Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, September 07, 2015

09/07 Links Pt2: Under cover of darkness – the Jewish anti-Semite; Who gains from BDS?

From Ian:

Under cover of darkness – the Jewish anti-Semite

Shortly after the start of the 2nd intifada, when Ariel Sharon’s footsteps on Temple Mount were being blamed for every other Palestinian home conveniently possessing an illegal weapon, my love affair with online forums began in earnest. It was an interesting time, and experience soon taught me the difference between those that ‘know’ and those that ‘think’.
Despite the anonymity that forums provide, online sentiments were still far more guarded then than they are now (although it didn’t seem that way at the time), and if you truly felt the need to face a barrage of blatant anti-Semitism, then outlets such as Stormfront or Icke were the place to be. I remember spending months reading posts about the scientific ‘proof’ that Auschwitz didn’t contain gas chambers. I think the most absurd argument I was ever involved in, was with a proud ‘denier’ regarding the death count from the Warsaw Ghetto; these people are fanatics to the extreme and there is no limit to the conspiracies they wish to create. Those discussions are not for the faint hearted.
However absurd it might sound, there is a comfort in the familiarity of arguing against the easily identifiable form of classic anti-Semitism; these people after all, wear their hatred like a badge. The poison they carry is clearly labelled, and unlike other sources and forms of anti-Semitism, it is neither dressed up nor marketed as treacle syrup. There is also near universal condemnation, and if a Jew stands up to a modern day Nazi, he is likely to find a fair number of different groups on his side. Fascism is the comfort zone of the argument on anti-Semitism; but what then of anti-Semitism outside of the comfort zone, anti-Semitism disguised as something it is not, anti-Semitism being sold as treacle syrup?
Having set up camp in opposition to the University of Southampton’s support of Oren Ben Dor’s proposed conference earlier this year, I developed a solid fascination with the writings of those like Ben Dor; people in the UK, who were born in Israel and who for whatever reason adamantly oppose all things Zionist. Whilst I was always aware of them, it is over the last few months that I have become far more acquainted with their positions, and people such as Atzmon, Pappe & Ben Dor have hardly a piece published on Israel, Jews or Zionism that I have not recently read. Along with Jewish non-Israelis like Blumenthal, their written output is craved by and disseminated on every anti -Zionist and anti-Semitic outlet on the web; Pro-Palestinian sites use them to fight the pro-Israeli message, whilst anti-Semitic sites market them as Jewish whistle blowers exposing the global Jewish conspiracy.

Hamas and New Israel Fund Bigwigs Back U.K.’s Labour Contender Jeremy Corbyn

Clearly, a Corbyn-led U.K. would not be friendly to the Jewish state.
One of the very few members of the U.K. Jewish community proudly standing with Corbyn is Rhea Wolfson, who serves as the campaign manager for the Young Labour Party. According to her Linkedin profile, she also serves as Communications and Outreach Manager at New Israel Fund U.K.. Indeed, her photo is prominently featured on NIF’s U.K. website. Wolfson says Corbyn “offers something different,” commenting that his “straight talk” has swayed her.
This is not surprising. Corbyn’s views on a boycott of Israel precisely mirror the position of the NIF. He recently remarked, “Is it right that we should be supplying arms in that situation? Is it right that we should be importing goods made in illegal settlements across the West Bank? Wouldn’t a stronger message be to those Israelis who want to live in peace with the Palestinians – and there are very many people in Israel that do, we recognize that – that the process of some economic measures might be helpful?”
Hamas also praised Corbyn. In an article in The Telegraph this weekend, Hamas Deputy Foreign Minister Ghazi Hamad said, “I find that [Corbyn] has very good sympathy and support for the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian struggle and he is frankly against the occupation, against the racist policy of Israel, against settlements.”
In 2010, the Knesset pursued an investigation into the New Israel Fund. At the time, Yisrael Hasson, MK from the centrist Kadima party and former deputy director of the Shin Bet security services, implied that the NIF could be receiving funds from Israel’s sworn enemies. During that period, he was quoted in the Israeli media saying, “If I were Al-Qaeda, I wouldn’t think twice, I would give to them.”
Birds of a feather flock together.

