Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur on counter terrorism and human rights, claimed on October 21 at a UN meeting, " There is no evidence that terrorist groups take advantage of refugee flows to carry out acts of terrorism." As we show, this is quite untrue.
This video was conceived by Anne Bayefsky of Human Rights Voices, and produced by me. Anne does a stellar job actually watching what the UN is doing and exposing its hypocrisy and lies.
Incidentally, based on the video, there were literally five people in the audience during his speech.
(UPDATE: It was a press conference, and reporters often don't bother showing up because they can see the conference on live webcam.)
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A few years ago, I bought a leather Etrog box - used during the holiday of Sukkot that ends today- in Hebron.
It looks like this:
The words are a paraphrase from a Midrash written before 500 CE:
אמר ר′ יודן: שלושה מקומות אין אומות העולם יכולות להונות את ישראל ולומר להם גזולים הם בידכם, ואלו הן: מערת המכפלה וקבורתו של יוסף ובית-המקדש
R. Yudin says: In three places the nations of the world cannot taunt Israel and say that they stole them from their hands, and they are: the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the burial place of Joseph and the Holy Temple.
In all three cases, the Torah records that the sites were publicly paid for.
The Arab world, of course, deny any Jewish connection to any of those sites, as well as for Rachel's Tomb and other Jewish holy sites. While most towns in the region retain their Biblical names, for these three places these sites are in have been renamed "al-Khalil" instead of Hebron, Nablus instead of Shechem, and Al Quds instead of Jerusalem.
The very three places that Jews have always known belong to them are the ones that the world claims to be exclusively Arab and Muslim.
The irony is too bitter for words.
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+972 publishes a call by 200 Israeli academics to release Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour from house arrest:
On October 11, 2015, Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was arrested by Israeli police during a night raid on her home in the village Al-Reineh, near Nazareth. On November 2, 2015, an Israeli court indicted her for incitement to violence. At the center of the indictment was a poem Tatour wrote in protest of the killing of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, Hadeel al-Shalamon, and members of the Dawabshe family in Duma. The indictment cites the full translation of the song, which was edited by an officer who has no prior experience in translation or poetry. Even according to the translation — which is fully of inaccuracies, most of them giving the poem an extremist tone — there is a call to resist the occupation, but there is no incitement to violence.
The main clause of her indictment was based on a poem that she had allegedly posted on YouTube under the title: “Qawem ya sha’abi, qawemhum” (Resist my people, resist them). Another main clause in the indictment relates to a news item, cited in a post on Tatour’s Facebook page, according to which “The Islamic Jihad movement calls for continuing the Intifada all over the [West] Bank…” The same post calls for a “comprehensive intifada.”
Their initial post about the arrest likewise didn't actually quote the poem, nor linked to her Facebook page, allowing people to verify the facts for themselves. Instead, +972 claimed that the translation of the poem was incorrect - without saying what the actual translation was.
However, an accurate translation of her poem is available, translated by an Arab poet. I published excerpts in August, but the +972 editors could have found it months beforehand.
And her poem called for ethnically cleansing Jews from the Jewish homeland:
Resist, my people, resist them.In Jerusalem, I dressed my wounds and breathed my sorrowsAnd carried the soul in my palmFor an Arab Palestine.I will not succumb to the “peaceful solution,”Never lower my flagsUntil I evict them from my land. I cast them aside for a coming time.Resist, my people, resist them.Resist the settler’s robberyAnd follow the caravan of martyrs. Resist, my people, resist them.Resist, my people, resist them.
Whether she explicitly advocated violence in the words of the poem are debatable. But the the video that she created to publicize the poem includes numerous romantic scenes of Palestinians throwing rocks and setting fires - you know, violence:
It is reasonable to question whether Tatour should be arrested for her poetry advocating ethnic cleansing and her video making it clear that she supports violence. But her supporters who claim that she did neither are doing everything they can to stop people from finding out the truth on their own about what she wrote.
If they are so supportive of Tatour, they should not fear publicizing her words.
Clearly, the +972 editors and Tatour's other defenders at Mondoweiss, Salon, Jewish Voice for Peace and elsewhere want to ensure that their readers only see their own pre-digested version of the truth, and not reality.
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On Sunday October 9 2016, after a busy day with family I sat down to catch up with the events of the day across the world. I’ve always been interested in the world around me and given my job I feel it’s my duty to be as informed as possible about events in Israel and the wider Middle East. My heart sunk when I read that there had been a terrorist shooting in Jerusalem, reminding me of how I felt when I was last in Israel and heard about the Sarona Market attacks. Since October 2015 a wave of terror has hit Israel, with this infographic from BICOM providing the details of the terrorism Israel has faced.
As highlighted by the infographic many Israelis have been killed and injured, just because they are Israelis. Palestinian terrorists are brought up on a diet of hating Israelis, and in many cases, hating Jews. That motivation led to the murder of two Israelis in Jerusalem on October 9 2016.
We can often become desensitised to terrorist attacks and forget that behind every person murdered is a personal story. Therefore, I’ve written below about those who died in Jerusalem.
Amnesty International now a terrorists' rights organization
Anti-Semitism continues to rage worldwide. YouTube is now joining the vindictive party.
