Sunday, November 20, 2016
Elder of Ziyon
Saeb Erekat
First, Ambassador Ajran explicitly laid out the reasons for the Palestinian and Arab-led vote at UNESCO last month. Most Western countries ended up supporting or abstaining from the vote by highlighting the late addition of a line reaffirming the ‘importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its walls for the three monotheistic faiths, Islam, Christianity and Judaism.’ There were many who said Israel overreacted to the resolution saying that just because it didn’t mention the Hebrew names for the Temple Mount and Western Wall, it doesn’t mean it is sought to deny the Jewish connection to them.
But that is exactly what the Ambassador says was the motivation behind the resolution!
“Kuwait… sponsored and recognized fully that the Palestinian issue is a Kuwaiti issue carried by Kuwaiti officials to all international forums, most recently Palestine’s victory at UNESCO and the issuance of the historic decision that the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Buraq wall, and underneath it and around it is a right for Muslims only and not others.”
But the Ambassador’s speech was also remarkable for another reason. Not for what he said, but for what he didn’t say. Most people have forgotten that in 1991, towards the end of the First Gulf War and after, Kuwait expelled over 400,000 Palestinians. If you have never heard of this, you aren’t alone. You won’t heard about this massive ethnic cleansing at any pro-Palestinian event. No organizers Israel Apartheid Week will mention this mass expulsion. And of course, there were no protests in the Western or Arab worlds nor any UN resolutions condemning the Kuwaiti government for its carefully planned and well documented actions. In fact, Kuwaiti diplomat Sheikh Saud Nasser al-Sabah told the Washington Post that
“thousands [of Palestinians] who do not have jobs will be deported or their permits will not be renewed. … And I think we have a perfect right to demand” it, he said. “It’s not just us in the government demanding it, it’s the people in the street who are demanding it.” … Having a large number of Palestinians in Kuwait would not be “helpful to our security,”
Anti-Israel activists vandalized a restaurant in Portugal because its head chef participated in a food festival in Israel.Take action! Demand that UNRWA remove inciting material from their classrooms.
The perpetrators, who are believed to be activists for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, on Friday night spilled red paint on the facade of the Cantinho do Avillez restaurant in the northern city of Porto and posted signs on it reading: “Free Palestine,” “Avillez collaborates with Zionist occupation” and “Entrée: A dose of white phosphorus.”
The attack, which is rare in Portugal, followed picketing opposite the restaurant by BDS activists over the participation of chef Jose Avillez along with at least 11 other chefs from renowned dining establishments around the world in the Round Tables festival in Tel Aviv this month, which is sponsored by American Express.
Robert Singer, CEO of the World Jewish Congress, condemned the BDS movement for the attack, which he said was anti-Semitic.
Over the course of what was probably no longer than an hour, my history was denied, the murder of my people was justified, and a movement whose sole purpose is the destruction of the Jewish homeland was glorified. Statements were made justifying the ruthless murder of innocent Israeli civilians, blatantly denying Jewish indigeneity in the land, and denying the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered,” she said. “Why anyone in their right mind would accept these slanders as truths baffles me. But they did. These statements, and others, were met with endless snaps and cheers. I was taken aback.
The ramifications of ignoring the normalization of anti-Semitism cannot be understated: The most recent FBI hate crime report found that 58.2 percent of hate crimes motivated by religious bias were targeted at Jews. Jews make up 2.2 percent of the American population, so the FBI’s statistics make it clear that Jews are the most disproportionately attacked religious group in America. It should be troubling to everyone that an SJP member at Temple University physically assaulted a pro-Israel Jewish student two years ago, calling him a “Zionist baby killer.” But it should be far more troubling that the SJP chapter at Temple (like all SJP chapters) promotes itself as a progressive organization, claiming solidarity with movements such as Black Lives Matter.
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.
Sunday, November 20, 2016Elder of Ziyon
Last Sunday, I reported that Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the banned northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel and who has incited violence against Jews for years, announced a hunger strike to protest the conditions of his imprisonment.
