Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 02, 2017

01/02 Links Pt2: Assad's Palestinian mercenaries; European diplomats meet with Hamas, express 'positive position'

From Ian:

Black Lives Matter offshoot embraces anti-Semitism, engages with terrorists

Over the Christmas weekend, Chicago surpassed the 750-murder mark for 2016. But as blacks lay dying on the streets of Chicago’s South and West Sides, a Black Lives Matter offshoot is more interested in traveling overseas to learn “resistance” from terrorists.
The Dream Defenders bills itself as “an uprising of communities in struggle, shifting culture through transformational organizing.” But an investigation conducted by the Haym Salomon Center reveals the group’s embrace of anti-Semitism and collaboration with a State Department-designated terror group.
In August, Black Lives Matter singled out Israel for condemnation, declaring it an “apartheid” state engaged in “genocide.” These accusations angered Jewish leaders, many of whom had steadfastly supported the BLM cause. Nonetheless, despite what can only be described as a total lack of relevance to its own agenda, BLM did not back down.
Just like BLM, Dream Defenders proclaims solidarity with Palestinians. DD claims that the black community in America, together with Palestinians in the “occupied” territories of Israel, are all victims of state-sanctioned violence. As such, the two causes are related and should learn “resistance” from each other. After leaders from BLM and DD made their first trip to Palestinian territories in January 2015, BLM’s anti-Israel advocacy remained steady, mostly lashing out at the Jewish state at rallies and protests. DD stepped up their disdain for Israel, engaging in what the U.S. government defines as anti-Semitism.
Dream Defenders’ website dedicates an entire page to Palestinian solidarity. While accusing Israel of existing on “stolen land,” there is no mention of Palestinian terrorism, including the targeting of civilians. (h/t Jewess)

Assad's Palestinian mercenaries

Over the past century, various Palestinian leaders have fostered alliances that were either unsuccessful or not particularly useful to them.
Take the alliance formed by the grand mufti of Jerusalem during the British mandate period, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who during World War II supported Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Al-Husseini hoped the Germans would win the war and Hitler would become fuhrer of the Middle East. After the Nazis lost the war, however, the West did not forgive al-Husseini, which severely damaged the Palestinian cause for over two decades.
Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat erred in 1990 when he supported Iraq in its invasion of Kuwait. Palestinian public support for the invasion led to a great deal of suffering for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians then living in Kuwait and the Persian Gulf, who paid the price for Arafat's support of the tyrannical Saddam Hussein.
Today, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is maintaining ambiguity regarding the Syrian war, taking pains to avoid denouncing or supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. It appears Abbas has learned from history. However, tens of thousands of Palestinians are apparently fighting on behalf of the Syrian dictator, even sacrificing their lives for him. These Palestinians, who went to live in Syria in recent decades, are helping slaughter the Syrian people fighting for their freedom. The guest has turned murderer.
Among the Palestinians, the most fervent Assad supporters belong to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's General Command, led by Ahmed Jibril. The organization is headquartered in Damascus and consists of thousands of fighters; Jibril's loyalty to the Assad regime has never wavered. His fighters are taking part in the war effort, even against their own people, their own flesh and blood. In one example, when Assad's army laid siege to the Yarmouk refugee camp, it was Jibril's fighters who provided the regime with intelligence information and ground support. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

The wisdom of the Kiwi foreign minister

New Zealand was one of the four countries which sponsored the biased and unhelpful Resolution 2334 at the UN Security Council last week. The main proponent of the Kiwi initiative was Murray McCully, the Foreign Minister.
Thanks to the excellent online publication Shalom.Kiwi we can be privy to Mr McCully’s insights into the geopolitics of the Middle East, offered at a meeting on 18 May 2016 in an address to the Auckland Jewish Community.
When asked about the role of Palestinian terror in the current stalemate, McCully declined to distinguish between Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians and the Israeli response to such attacks. When pushed, he refused to call the current wave of stabbings, shootings, car-rammings and suicide bombings “terrorism”, snapping: “You can call it what you like ….. you choose your words, I’ll choose mine.”
In relation to the terrorist group Hamas, McCully conceded that it had “stopped short of formally accepting the Quartet Principles” – an observation that ‘provoked astonished laughter from a shocked audience’.
‘The Quartet Principles include recognising Israel, abiding by diplomatic agreements and renouncing violence. As one audience member responded, this was rather a generous comment to make about an organisation whose statements, charter and purposes are the annihilation of Israel, not in order to make a Palestinian state, but because of a religious objection to Jewish sovereignty in any part of that land’.