Israel National News reported this week that the popular social media channel, owned by YouTube, has placed 21 videos of nonprofit educational organization "Prager University," run by conservative talk-show host Dennis Prager, on "restricted mode." Among these are three pro-Israel videos relating to the founding of Israel, the IDF and Palestinian refugees. Restricted mode allows guardians to protect children from objectionable content by filtering out "restricted" videos in Youtube searches. "PragerU" videos are designed to be viewed by all ages.
Israel National News reports that "One of the restricted PragerU Israel-related videos titled 'Why are There Still Palestinian Refugees?' explains that while Jewish refugees from Arab countries were quickly absorbed into Israel, Arab countries have intentionally refrained from absorbing Palestinian refugees so as to continue to use the Palestinians as a political tool."
The second video, titled "The World's Most Moral Army," features retired British general Richard Kemp explaining the uniqueness of the Israeli army in its intense care not to injure innocent civilians on the battlefield. The third video, titled "Israel's Legal Founding," features world-renowned attorney Alan Dershowitz relating how Israel was founded "step by legal step."
Readers depressed at the state of U.S. politics can console themselves with the knowledge that however bad off their party might be, it’s not Britain’s Labour. The party of Clement Atlee, Harold Wilson, and Tony Blair now finds itself in the worst crisis in its 116-year history. It has not won a general election for a decade. Its advocacy of mass immigration and the European Union has alienated it from much of its voter base. And worse, it has lost whatever halo-advantage it once had by becoming irrevocably tainted with what was once one of the greatest sins of European civilization. Over the last 15 years, it became increasingly clear that anti-Semitism, which had previously been expected to surface only on the political right in Britain, had traveled around the political circle and snuck up behind the political left. And now it has taken over the Labour Party.
Surveying the horrifying news from September’s Labour Party conference, one would have been forgiven for thinking that the biggest question facing Britain is a Jewish one. The place of Jews in the party and in Great Britain altogether seemed to dominate the proceedings. Activists at a “Momentum” grassroots event—Momentum being the group created to promote the leadership of the radical back-bencher Jeremy Corbyn, who won Labour’s top slot in 2015—handed out leaflets calling for the Jewish Labour Movement to be disbanded because its members represented “a foreign power.” Ruth Smeeth, a Jewish member of parliament, found it necessary to bring a bodyguard to protect her from potentially violent anti-Semitic members of her own party. On the main stage of the conference, a Jewish Labour Movement member was heckled from the floor as he was describing how let down many Jews in the party feel. Lord Mitchell, a Jewish peer, resigned from the party. His co-religionists in Labour now find themselves debating whether to stay and fight or declare the party a lost cause. It is not an easy choice.
The story of the takeover of the Labour Party by forces aligned with naked anti-Semitism begins with the aftermath of September 11 and the run-up to the Iraq war. In September 2002, three Jewish leftists who marched in a Stop the War demonstration described in a letter to the Guardian how they became increasingly uncomfortable with the “anti-Israel and anti-Jewish imagery” of their comrades: “Where does that leave us,” the trio wrote, “as Jews who totally oppose the war in Iraq but felt hostility or indifference from many of our fellow marchers?” The open link between leftist politics and the defenders of anti-Semitic terror in the Middle East was made clear by the way that the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament, a Cold War–era radical leftist group, allied itself with the Muslim Brotherhood to form the Stop the War coalition, one of whose leaders was Jeremy Corbyn.
Dave Rich is deputy director of communications at the Community Security Trust (CST), and is the author of a timely new book titled The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Antisemitism.
The following is a short clip from Rich’s talk at an Oct. 20th Fathom Forum on: Antisemitism and Labour: where has this crisis come from, how has it impacted the UK Jewish community, what must the party do now to put things right?
Dave Rich | ‘The Left's Jewish problem’
Today Haim is a successful and happy adult. If we were to make a list of what constitutes success, Haim would score highly in almost every single one. Yet my word, this Jewish lad has enemies. In a sickening turn of events, some act as if Haim’s life is somehow up for debate. There are actually people who publicly suggest they want Haim killed. Not the Chinese kid or the boy from Pakistan. Not the Russian or the South African, nor the Brit or the African. They see the little Jewish kid, and it is *only* him they want ‘removed’.
These people are the modern day anti-Zionists.
The Jewish umbrella
This letter in the Guardian is a classic example of twisted logic. In 1903 the British government offered the early Zionist movement an isolated area of what is now Kenya for a national home for the Jews, a proposal that split the Zionists into opposing camps. One favoured acceptance, but the other insisted that a Jewish homeland, and future Jewish state, could only be in the historic homeland in Palestine. The second camp won, and the proposal was refused. I am one of those who regrets that rejection. Does this make me a Jewish antisemite?
Apparently, because some people opposed a theory in 1903, objecting to today’s reality somehow amounts to the same thing. The Independent are another that throw this false premise around at will. Radical left and Islamic groups find and use Jewish people willing to promote the smear and elevate them to ‘guru’ status. Ilan Pappe, Max Blumenthal, Ronnie Barkan are a few examples. In the UK, people like Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi are readily sought out by radio stations and newspapers to push this insane idea. As about 90% of Jewish people in the UK see Israel as forming part of their Jewish identity, the tiny minority of ‘opposites’ are rolled out to provide an umbrella against arguments of antisemitism. As if a few Lord Haw Haw‘s could represent the people of Britain in 1940.
