Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 22, 2016

French scholar who pointed out Muslim antisemitism prosecuted for "hate speech"

This is surreal. From JTA:

One of the world’s leading historians on the Jewish communities in Arab countries is being prosecuted in France for alleged hate speech against Muslims.

The Morocco-born French-Jewish scholar Georges Bensoussan, 64, is due to appear next month before a Paris criminal court over a complaint filed against him for incitement to racial hatred by the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, the group recently announced on its website.

The complaint, which leading French scholars dismissed as attempt at “intimidation” in a statement Friday, was over remarks about anti-Semitism by Muslims that Bensoussan, author of a definitive 2012 work entitled “Jews in Arab Lands,” made last year during an interview aired by the France Culture radio station, the Collective said.

The Collective based its complaint on two remarks by Bensoussan.

“Today, we are witnessing a different people in the midst of the French nation, who are effecting a return on a certain number of democratic values to which we adhere,” read the first quote flagged.

The second quote cited read: “This visceral anti-Semitism proven by the Fondapol survey by Dominique Reynié last year cannot remain under a cover of silence.” Conducted in 2014 among 1,580 French respondents, of whom one third were Muslim, the survey found that they were two times and even three times more anti-Jewish than French people as a whole.

“Besides, with the animosity toward the French nation, there will be no integration as long as we will not be rid of this ancestral anti-Semitism that is kept secret (…) as an Algerian sociologist, Smain Laacher, very bravely said in a film that will be aired on France 3, ‘it’s disgraceful to keep in place this taboo, knowing that in Arab families in France and beyond everybody knows but will not say that anti-Semitism is transmitted with mother’s milk,” the quote continued.

Neither of those quotes are anything close to hate speech.

But people who want to shut down free speech in France have a powerful weapon:

[H]ate-speech indictments are “quasi-automatic” in France when police receive complaints of defamation, according to the L’Express news website.

So anyone can prosecute anything that they consider offensive. This absurd rule is completely incompatible with free speech. Hate speech indeed should be prosecuted, but a system needs to exist to vet the complaints in order to stop its abuse, which is clearly the case here.

The criteria should not be difficult to create: Hate speech encourages hate actions. No one is going to attack Muslims because an intellectual notes that Arabs generally hold antisemitic views or that their cultural influence on France is at odds with traditional French values.

Three prominent French thinkers, Jacques Tarnero, Yves Ternon and Michel Zaoui, issued a strong condemnation:

These approaches are now part of a strategy of intimidation aimed at the censorship of all lucid speech, of all critical expression. The new thought police seeks to use the weapons of democracy to constrain it. That they are adorned with the feathers of the antiracism does not change the case. The accusation of "Islamophobia", equated with a racist discourse, is itself part of a strategy of deviating from the meaning of words aimed at disqualifying any lucid analysis of the present situation.

Let us not deceive ourselves: today we are facing an all-out attack aimed at setting up cultural and political norms foreign to democracy and the spirit of the Enlightenment in the French and European landscape. This model seeks to act against our historical cultural order . This strategy is in line with the other aggressions which France and Europe have been the victim of for a number of years. This cultural terrorism complements the physical, murderous terrorism.

The trial is set for January 25.

(h/t Ronald)

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Latest "Apartheid?" poster

From the Jerusalem Post:

Two women from Israel’s Ethiopian community broke through the glass ceiling on Tuesday, becoming the first to be appointed judges. They were among six women who were included in the 13 new judicial appointments as judges and registrars serving in the district, magistrate’s and traffic courts in Haifa and Tel Aviv.

Although there is no shortage of Ethiopian-Israeli lawyers, none had previously reached the bench.

At the appointments ceremony at the President’s Residence, Ednaki Sebhat Haimowitz and Esther Tafta Gardi were the last two judges to be called to make the pledge not to pervert the law or to show favor. Haimowitz has been appointed to the Central District Magistrate’s Court, and Gardi to the Haifa District Traffic Court.

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12/21 Links Pt2: Down with the Norwegian occupation!; JStreet Do You Even Support Israel?

From Ian:

Down with the Norwegian occupation!

Norway’s third largest city, Trondheim, has announced a boycott of all Israeli goods originating in areas beyond the 1967 line.
Ironically, however, the policies of occupation, colonization and discrimination that these Norwegians are accusing Israel of imposing, have been practiced for centuries by Norway against its own indigenous minority.
Long before there was such a thing as Norway, the northern part of that country was the homeland of an indigenous people known as the Sami. While the Norwegians’ first king, Harald Fairhair, ruled in the 9th century CE, the roots of the Sami nation are much deeper – going all the way back to prehistoric times, according to archaeologists.
The name “Sami” first appeared in recorded history in the writings of the Roman historian Tacitus in the year 98 CE. Coincidentally, that was at almost the same time that the Romans tried to wipe out all memory of the Jewish inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael by renaming the country “Palaestina.”
Giving the Land of Israel a new name did not, however, change the ethnic, religious or national identity of the inhabitants, and claims of a “Palestinian” nation would not be heard until the late 20th century. In the meantime, in far-off Scandinavia, the poor Sami were enduring long centuries of mistreatment at the hands of their Norwegian occupiers.
In the 15th century CE, Norway began encouraging its farmers to establish settlements in the Sami region, an area the indigenous people call “Samiland” but the Norwegians renamed “Finnmark.”

