Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Impending foodie #BDSFail - Round Tables

Activists from the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign are urging a group of international chefs to cancel their participation in an Israeli culinary show they say is a “whitewash exercise”.
BDS campaigners will be conducting a twitterstorm today, calling on chefs to pull out of the event using the hashtag #ApartheidRoundTables.
Next month, head chefs of 13 famous restaurants from cities around the world “will spend a week cooking in Tel Aviv as part of a PR initiative to bring international prestige to Israel’s culinary scene.”
According to campaigners, “the Round Tables culinary show is sponsored by Israeli government ministries, the Tel Aviv Municipality and businesses operating in illegal Israeli settlements.”

The American Express Round Tables event in Tel Aviv started last year, and it was so successful (it sold out ahead of time) that it was decided to make it an annual event.

Welcome to Round Tables by American Express, an international culinary festival, which brings together the world’s best restaurants and chefs. The festival is back in November, and it’s going big:

13 of the most acclaimed restaurants in the world send their chefs to Tel Aviv for an entire week, where they will take over the kitchens of the city’s top restaurants.

Each hosting restaurant will serve a winning tasting menu, featuring the signature dishes of the guest restaurant, seasoned with a pinch of local flavors and ingredients inspired by the Israeli chef.

The result: a one-of-a-kind culinary show.

Among the restaurants and star chefs who will arrive this year – from New York, Paris, Madrid, Copenhagen, Lisbon, New Delhi, Lima, Bangkok and more – are 5 restaurants ranked in the prestigious and influential World’s 50 Best Restaurants list (actually listing 100 restaurants) and 4 Michelin stared restaurants.

The hosting restaurants in Israel – those who took on the challenge of learning and performing – are some of the leading in Israel: Taizu, Jaffa Tel Aviv, Thai House, Coffee Bar, Hotel Montefiore, The Norman, Popina, Nithan Thai, Pastel, Chloelys, The Blue Rooster, Quattro, and for those who want kosher – the wonderfully social Liliyot.

In other words, the BDSers already lost. The preparations have been going on for months, the best chefs of the world are vying to go to Tel Aviv, and it is already a smash success.

By the way, this ad for the festival was awarded one of the Best Food Ads of the Month by Ad Forum:

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10/26 Links Pt2: Palestinian campaign vs Balfour shows hostility undimmed after 100 years

From Ian:

David Horovitz: Palestinian campaign vs Balfour shows hostility undimmed after 100 years

Hidden away at the British Library — available for viewing only by special permission — is the original Balfour Declaration, foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour’s short but oh-so-resonant century-old letter of British government intent to revive Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land. Also preserved, in an elegant folders kept under lock and key, is an earlier draft of the Declaration, a version that was circulated to various officials for their responses and possible amendments before the final text was issued on November 2, 1917.
Even after deciding on the legitimacy of the Zionist cause — and assessing its potential advantage to British interests — the Brits, as the various drafts of the Declaration make plain, recognized the spectacular sensitivities and potential repercussions of the decision to “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
From the get-go, the British sought to square the circle — to restore Jewish statehood in the only place on earth where the Jewish people had ever been sovereign, but to do so while preserving the rights of the other communities living in the Holy Land. That effort to realize Jewish sovereign rights while also legitimizing the claims of the Arab peoples here was maintained when Britain ended its mandate and the UN in 1947 recommended partition — a revived Jewish state alongside a first-ever Palestinian state.
The Arab world opposed the Balfour Declaration from day one, opposed the UN partition plan, and sought to destroy the State of Israel in 1948. And on Monday, even though the Palestine Liberation Organization ostensibly came to terms with pre-1967 Israel when Yasser Arafat entered the ill-fated Oslo process with Yitzhak Rabin a quarter-century ago, a senior member of that same PLO proclaimed the Balfour Declaration to be a criminal “colonialist project” and formally launched what he promised will be a year-long campaign designed “to remind the world and particularly Britain that they should face their historic responsibility and to atone for the big crime Britain committed against the Palestinian people.”
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki welcomes United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the Muqataa, the PA headquarters, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on June 28, 2016. (FLASH90)
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki welcomes United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the Muqataa, the PA headquarters, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on June 28, 2016. (FLASH90)
A few months ago, the Palestinian Authority revealed it was also preparing a lawsuit against the British government over the Balfour Declaration, with the PA’s Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki holding London responsible for all “Israeli crimes” committed since the end of the British mandate. It was Britain that had committed the original sin of paving the way for Israel’s establishment, because the Balfour Declaration, said Malki, “gave people who don’t belong there something that wasn’t theirs.”