The Tamimi masterclass on media manipulation

Bassem Tamimi’s version was of course vague enough to allow both of them to fill in details and dramatize as needed when they were asked a few days later how their son had broken his arm. Bassem Tamimi chose to come up with the frightening scenario of a tank ploughing through the village, forcing his son to flee in panic; whereas his wife felt the need to invent the very different scenario of an IDF attack on the house, because she wanted to justify her insistence that it was best for her children to be sent out to confront soldiers.
Both obviously counted on the credulity of the reporters and didn’t expect to be asked for any evidence. Their son had a cast on his arm – who would doubt that in some way or other, a vicious act of the brutal “IOF” was to blame? One can only wonder how often the Tamimis have played the same game without being caught as liars.
But worse than their lies and their shameless manipulation of the media – which, after all, love to be fed the kind of stories the Tamimis are eager to provide – is their ruthless exploitation of their children. It emerged in the comments responding to Nariman Tamimi’s post that this was already the second time that her son Mohammad had broken his arm, presumably under similar circumstances. But when a concerned friend suggested it was “enough” and time to stop, Nariman Tamimi defiantly responded “Either victory or martyrdom.” It is a terrible thing to say, but given the way the Tamimis have exploited their children so far, it seems not unthinkable that they might ultimately consider the “martyrdom” of one of them a “victory.”
And make no mistake: the “victory” for which the Tamimis are fighting is not the peaceful co-existence of the Jewish State of Israel and an Arab-Muslim Palestinian state. In various interviews published on sites that oppose Israel’s existence as a Jewish state – such as the “hate-site” Mondoweiss and The Electronic Intifada (from where an interview conducted by the notorious Max Blumenthal was even cross-posted on the website of the Al-Qassam Brigades), Bassem Tamimi has indicated that he is a determined proponent of the so-called “one-state-solution” that would absorb the world’s only Jewish state into yet another Arab-Muslim majority state.

#FreeDolphinFromHamas rally a spectacular success in Berlin

I mentioned that a rally was planned for last Friday in Alexanderplatz, Berlin, in order to call attention to the plight of the Mossad dolphin captured by Hamas.

The photos of the rally are great.

"Antidolphinism is not OK"

"Dolphin are people too!"

"Freedom for our comrades-in-fins" (h/t Jerry)

This seems to have gotten far more people to march than any BDS rally I've ever seen. And they had police protection too - which is funny but also very sad.

UNRWA employee encourages small children to use weapons against Israel

UNRWA employee Thaer Khalil likes to post photos of little kids with big guns.

Like this:

The caption for this that he wrote is:

No room to embrace childhood in Palestine, you are either part of the resistance, or you are not alive!!

Which means that he wants every child who is old enough to barely hold a weapon to fight Israel.

Is this the message that UNRWA employees tell the children in their charge?

Well...yes.

09/07 Links Pt1: Resolution 242 Revisited; Nuclear Jihad; Israel unfazed by PA threat to end Oslo

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: “Resolution 242 Revisited”: new research on Security Council’s approach to Israel-Arab conflict

My new article, “Resolution 242 Revisited: New Evidence on the Required Scope of Israeli Withdrawal” has just been published in volume 16 of the Chicago Journal of International Law, and is available here. 242 may be the Security Council’s most famous resolution, yet amazingly, there are entire veins of evidence about its meaning that have remained untapped.
The article happens, fortuitously, to be quite relevant to the drama that will likely unfold in the Security Council this fall. So let me say a few words here about what the evidence developed in the paper suggests about these developments. (When I began working on the article last year, I did not know anything about a potential new Council resolution.)
France will reportedly soon introduce a new proposed resolution about the Israeli-Arab conflict in the Council. President Obama has repeatedly hinted that he might not veto such a resolution.
One thing the paper makes clear is that Res. 242 represented a territorial compromise, with accommodations to Arab and Israel positions. The French resolution – which mandates a withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines – would specifically undo the parts of that compromise that were in Israel’s favor, and essentially “reverse” 242, replacing it with the resolution demanded by the U.S.S.R and Arab states in 1967. If the U.S. allows this to happen, it would be a fundamental reversal of 50 years of Middle East diplomacy.