Joel Pollak: In Attacking David Friedman, J Street Condemns Itself

J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami writes in the Washington Post that David Friedman, chosen by President-elect Donald Trump as the next ambassador to Israel, is unfit to serve.
He begins by sharing how wounded he feels that Friedman has referred to “me and Jews who share my politics on Israel as ‘worse than kapos’ and not really Jews.”
What crocodile tears.
For several years, Ben-Ami and his group have tried to bully everyone less radical than J Street — which is to say, most of the rest of the American Jewish community.
It’s not enough to support the two-state solution — which Ben-Ami, disingenuously, claims to be the reason Friedman attacked J Street. No — J Street has cast even supporters of the two-state solution as enemies of peace if they dare to expect Palestinian concessions.
In 2010, J Street ran an advertisement describing supporters of the two-state solution like Alan Dershowitz and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) as part of the “chorus of no.” Unless you pressured Israel, you weren’t part of the “community of yes.”
Then Ben-Ami and his organization began pressuring the U.S. Treasury to investigate Jewish charities — and only Jewish charities — whose beneficiaries may have included Jews living across the 1949 armistice line, i.e. in East Jerusalem or the West Bank.

Students Supporting Israel: JStreet Do You Even Support Israel?

Yesterday Jeremy Ben-Ami published an article titled "MOVING THE US EMBASSY TO JERUSALEM IS STILL A BAD IDEA". In his article, Ben-Ami mentioned three points that should hold back the move of the U.S. Embassy: The Situation on the Ground, Danger to US Interests, Misunderstanding the American Jewish Community. After I read the article,
I would like to let Jeremy Ben-Ami know what my view on the issue is.
Let's start with the following: Until the embassy won't be moved I won't be excited about it. Many Presidents had the chance to move it and until today no one has done so. That day, and if it will move at all, I will make sure to get excited about the issue.
Now let's get to the point.
J Street is not a pro-Israel organization. An organization that backs up its decisions and articles in paragraphs like "Danger to US Interests, Misunderstanding the American Jewish Community," cannot say they are pro-Israel. Maybe J Street isn't anti-Israel like others but they are not pro-Israel.
An organization that is pro-Israel will first worry about Israeli interests before they will worry about how the American Jewish community will be seen and judged here; they should worry about how their cousins in Israel won't be killed by their other cousins in the Middle East. J Street = not a pro-Israel organization.

Love him or hate him, Bibi's all we've got at present. There really is no one else on the Israeli political spectrum who cuts such an appropriately statesmanlike figure as Benjamin Netanyahu. Which is why he's the second-longest running Israeli prime minister after David Ben Gurion. Israelis know that Bibi's it.

This doesn't mean that the other politicians aren't going to angle themselves into position for a takeover, hostile or otherwise. You'll always see Naftali Bennett , for instance, using any issue du jour as a platform to knock Bibi while at the same time taking credit for any progress made on said issue. Yair Lapid, too, is always looking for opportunities to advance his political fortunes. He has a knack for speaking and videos of his speeches always go over well on social media. Also: he has GREAT hair.

Finally, Lapid, unlike Bennett, is not right wing. Which could theoretically make him palatable to the mainstream media, which hates Netanyahu with a passion. They hate Netanyahu because President Obama hates Netanyahu, and they, the mainstream media, always do Obama's bidding.

Now it's interesting to watch all this angling for power and position on either side of the Atlantic. We Israelis watch President Obama as he blames Russia for interfering with the American election. We find this especially ironic, considering that Obama's State Department interfered with Israeli elections to the tune of $349,276 in taxpayer's money.

So no. It's not a new idea: trying to find someone, anyone, who might take over from Bibi, if not now, then at some future point in time. And so Ruth Eglash's interview with Yair Lapid in the Washington Post makes perfect sense. Washington is looking for fresh Israeli blood. Someone malleable. Someone who, unlike Bibi, will do the left's bidding, and say, "Sir! Yes, Sir," when ordered to stop building Jewish homes, release Arab terrorists, and offer up another slice of Jewish land to the Arabs.

So you can just imagine this is thrilling stuff for Yair Lapid, he of the amazing hair, of the legendary MK father. An interview with the Washington Post! Lapid must have been over the moon. What a chance!

Now there were two key points in this brief interview that stand out. First of all, a dig at Israel and Netanyahu from reporter Ruth Eglash, who manages to insert the idea that Israel's leadership is the equivalent of the PA leadership and isn't making any real efforts toward a peace settlement. This is supposed to show balance and symmetry.

Eglash demonstrates this supposed symmetry by asking Lapid if he believes that in Mahmoud Abbas, Israel has a partner for peace. When Lapid confirms that Abbas is no peace partner, that he's just more of the Tunis people, more of Arafat's ilk, and will never sign a deal, Eglash asks, "Isn’t the same true about the Israelis? In Israel, the same people have been saying the same things about the same peace deal for 20 years. Do we need to see a change in Israel before peace can be reached?"

So here's the thing. During Bibi's reign, settlement construction was frozen as per President Obama's bidding. This affected people I know, personally. People who were building homes had the construction stalled at length, and had to pay penalties because their homes were not ready when it was time for them to move according to the contracts they had signed. People could not add on to their homes to provide for the natural growth of their families. Not to mention, the idea has always been for the two sides of the conflict to meet WITHOUT PRECONDITIONS, for instance, without any construction freeze.