Sunday, November 20, 2016Elder of Ziyon |
| Gaza synagogue after it was destroyed in an act of religious tolerance |
Saturday, November 19, 2016Elder of Ziyon
"The better young people are integrated, the greater the chance is that they radicalize. This hypothesis is supported by a lot of evidence". — From a report by researchers at Erasmus University in Rotterdam.An Anti-Israel Brigade With Ties To Hamas Finds A Home In San Francisco State University
"The proportions of [Islamic State] administrators but also of suicide fighters increase with education," according to a World Bank report. "Moreover, those offering to become suicide bombers ranked on average in the more educated group."
Britain's MI5 revealed that "two-thirds of the British suspects have a middle-class profile and those who want to become suicide bombers are often the most educated".
Researchers have discovered that "the richer the countries are the more likely will provide foreign recruits to the terrorist group [ISIS]."
The West seems to have trouble accepting that terrorists are not driven by inequality, but by hatred for Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian values of the West.
For the Nazis, the "inferior race" (the Jews) did not deserve to exist; for the Stalinists, the "enemies of the people" were not entitled to continue living; for the Islamists, it is the West itself that does not deserve to exist.
It is anti-Semitism, not poverty, that led the Palestinian Authority to name a school after Abu Daoud, mastermind of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.
Opponents of academic accountability and apologists for terrorism alike are seething with fury over a campaign by the Middle East Forum (MEF) and Campus Watch to end San Francisco State University's Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which it coordinates with Hamas-dominated An-Najah University in the West Bank. Accurate criticism of a taxpayer-funded institution and extensive documentation of An-Najah’s ties to radicalism and terrorism go unanswered, while accusations of “McCarthyism,” “Islamophobia” and “hate-mongering” by “Zionists” abound.Why all Labour members need to read parliament’s antisemitism report
Predictably, SFSU’s General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) rushed to defend MOU architect and faculty adviser Rabab Abdulhadi (who is also director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative) with a cliché-ridden statement accusing Campus Watch and other “Zionist organizations” of racism, “Islamophobia,” and, most absurdly, “anti-Semitism."
The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network released a statement claiming that Campus Watch and other “Zionist groups … target Palestinian academics in the United States . . . [and] operate hand in hand with the violent military raids and pre-dawn arrests against Palestinian student activists at An-Najah.” Translation: Jews who object to relentless defamation of Israel on campus are as guilty as dastardly Israelis, and you know what we do to dastardly Israelis, right?
The 2016 Prisoner, Labor, and Academic Delegation to Palestine - a group comprised of radical activists and academics with whom Abdulhadi traveled to An-Najah earlier this year for an MOU-facilitated conference - equated Campus Watch's campaign with “an escalating backlash by pro-Israeli, Zionist organizations to undermine support for Palestine.”
The U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), of which Abdulhadi is a founding member, accused MOU opponents of engaging in “McCarthy-like tactics.”
Abdulhadi herself resorted to the same tiresome banalities, describing Campus Watch’s effort to end the MOU as a “McCarthyist attack” and “a witch hunt campaign.” She maintained that the campaign “seeks to whip up hysteria, Islamophobia, racism and xenophobia to divert attention from Israeli criminality.”
It is unfortunate that both Corbyn and Chakrabarti only seem fully to understand antisemitism when it comes in the form of state sponsored genocide and verbal and physical assaults on Jewish people. Indeed, the committee remarks that it is “not persuaded that [Jeremy Corbyn] fully appreciates the distinct nature of post-Second World War antisemitism”.
It is unfortunate, too, that Chakrabarti trivialised the evidence she heard of antisemitic anti-Zionism in the Labour Party as “a series of unhappy incidents”.
Those on the anti-racist left, and indeed all those who care about race hate, must accept the the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Corbyn and his supporters must also accept, once and for all, the committee’s conclusion that antisemitism is happening in the Labour party. Only then can they resolve to stamp it out.
As left-wing journalist Owen Jones recently said: “It is incumbent on the progressively-minded to take antisemitism seriously. We wouldn’t belittle other forms of bigotry or seek to deflect from it. Discussion about serious antisemitism should not be launched into a debate about Israel.”