Lawfare bulwark: Israel has become a convenient target

About two months ago, Professor Eugene Kontorovich stood before a special US congressional committee and laid out what he sees as the irrationality of boycotting Israel.
Kontorovich, 40, is considered a world-class expert in constitutional and international law, and deals mainly with the issue of international boycotts. Kontorovich said the committee members sought deeper understanding of boycotts against Israel and so invited him to speak.
The professor delivered a comprehensive overview: Among other things, Kontorovich detailed a series of laws legislated in the US in the 1970s, which stated that Arab League pressure to boycott Israel should be rejected. At the end of the meeting, says Professor Kontorovich, the committee expressed unequivocal opposition to boycotts of Israel.
“The problem is that now the boycott is not led by Arab countries, but by the European Union,” he explains. “Still, the Americans listened carefully, and I am convinced that my words convinced them that boycotting Israeli companies’ goods is a move that is dangerous for the free world no less than for Israel.

Are Abbas’s threats to quit part of a ploy to embarrass Israel?

Is that also an empty threat? Possibly. If Abbas were to declare Palestine an occupied state, ties between Israel and the PA wouldn’t end that very day. But the move would undoubtedly embarrass Israel in the international arena and beyond, and raise serious doubts about the Netanyahu government’s continued cooperation with the PA. It’s also possible that the declaration would lead to a resolution echoing the same content in the Security Council, seriously complicating things for Israel.
In the meantime, senior PLO and Fatah officials are gearing up for the Palestinian National Council. Senior members of Fatah are competing for three spots reserved for the movement in the PLO Executive Committee — including one for Abbas if he ultimately decides to run.
Another three spots are reserved for independent contenders who are also likely to be close to the PA president.
After all is said and done, his position will only be strengthened after the elections.
And who is running for the rest of the seats? As one senior member of the Executive Committee, Tawfil Tirawi, put it, “Who isn’t?”
Everyone, it seems, wants a seat at the table of what is considered, at least symbolically, as the international Palestinian leadership.

Israel unfazed by PA threat to end Oslo accords, declare Palestine occupied state

“It’s an empty statement,” said Alan Baker, a retired Israeli diplomat and former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry. “I don’t think it has any significance whatsoever. Nothing Abbas says, no declaration he makes at the UN, will change anything on the ground.”
The only thing it would achieve, Baker said, is to invalidate his status as president of the PA, as well as the legitimacy of the Palestinian parliament and courts. “It would also open up the opportunity for Israel to do whatever it deems necessary to protect its security and political interest, and could even cause possible termination of security and economic cooperation and other measures that are intended for the benefit of the Palestinian people.”
Is it even possible for Palestine to become a “state under occupation”? In his speech in New York later this month, Abbas will point to the General Assembly’s 2012 decision to accept “Palestine” as a non-member observer state and argue that Israel refuses to end the occupation of his state.
However, some argue that only existing states can be considered occupied, such as France during World War II or, more recently, Ukraine’s Crimea, which was occupied by Russia. But “Palestine” seeks to achieve statehood while under occupation, a situation without historical precedent. A state can only become “occupied” if parts or all of the territory it controlled is in effective control of another power, some legal scholars argue. That would not be the case here.
The Palestinians, however, are likely to argue that a sovereign “Palestine” existed before the 1967 Six Day War, when Israeli captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip, even though that appears to be a difficult position to defend among international law scholars.

What do those "Talmudic rituals at Al Aqsa" look like?

Yesterday, the AL Aqsa foundation reported that Jews had tried to perform "Talmudic rituals" on the Temple Mount, but their fiendish plot was foiled by vigilant Waqf guards there.

But today, Palestine Press Agency reported that "Jewish settlers stormed AL Aqsa and performed religious rituals inside."

What are these mysterious rituals? Do they look or sound like the rituals that Muslims routinely engage in when they see Jew filth on the Temple Mount, like this snippet of women screaming "Allah-hu Akbar" yesterday?

Certainly these Talmudic rituals must involve slaughtering animals and children, or perhaps wild screaming and dancing and drinking alcohol that would disturb the peaceful Muslim worshipers who are inside the actual Al Aqsa Mosque or one of the other mosques on the Mount.

Here is an exclusive look at a Jew engaging in Talmudic rituals on the Temple Mount, in all its offensiveness, from earlier this year:

Who could fail to be disgusted at such a blatant display of prayer?

The world seems to have discovered the Syrian refugee crisis this past week. But Israeli aid has been flowing to them since at least June 2013.

IsraAID has distributed over ten tons of aid over the past two years to Syrian refugees in Jordan.

A JTA article in October 2013 gave some details:

MAFRAQ, Jordan— The purple plastic sacks fill two rooms in the otherwise sparsely furnished headquarters of a Jordanian NGO, awaiting distribution to Syrian refugees already lined up on the sidewalk.