The construction freeze was flat out wrong. But Abbas demanded the freeze, Obama backed him, and Bibi felt forced to accede. Even though building homes has nothing to do with peace or the lack of same. As we saw with Disengagement, homes can easily be torn down and Jewish families expelled in the event that the State of Israel decides to do these things as part of a gesture of "peace."

This question so craftily posed by Eglash to draw a moral equivalency between the murderous PA and democratic Israel, was meant to make it sound as if Israel, like the PA, has done nothing for the sake of peace. But this is not true. Israel has made numerous concessions to the Arabs for the sake of peace, while the Arabs have made not a one. The settlement freeze, which, de facto lasted much longer than the ten months demanded, was one such concession. But there have been many.

And the PA? They have made not a single concession for the sake of peace. They will not even recognize the State of Israel. Meantime, the PA's Facebook page, and official television station are used to incite terror against Israeli citizens.

Now that is something you surely do not see on the other side. You don't see Bibi telling Jews to go out and kill Arabs. Not on his Facebook page. Not on Israeli television. Not anywhere.

You don't see Israelis throwing firebombs and boulders at Arab cars. You don't see Israelis ramming their cars into babies in strollers. You don't see Israelis hacking at Arabs with knives, scissors, and axes, or shooting people on buses, And you don't see Israelis kidnapping, murdering, and dismembering teenage Arab boys on their way home from school.

But here is Eglash. She wants to draw some kind of symmetry between the Arabs and the Jews and how little they've done to make peace? Frankly, it makes the bile rise in one's throat. The lack of peace is due to the presence of terror. Arab terror. Against the Jews. Jews like Eglash.

These are the things Lapid, oh he of the great hair, could have and should have said. It was an opportunity, one handed to him on a platter by Eglash, on behalf of that bastion of the liberal media, the Washington Post. Right here, at this point, was where Lapid could have redeemed himself, shown us that he can someday step into Bibi's shoes and be a leader worthy to rule the great nation of Israel.

And here is where he utterly failed.

Here is where he should have backed his prime minister, his people. Here is where he should have listed all the weighty sacrifices the Jews have made in the name of peace. Here is where he should have recounted, at length, all the ways in which Israel is genuinely good to its Arab minority. Here is where he should have firmly pointed out the disparity between the murderous nature of the Arab regime and the terror it incites, as against the democratic and utterly moral and upright nature of the Jewish State.

Instead, he of the great hair reverted to type and became a politician, grandstanding, angling for his piece of future pie. He said:

"Since the Oslo accords, there have been 11 rounds of bilateral talks and all of them came out to the same nothing. It was the same people, saying the same things to each other."

Translation: All of these leaders of Israel haven't managed to create peace. They are failures. (As if the PA were not the responsible party for the absence of peace!)

He said:

"If we are going to do this, then there needs to be a different mechanism. Since last September, I have been pushing a new concept, a regional conference that will include many of the players who are involved anyway — Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the gulf states."

Translation: You need someone new. You need ME. I have a new idea. (Which actually isn't new and is predicated on the cooperation of all the Arab allies that Bibi has cultivated while serving in office as prime minister.)

He said:

"And, we need to start with Gaza. Gaza is a simpler deal. There are no Jews in Gaza, no holy sites. We will not talk to Hamas, but with regional players present, we will have moderators to talk through. If we start in Gaza, we will have a win. I think the entire area needs to see progress."

Translation: Let's move the conflict to a different arena and pretend this will make a difference. (Certainly sounds good if you don't look too closely or demand any details.)

So basically you have Lapid boasting that he can do what Bibi cannot just by changing the venue, the words, the players. Boasting. Instead of backing his prime minister or his people. During an opportunity to make Israel look good in the Washington Post. An opportunity scorned.

But okay, he was led. He was asked a leading question. And he's a politician and ran true to type.

Alas, it got worse. Much worse.

Eglash asked, "Netanyahu boasts about how Israel is now getting along with the rest of the world; he says he is 'optimistic' about relations he has cultivated in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, but surely the only relationships that really matter diplomatically are those with the United States and Europe?"

Eglash paints Netanyahu as boastful. She makes him sound stupid because he doesn't know that the only real players (according to Eglash) are the U.S. and Europe. Yet in her rude question that knocks the leader of an American ally in a major American news outlet is a second chance. A chance for Lapid, he of the great hair, to say staunch and supportive words to back the foreign policy of his country's leader. To say something good and positive about Israel and the tack it is taking on the world stage.

Instead, Lapid takes the bait and takes a stab at Bibi. He says, "Without criticizing the prime minister, I will say there is a difference between how you handle trade policy and foreign policy. Trade policies deal with everyone everywhere in the world, but foreign policy is subjective. It is dependent on three places — Washington, Brussels and international institutes. This is where the game is played, so if you are in the game, then you have to make sure you are on good terms with all these three."

Note to Lapid: whenever someone prefaces his remarks by saying, "Without criticizing the prime minister," you can be sure that what will follow is exactly that. A criticism of the prime minister. Which is what that was, your response. A criticism.

For all that Lapid and his party are part of the opposition, there comes a time when supporting your people trumps party lines and politics. If Lapid had unequivocally backed Bibi in this interview, it would have told Israelis (and Americans!) something important: that here is a man of quality and substance—someone who might one day fill Bibi's most substantial shoes.

Alas, we came away knowing that the only thing to know about Lapid is what we already knew:

He sure does have great hair.