Beware of antisemitism’s ‘third rail’

In an address before the EU parliament last month, Conference of European Rabbis president Pinchas Goldschmidt said that European Jews feel like they are standing in the middle of a railroad track with trains bearing down on them from both directions.
One train is “radical Islam and Islamic terrorism,” he said; the other is “the antisemitism of old Europe, the extreme Right.” Both “are existential threats” for European Jews, he warned. “Both trains have to be halted before it’s too late.”
Rabbi Goldschmidt’s analogy aptly summates why European Jews feel sufficiently threatened to be emigrating in record numbers. The vast majority of rampant anti-Jewish violence on the continent is committed by Muslims, and most of the rest is perpetrated by individuals (and sometimes groups) that can be broadly characterized as right-wing. Anti-Jewish violence in the United States, which “rose dramatically last year” according to the Anti-Defamation League, displays a similar breakdown.
But there is third train on an adjoining rail, advancing more slowly. This one isn’t producing physical assaults on Jews, or even (in most cases) explicit expressions of antipathy to Jews. However, it is fueling a different kind of Jewish emigration, made all the more disturbing by the fact that it elicits far less public attention and outrage.
Militant anti-Zionism first emerged in force in the West in the late 1960s, fueled by the growing popularity of far-left ideologies, hostility to allies of America, and Israel’s sweeping military victory in 1967.

UK: Labour Party Still Shooting Itself in Both Anti-Semitic, Far-Left Feet

The Palestinian "resistance" is not a struggle to create a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel.No group or leader within the "resistance" movement has ever considered that their goal. Their position is summed up in the slogan chanted by many students and pro-Palestinian groups, "Palestine will be free, From the river [Jordan] to the [Mediterranean] sea".
It is not, in fact, illegal in the slightest for the Jews to be in a country in which they have continuously lived for 3000 years. The only title to the land the Palestinians seem to have is that under the Ottoman empire, the land had been subject to Muslim governance; and if one applies Islamic law, rather than common law, any land that has once been under Muslim control must stay that way forever -- including of course "el-Andalus," all of southern Spain and Portugal.
Seamus Milne added that Palestinians in Gaza have the right to "defend themselves" and claimed: "It isn't terrorism to fight back. The terrorism is the killing of citizens by Israel on an industrial scale." No, the terrorism is the tens of thousands of rockets and missiles fired from Gaza into Israel for more than a decade.
Given that Gaza had long been unoccupied by anyone at that date and that Israel had never killed "citizens" on an industrial scale, we can see something at play totally at odds with reason, fact, and political knowledge. That something is creeping out from beneath an unpleasant rock, and that it has a deep connection with anti-Semitism, if it is not anti-Semitism in its purest modern form.

It would be kind of a shock to see someone kneeling on a tallis, butt in the air, crying "Allahu Akbar," anywhere at all. It would, however, be a special kind of shock indeed to see this take place in Israel. And yet, that is just what happened in Israel's Ben Gurion Airport synagogue. In fact, not only did it happen, but it happened on the eve of a Jewish holiday, Simchat Torah!

A group of Turkish tourists passing through decided to duck in and use the synagogue at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport as a mosque. Not having a prayer rug handy, they grabbed a Tallit (also called Tallis) and spread it on the floor to use as a prayer rug. Watch it here:

It's not cool to desecrate a religious symbol in your host country. And it would be pretty difficult for these tourists not to notice that um, they were in a synagogue, being that it was decorated with all sorts of Jewish symbols and Hebrew books, Torahs, and signs. Not to mention location, location, location. Which in this case was Israel the, you know, Jewish State?

Nope. No chance this could have been a mosque.

But bravo to the Times of Israel for characterizing this desecration of a Jewish house of worship and sacred item as a "mistake" (could have been worse, they could have called it "resourceful").

Oh, OOPSIE!

Now, I wonder what would happen if I draped a prayer shawl around my neck and said the Shema at the Kaaba?

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If You'd Just Let Us Kill You, Maybe We'd Stop Killing You By Bassem Tamimi, Palestinian activist (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Perhaps the most persistent argument in defense of the wall that keeps us Palestinians imprisoned is that it prevents attacks on Israelis. But that contention could not be more ridiculous, because if the Zionists would simply dismantle the barrier and let us kill them, maybe we might stop killing them.

It follows a simple line of reasoning: Palestinian violence aimed at Israelis prompted the construction of a barrier more or less along the 1949 Israel-Jordan armistice line to keep out suicide bombers and other Palestinian heroes, which of course prompted an outcry from us and our supporters around the world about a "land grab" and further justification for Palestinian violence. It only makes sense that when someone tries to stop you from killing them, the sole adjustment you can make is to try harder, because they have no right to stop you. That is, if you're Palestinian. So once the barrier is gone, our pretext for deadly violence is gone, which means we will be free to kill Jews.