They contain an array of staple dry goods — lentils, pasta, powdered milk, tea — as well as a range of hygiene products like soap and detergent, enough for 250 refugee families. But before the goods are handed out, one thing will be removed — the word “Jewish.”

Going sack by sack with a pair of scissors, an aid worker begins to cut.

“We don’t announce with trumpets that we’re Israeli,” the worker says. “There’s no need for that. Once you let that cat out of the bag, everything starts to blow up.”

Jordan hasn't been the only theatre for Israeli aid. This article is from March 2014:

IsraAID, an Israeli civilian disaster relief organization, will send a team to Bulgaria on Monday to help the country with its growing Syrian refugee population, which presently stands at 11,000.

The mission will provide food and supplies, as well as assist the authorities in constructing a program to improve the psycho-social wellbeing of the refugees, the organization said.

The Bulgarian government issued an appeal to the international community after struggling to feed and house the thousands of Syrians who had fled to the country via Turkey.

This is all besides the many Syrians who have been treated in Israeli hospitals since the war began.

Israel has nothing to apologize for.

The rest of the world that has all but ignored the Syrian crisis, however, is a different story.

Report: PLO to annul Oslo Accords. Israel needs to respond forcefully.

From Times of Israel's Avi Issacharoff:

The fog created by the ostensibly impending resignation of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas appeared to clear Monday, as details emerged indicating that the resignation threats were no more than a diversion ahead of a dramatic move planned by the Palestinians: declaring Palestine a state under occupation and reneging on their obligations as detailed in the Oslo Accords.

One senior PLO official, Ahmed Majdalani, told the Palestinian Ma’an news agency on Sunday that the central committee would discuss the abovementioned resolutions in its coming session. After voting on the decisions, the Palestinians are expected to announce the annulment of all agreements signed between the PLO and Israel, and to declare a new relationship with the Jewish state. Majdalani added that an announcement has already been drafted by the preparatory committee of the Palestinian National Council.

The Oslo Accords, as well as the agreement signed in Sharm el Sheikh in 1994, are expected to be canceled. Also set to be annulled are an economic agreement signed in Paris and several pacts on security cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

At this stage, it is still not yet clear what the actual implications of such a decision will be, but it will be accompanied by an announcement by Abbas at the United Nations General Assembly session at the end of the month, where he is expected to say that in light of the annulment of the agreements, Palestine will be considered a state under occupation.

Ma'an's coverage seems to indicate that this move has at least as much to do with internal Palestinian politics as it has to do with "occupation":

[Majdalani] visited Syria two days ago to meet with Palestinian factions who are not members of the PLO to explain the motivations for the upcoming meeting, saying that the session would challenge the Israeli occupation and was a response to Hamas' alleged talks with Israel "at the expense of internal reconciliation."

Around 26 participants from Syria will participate in the PNC meeting, he added.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command and the Popular Liberation Forces said they would boycott the meeting “but won’t take strict stances against decisions which emerge."

If "Palestine" is a "state under occupation" that means that either Area A is not occupied at all, or that Israel can move troops into Area A without coordination with the PA (or whatever they want to call the PA.) Because the definition of military occupation is the area where there are actual "boots on the ground" with the ability to exert "effective control," as a meeting of international law experts convened by the ICRC determined recently:

The experts discussed the cumulative constitutive elements of the notion of effective control over
a foreign territory, which underpins the definition of occupation set out in Article 42 of the Hague
Regulations of 1907.

The presence of foreign forces: this criterion was considered to be the only way to establish and exert firm control over a foreign territory. It was identified as a prerequisite for the establishment of an occupation, notably because it makes the link between the notion of effective control and the ability to fulfil the obligations incumbent upon the occupying power. It was also agreed that occupation could not be established or maintained solely through the exercise of power from beyond the boundaries of the occupied territory; a certain number of foreign “boots on the ground” were required.

... according to most of the experts, occupation could not be established or maintained solely through power exercised from beyond the boundaries of the occupied territory; it required a certain number of foreign boots on the ground, as it were.

So if there is still security cooperation between the PA's forces and Israel, then that means that the PA forces are acting under Israeli control in Area A in order for that territory to be considered occupied. (Occupation only extends to areas that the occupier can exert effective control.)

The legal system, if under occupation, would likewise either have to come under Israeli oversight or the areas where it can be exerted would be by definition not under occupation.