Over the summer Mrs. Elder and I had the opportunity to meet and interview Manfred Gerstenfeld, perhaps the leading expert on antisemitism today.

His book The War of A Million Cuts is an incredible and frightening read. Of course I read articles all day about antisemitism but to see everything described thematically and in context is an almost overwhelming experience.

Gerstenfeld first shows how antisemitism and anti-Israelism is intertwined. He categorizes different types of antisemitism and gives copious examples of each. Finally, Gerstenfeld puts together a plan to combat the "world's oldest hatred."

The book is now available for download for free from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. i

Get it. It is very worth your time.

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Who wants to be a Palestinian? (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

When the Israeli journalist Noga Tarnopolsky posted a tweet announcing the heartbreaking news that a young Israeli woman was among the victims of the New Year’s eve terror attack in Istanbul, Haaretz World News Editor Asaf Ronel insisted that the victim should be described as “Palestinian.”

Tarnopolsky responded by pointing out that not all of Israel’s Arab citizens identify as Palestinians; indeed, a relevant recent poll she posted showed that only 12% chose “Palestinian” as their preferred identity, while 24% chose Arab, 25% Israeli, and 29% preferred to be identified by religion, i.e. Muslim, Christian or Druze. Tarnopolsky also noted correctly that irrespective of the victim’s preferred identity, Israeli authorities would provide the family with the same assistance that every Israeli family receives in these terrible circumstances.

However, in the course of the exchange it quickly turned out that Ronel couldn’t care less about how Israel’s Arab citizens prefer to be identified. He insisted that designating the victim as Palestinian was “more accurate since it’s factual.” Preposterously, he even insisted that if the victim’s family preferred to identify as Israeli Arabs, “they are Palestinians w Israeli citizenship that define themselves as Israeli-Arabs.”

So we know now that it’s progressive and politically correct to ignore the wishes of Israeli Arabs who don’t want to be described as Palestinian.

I’m not sure if this should perhaps have implications for Article 1 of the Palestinian Constitution, which declares: “Palestine is part of the large Arab World, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab Nation.” After all, this clearly implies that being Palestinian is a subcategory of being Arab, similar to being Bavarian is a subcategory of being German. Does Ronel approve of this or would he prefer the Palestinians to forget about feeling “part of the large Arab World” and “part of the Arab Nation”? And what about the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, that proclaims: “The State of Palestine shall be an Arab State and shall be an integral part of the Arab nation”?

In this context it’s interesting to consider the poll posted by Tarnopolsky in some more detail. It is taken from the 2016 Israeli Democracy Index, published two weeks ago by the highly respected Israel Democracy Institute (IDI). The relevant poll is on page 78 of the report, and IDI notes [emphasis added]:

“Arab respondents were given the following options to choose from as their primary identity: Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, and religious (Muslim/Christian/Druze). As the figure below indicates, the strongest identity among Arab respondents is religious, followed by Israeli and Arab. Palestinian identity was selected as primary by the smallest share of respondents, bolstering the argument that the Arab population is undergoing a process of Israelization and, at least seemingly, countering the widespread claim that a major process of Palestinization has taken place, or is taking place, in Arab Israeli society.”

IDI explains further:

“A breakdown of the Arab sample by religion yielded interesting results. The responses of Muslim interviewees when asked about their primary identity can be summarized as follows: religious identity, as chosen by the largest share, followed by Arab and Israeli identity, with Palestinian identity trailing far behind. […] We learned further that among Christian Arabs, Arab identity takes precedence, followed after a sizeable gap by Israeli and religious identities. Here too, Palestinian identity is at the bottom of the list. Among the Druze, religious identity is dominant, followed by Israeli identity, while Arab identity is weak and Palestinian identity is negligible.”

But it’s perhaps only fitting that the Haaretz World News Editor would insist that imposing the preference of a tiny minority on everyone is somehow “more accurate since it’s factual.”