The Zionist-controlled media will never present it that way, of course. They're too busy trying to inject nuance into a story that is nothing less than Good vs. Evil. We Palestinians, on the side of Good, are allowed to engage in whatever behavior advances our cause, because Good. Sometimes you have to massacre a few million Jews to serve your cause. It's that stupid wall that prevents us from exercising that God-given right. Once it is gone, of course, we will demonstrate our peace-loving nature, and answer the gesture with an appropriate display of carnage. In the interest of peace.

But our efforts to bring down the Apartheid Wall have yet to bear tangible fruit, and we need the assistance of the international community to remove the proximate cause of our murderous rage. Only a concerted global effort can apply the necessary pressure to the Zionists to get them to take down the barrier and restore our freedom of movement, which we will celebrate by sending our youngsters onto Israeli buses to detonate explosives packed with nails and shrapnel. What else could freedom of movement be for, if not engaging in the manifestation of one's very identity?

So please, if you live in a democratic country, let your representatives know the importance of taking down Israel's separation barrier, for the sake of peace and thousands of dead Jews. Remember, this is the ultimate battle of Good and Evil.

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10/26 Links Pt1: 2,700 year old papyrus mentions Jerusalem; New PA school named after Munich Olympics terrorist

From Ian:

Oldest Hebrew mention of Jerusalem found on rare papyrus from 7th century BCE

A rare, ancient papyrus dating to the First Temple Period — 2,700 years ago — has been found to bear the oldest known mention of Jerusalem in Hebrew.
The fragile text, believed plundered from a cave in the Judean Desert cave, was apparently acquired by a private individual several years ago. Radiocarbon dating has determined it is from the 7th century BCE, making it one of just three extant Hebrew papyri from that period, and predating the Dead Sea Scrolls by centuries.
The slip of papyrus, which was formally unveiled by the Israel Antiquities Authority on Wednesday, measures 11 centimeters by 2.5 centimeters (4.3 inches by 1 inch). Its two lines of jagged black paleo-Hebrew script appear to have been a dispatch note recording the delivery of two wineskins “to Jerusalem,” the Judean Kingdom’s capital city. The full text of the inscription reads: “From the female servant of the king, from Naharata (place near Jericho) two wineskins to Jerusalem.”
The fact that the note was written on papyrus, rather than cheaper clay ostraca, suggests the consignment of wineskins may have been sent to a person of high status.
Speaking at a press conference in Jerusalem with IAA officials on Wednesday, Israel Prize-winning Biblical scholar Shmuel Ahituv said the mention of a “female servant of the king” sending the wineskins to “Yerushalem,” indicated that it was sent by a prominent woman to the capital.

UNESCO resolution is a 'disgrace to intelligent people,' says Temple Mount archeologist

On the eve of UNESCO’s Wednesday vote in Paris to ratify a resolution denying Jewish ties to Judaism’s holiest site, Temple Mount Sifting Project co-founder and archeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkay dismissed the ballot as an affront to science and history.
The resolution, which refers to the Temple Mount solely by its Muslim name of Al-Haram Al-Sharif – ostensibly eliminating its connection to Judaism and Christianity – is expected to be approved by the committee comprised of 21 member states at its 40th session.
“I’m an archeologist, not a politician,” Barkay said Tuesday at a press conference arranged by Media Central at the project’s headquarters in Jerusalem’s Emek Tzurim National Park.
“I cherish all civilizations of Jerusalem, without exception... Jesus and the Temple Mount are referred to in the New Testament over 20 times. Jesus went there prior to his crucifixion and overturned a table from money-changers and prophesied about the Temple Mount. So he who tries to jeopardize the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount actually undermines Christianity, because it is based on Jesus and his connection to the Temple Mount.”

PreOccupiedTerritory: Ancient Palestinians Tired Of Zionist Time-Travelers Planting Jewish Evidence (satire)

Palestinian farmers of the tenth century Before the Common Era have grown weary of Zionist conspirators from the distant future appearing and planting evidence of ancient Jewish civilization, local representatives reported today.
Idyllic, pastoral Palestine has long known conquest and occupation, with rule shifting from one foreign ruler to another over the centuries, but the simple, peace-loving indigenous Palestinians have clung to the land. Lately, however, strange people from a different time and place have come from nowhere to build structures, bury artifacts, and falsify the history of Palestine.
“They call themselves ‘Zionists’ whatever that means,” observed Abdul Hassan, who speaks Arabic which the Zionists have made you think would appear in Palestine only many centuries later. “When I asked one of them what they were dong on my family’s land, he laughed and said in time, no one would ever believe it was ever my land – that he and his associates were from the future, and were making sure someone called the ‘Jews’ were recognized as the indigenous inhabitants. It was all very weird.”
“But then it happened again, and neighbors began talking about the same thing happening to them,” continued Hassan. “Pretty soon the whole countryside was awash in these tales of people who came from a different time, set on altering something called ‘history.’ I don’t even know what that is. All I know is they get in the way of my farming and herding with increasing frequency lately, and I’ve got a family to feed here.”