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Muslims Call Display Of Hanukkah Lights An Assault On Their Religious Freedom (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jerusalem, December 21 - Religious leaders in the Muslim community across Israel warned today that if millions of Israeli Jews kindle their annual Hanukkah lights as planned beginning this Saturday evening, the act would constitute a violation of Muslims' religious right not to have to see anyone practicing a religion other than Islam.

A group of Sunni Imams and Islamic religious educators gathered in Jerusalem today to prepare a statement protesting the Ministry of Religious Affairs allowing Jews to light their candles and oil lamps in full view of Muslims, in some cases even tolerating the erection of candelabra tall enough to require a cherry-picker to light, visible as far as the eye can see. The group agreed that while they lack the political power to prevail upon the Jewish-run ministry to prevent millions of Jews from thus trampling Muslim religious freedom, they must at least register their objections lest their silence be taken as acceptance of such abuse.

"We Muslims in this land who have already known decades of persecution in the form of being prevented from implementing the Pact of Omar cementing our social and political dominance over non-Muslims, condemn the ongoing attempt by the Zionist usurpers of this Islamic land to assert that anyone but adherents of Islam may so confidently remain non-believers. Our community reserves the right to resist this onslaught of heresy by any means," read the statement.

Participants in the conference explained that in addition to the violation of their religious freedom that public display of Hanukkah lights represents, the environmental damage deserves consideration. "Here you have tens of millions of flames burning at once, releasing who knows ho much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming," admonished Duwas Assay, an Imam from Umm el-Fahm. Even in our city, where we are not plagued by the sight of Hanukkah lights or symbols everywhere, we will suffer the consequences of such wanton ecological negligence," he explained.

Others noted the hypocrisy of such garish displays of light at night, when others want to sleep. "There was almost a law passed last month banning the use of mosque loudspeakers for the pre-dawn call to prayer," recalled Aiwish Tuqilyu, a religious educator in Jerusalem's Jebel Mukaber neighborhood. "Supposedly, the concern was for people who wish to be asleep at that hour, as if anyone not coming to pray then has any right to object, or any worth at all as a human. Yet these same authorities do nothing about the assault on our senses of all this light shining from every Jewish window during nighttime hours. The hypocrisy stinks."

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12/21 Links Pt1: Obama’s Inaction in Syria Has Disgraced the Nobel Peace Prize; Two States and the Embassy

From Ian:

Rabbi Nachman's grave desecrated with pig's head, 'blood' in Ukraine

Astonished visitors arrived to a gruesome antisemitic scene of a pig's head and red paint splatters Wednesday morning at the venerated Rabbi Nachman's grave in Uman, Ukraine.
The act of vandalism is believed to have occurred late Tuesday night.
The Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Moshe Asman, said in an interview with Army Radio: "We will look into it, we have ways to do this, along with the police and local intelligence institutions, we will try to reach them. Vandals threw a pig's head and shed blood."
"The question now is who did it, it wasn't easy to move it there, because the area is inhabited by a lot of Jews."
"There haven't been events like this, but there are always cases of antisemitism before the New Year. In such a small place sometimes there are incidents, but I don't have any more details, we will learn more from the investigation," he added.
Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid on Wednesday morning urged the Ukrainian Ambassador in Israel, Hennadii Nadolenko, to swiftly investigate the incident and demanded that the Ukrainian government act quickly to ensure the security of the many Jewish visitors who regularly visit the site.

This Female IDF Soldier Fights Off 23 Terrorists in Ambush Attack After Being Shot

Captain Or Ben-Yehuda of the Israeli Defense Forces has cemented a legacy that will endure well past her lifetime. The young, decorated IDF Captain was in charge of a company of soldiers when they were violently attacked by nearly two dozen terrorists near the Egyptian border.
Due to her leadership and bravery, she and her men were able to survive.
Captain Ben-Yehuda was in charge of the Caracal Battalion which was stationed near the Israeli / Egyptian border. Three suspicious vehicles quickly approached the battalion’s position and Captain Ben-Yehuda along with a driver went to check them out.
As they approached the first vehicle, nearly two dozen armed men opened fire on their position in an ambush attack. Both Captain Ben-Yehuda and her driver were immediately shot in the volley of gunfire.
Despite suffering from a gunshot wound, Captain Ben-Yehuda managed to get on the radio and call for backup, administer first aid to her driver and return several magazines worth of gunfire back at her attackers.

Barry Shaw: Obama’s Inaction in Syria Has Disgraced the Nobel Peace Prize

Attempts to achieve peace through inaction are bound to fail. Just ask the people of Aleppo. Attempts to achieve peace through appeasement are bound to fail. Just ask Neville Chamberlain. Peace only comes from assertive action that destroys a rampaging enemy’s will to survive. Just ask Winston Churchill. World War II should have taught us that.
Doing nothing in the face of an Assad-inflicted genocide in Syria — which is supported by Iran and Russia — has shown us where inaction leads.
Obama’s promise to live up to the vain standards of the Nobel Peace Prize lies in the ashes of Aleppo.
Obama’s dereliction of his international and humanitarian responsibilities by failing to implement his infamous “red lines”warning made a mockery of the Nobel Prize. His non-violent policy and impotence to act gave the green light to the resultant Syrian genocide.
Syria is another step that follows in the awful tradition of Rwanda, Sudan and many more. Collectively, they show us that only using force against evil-doers will protect innocent lives against acts of unchallenged heinous massacre.
When good men of influence do nothing but complain, evil triumphs. Obama was a complainer, not a doer.