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01/02 Links Pt1: Kerry on Israel: An Alternate Universe; Friedman’s Unhinged Attack on Netanyahu

From Ian:

Omri Ceren: Kerry on Israel: An Alternate Universe

For months one of the worst-kept secrets in foreign-policy circles was that Secretary of State John Kerry would give a speech about his vision for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, just as soon as the 2016 elections were safely over. Gossip revolved around which staffers were getting pulled in to write, which wonks were being brought in to vet, how far it would go, and so on. A few weeks ago, Kerry even nudge-winked about just how much of an open secret his plans had become, telling an audience in London that he’d be moved to speak on the issue some time “in the next weeks, months, or over the year.”
What few people expected is how totally irrelevant Kerry’s performance would end up. The secretary’s remarks, which extended for over an hour, have already generated the expected heap of praise and criticism. But the praise feels like writers rationalizing how they wasted a day on what will ultimately become a footnote in American diplomatic history, and some of the criticism is crankiness over the same thing.
Kerry’s speech was already going to be drowned out by the global din around United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed in recent days after the U.S. abstained, and which among other things lumped Judaism’s holiest sites in East Jerusalem together with the West Bank and declared all of them occupied Palestinian territory. It has been criticized first as a diplomatic gambit that detonated the peace process and, second, as an abandonment of Israel contrary to decades of U.S. diplomacy aimed at blocking international assaults on the Jewish state.
The resolution presented another rhetorical problem for Kerry: To even get to the parameters, he was going to have to get past those two criticisms. He needed to paint a world in which the UNSCR built on the peace process rather than detonated it, and boosted Israel rather than abandoning it.

Algemeiner Editor-in-Chief: ‘Obama Has Given Incredible Boost to March of Antisemitism’ by Abstaining From Vote on Anti-Israel UN Resolution

US President Barack Obama “has given an incredible boost to the march of antisemitism,” the editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner said in an interview on Friday.
Discussing the latest moves by the lame-duck administration in Washington to put pressure on Jerusalem — abstaining in the UN Security Council vote on anti-settlements Resolution 2334, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s subsequent harsh address, warning that Israel cannot remain both a democracy and a Jewish state — Dovid Efune told Rush Limbaugh Show guest host Buck Sexton that such behavior encourages and invigorates the deligitimization and demonization of Israel, both defined as antisemitic by the US State Department.
It is for this reason, said Efune, that Kerry caused such a stir.
“His speech was essentially a glorified attempt to justify the vote at the UN last Friday, which the US — in an unprecedented move — abstained from, angering the Israelis, betraying the Israelis. And I can tell you from where I stand: The mainstream Jewish community in this country is seething, outraged, furious across the board with this stab in the back and, as some have even defined it, a stab in the front,” Efune said.
Listen to the full interview below (Efune’s remarks begin at 37:30):

How UN Security Council Resolution 2334 Relates to Palestinian Terrorism

On December 23, 2016, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2334, with 14 countries voting in favor. The United States abstained allowing the resolution to pass. Resolution 2334 deals mostly with the Israeli settlements in Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem, over which there is broad international consensus. The issue of terrorism is included in the resolution but its weight is slight (as opposed to extensive dealing with the settlements, which are represented as the main obstacle to peace). Moreover, for the most part the terminology used in dealing with terrorism is general and vague. The resolution does not explicitly refer to Palestinian terrorism, the Palestinian terrorist organizations (especially Hamas) and popular terrorism and violence(the so-called "popular resistance").
1. By not explicitly mentioning Palestinian terrorism and the Palestinian terrorist organizations,the resolution can be expected to lead the Palestinians to interpret the operative paragraphs dealing with terrorism and violence as relating to Israel and not Palestinian terrorism(Paragraphs 6 and 7; see Appendix A). That was manifested at the recent 7th Fatah Movement conference when Mahmoud Abbas rejected terrorism "regardless of motive and source," including the terrorism of a country [i.e., Israel] and the settlers. He claimed that "we [Palestinians] adhere to culture and tolerance."

The fallout from the videos of Jews dancing in Bahrain continues.

The Bahrain Women's Union, also known as the Bahrain Society Renaissance Girls, issued a statement against "normalization with the Zionist entity" that was prompted by the videos.

The group "considers this reception and hosting [of Jews] is an integral part of the deception and deceit and conspiracy process exercised by racist enemy Zionist usurper in order to impose the recognition of their settlements and the gradual normalization.