It is absurd of course. Whatever theoretical discussions one may have had 80 years ago, it is patently absurd to suggest that anti-Zionism of the 1930’s is the same as opposing Israel today. Israel is not a theoretical discussion; Israel is a vibrant democratic state with a population of over 8 million.
And anti-Zionism TODAY means destroying Israel. It means ignoring the democratic will of 8 million people. Anti-Zionism does not mean having issues with Israeli actions, with Israeli settlements, with Israeli policy. It means taking the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and destroying it. Which leads to another chronic deception. The people who say criticism of Israel is not antisemitism Of course it isn’t. Criticism of Israel is legitimate, but these anti-Zionists do not want to criticise Israel, they wish to destroy the Jewish nation.
Exactly two years ago I noted that Arabic news sites, including Egypt's El-Fagr and Hamas' Felesteen, published an article called "Qualities of the Jews in the Koran" where they listed the horrible qualities of Jews:
Jews have knowledge of the truth but they conceal it among themselves and give bad advice to others so they can profit.
Jews are miserly
Jews obtain other people's money unjustly, using usury and fraud and deception
Jews are cowards, hiding behind fortified cities and building walls and living in ghettos
(If you were a patron of EoZ, you would have seen this article yesterday. Join now!)
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In a saner era, the latest archeological discovery in Jerusalem would be the sort of thing only academics or ancient history buffs would care about. But in a month when UNESCO has voted repeatedly to treat Jerusalem’s holiest spots as if they were solely Muslim, the dig that located the site where the Romans breached the capital’s walls during the great Jewish revolt in 70 C.E. is of more than academic interest. It is not only yet another reminder of the insidious nature of the war still being waged to extinguish the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland.
The details of the discovery are exciting to those who care about this chapter of history during which the second Jewish commonwealth ended. Archeologists have uncovered the remains of the “Third Wall” that protected the northern extremity of the capital during the Roman siege that ended in the city’s destruction as well as the burning of the Second Temple. The dig, which was supervised by the Israel Antiquities Authority, also found the remains of one of the guard towers that dotted the defensive structure as well as stones that were the ammunition for catapults the Romans used to pummel and ultimately break through the wall, as the historian Josephus attested. The defeat of the defenders at this spot gave the Romans the chance to get inside the city. It would take them another two and a half months to get through the other two inner walls and begin the orgy of murder and destruction that ended Jewish independence for two millennia. It is hardly surprising that such fascinating artifacts could be found in the heart of Jerusalem. And that is the problem for the Palestinians and their supporters in institutions like UNESCO. All you have to do to prove the existence of historic Jewish ties to Jerusalem is to start digging virtually anywhere in the city or, for that matter, anywhere in the country. That’s why Palestinians and their supporters are so quick to resist archeological work in and around the Old City such as the separate dig at the City of David—a site that points to an even more ancient Jewish kingdom a thousand years before the Romans laid waste to the city. Pretending, as the Palestinians and now the majority at the UN agency that claims to be its educational, scientific and cultural organization do, that the Temple Mount and the Western Wall—the heart of the Jewish city that the Third Wall was built to protect—is Muslim a statement of astonishing ignorance. The stones of the Temple Mount and the remains of part of its outer enclosure that make up the Wall are living evidence of 3,000 years of Jewish history as well as the events and places that are integral to the beginnings of Christianity. But it’s far more than that. This revisionism is at the center of a century-old effort to deny Jewish history and the rights of the Jewish people to their homeland and its capital.
The controversy was less over what the resolution said so much as the way they said it, an analysis by Nir Hasson (also in Haaretz) says the following; The term Western Wall appears in quotes throughout the document, while the Arabic term for the site, Al-Burak, does not. The document refers to the Temple Mount by its Arabic names, Haram Al-Sharif and Al-Aqsa, while making no mention of its Jewish names.
The BBC provided an excellent all around analysis also though it strikes me that not much of an analysis is needed. The bottom line is that a UN body just crapped all over Jewish history.
This is why I take more pleasure than usual at the announcement that Israeli archaeologists located the site where the Romans breached the wall to Jerusalem sometime around AD 70.According to the Times of Israel; The discovery, made last winter during an excavation of a construction site for the new campus of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design outside the Old City, also finally confirmed the description of the wall that was breached provided by the historian Josephus Flavius. I guess no one at UNESCO has bothered to read The Jewish War. It doesn’t matter so much now anyway as Israeli archaeologists (nor the country as a whole) are no longer cooperating with UNESCO. If anyone ever wondered why an American veto was so necessary in the UN Security Council this kind of nonsense is the demonstrable reason.
Walking the streets of Jerusalem during these festive days, it suddenly struck me just how perfectly timed was the absurd UNESCO decision disconnecting Judaism from the Temple Mount – because no holiday exposes the idiocy of the UNESCO vote better than Succot.