Annulling Oslo would also probably mean that the agreement to pay tax revenue to the PA would be null and void.

In fact, the PA itself would disappear, since that exists only because of Oslo.

It may also mean that all the other agreements based on the idea of a quasi-independent PA would also become nullified.

I doubt that this is what Erekat and Abbas intend. They will try, as always, to twist international law to gain all the benefits and none of the responsibilities - to keep their power base (which means they are not under occupation in those areas) but to claim that they are under occupation.

There could be other legal implications and unintended consequences for the Palestinian Arabs.

The illegality of unilaterally abrogating an agreement like Oslo and subsequent agreements must be stressed as well. If the PLO cannot be trusted to abide by a signed agreement, then what incentive does Israel have to work on a two-state solution?

Israel must spell out these consequences now, explicitly, rather than let the PLO decide on the rules of the game.

By the way, the US is killing civilians - and covering it up

From Buzzfeed:

Nearly one year after the Obama administration launched its campaign of airstrikes to target ISIS and other extremists in Syria, claims of civilian casualties are piling up. The Syrian Network for Human Rights, a local monitoring group, said there have been 242 civilian casualties from strikes by the U.S.-dominated coalition bombing the country, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also puts the civilian death toll at more than 200. Airwars, a U.K.-based project to collect and evaluate claims of civilian casualties in Syria, has identified 86 events during which coalition-inflicted civilian deaths are alleged, said Chris Woods, the investigative journalist who runs it. Of those, he said, 53 incidents had at least two credible sources and warranted further investigation. These incidents alone accounted for between 280 and 340 reported civilian deaths, he said.

Yet after more than 2,400 attacks from the coalition’s drones and fighter jets in Syria, the U.S. Central Command (Centcom), which oversees the campaign as well as investigations into civilian deaths, has admitted that just one bombing run in the northern town of Harem had “likely” killed two young girls. And according to a Centcom spokesperson, only five incidents are currently under formal investigation. “This tells us that something here is broken,” Woods said. “We are tracking three times more alleged civilian casualty events than they have picked up.”

The dangers of visiting Syria limit the ability of independent observers to confirm accusations of civilian casualties, especially in territory controlled by ISIS, where most of the strikes take place. Residents are forbidden from talking to the media or other monitors, and even those who flee to safety in Turkey fear that speaking out could endanger relatives who remain in Syria. But BuzzFeed News interviewed witnesses to, or family members of, alleged civilian casualties from eight suspected coalition airstrikes, who suggest that these incidents are taking place on a much greater scale than the U.S. admits. Most spoke — either on the border or by phone from Syria — on condition of anonymity.

Behind the scenes, even some U.S. officials say the numbers are likely higher. According to one, credible reports of civilian casualties that have been flagged internally and passed to Centcom appear to receive only “minimal” follow-up. “They don’t want to admit it,” the official said, requesting anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press. “It’s against their interest to admit there were civilian casualties in any strikes, and that’s why the burden of proof is quite high.”

A second U.S. official, who works for the State Department, said he had seen multiple reports of civilian casualties, all flagged internally, that he found to be credible: “There’s no question.”

This is what happens in war.

But the US is not held to the same standards of investigation into each incident that Israel is.

Israel keeps track of each mortar, tank shell and missile so it can investigate the circumstances and ensure that mistakes are minimized - but the US is simply covering their mistakes up.

And no one cares, just as they don't care about Saudi air raids in Yemen, because they only care when Jews can be blamed.

(h/t Yoel)

From Iran's ABNA news:

Palestinian students in the Gaza Strip received gifts, toys and writing utensils from Iranian children as academic year started in the Israel-besieged region.

The aid cargo which was sent under a humanitarian project named 'the school bags' included 1,600 school bags for girls and boys and stationary stuff like notebooks, pen, pencil, etc.

The charity is called the "Riyad Al-Salihin Association for Children and Social Services" and is based out of Tehran.

Egypt's Rafah crossing has not been open since August 21, so these school supplies must have gone through Israel and entered through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

Which means that this charity, which is almost certainly controlled by Iran, had to coordinate this aid package through Israeli authorities, even though Iran refuses to officially cooperate with the evil Zionist entity.

The story also shows, of course, that the people who claim that Israel doesn't allow things like school supplies into Gaza are lying.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

09/06 Links: What about the Iran lobby?; How would you vote if your children’s lives were at stake?