Danish imam who called Jews "sons of apes and pigs" says he is moderate

From AP:

A Danish court has convicted an imam of violating Denmark's racism laws and given him a 14-day suspended jail sentence.
The City Court in Odense says Mohammed al-Khaled Samha held a speech in September 2004 in which he described Jews as "children of apes and pigs."

At the trial, Samha argued that his speech was protected, free speech. His lawyer compared it to the legality of posting cartoons of Mohammed that offend Muslims.

The court didn't buy it.

In the same video, Samha said "Palestine has been and will remain the land of Islam. It is the land of the great battle, in which the Muslims will fight the Jews, and the trees and the stones will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah! There is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him’".

In the closing statement, the imam said that he belongs to the more moderate community of Muslims in Denmark, and said that he cherished democratic freedoms in the country.

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The New York Times has a feature called "The Stone" which is supposed to be "a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. "

Its latest installment bashes Zionism. Philosophically, of course.

Omri Boehm, an assistant professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research, starts off the way any good propagandist does, by defining his terms initially in order to come to his foregone conclusion:

Zionism [is] a political agenda rooted in the denial of liberal politics.

How so?

To appreciate this inherent tension, consider Hillary Clinton’s words from the second presidential debate: “It is important for us as a policy not to say, as Donald has said, we’re going to ban people based on a religion. How do you do that? We are a country founded on religious freedom and liberty.” Here Clinton establishes a minimum standard of liberal decency that few American Jews would be inclined to deny. But she is not the incoming president. Trump’s willingness to reject this standard is now a cause for alarm among Jewish communities, along with those of other American minorities.

Yet insofar as Israel is concerned, every liberal Zionist has not just tolerated the denial of this minimum liberal standard, but avowed this denial as core to their innermost convictions. Whereas liberalism depends on the idea that states must remain neutral on matters of religion and race, Zionism consists in the idea that the State of Israel is not Israeli, but Jewish. As such, the country belongs first and foremost not to its citizens, but to the Jewish people — a group that’s defined by ethnic affiliation or religious conversion.

Boehm, knowing his audience is American, purposefully defines American values as the "minimum standard of liberal decency." Which means that any country that favors one religion or national group over another is, if you buy Boehm's definition of liberalism, indecent.

Yet Denmark, England, Monaco, Lichtenstein, and many other countries have, to varying degrees, state religions.

Many European nations have citizenship laws that favor descendants of those who originally came from their countries over all others. Germany, Hungary and Italy allow people to become citizens after many generations.

Very few nations pass Boehm's test of the "minimum standard of liberal decency."

Moreover, Israel's laws protecting freedom of religion are no less liberal than those of any other nation. While France bans burkinis and Switzerland bans minarets, Israel does neither.

Worse, Boehm's essay at no point acknowledges that Jews are not just a religion - but a nation. And the Jewish people have the same right to self-determination as any other nation.

Of course there is a tension between Zionism and liberalism, but that doesn't mean that a Zionist state must be by definition illiberal, as Boehm claims. Zionism is not by any means "rooted in the denial of liberal politics." It is an obvious lie. Zionism from the outset recognized the rights of all citizens in the Jewish state.

There is a tension between democracy and liberalism as well - because people can vote for leaders and laws that are not liberal. There is tension between liberalism and patriotism. There is a lot of tension between classical liberalism that emphasizes liberty above all and the type of big-government liberalism espoused by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. You can find tension between liberalism and the actual practices of every nation on Earth if you bother to look. But tension does not mean that any of these other situations are the antithesis of liberalism. A real philosopher would know that.

In fact, Boehm does know this, but he creates a false definition of Zionism as illiberal at the outset because he wants to claim that US Jews who support Israel must be betraying their liberalism by definition. And Boehm has an agenda that is more akin to propaganda than education.

Boehm, the supposed philosopher, asserts that Zionists are now flocking to support antisemites and racists and bigots, using a startling lack of logic for a philosopher, pretending that any commonality between some Israelis and European nationalist parties or Christian Zionists is proof of Zionism's inherent illiberalism. Boehm's simplistic proofs could be summarized as "A member of Israel's ruling coalition says good things about someone whose party's origins originally included antisemitic ideas - therefore Israel itself is embracing antisemitism." His flat statements that today's evangelical Zionists are antisemitic, or that people like Geert Wilders are antisemites, are simply wrong, and yet that is a core part of his argument.

Boehm says:

Opposition to the Palestinians’ “right of return” is a matter of consensus among left and right Zionists because also liberal Zionists insist that Israel has the right to ensure that Jews constitute the ethnic majority in their country. But if you reject Zionism because you reject the double standard, organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or the Jewish Federations of North America would denounce you as anti-Semitic.

In plain English, this means that Boehm holds that his concept of liberalism clashes with the Jewish people's right to self-determination. Since Jews aren't a nation, in Boehm's estimation, they only have religious rights, not national rights. This is arguably far more antisemitic than anything that today's Right (not the alt-right, that Boehm takes pains to conflate with Zionism) espouses.

Yet is it Boehm's example of what he regards as the "original sin" of illiberal Zionism that proves something a little different than he intends:

[It] is Friedman’s own politics — and the politics of the government that he supports — that’s continuous with anti-Semitic principles and collaborates with anti-Semitic politics.