We begin with the commandment in the Bible - written over 3,000 years ago, before Islam’s inception - that the people of Israel were to celebrate on the Temple Mount for the entire duration of the Succot holiday: “For seven days you shall celebrate for the Lord your God, in the place that the Lord will choose.” (Deuteronomy 16:15) This is the only holiday which has a specific command for the Jewish people to celebrate in the Temple for an extended period of time.
The special relationship between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount was cemented when King Solomon dedicated the First Temple on Succot (Kings I 8:2), and when the Second Temple was dedicated on Succot (Ezra 3:4). Both Jewish Temples - which sat right there on the Temple Mount - were dedicated during these days of a Succot! This, no doubt, is a major reason for our national rejoicing during these days.
Lest anyone think that the Temples were built only to benefit the Jewish people, King Solomon offered the following prayer on that first Succot in the Temple: “Also a gentile who is not of Your people Israel, but will come from a distant land, for Your Name’s sake; For they will hear of Your great Name and Your strong hand and Your outstretched Arm – and will come and pray towards this Temple; May You hear from Heaven, the foundation of Your abode, and act according to all that the Gentile calls out to You, so that all peoples of the world may know your Name, to fear You as Your people Israel and to know that Your Name is proclaimed upon this Temple that I have built.”
UNRWA set up a photo gallery of images from its collection to show the world the history of Palestinian Arabs under its mandate.
Palestinians, in UNRWA's world, are only victims.
The gallery is meant to be "a unique and historic testament to the resilience and steadfastness of Palestine refugees." (Of course, when they say Palestine refugees, they only mean Arab refugees - Jewish refugees who lost their homes during the 1947-48 war don't count.)
UNRWA has photos from 1948 - but only of Palestinians fleeing, even when they didn't have to, as with these girls leaving Jaffa.
There are photos from 1967 of more Palestinian "refugees" - who were not in any way forced out of their homes, and were not refugees by any definition, either UNRWA or UNHRC's. Nearly all of them "fled" after the Six Day War was over. They simply didn't want to live under Israeli rule, but they were not fleeing any danger whatsoever.
There is even a category for the second intifada - which was by definition a Palestinian uprising - but not one photo showing Palestinians attacking Jews. Instead, it shows a house demolition meant to discourage violence.
No photos of Hamas rockets, or masked Palestinian stone throwers, or anti-Israel rallies that attract tens of thousands of people in Gaza.
Palestinians are not only innocent victims of Israel in the photo collection. They are also innocent victims of Jordanian and Lebanese violence.
But Palestinian Arabs are themselves blameless for everything.
The only use of the word "massacre" is for Sabra and Shatila, for which the blame always goes to Israel (and never to the Christians who actually killed the Palestinians.)
UNRWA pushes its extensive photo archives in many venues. But anyone who thinks that there is any historic value in these one-sided exhibitions is already brainwashed.
(h/t Irene)
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A court in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip issued a prison sentence of three months to two young men who tortured and killed a dog.
The two men were arrested 15 days ago on charges of killing a dog after video of the crime spread on social networking sites.
The incident was widely reported in Arabic media, with the news reports calling the crime "heinous" and "disgusting."
Those are words that one never sees in Arabic to describe any attacks on Jews.
On the contrary, those who murdered Jews (or even attempted to murder Jews) are considered heroes. They get salaries in prison and automatic jobs when they are released.
So by any measure, dogs - which are generally reviled in popular Muslim culture - are infinitely better than Jews.
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The gathering wasn’t exactly unprecedented. Jewish settlers and their Palestinian neighbors have met quietly before, many times. But not like this. This meeting, this was rare.
The settlement of Efrat is a bedroom community of 10,000 affluent Jews, including many Americans, a few miles south of Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The residents of Efrat live the good life in a growing hilltop community that the United States considers illegal and an obstacle to peace.
The Efrat mayor, Oded Revivi, who is also a colonel in the Israeli army reserve, invited Palestinians from surrounding villages to come to his house and celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, when the faithful gather in palm-roofed huts, a remembrance of the 40 years of wandering landless in the desert back in the time of Moses.
A couple dozen Palestinians accepted the mayor’s invitation this week to share brownies, grapes, cookies, apples and coffee, alongside 30 Israeli settlers. This was a first.
The idea? The sides were here to talk, perhaps even to bond — no matter if the dynamic was a little awkward and asymmetrical.
Everyone was very polite. A Palestinian farmer sat next to an Israeli diplomat. They live a mile and a world apart. A rabbi from the settlement broke bread with a Palestinian stone mason. Guests shook hands, took selfies, patted one another on the back. Both sides seemed a little stunned to be together celebrating a Jewish holiday.
The Palestinians spoke decent to fluent Hebrew. The settlers didn’t speak much Arabic.
One Palestinian stood and told the guests that he didn’t want to see the West Bank “turn into Syria.”
Another said he didn’t like “being lumped together with the terrorists.”
Everyone talked about peace. Nobody really talked about one state or two states. They didn’t mention Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Some Palestinian guests felt comfortable enough to complain out loud about how they are treated. Some Israelis mentioned the wave of Palestinian stabbing attacks against them.
There were some remarkable moments.