From Ian:

Howard Jacobson: Corbyn may say he's not anti-Semitic, but associating with the people he does is its own crime

Still I will not call it anti-Semitism. The truism that criticism of Israel does not equate to anti-Semitism is repeated ad nauseam. Nor, necessarily, does it. But those who leave out the “necessarily” ask for a universal immunity. Refuse it and they trammel you in the “How very dare you” trap. They are, they say, being blackmailed into silence. The opposite is the truth. It is they who are the blackmailers, intimidating anyone who dares criticise their criticism.
Alone of prejudices, anti-Zionism is sacrosanct. How very dare we distinguish the motivation of one sort from another? Or question, in any instance, an anti-Zionist’s good faith? In fact, what determines whether anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic is the nature of it. Question Israel’s conduct of recent wars and you won’t find many Jews, in Israel or outside it, who disagree with you. Join Hamas in calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, as the prime instigator of all evil, and you’re on shakier ground.
In an apparent softening of party tone, Corbyn’s warm-up man, the journalist Owen Jones, recently reprimanded the Left for its ingrained anti-Semitism. Welcome words, but they will remain only words so long as the Corbynite Left – and indeed the not-so Corbynite Left – refuses to acknowledge the degree to which anti-Semitism is snarled up in the before and after of Israelophobia. The Stop The War Coalition is a sort of home to Jew-haters because its hate music about Israel is so catchy. It simplifies a complex and heartbreaking conflict, it elides causes and effects, it perpetuates a fable that flatters one side and demonises another, it ignores all instances of intransigence and cruelty but one, inflaming hatred and enabling the very racism it declares itself opposed to.
Let’s forget whether or not anti-Semitism is the root of this. It is sufficient that it is the consequence. Face that, Corbyn, or the offence you take at any imputation of prejudice is the hollow hypocrite’s offence, and your protestations of loving peace and justice, no matter who believes them, are as ash.

"Palestine" is "The Jewish People’s State” under International Law

Arab irredentists have never accepted recognition of the Jewish state. The recognition of a state may be express or tacit. The latter results from any act that implies the intention of recognizing the new state. Approval of the League of Nations Mandate is such an act based on the the summaries shown in the Memo of the British Foreign Office of December 19, 1917 and that of the American summary circulated at the Paris Peace Talks and approved at San Remo.
The Arabs have expressed their dissatisfaction by threats of violence, actual violence and by fraud. The usual fraud is carried out by publication of bogus legal opinions claiming to show the illegality under international law of Jewish settlements and occupation outside the Green Line and claiming the unilateral right to secede from the Jewish state.
Why arguments based on international law? How many people who pass you on the street know anything at all about international law. Repeated often enough to them it becomes a “poetic truth” that can’t be dented by facts, reason or logic. Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem may be occupied, but it is not a “belligerent occupation” as defined in the Regulations under the Hague Convention, nor does voluntary settlement of Jews in these areas, impose the obligations on Israel that it would if they had been deported or transferred.
These are areas that were liberated in 1967 to fulfill the status intended for them at San Remo in 1920 as a part of a Jewish People’s State.

David Horovitz: Europe’s challenge: How to prevent Islamic extremism entering along with its victims

As Europe grapples with a migrant crisis, its leaders might ask themselves if they could have done more to alleviate some of its causes
It’s hard to imagine the West condemning us now for choosing, over the past few years, to seal off the border with Egypt in order to prevent the tens of thousands of African asylum-seekers who made their way to the only land-accessible democracy in the area swelling into the millions. It’s harder now to dismiss those Israeli leaders who contended that migration across a porous border could remake Israel’s demographic balance.
Should we allow people of Palestinian origin to cross from Syria and Lebanon into the West Bank, as PA President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded? Plainly, that would be easier if we were at peace with the Palestinians, rather than deadlocked, and if Abbas had publicly renounced the demand for a “right of return” that wields demographics as a weapon against Israel.
Too many questions; too few answers. And the validation of a familiar assertion: The Middle East is the dinner guest who never goes home. Ignore it or seek to disengage from it at your peril.

Anyone who knows the least little bit about the Arab-Israel war, as portrayed in the general media, knows that it is done so in a manner that is toxic to Jews.