The “original sin” of such alliances may be traced back to 1941, in a letter to high Nazi officials, drafted in 1941 by Avraham Stern, known as Yair, a leading early Zionist fighter and member in the 1930s of the paramilitary group Irgun, and later, the founder of another such group, Lehi. In the letter, Stern proposes to collaborate with “Herr Hitler” on “solving the Jewish question” by achieving a “Jewish free Europe.” The solution can be achieved, Stern continues, only through the “settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine.” To that end, he suggests collaborate with the German’s “war efforts,” and establish a Jewish state on a “national and totalitarian basis,” which will be “bound by treaty with the German Reich.”

It has been convenient to ignore the existence of this letter, just as it has been convenient to mitigate the conceptual conditions making it possible. But such tendencies must be rejected. They reinforce the same logic by which the letter itself was written: the sanctification of Zionism to the point of tolerating anti-Semitism.

When this letter was written, Stern's assumption was that Hitler did not want to systematically exterminate the Jews, but wanted to encourage them to leave Europe.

It is truly obscene to describe Stern's desperate effort to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the clutches of the Nazis as an inherent Zionist affinity with Nazism. In fact, Stern was known to explicitly compare Hitler to Haman.

But Boehm is even worse than misrepresenting Stern. Stern's offer to collaborate with Germany to save thousands of Jews was anomalous. From the right to the left, the Zionist movement opposed Nazi Germany from the beginning. Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote strident anti-German articles. Mainstream Labor Zionists equally abhorred the Nazis. And, of course, the Zionist Jews of Palestine actually did join the war effort against Germany, and none of them fought for Germany - unlike some other people in the region.

It is instructive that Boehm digs up this little-known episode as the paradigm of Zionism's supposed affinity with anti-semitism.

What do you call a man who generalizes about an entire group of people based on problematic anecdotes about a single member of that group?

You would call him a bigot.

You would certainly not call him liberal.

Boehm doesn't compare Israel's liberalism against that of Western Europe. He doesn't mention the undeniably liberal social policies in Israel. He doesn't mention that Israel, even while being the Jewish state, cannot discriminate against its non-Jewish citizens by law. He doesn't mention that in many ways, the "indecent" Zionist state is more liberal than the US.

Because Boehm is not a liberal. He is a bigot who is using the language of liberalism to attack and insult a specific group of people he finds distasteful, and he justifies his hate after the fact by cherry-picking examples that do not represent the group at all. And his agenda is to shame American Jews into hating the only liberal state in the Middle East and sympathize with Israel's very, very illiberal enemies.

This isn't the first time he has written for the New York Times philosophy column. By sheer coincidence, out of the four columns he has written, all four included anti-Zionist components.

This climactic essay of the series shows that Omri Boehm is projecting his own irrational and pathological hatred of Zionism onto Zionist Jews themselves.

Maybe the New York Times should start a psychology column to evaluate the underlying biases of its columnists. This sort of analysis is needed a lot more than bigotry pretending to be philosophy.

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EoZ Best Posts of 2016 - vote for your choice!

Reader AlexandreM keeps track of what he considers my best posts. Here is his list for this year:

Does the "Status Quo" forbid Jews to quietly pray on the Temple Mount?

Ban Ki Moon doubles down on justifying (while "condemning") terror

Latest teen terrorist doesn't look like he was "frustrated with the occupation" - he was brainwashed to love violence

UNRWA starts its cover-up, and the StateDept covers up for UNRWA

The difference between theory and fact in the UC anti-Zionism debate

The execution of a true Palestinian hero

Jerusalem, quod erat demonstrandum and Daniel Seidemann

Europe blaming Jews for being murdered by Arabs since 1921

The Economist unwittingly predicts the Palestinian future

Media ignores Abbas' outrageous lies, as usual

Why calling Zionism colonialist is false - and antisemitic

No matter what happens with Trump, Obama's anti-Israel narrative will take a huge hit

Vote for your choice! You can vote for more than one.

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12/20 Links Pt2: Today’s mood is eerily reminiscent of the early 20th-century unravelling; The Top 10 Worst U.N. Moments of 2016

From Ian:

Maajid Nawaz: Today’s mood is eerily reminiscent of the early 20th-century unravelling

The tangled and deteriorating state of global security today is reminiscent of the early 20th century breakdown of the world order. On 28 June 1914, a 19-year-old Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, triggering events that led to the Great War. On 19 December this year, a 22-year-old Muslim identitarian Mevlut Mert Altintas — who bears a striking resemblance to Princip — killed Andrey Karlov, Russia’s ambassador to Turkey.
Turkey’s sensitive geographic location between Europe and the Middle East, her hostile relations with Assad’s regime, her support for Syrian Arab and Islamist rebels there, her fight against Kurdish militants, her tense relationship with Russia, her membership of NATO and Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman delusions of grandeur all make Turkey the perfect place to attack, for those desiring to spark the collapse of our world order. This coupled with rising identity-based polarisation across the world, and repeated random and unpredictable mass-casualty attacks — such as the Berlin truck attack that happened on the same day — make conditions ripe for those seeking to trigger a broader war.
The similarities don’t end there, Ferdinand’s killer Princip was a radical, a member of Young Bosnians who were supported by the Yugoslav nationalist Black Hand. Likewise, Altintas — the now dead assassin of Russia’s ambassador — was also radicalised. While it was his service as a Turkish policeman that facilitated how Altintas managed to get so close to Ambassador Karlov, and explains his obvious firearms training, it was his ideological outlook and Muslim sense of outrage that affected his actions. Video that emerged after the killing shows the assassin chanting in Arabic, ”Allahu Akbar, we are the ones who pledged allegiance to Muhammad for Jihad, Allahu Akbar” and then in Turkish “Don’t forget Aleppo, Don’t forget Syria, I will not leave here alive.”