Ahmad Mousa, 58, a contractor from the neighboring Palestinian village of Wadi Al Nis, said, “We consider ourselves part of the family, part of the people of Efrat.”
You do not hear that much in the West Bank, at least not in public, with smartphone cameras rolling.
He said, “Seventy percent of our village works in Efrat. They treat us very well and we are very good to them, too.”
Noman Othman, 41, a construction worker from Wadi Al Nis, said this was his first time as a guest in a home in the settlement, although he had worked here for years, building houses.
“This is good,” he said. “Our relationship is evolving.”
Asked whether he bore any grudge against the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, now home to 400,000 settlers, which the Obama administration has condemned as “an obstacle to peace,” Othman said nope. He didn’t have any problem with Efrat.
If there was a Palestinian state someday, a dream Palestinians say is growing more distant, Othman said the Jews in Efrat “should stay on their land.”
He saw it this way: “These are their houses. They bought them with their own money. We should have no problem living together — if there is peace.”
Ali Musa, 49, came from the village of Al Khader. He told the gathering: “I came for a reason. I came to talk about our relationship, between you and us.”
He reminded his hosts that there is a locked yellow gate that blocks the entrance to his village, a closure enforced by Israeli security forces. “That gate should be removed,” Musa said.
He added: “And that racist sign? That should also be removed. It’s outrageous. It prevents our Jewish friends from visiting us.”
Musa was referring to the large red signs posted across the West Bank warning Israelis in capital letters that it is against the law and “dangerous to your lives” to enter “Area A,” cities and villages under full control of the Palestinian Authority.
The mayor gave a short speech. “Some people say there will be one state, some say two states,” Revivi said. “As neighbors, we are already living together.”
Revivi hailed the men who came to his home as “true men, courageous men.”
“I know there were men I invited and they did not come,” he said, “because this takes initiative and courage.”
But in Palestinian media, this story was treated as a catastrophe.
As soon as this story was reported, the deputy governor of Bethlehem Mohammed Taha promised an investigation and possible arrests for this crime of meeting Jews who live in Judea. Taha said he will initiate legal proceedings against the participants, saying it is not the culture and education of Palestinians to visit these Jews, it is a "dangerous and unacceptable phenomenon," and he will follow up on the matter with Palestinian security services and factions.
The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) security forces arrested three Palestinian Arabs from the Gush Etzion area who “dared” to visit the sukkah of Oded Revivi, mayor of the town of Efrat.
Channel 2 News reported on Thursday evening that the Arabs who were arrested were questioned over allegations they met with "baby-killers", an apparent reference to General Nitzan Alon, the head of the IDF's Operations Directorate, and the Shai District Police Commander, who were also guests in the same sukkah.
Revivi said on Thursday evening, “Yesterday we sat in the sukkah - Jews and Muslims. We ate, drank and talked about common themes and our hope for a better neighborhood and for peace. Today the PA summoned some of the Muslim guests for questioning.
“All those who pressure the Israeli government to enter a peace process with the Palestinian Authority should be reminded that they behave in a way that does the opposite of encouraging peace with their Jewish neighbors,” continued Revivi. “An authority which names squares after suicide bombers and summons for questioning citizens who drink coffee and talk about peace with their Jewish neighbors is not one that promotes peace.
“I salute my neighbors who were not afraid to come to our sukkah yesterday, to talk about peace, who asked to be photographed and to show the world that they are brave enough to stand up for peace,” he stressed.
I hope that the Washington Post publishes a follow-up. The arrests are just as important a story as the meeting was.
(h/t YMedad)
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Yom Kippur ended with Ne’ila, which symbolizes the closing of the gates of repentance.
Interestingly, Jewish tradition has long asserted that the gates do not quite creak entirely shut as the sun sets on the holiest day of the year. The period of repentance extends, said our sages, through the last day of Succot. It is as if they were desperate to remind us that even when we think it is too late to change, too late to rethink, too late to reimagine ourselves, it is not. There is still time, even if it is ebbing.
Their surprising extension of the days of repentance is an important reminder for each of us. Who has truly done all the work of reimagining ourselves by the end of Yom Kippur? The question is no less relevant to us as a people and a nation. Are we sanguine about the state of this country? About what we will bequeath to our children? We would have to be foolish or blind not to be worried.
The value of worry, though, is that we believe that change is possible. The meaning of repentance is that we recognize the past, yet focus on the future.
That embrace of the future was what always animated the best of Zionism. Was there reason to think, in 1897 when Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress, that the world would ever endorse the idea of a Jewish state? Half a century later, with Polish Jewry destroyed and the British still forbidding Jewish immigration to Palestine, what were the chances that we would ever be able to declare Independence? When hundreds of thousands of Jews poured into a newly established and impoverished state, who could have thought that we would survive, that our fledgling economy would somehow manage? With all our challenges, we still need to repair. We have what we have and are who we are because Judaism – and Zionism – are committed to looking to the future. The past teaches us, informs us, shapes us and admonishes us, but it does not define us. Ours is a tradition that embraces the future – what it can be and what we can make happen.