Chinese policies destroying Jewish community of Kaifeng (video)

An important story from France24:

In China, only five religions are officially recognised by the state and Judaism is not one of them. The eastern city of Kaifeng is home to a tiny Jewish community that dates back a thousand years. But in recent months, local authorities have erased all traces of their existence and heritage. The Kaifeng Jews are forced to practice their religion in secret and some have even left the country.

The Forward reported last month:

Police have shut down the only Jewish learning center in Kaifeng, helmed by the Israeli activist group Shavei Israel, say activists. A well that community members identify as their historic mikveh, for ritual Jewish bathing, was reportedly blocked. Foreign Jewish tour groups are said to have been barred from entering the city. And community members are allegedly being monitored and questioned.

You can read about the history of this community here.

(h/t Yoel)

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Haaretz reports:

A record number of Jews visited the Temple Mount during this year’s three-week fall holiday season, from October 3 to October 25, and overall the number of Jewish visitors to the Jerusalem site in 2016 is expected to set a record.

During the week of Sukkot alone, more than 1,600 Jews visited the Temple Mount compound for religious purposes after undergoing ritual immersion. During the entire holiday period, over 3,000 Jews visited.

The Temple Mount was relatively quiet over the holiday period, which led the police to be more flexible about allowing Jewish worshippers into the compound. For example, in contrast to last year, the police allowed larger groups to enter and permitted more than one group of worshippers to be in the compound simultaneously. On October 18 there were more than 400 religious Jews on the Mount at the same time.

Jewish visitors also reported a certain relaxation of the restrictions on prayer and religious rituals in the compound. For example, police did not interrupt anyone who was praying quietly on their own, and in a number of instances Jews were even allowed to enter the compound carrying the four species central to the observance of Sukkot.

Arab sites have picked up on this and they are very upset.

The president of the Supreme Islamic Council in Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, said that the Israeli government is trying to change the facts on the ground slowly, and he criticized these "excesses," claiming that Israeli police are emptying the compound of Muslims to give room for "settlers" to "storm" the site.

Far, far more Muslims visit the Temple Mount on any given Friday than the total number of Jews who are expected to visit even on this record-breaking year (probably 12-13 thousand.)

Meanwhile, the director of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Omar Kiswani, said these "intrusions represent a nightmare for us and for the mosque and patrons."

If I am understanding this op-ed correctly, a Jordanian writer is complaining that Arabs in Jerusalem aren't violently fighting Jews who try to assert historic rights to Judaism's holiest spot, asking why they are leaving the battle for the Al Aqsa Mosque to Jordan alone, and warning that it will be destroyed soon if they don't do anything about it.

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Saeb Erekat published an op-ed in the Washington Post where careful readers can see what the Palestinian Arab leadership really wants.

[M]illions of Palestinians [are] not allowed to return to live in their homeland because they are not Jewish.

If they are Palestinians, and if the PLO wants to accept a two-state solution with and Arab Palestine and Israel living side by side as they claim, then their homeland is the Palestinian Arab state, not Israel. Israel isn't stopping anyone of Palestinian ancestry from moving to areas under PA control.

When Erekat is saying that Israel is their homeland, he is admitting than the PLO doesn't really take the two state solution seriously, and that "Palestine" is only a stage to destroy Israel altogether. The PLO doesn't want Palestinians to move to their own state, but to Israel - to destroy it demographically.

What other proud national entity explicitly demands that its people move elsewhere?

The irony is that this op-ed is meant to prove the opposite - that Israel is the party that is against the two-state solution, not "Palestine." Erekat's words, however, show the truth.

Erekat's deceptions don't end there, of course:

He writes both that "Next June will mark 50 years since the Israeli military occupation began in 1967" and that "the Palestinians...have continuously suffered from Israeli settlements and its associated regime for more than half a century," Which is it - 49 years or more than 50?

This is not a typo - Erekat is saying that all of Israel is illegitimate, not just the "occupation."

Erekat claims that the Palestinians "embrace the two-state solution" but in fact that is not the end game, as even his own words prove.

Much more about the op-ed at the Tayara Herzl site.

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Israeli Arabs more bullish on Israel than Israeli Jews

The Israel Democracy Institute has a Peace Index which asks a series of questions every month about Israeli attitudes towards the state and some specific timely issues.

This month's results show that Israeli Arabs actually have far more confidence in the strength and future of Israel than Israeli Jews do.