The Abbas family’s corruption is a hot topic in the territories, but not here in the U.S. Tareq Abbas, son of the Palestinian Authority president, is a multi-millionaire owning villas in Amman, a Beirut rooftop pad and a luxury London flat. His older brother, Yasser, has made a fortune from, among other things, his monopoly sale of U.S.-made cigarettes in the Judea and Samaria a.k.a. the West Bank.Dershowitz: BDS Activists ‘Miseducating Generation of Future Leaders’ About Israeli-Palestinian Conflict to Delegitimize Jewish Nation-State
Leaked records from a Panamanian law firm show that PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his two sons used power and influence to control the two major Palestinian economic boards (Arab Palestinian Investment Company, Palestinian Investment Fund) and built a West Bank economic empire worth more than $300 million. Abbas’ authoritarian rule has allowed his family’s Falcon consortium to dominate the West Bank’s commerce and labor markets including owning shopping centers, media and insurance companies and distributing food, cigarettes, cosmetics and other consumer items. Falcon touches every aspect of Palestinian commercial life.
These documents, reports from senior Fatah officials and Palestinian social media reveal extensive corruption at the highest levels — the Abbas family and a Palestinian elite manipulating the political and financial systems to benefit themselves at the expense of the people.
The 1993 Oslo Accords established Palestinian self-rule over 98 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza. Since then, the PA received an estimated $25 billion in financial aid from the U.S. and other Western countries, the highest per capita assistance in the world.
Instead of creating the independent and robust civil institutions necessary for good governance, promoting peace with Israel and improving the lives of its people, the billions of dollars of international aid were used to create a corrupt dictatorship focusing on enriching its elites, inciting its people against Israel, advocating terrorism and waging a massive international campaign to demonize, delegitimize and destroy the Jewish State. And the U.S. doesn’t seem to care, donating $442 million of taxpayer money in 2016.
Abbas is currently in the eleventh year of a four-year term. He rules by decree, and parliamentary and presidential elections are not on the horizon.
While BDS activists have failed to get American educational institutions to boycott the Jewish state, they are succeeding in “miseducating a generation of future leaders” about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, internationally renowned legal expert Alan Dershowitz warned on Wednesday.
“Lawsuits and legislation are not enough,” Dershowitz said, during an anti-BDS conference hosted by Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon at the global intergovernmental organization’s New York City headquarters. “We have to increase our advocacy in the court of public opinion. We have to make sure that on every college campus, every claim made by BDS is refuted — on social media and by professors…We are losing the campaign for the minds and hearts of the college students today, while winning the campaign against the actual BDS program.”
Dershowitz made the comments during a discussion moderated by Dovid Efune — editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner — at the “Legal Scholars Against BDS” event.
“It will not be enough to win our war against BDS in the courts of law; we must also win it in the courts of public opinion,” Dershowitz emphasized.
President Elect Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon as his chief strategist has been criticized on the ground that Bannon is an anti-Semite. There are many reasons for opposing the appointment of Bannon, but anti-Semitism is not one of them. I do not support the Bannon appointment. But neither do I support accusing Bannon of being an anti-Semite, based on the evidence I have seen.Evelyn Gordon: Peace Now! Israeli Rightist Style
With regard to anti-Semitism, there are three distinct but overlapping issues: (1) Is Bannon personally an anti-Semite? (2) Does his publication, Breitbart, promote anti-Semitic views? (3) Do Breitbart and Bannon have followers who are anti-Semitic?
From what I can tell, the evidence cited in support of the accusation that personally Bannon is an anti-Semite falls into two categories: first, that his wife testified at a hotly contested divorce proceeding that he did not want his children to go to school with "whiney Jews"; and second, that he ran an article describing Bill Kristol as a "renegade Jew."
Let us consider these items of evidence in order. Senator Harry Reid tried to strengthen the first accusation against Bannon by saying that it appeared in a court document, thus suggesting that it had the imprimatur of a judge. But that is not the case. The claim was simply made by his former wife in a judicial proceeding, thus giving it no special weight. Bannon has rigorously denied making the statement and said that he and his wife were fighting over whether his children should attend Catholic school, rather than a secular school.