A number of European institutions as well have condemned BDS. The Paris City Council adopted two resolutions condemning attempts to boycott Israel. One of the resolutions says the City of Paris “opposes publicly all attempts to isolate Israel from the collective of nations.” In the UK, the British Cabinet Office released a statement saying that under government rules local authorities and public-sector organizations in Britain are banned from boycotting Israeli suppliers and that violators could face severe penalties. The statement added that such boycotts "undermine good community relations, poisoning and polarizing debate, weakening integration and fueling anti-Semitism. The anti-Semitic character of BDS has not only been identified and stressed by the State of Israel, Jewish individuals and Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the American Jewish Congress. Senator Chuck Schumer from New York also recently called the BDS campaign anti-Semitic.
Hillary Clinton and Republicans John Kasich, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, US Senator Cory Booker, a group of Latin American and Caribbean lawmakers, as well as then British Justice Minister Michael Gove, and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have all condemned the BDS movement as anti-Semitic.
Much of the criticism of BDS, however, does not stress its anti-Semitic character.
One interesting exception concerns the student council of Leipzig University in Germany. The student council voted “to condemn the anti-Semitic BDS campaign,” and is “against anti-Semitic measures such as disinviting Israeli academics.” The vote against BDS was a response to a campus event featuring Lori Allen, a professor from the University of London who supports academic boycotts of Israel and justifies terrorism against the Jewish state. In 2015 the German Green parliamentarian Volker Beck stated “There is no doubt of the anti-Semitic motivation within the spectrum of the BDS campaign. BDS aims essentially against Jewish Israelis and is therefore anti-Semitic. Whoever aggressively boycotts Israeli goods and people, should also be viewed as anti-Semitic by the federal government.” The German government refused to accept this at the time, claiming that there was no definition of anti-Semitism. Since then, the IHRA definition was accepted, which required the German government’s agreement. Now Beck’s proposal for Germany to view BDS as anti-Semitic merits another try.
In a recent piece, I noted that right-wing provocateur, David Horowitz, recently set his sights on San Francisco State University.
He and his people did so as part of a larger campaign to rile up political discussion concerning the connection between anti-Zionism and increasing levels of Jew hatred on American university campuses.
SFSU, like many universities around the United States, promotes three types of racism. These are humanitarian racism, anti-white racism, and anti-Semitic anti-Zionism.
In response, Horowitz sent some little ideological ninjas onto that campus at night - just before the biggest rainstorm San Francisco has had in almost a year - and plastered the area with various posters pointing out that targeting Jews for death, as Hamas does, is not very nice and that, perhaps, SFSU should not support it. But support it, it does. One of Horowitz's posters features professor Rabab Abdulhadi with text reading, “a leader of the Hamas BDS campaign; collaborator with terrorists; San Francisco State professor.”
The Shin Bet arrested four individuals last month suspected of planning to carry out a large scale terror attack in an events hall in Be’er Sheva and kidnapping an IDF soldier, it was cleared for publication Thursday.
According to the indictment issued against the four, they planned to throw grenades into a crowd of dancers celebrating at the Narnia events hall and to use weapons they would hide in trash cans ahead of the attack before fleeing the scene. They also considered detonating pipe bombs concealed under the dining tables.
Moreover, they began accumulating funds to perpetrate a separate attack involving the abduction of an IDF soldier from the city's central bus station who they intended to kill and use his remains to solicit concessions from Israel.
During the investigation of the four conspirators, one of whom is a resident of the bedouin town of Tel as-Sabi in the Negev and the other three illegal aliens from Gaza, interrogators discovered that the planned attack was the brainchild of the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad organization.
The suspects, two of whom worked in the events hall which they intended to strike, carefully plotted their attack as they collected information about their target.
The ringleader of the suspects, all of whom were arrested on September 21 by the the Shin Bet in cooperation with the Negev Police Central Unit, was identified as Mahmoud Yusuf Hasin Abu-Taha from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza who had entered Israel via the Erez Crossing for commercial purposes.
He was recruited into the cell by Wael Abu-Taha, a senior official in the Islamic Jihad movement who lives in Gaza, when the latter asked him to establish a military infrastructure and coordinate a terror attack.
In May, Mahmoud and Wael presided over plans for the attack’s execution in the hall and, to that end, checked a number of entrances to the complex. It was decided that Shafik would enable the attackers to enter, including Mahmoud who was also scheduled to work on the day marked for the bloodletting.
Doesn't Israel check that everyone who leaves Gaza returns? Why didn't the events hall do a basic background check of the terrorist workers and check their names against a list of known suspects?
This story is much scarier than the headline. It points to a basic failure in Israel defending itself.
If Israel responds by tightening up on who can leave Gaza for commercial purposes, then this attempted terror attack will hurt ordinary Gazans. Yet no Arab can ever be found to publicly denounce the selfish stupidity of Islamic Jihad in trying to subvert a humanitarian gesture into a terror attack. On the contrary - most Palestinian Arabs consistently say they support specific terror attacks after the fact.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
The UNESCO resolution which referred to Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem by their Muslim names alone that passed this week made me think that we – the State of Israel – are taking the wrong path, at least if the destination is to survive and thrive.
The implication of the resolution is to deny the connection of the Jewish people to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. Despite our attachment to them, the resolution suggests that the sites ‘belong’ to Islam.