The question is, given the number of violent national conflicts all around the world, why must this one be so utterly acrimonious among people who, as they say, do not have a dog in the fight? All around the world, with the possible exception of parts of the Asian Pacific Rim, people seem to care very deeply about Jewish behavior toward Palestinian-Arabs while not caring at all about the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, including many Palestinian-Arabs residing there.

And do I really need to reference the death toll in recent years in the Congo? That number is in the millions, but nobody outside of the region cares a whit.

Please understand that I do not hold myself innocent in the question of the miserableness, toxicity, and the just plain stupidity of the conversation around the Arab-Israel conflict. The question is, why is it that conversation so toxic?

The answer, in part, is postcolonial theory.

The people who are driving the conversation are anti-Jewish / anti-Israel ideologues of the sort that shake their fists for BDS. They honestly view Israel as a white, western, racist, colonialist, European outpost in the Middle East... or some combination of this highly dubious rhetorical gibberish. This is due, at least in part, to significant twentieth-century thinkers like Michelle Foucault and Edward Said.

Foucault and Said
Foucault suggested that scholarly narratives were not so much about “truth” but about the maintenance of hegemonic systems of power through constructing necessary epistemologies and ontologies, or ways of thinking and being. Said, following Foucault, claimed that western “Orientalist” scholarship, and thus western views on the Arab world, were about the maintenance of western power over the "occupied" Middle East.

This particular way of viewing knowledge - as little more than part of the prevailing system of imperial control - dovetails with the postcolonial view that divides the world into Occupiers and the Occupied or white, western oppressors and their victims. The historical source of this relationship allegedly derives from the old racist, European imperial adventures and, we are told, continues to this day with the United States representing the foremost oppressor on the world stage. It is this that Barack Obama thinks that it is his job to undue. Israel is viewed as an instrument of this imperialism, as well as a current example of an "apartheid state" that must be shunned and opposed.

The Jewish State must therefore be struggled against not merely for this or that policy toward the Palestinian-Arabs, but because in its essence, it is viewed as a racist, colonialist enterprise similar to, say, the British in India or the French in Indo-China. The problem with Britain in India was not this or that royal policy toward the indigenous population but its very presence controlling other people's lives and land. The problem was imperialism, period, and not merely any particular imperial policy.

Israel, of course, does not actually fit the postcolonial model for the obvious reason that people cannot illegitimately, or illegally, "colonize" their own land. In order to make it fit anti-Israel ideologues twist Jewish history in order to cram it into the model. They maliciously misinterpret Israeli behavior in order to suggest that this behavior is not a reaction to real events like, say, Qassam rockets, but is rather an expression of the ugly, essential nature of the Jews in the Middle East, if not Jews more generally.

Israel is either a white, western, outpost of imperialism or it is not. Postcolonial theory claims that it is and postcolonial theory is the ghost that hovers behind the conversation, that gives the anti-Israel people their intellectual validation. But how can the movement for Jewish self-determination and self-defense be "imperialist" when we know that the vast majority, virtually the entirety, of European Jews who made aliyah did so to escape late 19th century Russian pogroms and, later, that minor bit of nastiness in early-mid twentieth-century Germany?

Thus, on its face, the origins of the Jewish state are not imperialist and in order to make it so an inversion is necessary. The Jews who fled Russian pogroms and, later, the Holocaust, must be viewed as the oppressors. The Jewish immigrants did not arrive at the behest of any European power. They did not ride with any army of conquest, nor were they the functionaries of any foreign government seeking domination. They came to the Land of Israel as an oppressed people hoping to build a community for themselves and their children on the land where Jews have lived for well over three thousand years.

The actual history therefore undermines post-colonial theory in regards Israel and renders it useless.

The only way to make it work is to start with the presumptions of the theory and then twist the history to conform to, and thus confirm, the theory. But scholarship doesn't work that way. The irony is that post-colonial theory has Marxist roots, but Marx did not consider himself an “idealist,” one who starts with an ideology hovering over the material facts, but just the opposite. Marx thought of himself as a corrective to the German idealist tradition by starting with the material facts of history and drawing his conclusions from those facts, not the other way around, as the current post-colonialists do.

Furthermore, since Israel and Zionism are considered in their very nature corrupt, anything that Israel does is viewed as evidence of that corruption. Let’s take the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, for example. Israel was there with an absolutely amazing medical team that saved G-d knows how many lives, yet there are plenty of people who insist that this was nothing but a cheap PR stunt to take attention away from the Gaza strip.