Here are some of the results:

In your opinion, what is Israel’s overall situation today?

"Very good" or "moderately good": Jews 43.7%, Arabs 63%

In your assessment, what will be Israel’s overall situation in the new year that is now beginning?

Better than last year: Jews 22.5%, Arabs 54.4%

How will Israel's situation be in these domains compared to last year?

Military/Security:

Better than last year: Jews 27.4%, Arabs 39.9%

Socioeconomic:

Better than last year: Jews 19.5%, Arabs 42.6%

Political/Diplomatic:

Better than last year: Jews 14.3%, Arabs 42.3%

Disputes between different parts of the public:

Better than last year: Jews 10.2%, Arabs 31.6%

Israeli Arabs are more bullish on Israel's current situation and its future than its Jewish citizens.

Considering how the current Israeli government is portrayed as being a disaster both for the Arab public and for Israel as a whole, this survey shows a much different situation on the ground.

(h/t Yoel)

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10/25 Links: The Funeral of the Oslo Accords; Why Palestians can’t make peace

From Ian:

Middle East’s ‘demons’ now an unstoppable force, writes veteran correspondent

In the closing sentence of “The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East,” Patrick Cockburn gives a chilling warning to his readers.
“The demons released by this age of chaos and war in the Middle East have become an unstoppable force,” the veteran Irish foreign correspondent writes.
Existential threat is a phrase so overused in the political discourse of the Middle East nowadays, that it often tends to lose value or meaning. But for millions of citizens across Iraq and Syria, according to Cockburn, the term is an extremely frightening and very real prospect.
“The whole area is disintegrating,” says Cockburn, who has worked as a journalist in the Middle East for the past four decades.
“There are multiple reasons for this,” he explains. “Some are oil states. These look powerful, because they’ve got a lot of money. But they are much more fragile than they appear because the money is concentrated on the top.”
Mismanagement of oil revenues is a huge problem for many Middle Eastern states right now, Cockburn believes. Primarily because of the hierarchical structures within governments they helped to create, exacerbating corruption and sectarianism in equal measure.
The journalist cites Iraq as a typical example of a nation state where badly managed oil revenues has resulted in a chaotic failed state.

The Funeral of the Oslo Accords

Despite the unceasing waves of murdering innocent Israeli civilians, Western politicians speak as if Israel were not under attack. The politicians are not interested in hearing what Palestinian leaders say when they call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews.
These Western leaders can well imagine what those consequences would be if the Arabs had their way: genocide. One can only assume they are pleased with that.
In private, some people say that the burial of Shimon Peres was also the burial of the Oslo Accords and of a never-ending "peace process" that brought only war.
Understanding that the economic relations between Israel and Europe could deteriorate, Netanyahu set about negotiating free trade agreements with China, India, South Korea and Japan, and he signed economic and military cooperation agreements with seven African countries also threatened by Islamic terrorism.
Against all odds, Israel is now in a much stronger position than it was even a few years ago.

Palestinians announce year-long campaign against ‘crime’ of Balfour Declaration

Palestinian officials announced a year-long campaign to commemorate 100 years since the “crime” of the Balfour Declaration, official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported Monday.
Activities and events will take place worldwide, will be launched on November 2 and end on November 2, 2017 — the 100-year mark since British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour announced his government’s intention to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in the Land of Israel.
Signed by Balfour in 1917, the declaration was seen as giving the Zionist movement official recognition and backing on the part of a major power, on the eve of the British conquest of the then-Ottoman territory of Palestine.
Calling the declaration a “colonialist project,” Taysir Khalid, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said Monday the new Palestinian effort was intended “to remind the world and particularly Britain that they should face their historic responsibility and to atone for the big crime Britain had committed against the Palestinian people.”
In July the PA said it was preparing a lawsuit against the British government over the 1917 document that paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel.

Chag Sameach! Some historic Simchat Torah flags

Once again I will not be blogging for the next two days because of the last of the season's Jewish holidays, Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah.

Here are some historic Simchat Torah flags:

From Russia, featuring Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau, co-founders of the World Zionist Organization. It is fascinating that these staunch secularist Zionists were celebrated at Simchat Torah services - apparently the idea that religious Jews were axiomatically anti-Zionist is quite wrong. (Nordau married a Protestant Christian woman.)

Woodcut Simchat Torah flag, late 19th or early 20th century.

King David celebrating Simchat Torah, Jewish Museum, New York.

Chag sameach!

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A tweet from the head of the Arab Joint List Ayman Odeh, translated:

550 Arab students joined the Technion, 60% of them women! The Technion was once virtually closed to us and this year 25% of the male students and 35% of the new female students are Arab!

