute to #‎Hitler # Gaza #‎jews #‎Israel #‎jewish.” Below it: A poster of Hitler that read “LET ME SALUTE TO HITLER THE GREAT. He said ‘I would have killed all the jews of the world, but I kept some to show the world why I killed them.’”

06/19 Links Pt1: Israeli man killed in West Bank terror attack; Hamas War Crimes in Gaza

From Ian:

Israeli man killed in West Bank terror attack

An Israeli man who was critically injured Friday afternoon in a shooting attack in the West Bank succumbed to his wounds.
The 25-year-old was shot in the upper body near the settlement of Dolev, northwest of Jerusalem. He was found unconscious and transferred to Tel Hashomer Hospital by IDF helicopter where he died over an hour after the attack.
A second man was moderately hurt in the attack and was also being treated at Tel Hashomer.
A large deployment of soldiers aided by Israel Police were currently searching for at least one shooter.
The two men in their mid-20s were traveling in their car after visiting a spring near Dolev, when they were flagged down by a Palestinian man, seemingly asking them for help, and shot at point-blank range.
IDF spokesman Peter Lerner said a “Palestinian approached a vehicle that was in the area and asked them to stop… and shot the two from close range.”

Jordan may not extradite alleged mastermind of ’82 terror attack on Jewish restaurant

France reportedly could have a difficult time extraditing the alleged organizer of a deadly 1982 terrorist attack who was arrested in Jordan earlier this month.
An unidentified Jordanian source “close to the case” told the French news agency AFP on Thursday that his country rarely extradites its citizens, choosing instead to try them in “specialized Jordanian courts.”
Zuhair Mohamad Hassan Khalid al-Abassi, aka “Amjad Atta,” one of three suspects in the attack for whom France issued an international arrest warrant earlier this year, was arrested on June 1. The attack was under the auspices of the Abu Nidal Organization, a Palestinian terrorist group.
Abassi, 62 and of Palestinian origin, is today “an aging man who works in the construction sector,” the Jordanian source told AFP. The source added that al-Abassi appeared in court without a lawyer and was ordered to surrender his passport before being released on bail.
According to AFP, Abassi was detained in the city of Zarqa, 18 miles northeast of Amman, the capital.

Sarah Honig: Mahmoud Abbas’s careless candor

The upshot of the misnamed “Arab Spring” – as some uncool Israelis had the temerity to warn from the outset – is that the bogus nationalities of the Arab sphere disintegrate chaotically before our eyes.
If anyone can lay claim to utmost mastery of the thriving arts of history-forging it’s the Jordanians. Their entire state, nationhood and very identity are a sham. Had the international community not been sympathetically predisposed to lap up the lie, Jordan obviously couldn’t pull it off. Its wholesale deceit hinges on a world contentedly complicit in hoodwinking itself – to no small measure because it’s loath to overcome its congenital Jew-aversion.
So the deceit blithely thrives in a world so eager to be deceived. The recent-vintage Jordanian and Palestinian pseudo-ethnicities are presented as bona fide nationalities. Moreover, it’s brazenly asserted that they are dissimilar and deserve self-determination in separate homelands.
This cock-and-bull contention begat the image of the stateless Palestinians – aggrieved indigenous inhabitants, striving desperately to throw off the yoke of foreign (Jewish) occupation. It serves as the perfect purportedly principled pretext to chop off another chunk of what pitifully remains from the originally designated Jewish homeland.
This is Abbas’s outright aim and he’s on the whole an unquestionably successful liar – not least because the international community is eager to lap up any lie about Jews. The dysfunctional family of nations probably wouldn’t care that he fleetingly forgot to prop up his own gargantuan con. However, we Israelis cannot but care that our purportedly trustworthy peace-partner barely remembers which outrageous lie he told last.
In his own version of Lincoln’s remark, Mark Twain – another American immortal – quipped that “if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” That means that Abbas has to remember everything, all the time and that’s not easy – as his careless candor shows.

Hamas detains journalists who accidentally saw Hamas kick civilians out of a shelter. Media silent.

Hazem Balousha is a Gaza-based journalist who has written for The Guardian and The Washington Post.

According to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, on Wednesday Balousha and two other journalists, an Australian and a Brit, were detained by Hamas because they happened to be near a UNRWA school shelter that was being forcibly evacuated by Hamas police (which would be a story itself in any other universe.)

The foreign journalists were released after about an hour but Balousha was transferred to a police station where he remained a bit longer.

The journalists tried to explain that they were trying to film a story about the anniversary of "Israel's aggression" in 2014, not to film the Hamas police forcing out innocent people who have nowhere to live. (UNRWA officially closed the shelters this week.)

The Hamas police insulted the reporters and treated them with contempt.

In fact, one person who was at a UNRWA shelter tried to commit suicide when the apartment his family had been promised was given to another family with better connections at UNRWA.

There has not been a word about this detention of Western reporters in Western media. The Guardian and Washington Post have not covered the story of their own reporter.

So not only does the world media refuse to report on Hamas abuses of Gazans, they even refuse to report when their own journalists are arrested.

The only conclusion one can make is that Hamas controls the media in Gaza with threats.

Every report from Gaza that doesn't mention that the reporters are intimidated by Hamas is a betrayal of journalistic standards.