I am not going to discuss the historical or archaeological evidence, or the religious traditions in Judaism, Christianity or even Islam that the resolution contradicts. Rather, I am concerned with the political implications; what we can learn from it about our position in the world and our possible diplomatic and even military strategies.
There are 58 nations on UNESCO’s board, and 56 of them voted. Six opposed the resolution: Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, The Netherlands, United Kingdom and United States. 23 voted in favor, and 27 abstained (Mexico changed its vote before the final approval from in favor to abstain). All the Muslim-majority nations that voted were in favor except Chad and Guinea, which abstained. To Israel’s chagrin, the ‘advanced’ European nations of France, Italy and Spain abstained on a resolution which many saw as an expression of pure Jew-hatred.
Despite the recent improvement in relations between Israel and Egypt, including military cooperation, Egypt not only voted for the resolution but was also one of the seven Arab nations that proposed it. And apparently Israel’s ties with Russia did not carry over to this arena, where Russia too voted for it.
In April, UNESCO passed a very similar resolution. The same six countries voted against it, but then there were 33 in favor and only seven abstentions. The changed votes were probably due to feverish lobbying by Israel, possibly with some help from friendly countries. I am not sure why there was less public indignation in April – probably because the vote was so unbalanced as to be embarrassing.
What are the lessons to be learned from this?
One is that while we might be successful in cooperating with some Muslim nations in limited ways on limited issues, there is unlikely to be an ideological breakthrough. Where the legitimacy of a Jewish state on ‘Muslim land’ (which happens to include all of our country) is concerned, there can be no compromise, even if there might be pragmatic – and temporary – acceptance. The day that Egypt will not be poisoned by Jew-hatred is far off.
Another is that, at least in the international forums associated with the UN, we can’t win. It is not paranoia to say that there they are “all against us” with only a few exceptions (and those exceptions are not guaranteed). This does not augur well for the expected UN Security Council resolution that is expected to be proposed to outlaw Israeli settlements across the Green Line.
We can also note the degree of cynicism – or perhaps extreme anti-Zionism or even Jew-hatred – that would cause a country like France, Spain or Italy, with their Christian traditions, to in essence deny the connection between the Jewish people and the historical Temple. From where do they believe Jesus threw out the money-changers? A mosque, some 600 years prior to Mohammed? It is not as though they were not aware of the implications of abstaining – our diplomats made sure that they did understand.
All this is justmore evidence, as if more is needed, against the strategy of accommodation, the idea that if Israel would be a good “world citizen,” then its conflicts will end. Ha’aretz, in a typical editorial following the vote, said that improving Israel’s standing in the world will require “meaningful steps to moderate the occupation and serious negotiations to establish Palestine.” Really? Do you think that any such “steps” short of total surrender will satisfy the Muslim world, which almost unanimously believes that Jews have no rights to any land in the Middle East? We allowed Hamas to “establish Palestine” in Gaza, and the result is plain to see.
Yes, we need a better-organized Foreign Ministry, better direct diplomacy and better hasbara. But those things will not change the basic dimensions of the problem, which can be defined as follows: they are (more or less) all against us, and the reason is that we are Jews in a world where we are a tiny minority, non-Muslims in a Muslim region; we are considered “European colonialists” despite our truly indigenous status and the fact that half of us are not from Europe; and we are nationalists in a world where nationalism is only permitted to “people of color.”
Trying to convince the world that this isn’t so, especially through international institutions where Sudan, for example, has the same vote as the US or the UK, is not a workable strategy. Trying to be a good citizen isn’t enough, because what they want we can’t afford to give (as Ayaan Hirsi Ali is reported to have said “even if you give them Jerusalem, there will be no peace”).
But trying to do these impossible things not only fails, it has a negative impact. Begging the world to recognize that Jerusalem belongs to us implies that we aren’t strong enough to hold onto it. Keeping Jews from praying on the Temple Mount implies that it is not ours at all.
The only strategy that might succeed is one that calls for the exercise of power. We should use our power – and we have more economic, political and military power now than at any time in the past – to hurt our enemies and help our friends. A straightforward application of power is the best way to achieve our security and other goals, as well as to “improve our image” in the only way that counts: to make our friends trust us and our enemies fear us.
We are not doing this when, as the strongest military power in the region, we allow Hezbollah to establish deterrence that constrains our actions. We are not doing this when, as a sovereign state, we allow our foreign enemies to pump millions of dollars into subversive organizations here, or to interfere in our elections. And we are not doing it when we allow Muslims more rights on the Temple Mount than Jews.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Israeli archaeologists found the site of a fierce battle where the Roman army bombarded and breached the walls of Jerusalem before conquering the city and destroying the Second Temple almost 2,000 years ago, officials said Thursday.
They said that the discovery, made last winter during an excavation of a construction site for the new campus of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design outside the Old City, also finally confirmed the description of the wall that was breached provided by the historian Josephus Flavius.
During the dig, the archaeologists found the remains of a tower surrounded by scores of stones and boulders fired by Roman catapults at the Jewish forces guarding the wall, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement. “This is a fascinating testimony of the intensive bombardment by the Roman army, led by Titus, on their way to conquering the city and destroying the Second Temple,” the statement said.