In this way, it doesn't matter what Israel does because it is already condemned in its essence as an evil, racist, imperialist, regime and its behavior, whatever that behavior might be, is conducted not from actual circumstances, but as an expression of its corrupt essence.

And this is ultimately what makes the conversation around the Arab-Israel conflict so vitriolic. The ideology, by necessity, turns the vast majority of world Jewry into the enemy.

So, of course, discussion around the Arab-Israel conflict is toxic.

The prevailing anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, postcolonial ideology rattles the Jewish cage.

So, what would anyone expect?


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.

Hamas announced the "accidental" death of one of its "mujahadin," Sakher Nabil, without saying how he died.

Arabic message boards mostly said that he drowned while doing an exercise as a frogman for Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades.

But one person on the boards says that he witnessed what happened - and he swears that Nabil mishandled some explosives which ended up blowing his head off.

The photos of his funeral I found don't include any of his dead body, so perhaps that is true.

Time to hand out the candy!

Another UNRWA teacher who supports axing Jews to death

On the same day that four rabbis were murdered while at prayer in Har Nof, Jerusalem, UNRWA teacher Eiad Hindi posted this:

The text says:

This is the way
#Intifada_of_Jerusalem
#Jerusalem's_Elite
The time is near, oh Jerusalem

Will UNRWA condemn this posting? They sure haven't condemned any of the many others I've uncovered!

And I still have more...

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

From Ma'an:

A number of Palestinians were injured Saturday morning after a "dispute" erupted at a Fatah conference in the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses said.

Witnesses told Ma'an that Fatah members threw stones at people taking part in the conference, injuring at least three, including a woman.

Ahmad Shahwan, a member of Fatah in Khan Younis, told Ma'an that "some angry members whose names were not included in the conference's list threw rocks at the conference, injuring a member."

Shahwan added that the Fatah conference took place in Khan Younis with 530 members from 12 regions across the Gaza Strip, with the intent of electing 32 members for the leadership of Fatah in Khan Younis.

Palestine Press Agency fills in the details. The followers of Mohammed Dahlan were the ones who were incensed that they were not included in the Fatah conference and voting.

Dahlan is a rival to Mahmoud Abbas who has been stripped of his positions by the PA president.

09/05 Links: 43 years ago today - Israeli athletes murdered in Munich by Palestinian terrorists

From Ian:

43 years ago today - Israeli athletes murdered in Munich by Palestinian terrorists

It was 43 years ago to the day when a group of armed terrorists from the radical Palestinian faction Black September snuck into the section of the Olympic Village housing the Israeli athletes and took 11 of them hostage during the Munich summer games.
After the Israeli government refused the terrorists' demands to release jailed Palestinians, the athletes were then ushered to an airport, where German authorities staged a failed attempt to extricate the athletes.
All 11 Israeli hostages were killed, while a number of Black September gunmen died in gunfights with German police.
The Anti-Defamation League on Friday paid homage to the murdered athletes.
“We remember one of the darkest days in modern Olympic history and commemorate the 43rd anniversary of the tragic murder of the entire Israeli Olympic team at the hands of Palestinian terrorists,” ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt said.

EU close to decision on labeling products from Israeli settlements

The European Union will soon decide on labeling rules to inform consumers if imported Israeli products come from Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, the EU's top diplomat said on Saturday.
Some EU countries, including Britain, already issue guidance to shops so consumers can see if goods are made in the settlements that most countries consider illegal, rather than within Israel's recognized borders.
The European Commission has to decide how to extend these guidelines to all the 28 countries of the bloc.
"The work is close to being finished but it is still ongoing," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
The EU has been debating the labels for several years but has never put in place any measure, wary of upsetting attempts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. (h/t Yenta Press)

American Muslims For Palestine: Inventing a heritage

American Muslims for Palestine is looking for "Palestinian" artifacts to display at their November convention.
Their call for "coins and currency' is illustrated by the coins of the colonial power, the British Mandate.
No one doubts that the the British mandate for Palestine existed, and its unclear how exhibiting coinage that proclaims the "Land of Israel" supports the AMP claim of the historic existence of a Palestinian people.
A quick search of the New York Historical index shows that common use of the term "Palestinian" did not begin until 1970.
American Muslims for Palestine knows the true history of the coinage- in their promotional material advertising their conference they deliberately cut out the Hebrew writing.
After all, you cannot 'reclaim a narrative' with eliminating an existing one.