Dani Dayan first responded by thanking Odeh for pointing out that Israel doesn't discriminate. Odeh then replied that the Arabs are successful in spite of Israeli discrimination and racism. In other words, all achievements are due to Arabs and all obstacles are due to Jews.

Dayan again responded by pointing out that clearly Israel doesn't practice discrimination, as any statistician would point out that the percentage of Arabs at Technion are way higher than their numbers Israel-wide.

Anet Haskia, a proud Israeli Arab, responded that if Odeh didn't exist he would have to be invented just to perpetuate his racism towards the state.

(h/t Yoel)

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The New York Times Magazine has a skeptical profile of Miri Regev, Israel's right-wing Minister of Culture and Sport, by Ruth Margalit.

The bias is clear, but this episode in the article blows apart the idea that Israel's right is anti-Arab:

One evening, I joined Regev for a Ramadan visit to her Arab supporters at a private home in the northern town of Ma’alot-Tarshiha. It was an airless night. An enlarged print of the Dome of the Rock, the holy site in Jerusalem, hung in the entryway. Every table inside the carpeted house was laden with watermelon wedges, puff pastries and silver carafes of black coffee, even though the fast wouldn’t be broken for another couple of hours. Regev was the guest of honor, and a line of men with their young sons formed to greet her and her aides.

She shook each of their hands, hugging the men she recognized and pinching the boys’ cheeks. “They killed you with this heat, huh?” she said. She turned to one of the men, who wore a white button-down shirt. “You look like a groom today! Come, neshama. Join us.” She glanced at the tables, feigning disbelief. “What’s all this food for if you can’t eat?”

“It’s for you,” the host replied warmly.

The atmosphere was festive, but the gathering itself seemed unlikely, surreal even, considering Regev’s past rebukes of Arab lawmakers — “Betrayers! Terrorists!” she fulminated in 2014 — and the fact that Arab Israelis rarely vote for Likud (the party garnered about 1 percent of the Arab vote in the last election). I was told that the evening’s host was a veteran Likudnik — he referred to Regev as being “like family” — but I wondered how many of the other men present actually voted for her.

Then one of the town’s deputy mayors, a genial lawyer named Ayman Shanati, spoke. “I’m not a man of Likud,” he said. But with Regev, “we are seeing real change and a lot of new projects in the Arab sector.” He praised Regev’s reallocation of funds, which has benefited Arab towns much as it has the peripheria and ultra-Orthodox communities, but complained that his town still didn’t meet certain budget criteria.

Regev nodded. “Write it down,” she told an aide.

...She doesn’t see a disconnect between her radical statements against the Palestinians and her attempt to promote Arab culture or woo Arab Israeli voters, many of whom identify as Palestinian. Arab Israelis want to “raise their children in peace,” she says, while members of the Palestinian leadership “sanctify death.” (Arab municipalities are used to such double speak from government ministers but often decide to swallow the insult in order to maintain working relations.)

Why is it double speak? In the next paragraph we see that it isn't:

She stood up and thanked Shanati. “The cultural revolution that I am leading is to give voice to the Arab sector,” she said at a volume more suitable for a conference hall. “My office is your home. Every problem, every issue.” Yet earlier she ventured a qualifier by way of hyperbole: “Whoever is loyal to the state, we’ll bring him the moon.”

Regev is not being hypocritical - she is being entirely consistent. Arab-Israelis deserve to be treated better and she is working to do so. Arabs - and Jews - who are disloyal do not deserve automatic funding for anti-Israel plays, poetry and films. It isn't a "right" and refusing to fund such art is not censorship.

Similarly, loyal Arabs and Jews whose voices have been stifled by the left-wing Ashkenazic artistic elite should be supported. The state does not have the responsibility to support art that tries to undermine its very foundation, whether it is from the Arab or Jewish sectors.

There is no anti-Arab bias whatsoever, but Margalit is so wedded to the idea that Regev is a racist that she cannot see the distinction that she herself reports.

The only bias here is from the reporter.

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10/23 Links: Jacobson: Let’s be clear – antisemitism is a hate apart; The U.N. – UNbearably UNbalanced

From Ian:

Howard Jacobson: Let’s be clear – antisemitism is a hate apart

To the question posed by the parliamentary committee last week, as to whether Shami Chakrabarti’s soft inquiry into antisemitism in the Labour party was a whitewash for which Corbyn brazenly rewarded her with a peerage, or evidence of a deep-seated reluctance to take the subject seriously, there is unlikely to be a satisfactory answer.
Where people are convinced of their own rectitude – and Corbyn and Chakrabarti belong to the more un-self-questioning wing of British politics – there is no separating what they know from what they don’t want to know.
The Chakrabarti inquiry didn’t fail, it was stillborn. Corbyn has always defended himself against the charge of antisemitism by protesting his freedom from all racisms – an insistence that feels like an evasion and blurs a crucial distinction – and the moment Chakrabarti widened the terms of her inquiry likewise, there was no hope for it.
To assert that antisemitism is unlike other racisms is not to claim a privilege for it. Hating a Jew is no worse than hating anyone else. But while many a prejudice is set off by particular circumstance – the rise in an immigrant population or a locally perceived threat – antisemitism is, as often as not, unprompted, exists outside time and place and doesn’t even require the presence of Jews to explain it. When Marlowe and Shakespeare responded to an appetite for anti-Jewish feeling in Elizabethan England, there had been no Jews in the country for 300 years. Jewishness, for its enemies, is as much an idea as it is anything else.
The part played by Jews in the evolution of Christianity has much to do with this. In the popular imagination, the Jew is the killer of Christ. To a philosopher like Nietzsche, the Jew is culpable not for rejecting Christianity but for inventing it. For cultures unable to make up their minds, whether they are heathen or Christian – remember those demonstrations of Teutonic paganism on the streets of Christian Germany 80 years ago – the Jew fits the bill of villain twice.

Shocked by antisemitism at university

Last night for the first time in my life I felt the genuine threat of antisemitism. The event was a discussion titled “Is criticising Israel antisemitic?” led by Tony Greenstein, the political activist, who was recently suspended from the Labour party. While addressing his suspension he ensured us that there was “absolutely no anti-Semitism in the Labour party”, while also promptly ensuring that we all knew that “Ken Livingstone is a long term friend and I know he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body” - really akin to saying that one can’t be racist if they have a black friend. But unfortunately the problematic nature of the discussion, and the affirmation of antisemitism in Bristol and further through the UK and Europe, was achieved not only through the views of Greenstein himself, but worsened by the booming, loud, obnoxious voices of drunken white men, with no affiliation to Israel personally but whose speech and actions made countering any point impossible.
Ultimately this is not a feminist issue. I went in to the meeting with criticism of the image used on the Facebook group, and the antisemitic (NOT anti-Zionist but specifically antisemitic) connotations of equating Israel/Judaism with the power and wealth of America as well as the use of age old rhetoric of the corrupt, capitalist Jew.
I felt bold enough to make my point in front of these people (having got cocky from 11 likes on my comment on the event’s post on Facebook) but ultimately I was so overwhelmed with the threatening voices of those who were so ardently anti-Zionist, that I don’t believe they would have felt held to account by an accusation of antisemitism, and I found it impossible to speak. And in fact the entire status of antisemitism was countered by the claims of Greenstein that “anti-Semitism is a tool by the right to destabilise the left”.

‘’Jews aren’t an ethnicity and modern antisemitism is a myth’’ — What happened when I went to an event by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Bristol (same event as a first article)

Last night in my home of Bristol I went to a an event entitled ‘’Is criticising Israel antisemitic’’ held by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, they were hosting Tony Greenstein, an activist who had been suspended from the Labour party for calling people ‘zionist rats’. I was one of the first people there and sat and watched as the room filled up. The turnout was more mixed than I expected, at least half the people there must have been around or over the age of fifty. They set up a table at the back with a selection of pamphlets, one of which claimed that the city of Jerusalem was 51% Christian in 1922 before the Israelis ‘expelled’ them (which is untrue). The vibe felt more like a village hall meeting than the hotbed of young radicalism I expected. Nevertheless, the other half were youngsters like me, it was a decent, pleasantly surprising mix.
The event started with a man wearing a fabric white poppy on his blazer introducing us to the event and to Greenstein, he talked about the turn against Palestine activism. He talked about the zionist agenda, how zionists secretly control the media and have brainwashed us all to support Israel. I hate to admit it, but at this point in time, I felt uncomfortable. I know full well that what he was saying wasn’t antisemetic, it was antizionist, but it was delusional. Neonazis believe the same thing, except they say ‘’Jews’’ instead of zionists, it felt like he had just taken their rhetoric and copypasted away the word ‘Jew’ with ‘zionist’ and with very little effort. I felt like I had just entered the world of fringe politics, maybe I had.
Greenstein was introduced to us as an encyclopedic figure who knew everything there was to know on Israel and Palestine. He slouched back in his chair and told us anecdotes and what he believed was ‘going on’. He talked about how Bristol is apparently home to the largest Palestinian diaspora in the United Kingdom, that and its large activist community therefore meant the city has ‘Palestine’ in its heart. That nobody ‘’gets Palestine’’ as much as Bristol. Bristol should be known as a centre of his sort of activism he said. I wondered what ‘’getting Palestine’’ meant.
His central point was that Zionism, and he didn’t specify how he was defining ‘Zionism’, was a form of antisemetism. All Zionism is, for the uninformed, is the belief that Jews should have a national home where they can practice their right to self-determination. But he believed that it was a form of antisemetism, because it assumes that Jews are an ethnicity, in the same way that antisemitism does.