Fred Maroun: Rachel Avraham exposes Hamas’ willing collaborators

In her book “Women and Jihad”, Rachel Avraham, Jerusalem Online news editor and political analyst, brings the reader into the dark world of Palestinian female suicide bombers. She examines in detail the history of eight such terrorists, and she describes how their attacks were covered in the Israeli media, the Arab media, and the American media.
As a summary of her observations on the three types of media, Avraham writes, “The main difference between Arabic language media coverage of Second Intifada Palestinian female suicide bombings and that of American media is that often the Arabic language media coverage would overtly justify and glorify the actions of the suicide bomber, while American media coverage would more often rationalize the hardships that prompted the Palestinian female suicide bomber to blow herself up while refraining from condoning suicide bombings. The Israeli media by contrast was less likely than the American media to note the motivating factors behind the suicide bombing yet was still more likely to mention the factors prompting the female suicide bombers than it would had the suicide bomber been a male.”
With this analysis, Avraham reminds us that the media is an essential component of terrorism since terrorism’s objective is to terrorize enough people to force the political change that it desires. From this point of view, it does not matter whether the reporting is sympathetic to the terrorists or not. It only matters how many people are terrorized.
A secondary and even more perverse effect of media reporting on terrorism is that it can change public opinion in favor of the terrorists’ cause when it portrays the terrorists as victims or even heroes. For example, Avraham writes that CNN anchorman Aaron Brown claimed that terrorists Darine Abu Aisha and Wafa Idris were “something akin at least to feminist heroes in the Arab world”!

Ryan Bellerose: On Canada, Israel, and indigenous peoples

Editor’s Note: On Monday, November 28, ‘The Toronto Star ‘published an editorial written by Dr. Yousef Jabareen, a Palestinian MK, with the headline “What Israel Can Learn From Canada.” The following is a response to Dr. Jabareen from B’nai Brith Canada’s advocacy coordinator of Western Canada.
Perhaps what’s most disparaging about your remarks, Dr. Jabareen, is your accusation, in the wake of UNESCO and the Palestinian Authority’s attempt to rewrite Judeo-Christian history and challenge Jewish and Christian ties to Jerusalem and its holy sites, that Jews are obliterating the aboriginal names of places in Israel.
I am a Canadian and I love my country, although I love it more for the dream of what it could be rather than the reality of what it is.
Like you, I know there are things that need fixing. Unlike you, I’m not running around telling lies about my own country.
Perhaps you can be more conscious of the fact that referring to Palestinians as “indigenous” lends a hand to their systematic campaign to rewrite Jewish history.
As an Arab-Israeli representative of the Knesset, you indeed have a responsibility to speak on behalf of Arabs. But you also have a responsibility to speak on behalf of Israel.

Peter Beinart says Ramallah is "inside the State of Israel".

Peter Beinart is so upset over David Friedman that he feels that he must counter Friedman's rhetoric with his own peculiar brand of "facts."

Friedman writes, quite accurately, that Palestinians in the West Bank "have freedom of speech, the right to free enterprise, the right to worship freely, the right to elect their leaders.”

Beinart's response:

Palestinians in the West Bank live inside the state of Israel. The Israeli army—and the army of no other country—can enter any square inch of the West Bank any time it chooses and arrest anyone it wants, including officials of the Palestinian Authority. Thus, the real “leaders” of West Bank Palestinians are the leaders of Israel. But West Bank Palestinians cannot elect them because they cannot vote in Israeli elections. As non-citizens, West Bank Palestinians live under military law. This dramatically restricts their freedom of speech, worship and their right to pursue free enterprise. Under Military Order 101, for instance, West Bank Palestinians need Israeli military permission to hold a political gathering of more than ten people, even if it is occurring in a private home.

So, according to Beinart, Palestinians live "inside the state of Israel." Not under occupation, not in any autonomous areas, but "inside the state of Israel." I guess if you are going to claim that Israel is an apartheid state, you have to start making up lies to support that claim.

Let's look at this awful Military Order 101. When was it written?

In August 1967.

Before, of course, the Palestinian Authority had control of Area A and partial control of Area B. Where some 97% of Palestinians live. And where Military Order 101 - and the other thousand of them - do not apply.

Beinart is claiming, absurdly, that this parade by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades two years ago in Qalandia was approved by some Israeli military officer.

And so was this speech by the PA prime minister last week.

And so is the weekly Palestinian Authority cabinet meeting.

And so is the lighting of the Bethlehem Christmas tree, which includes anti-Israel rhetoric every year.

And so was the Fatah Conference last month with hundreds of attendees.

And every ceremony where they name a new school or square after a terrorist.

And so is every other of the hundreds of gatherings that take place every month in the PA-controlled areas.

Beinart believes that Israel controls and approves every one of those gatherings, many of which are explicitly anti-Israel. Because they all take place "inside the State of Israel," in Beinart's absurd view.

Beinart's attempt to refute Friedman relies on absolute falsehoods.

But what can you expect?

Maybe Beinart will next claim that Argentina is part of the State of Israel as well. After all, the brutal, apartheid Israeli regime had kidnapped, arrested, tried and executed someone from that country in 1960.