On the other side of the ledger is the testimony of Jewish individuals who have worked closely with him for years. These include my former research assistant, Joel Pollak, an orthodox Jew who wears a kippah and takes off all the Jewish holidays. He is married to a black woman from South Africa who converted to Judaism. Joel assures me that he never heard a single anti-Semitic utterance or saw an anti-Semitic action in the four years they worked together. The same is true of numerous other Jewish individuals who work with him, some of whom thoroughly disapprove of Bannon's politics and the way he ran Breitbart, but none of whom have reported any events of anti-Semitism.
Donald Trump’s election as president has already had one negative effect: It seems to have turned most Israeli cabinet ministers into radical leftists. By that I obviously don’t mean they have started adopting leftist policy prescriptions. But they do seem to have embraced radical leftists’ childish demand for immediate implementation of their own preferred solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, regardless of how much real-world damage it causes.Israel looks forward to working with Trump team, Dermer says– 'including Steve Bannon'
Most Israeli ministers–albeit not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu–appear to support a one-state solution, and ever since Trump won, they have been demanding major steps toward its implementation: unrestricted building in the settlements, legalizing illegal settlement outposts and annexing roughly 60 percent of the West Bank (Area C). As a first step, the governing coalition decided earlier this week to support a controversial bill that would legalize many (though not all) outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land; the bill passed its preliminary Knesset reading on Wednesday. Netanyahu himself opposed it, but facing a revolt in both his cabinet and his party, he refrained from using his prerogatives to stall the bill
To be clear, nobody, even in the coalition, expects the bill to become law; its passage in preliminary reading was primarily a way of making a statement. But even if you genuinely support the bill, advancing it at this particular moment would be asinine. And that’s true even if you could somehow discount the two most obvious objections to the timing.
The first of those, of course, is that Barack Obama remains president for another two months and could use that time for various anti-Israel moves. Thus, the last thing Israel’s government needs is to give him additional impetus for such moves by appearing to abandon his cherished two-state solution.
Israel's ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer said his government has "no doubt" that President-elect Donald Trump is a "true friend to Israel," visiting his team at Trump Tower in New York on Thursday afternoon.Caroline Glick: The Ellison Challenge
"Israel has no doubt that President-elect Trump is a true friend of Israel. We have no doubt that Vice-President-elect Mike Pence is a true friend of Israel– he was one of Israel’s greatest friends in the Congress, one of the most pro-Israel governors in the country."
Briefly addressing press stationed at the bottom of the president-elect's namesake tower on Fifth Avenue, the Israeli envoy then touched on a controversy without prompting: Trump's appointment of Stephen Bannon, head of the right-wing website Breitbart.com, as chief White House strategist.
"We look forward to working with the Trump administration, with all of the members of the Trump administration, including Steve Bannon, and making the US-Israel alliance stronger than ever."
Bannon has been the subject of criticism from Jewish groups for his ties to the alt-right movement, considered a modern-day home for white nationalist, ultra-nationalist and antisemitic individuals and organizations.
The Democratic Party stands at a crossroads today. And so do the Jewish Democrats.
Out of power in the White House and both houses of Congress, the Democrats must decide what sort of party they will be in the post-Obama world.
They have two basic options.
They can move to the Center and try to rebuild their blue collar voter base that President-elect Donald Trump captivated with his populist message. To do so they will need to loosen the reins of political correctness and weaken their racialism, their radical environmentalism and their support for open borders.
This is the sort of moderate posture that Bill Clinton led with. It is the sort of posture that Clinton tried but failed to convince his wife to adopt in this year’s campaign.
The second option is to go still further along the leftist trajectory that President Barack Obama set the party off on eight years ago. This is the favored option of the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. Sanders’s supporters refer to this option as the populist course.
It is being played out today on the ground by the anti- Trump protesters who refuse to come to terms with the Trump victory and insistently defame Trump as a Nazi or Hitler and his advisers as Goebbels.