“The bombardment was intended to attack the sentries guarding the wall and provide cover for the Roman forces so they could approach the wall with battering rams and thereby breach the city’s defenses,” it said. The part of the wall that was breached was known as the Third Wall. It was found in the area of modern Jerusalem known as the Russian Compound. According to accounts by Josephus, this part of the wall was designed to protect a new quarter of the city that developed outside the other two existing walls.
The director of the Israel Antiquities Authority on Wednesday slammed UNESCO for its resolution on Jerusalem holy sites, comparing the UN cultural body to Islamic State jihadists.
Speaking at the opening of the new IAA headquarters in Jerusalem, director Yisrael Hasson said the resolution adopted last week and confirmed on Tuesday put the UN organization in the same league as IS jihadists who have destroyed and looted hundreds of archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq to fund their “caliphate.”
“Around us, world heritage treasures are being destroyed… They murdered Syrian archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, who tried to protect heritage,” Hasson said recalling the 82-year-old retired head of antiquities in Palmyra who was beheaded by IS militants last year.
IS overran Palmyra — a UNESCO world heritage site known as the “Pearl of the Desert” — in May 2015 and used its ancient amphitheater for public executions. The extremist group blew up temples and tower tombs as part of it campaign against pre-Islamic monuments it considers “blasphemous.” “And recently UNESCO in essence joined this system of destruction by diplomatic means. This is essentially the same action by a diplomatic course,” Hasson said. (h/t Yoel)
The UNESCO vote seems clearly a response to the expansionist, jihadist aspirations of members of the OIC who sponsored it: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan. Some analysts consider a vote to abstain to be a victory for Israel, but for Spain, Greece, France, Sweden, Slovenia, and Italy it was blatant appeasement and fear of their own often-violent Muslim minorities: "Please, please, don't blow up our capital cities. We will reject Jewish and Christian history and pretend Jesus chased the money changers from the steps of Montmartre."
UNESCO's Director General Irina Bokova had already announced her opposition to the resolution, a position for which she received death threats.
Having demonstrable historical fact, such as Jewish patrimony on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, subject to the whims of the UN, in which, as the late Abba Eban said, Arabs could muster a majority to decide the sun rises in the West, is not a positive proposition. The question remains how to convince nations in the West to stand for themselves in the face of Islamists committed to replacing them.
This past week I caught myself making a
dramatic assumption about my country, Israel.
I was watching the news about Hurricane
Matthew with Tal, Lenny’s eldest son (18 years old). We saw images from the US,
mostly of flooding. Pity for the people whose homes were damaged welled up
inside me. As difficult as that situation was, it was the images from Haiti
that took my breath away, giving new meaning to the word “devastation”. It
looked like the winds had peeled the homes from the ground, spun them around in
the air and flung the pieces in every direction.
Quietly Tal asked, “We sent them aid,
right?”
“We must have” I answered. “If we haven’t
done so yet, we’ll send help soon.”
What an assumption! We both recognized people
in desperate need and automatically assumed that our country, tiny Israel,
would send Haiti help from half way around the world.
It doesn’t matter that we are far away.
It doesn’t matter that the people of
Haiti aren’t Jewish. Our nation doesn’t have much of a connection to theirs.
It’s not a location Israelis tend to frequent. Israel doesn’t even have a
resident embassy in Haiti.
It doesn’t matter that other countries
are bigger and richer than we are and would find it easier to cope with the
unexpected expense.
Or that we have too many of our own
problems: threats on our borders, threats of terrorism, diplomatic terrorism
(like that of the recent UNESCO resolution denying the connection between the
Temple Mount and the Jewish people) and all of the internal social issues
Israel struggles with every day. The issues Israel must handle would overwhelm
most nations but that doesn’t matter.
The people of Haiti are in worse
condition than we are and they need help.
Tal and I knew that Israel went to help the
people of Haiti in 2010, following the earthquake that reduced much of their
country to rubble.
For us it was automatic to assume Israel
would go again. It is the right thing to do. That’s what we always do. Of
course that is what would happen.
Following the news in the next few days I
didn’t hear anything about Israel sending aid. There was nothing on TV, I
didn’t hear anything on the radio. The lack of news seemed so strange, I decided
to look it up on the internet. There, I found the answer –
Israel had never left Haiti. We didn’t
need to send aid because we were already there.
“As soon as the rain stopped, we
came out and started contacting people we work with to understand the scale and
the needs. We started arranging supplies and distributions, as many people
have left without a shelter” reported Natalie
Revesz, IsraAID’s country director based in Port-Au-Prince. The aid provided
includes emergency supplies, food, clean water, and basic hygiene items.
Only two months ago, MASHAV,
the Israel Foreign Ministry’s agency for international development cooperation,
sent a new shipment of medical supplies to re-equip the trauma unit it
established in one of Haiti’s main government hospitals three years ago.
That made more sense.
There was no fuss on the news
because it was obvious. Why make a fuss? Of course we would help.
That is my Israel, a country I
can assume the best of and be correct.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
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Sunday, October 23, 2016
Elder of Ziyon