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Sneakers put out to dry. Wet and full of sand, they looked tired.

My heart almost burst to see them.

They tell a story people who live elsewhere wouldn’t recognize but most Israelis would. Those who don’t have this story in their own home know the story well. Across political affiliations and religious denominations, it is a story we all honor.

A dirty pair of sneakers; this is what Zionism looks like.

A silent testament to effort, the desire to achieve and most of all, the desire to serve.

At night, down at the beach, in the cold, in the wind. Running, stretching, building strength. Pounding the pavement, through the sand, the water and back again.

Straining under extra weight, purposely added to make the run more difficult.

The biting wind is something to ignore. The temporary discomfort something to laugh at, knowing that future challenges will be harder.

No one told him to go. He goes on his own. There are no requests for assistance, no: “Can you drive me?” Just a quick “bye” and then he is gone, off to join others like him.

Together they strive, pushing themselves to new heights, knowing the tests they long to pass will stretch them physically and mentally beyond their current limits. And should they pass, the next challenges will be even harder.

They must be stronger, faster, better… that is the only way to gain admittance to an elite IDF unit. For this group, no regular unit will do. They strive to be the best so they can join the best.

Their peers will also serve but few will undertake the challenges this group chose to take on. Few are able, capable of doing so.

They are not competing for their own glory. There is nothing glorious in being wet, tired, hurt, dirty, exhausted… They are competing for the honor of serving their people, shoulder to shoulder with others as dedicated, as passionate as they are.

Their Zionism is our future.

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12/20 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: Civilized world must come together to fight terror; David Friedman’s Jewish antagonists

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: David Friedman’s Jewish antagonists

David Friedman, US President- elect Donald Trump’s choice to serve as the next US ambassador to Israel, has his work cut out for him.
Right after Trump announced his appointment, the nameless bureaucrats at the State Department mounted a rebellion. Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, the permanent members of the State Department’s Israel policy shop let it be known that Friedman is not to their liking.
“These are the people,” the Post’s Washington reporter Michael Wilner wrote, “behind the carefully worded reactions to breaking news developments in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.”
They operate on the basis of their shared catechism. Euphemistically stated, that writ of faith is that the US’s “influence... is only as strong as the legitimacy they maintain... as a fair and balanced arbiter.”
In plain English that means that the permanent bureaucracy believes the US must be hostile to Israel.
And now its members are worried. They “now fear that [their] influence may diminish under... Trump, after his announcement on Thursday night that... Friedman would be Washington’s ambassador to Israel.”

PLO will revoke Israel recognition if US moves embassy, top official warns

If the incoming Trump administration moves the US embassy to Jerusalem, the PLO will revoke its recognition of Israel, the prospect of a two-state solution will be over, and any hope of Israeli-Palestinian peace in the future will vanish, the top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned on Monday.
Speaking on a conference call organized by the Wilson Center policy forum in Washington, DC regarding expectations from the Trump administration, Erekat reeled off a list of what he said would be the consequences of President-elect Donald Trump honoring his campaign pledge and relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Erekat said he would immediately resign as the chief Palestinian negotiator, and that “the PLO will revoke its recognition of Israel” as well as all previously signed agreements with Israel.
Furthermore, said Erekat, all American embassies in the Arab world would be forced to close — not necessarily because Arab leaderships would want to close them, but because the infuriated public in the Arab world would not “allow” for the embassies to continue to operate.

Son of terror victim goes to police after Nazareth honors father’s killer

The son of a terror victim asked the police on Sunday to open a criminal investigation into the mayor of Nazareth, following a recent event in the city backed by the municipality that celebrated his father’s murderer.
On December 10, Nazareth, the largest Arab-majority city in Israel, held its “Nazareth reads” event, which saw hundreds of children sit and read in a line that stretched from the plaza of the Spring Square within Nazareth’s old city to the Church of the Annunciation, according to Palestinian Media Watch, which first reported the event in English.
The event honored Palestinian terrorist Baha Alyan, one of two men who attacked a bus in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood on October 13, 2015, shooting and stabbing passengers. Police who arrived at the scene shot and killed Alyan. The other attacker, Bilal Abu Ghanem, was shot and injured and taken into police custody.
Among the three killed as a result of the attack was peace activist and educator Richard Lakin.
His son, Micah Avni, wrote to Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh on Sunday, asking for a criminal probe to be opened into Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam, “in light the offenses of sedition, incitement to terrorism, unlawful assembly, a breach of trust and illegal use of public funds, and in light of the serious blow to the feelings of the public and respect of the state.”

From the Arab Bank Bahrain website:

For the first time in the Bahrain, Arab Bank - the largest Arab banking network, introduces a value-added service specially designed to meet the needs and expectations of Palestinian Expats, residing and working in the Bahrain. The “Bankee Maee” service offers you a host of benefits to help you conduct all your banking transactions in the Bahrain and Palestine easily and with utmost levels of convenience and comfort. Through the “Bankee Maee” service you will enjoy the following benefits.

SAVINGS BACK HOME THROUGH ARAB BANK DUAL ACCOUNT

- Account opened in each of Bahrain and Palestine from Bahrain
- Account opened in Palestine without the need to be physically present there
- Earn high interest rates on your account in Palestine whether in Jordanian Dinar or NIS

An Arab bank in the Gulf paying interest in New Israeli Shekels?

The times, they are a-changin'.

(h/t Mike)

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