For the Democrats, such a populist course will require them to become more racialist, more authoritarian in their political correctness, angrier and more doctrinaire.
It will also require them to become an antisemitic party.
Antisemitism, like hatred of police and Christians, is a necessary component of Democratic populism.
Friday, November 18, 2016Elder of Ziyon
Friday, November 18, 2016Elder of Ziyon
Friday, November 18, 2016Elder of Ziyon
Thursday, November 17, 2016Elder of Ziyon
MESA has its own history, culture and vulnerabilities. What might be right for other associations will not necessarily serve MESA well. So we need to weigh the concrete difference MESA’s endorsement of a boycott resolution might make against such action’s potential downsides for the association, including the likely loss of some of its membership as well as of some affiliated organizations and institutions, but also possibly legal action, stepped-up attacks on MESA and Title VI by hostile organizations, legislative bodies and media, and conceivably even the loss of MESA’s home base at the University of Arizona.Fred Donner, a past president who also personally boycotts Israel, was more explicit:
For MESA to take a political stand will lead to a loss of membership, as those who do not support what becomes MESA’s official position will no longer feel welcome within it.
A stand on BDS will open the door to MESA being asked take a stand on the dozens of other political issues related to the Middle East, further fracturing its membership.
For MESA to take a stand on BDS will endanger its tax-exempt status and therefore its long-term viability as an organization, since MESA’s 501(c)3 tax exemption depends on it remaining non-political.
MESA’s endorsement of BDS will hand MESA’s enemies, who have persistently (but, until now, wrongly) claimed that MESA has been politicized, exactly the evidence they need to make their case against us—which they will not hesitate to do, to our representatives in Congress, to the I.R.S., and to the University of Arizona, whose support of the MESA Secretariat is vital to the organization’s well-being.
Nature and Objectives. THE MIDDLE EAST STUDIES ASSOCIATION is a non-profit, non-political association that fosters the study of the Middle East, promotes high standards of scholarship and teaching, and encourages public understanding of the region and its peoples through programs, publications and services that enhance education, further intellectual exchange, recognize professional distinction, and defend academic freedom.
MESA is a non-profit association that fosters the study of the Middle East, promotes high standards of scholarship and teaching, and encourages public understanding of the region and its peoples through programs, publications, and services that enhance education, further intellectual exchange, recognize professional distinction, and defend academic freedom, in accordance with its status as a 501(c)(3) scientific, educational, literary, and charitable organization.”In other words, members of MESA hate Israel so much that they want to change their very bylaws in order to be able to more freely express that hate on an institutional level. This despite the potential problems that could come up, such as losing their tax-exempt status, losing their free office space at the University of Arizona, losing the portion of their funding that comes from Congress, or losing what prestige remains for their own academic journals whose articles can no longer even pretend to be objective. Moreover, there is a competing Middle East studies association that is quite willing to welcome those who become disgusted with MESA.
The Young Americans for Freedom chapter at DePaul University invited Christina Hoff Sommers and Ben Shapiro to speak on campus. At some point, the administration decided not to allow Ben Shapiro on campus over supposed security concerns, even threatening him with arrest if he set foot on campus.IsraellyCool: The Stranglers Slam Roger Waters And BDS As “Ignorant”
In an ultimate twist of irony, the subject of Shapiro’s speech was free speech on campus.
The YAF blog has the details:
DePaul Obstructs YAF Lecture, Shapiro, Sommers
Despite having no apparent problem hosting prominent leftists in the past, DePaul University is working to obstruct DePaul Young Americans for Freedom’s scheduled lecture with Christina Hoff Sommers, after the chapter announced Ben Shapiro was slated to make a guest appearance.
To great media criticism DePaul banned YAF from hosting Ben Shapiro in August. In response DePaul YAF, Young America’s Foundation, and Shapiro decided the campus needed his message and planned to host him alongside Sommers in order to make a powerful statement about the importance of ideological diversity.
As of Tuesday morning, DePaul administrators were actively working to prevent students from hearing Shapiro’s message on campus that evening.