MYOPIA

Some time ago one our participants at Israel Thrives suggested that my focus on Israel, and the rise of Political Islam, is myopic in terms of the forthcoming US presidential election.

I take such criticisms seriously and even though I might not respond immediately - or at all - it does not mean that I am not chewing on the matter.

This writer proposed that there are plenty of other things to consider, beyond the never-ending Arab-Israel conflict, when determining who to vote for. He is right, of course. Americans are coping with a huge range of life-effecting issues that must be addressed through our politics.

So, why focus on an entirely sectarian issue like the Arab-Israel conflict?

There are a number of reasons.

This first is that the focus of Israel Thrives is what it is. If it were a blog devoted to fishing nobody would complain that it is not discussing duck hunting. This is not to say that murdering perfectly innocent ducks isn't a worthwhile endeavor, delicious as they are, but it simply has nothing to do with fishing other than the fact that both are outdoor sports.

What is more troubling are charges of semi-irrelevant sectarianism, because such charges promote indifference of, and dismissiveness toward, the fundamental issue of Political Islam.

DISMISSIVENESS

When we dismiss concerns about Jihadism as racist, anti-Muslim, Islamophobic bigotry (as Pamela Geller might put it) we not only stifle the possibility of discussion through a slander that has ruined peoples lives, but call our own ideological credibility into question.

Jews or no Jews, al-Sharia persecutes millions of people throughout the Middle East and Europe and how we react to that persecution speaks volumes toward our credibility in speaking on other issues concerned with human rights.

1) The Abuse of Non-Jews Under Sharia

The Jews of the Middle East are victims of al-Sharia who refuse to be victims of al-Sharia.

Israel may be The Dhimmi that Got Away, but that doesn't mean that the much larger, hostile, majority-population of the Middle East are not intent on retrieving it.

That is, even as Israel stands strong militarily, technologically, and economically, Israeli-Jewish society lives under a constant threat of Jihadi violence that kills innocent people thereby propelling hatred and fear throughout much of the culture.

Israel, however, has the IDF, but the Christian Copts in Egypt do not.

The Yazidis of Nineveh, Iraq, do not.

Neither do women anywhere in the Arab-Persian-Muslim World who are generally treated - at least, according to contemporary western standards of human decency - as something approaching chattel.

We are talking about hundreds of millions of people, almost all of whom are non-Jewish, who live under medieval systems of jurisprudence derived from Islamic primary sources. We know that in many parts of the Islamic world, such as Saudi Arabia, they are still hacking at body parts as a form of Holy Justice.

In the Quran, Surah 5:33, we read that one such punishment takes the form of chopping off one foot and one hand from opposite sides of the individual's body and then, presumably, leaving that person to simply writhe to death in the sand.

One can only wonder if that particularly evil form of "justice" is still practiced in Riyadh today.

2) The Maintenance of Ideological Credibility

How we respond to the issue of rising Political Islam is, or should be, an expression of our political ideologies.

If we claim to stand for social justice then we have an obligation to stand up for women in the Middle East, Gay people in the Middle East, and all non-Muslim peoples living under al-Sharia. And it must be said that the greatest victims, by far, of the Jihadi trend are Muslims, themselves.

If we fail to speak out definitively against Political Islam then we cannot claim the mantle of social justice or universal human rights and, therefore, any claims that we make along such lines can be airily dismissed, with the wave of a hand, as hypocrisy.

That is, if we claim to stand for women's rights, but cannot bring ourselves to vocally and consistently condemn practices like burying condemned women up to their shoulders in preparation for a proper stoning in Iran, then we have no right to claim to stand for women's rights.

If we claim to stand for GBLTQ rights, but cannot bring ourselves to vocally and consistently condemn the execution of Gay people under al-Sharia, then we have no business claiming to be pro-Gay.

If we claim to stand for secular democratic principles in western lands, but have no problem with dual and, thus, unequal legal systems in European countries, then our claims to stand for secular democratic principles are precarious, at best.

Finally, for those who think that standing for universal human rights is inconsistent with being pro-Israel, then I recommend that one read more deeply into the history of the Jewish people under thirteen centuries of Islamic dominance in the Middle East, prior to World War I.

Thirteen hundred years of second and third-class non-citizenship under the boot of imperial Islam was quite enough for the Jewish people, and all other non-Muslims, living in the Middle East.

One cannot understand the never-ending conflict if one refuses to place it into its larger historical and geographic context.

Martin Gilbert's, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands (2010, Yale University Press) is a good place to start.

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.

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