Legendary Punk rock pioneers The Stranglers are here in Israel to perform tonight. And at their press conference yesterday, they let know where they stand on BDS and Roger Waters.The Stranglers Slam Roger Waters And BDS As "Ignorant"
This is in addition to this interview, where they used even saltier language.
You first played in Israel in 2008 on a double bill with Blondie. What were your impressions then, and have you been pressured at all by any pro-Palestinian activists to reconsider coming?
First of all, we had a great time back then.
Tel Aviv is such a rocking city and the Israeli people are so open and fun to be with. I don’t think the outside world realizes how cool it really is there.
But as you know, people are generally ignorant of the situation in Israel and they just read the headlines. They don’t realize that Israel is a democracy in a sea of f***ed up countries. A true democracy with the Left and Right able to express themselves.
The explanation is a sharp drop in Arab Israeli birth rates while Jewish birth rates have been rising: “In 2000, the fertility among the country’s Arab population stood at 4.3 children per woman, while the fertility rate of Jewish women was 2.6. Since then the gap has narrowed as the Arab rate dropped off and the Jewish fertility rates steadily increased.”Britain’s Parliament Debates the Balfour Declaration, Revealing Divides Over Israel in Contemporary Politics
This high fertility rate is not simply an artifact of Israel’s growing ultra-Orthodox or Haredi population; the non-Haredi fertility rate is 2.6. (This is, by the way, a far higher fertility rate than that of American Jews, which is 1.9; the replacement rate is 2.3.) The overall Israeli Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 also suggests that the population balance between Israel and the West Bank will not change: “Palestinian fertility on the West Bank has already fallen to the Israeli fertility rate of three children per woman, if we believe the Palestine Ministry of Health numbers rather than the highly suspect Central Bureau of Statistics data. In 1963, Israeli Arab women had eight or nine children; today they have three, about the same as Israeli Jews.”
What are the political implications? Whatever they are, the debate must begin with facts rather than assumptions–including facts about population growth.
The British Government will neither celebrate the Balfour Declaration nor apologize for it. So responded the UK’s Minister for the Middle East, Tobias Ellwood, at the close of a special debate on the Balfour Declaration at the British Parliament this morning, criticizing the Balfour Declaration for failing to include a parallel commitment to Palestinian Arab statehood in 1917. “It is fifty years since the Occupation began,” noted the British minister with frustration, arguing that “it is for historians to assess the Declaration” and for “ministers to deal with the today.” “The Occupation of the Palestinian Territories,” he stressed, “is unacceptable and unsustainable.”
The debate was heavily dominated by concern for the “unfinished business” of the two-state solution and punctuated by repeated criticism of Israel’s settlement policies, but nevertheless included numerous supportive interjections by MPs friendly to Israel.
Labour MP Ivan Lewis stressed the importance of the debate in the context of resurgent anti-Semitism—within his own party and across Europe—which “more often than not is linked to hostility to the State of Israel.” He further blasted the “delegitimization of Israel through the rewriting of history, which seeks to deny the legal and moral basis” of Jewish self-determination. His colleague Luciana Berger spoke up for the Labour Party’s historical support for the creation of a Jewish state. A Northern Irish MP recalled following the Six Day War on the radio, admiring Israel as the underdog. And Conservative MP Jonathan Djanogly paid tribute to Theodor Herzl for persuading the international community to put an end to “Jewish homelessness.”
Numerous pro-Israel MPs made friendly interruptions to Conservative MP Caroline Ansell’s opening speech. The key to sustainable peace is that all parties should recognize Israel, said one. There would have been a two-state solution seventy years ago if “the armies of five Arab states had not invaded Israel in 1948,” added another. One MP criticized the destruction of the greenhouses in the Gaza Strip after the 2005 Disengagement. Another stressed the difficulty of conducting negotiations when “one side” refuses to come to the table, and yet another expressed disappointment at how the Palestinians have been “let down by their own leadership.”
Thursday, November 17, 2016Elder of Ziyonzionist attack zoo
Near the most eastern part of the oasis, where the ground is unusually soft, we saw the footprints of wild boar, ibex, gazelle, jackal, and many partridges.
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