"This reception and celebration of the Zionist delegation was a serious episode of penetration and normalization with the Zionist entity, and it also represents a provocation against the national feelings of the Bahraini people who refuse to compromise on the fundamentals of the Arab nation. It also represents a flagrant threat to the Palestinian presence.

"We express our condemnation of this visit."

The statement also condemned "provocative dancing and performing Zionist songs and anthems of to build a Jewish temple on the ruins of the mosque Al-Aqsa," adding that the Jews were also somehow threatening a public square in Manama.

But they have nothing against Jews. Only "Zionists."

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Fatah honors terrorist Dalal Mughrabi at "52nd anniversary" celebrations

On January 1, Fatah celebrated 52 years since its first terror attack in 1965. (It never marks the anniversary of its actual beginnings in the 1950s.)

According to the leaked minutes of meetings between John Kerry and Susan Rice and Palestinian leaders, the Americans "praised 'Abbas's courage, positions, leadership, and adherence to the culture of peace and to peace as a strategic option."

These photos show what kind of a "culture of peace" Mahmoud Abbas has built in the territories he controls.

The celebrations included boys in military uniforms:

Lots of masked Fatah members, imitating if not being actual terrorists:

Armed terrorists as well:

And large posters of Fatahs' heroes: Arafat, Abbas, and terrorist Dalal Mughrabi:

Mughrabi's poster was clearly meant to boost Abbas' popularity as a man who supports terror while he tells gullible Westerners the opposite:

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Hamas put out its annual statistics of its "martyrs."

It shows Hamas was far more efficient at killing its own people than Israel was last year.

According to the Al Qassam website and Hamas newspaper Felesteen, 29 Hamas members were "martyred" in 2016. This included 21 people killed in tunnel collapses, 2 in training accidents, 2 killed in work accidents, one killed while trying to dismantle a bomb, one died of previous wounds, one killed by Israel in Hebron after he murdered Rabbi Miki Mark, and one who was presumably assassinated by the Mossad in Tunisia.

Islamic Jihad also released a list of its nine "martyrs" for the year. None were killed by Israel in 2016, although one died from wounds from an Israeli attack in 2006. The rest were killed in work accidents, tunnel accidents, or even heart attacks.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Record breaking "desecrations of Al Aqsa" in 2016

According to Arab media, this year some 17,602 Jews visited the Temple Mount in 2016, the highest number since 1967.

This means that more Jews visited their holiest spot in 2016 than since the destruction of the second Temple.

Somehow, the Muslim observers at Judaism's holiest spot know that the visitors who "desecrated the Al Aqsa Mosque" included 14,103 "settlers," 2,259 Jewish students, 815 police and 425 plain-clothed police. I don't know how they determine which people are "settlers" and which ones are Jews who live within the Green Line.

Oh, that's right. All Israelis are settlers.

th Muslim officials say that October was the busiest month with 3,020 Jews because of the Jewish holidays.

For context, far more than 17,000 Muslims visit the Temple Mount every Friday.

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There is no shortage of NGOs and media articles that claim, falsely, that Israel limits medicine and critical medical equipment to Gaza.

But there are very few reports of the corruption that actually occurs within Gaza for patients.

According to a new investigative article, there are two ways to get a routine operation at a government hospital in Gaza: either you must be politically or socially connected, or you must pay a bribe to the doctor. Otherwise you may wait a year or more for basic surgery.

The bribes are euphemistically called "gratuities."

Doctors are prioritizing procedures for their friends and relatives over others, and patients are even witnessing their own scheduled operations being bumped by well-connected patients.

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01/01 Links: A Palestinian Defeat Is Good for All; Israel is Jewish

From Ian:

Daniel Pipes: A Palestinian Defeat Is Good for All

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was photographed on December 21, carrying a copy of Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History, by John David Lewis. In that book, Lewis looks at six case studies and argues that in them all, “The tide of war turned when one side tasted defeat and its will to continue, rather than stiffening, collapsed.”
That Netanyahu should in any way be thinking along these lines is particularly encouraging at this moment of flux — when Sunni Arab states focus as never before on a non-Israeli threat (namely the Iranian one), Obama leaves Israel in the lurch at the United Nations Security Council and insurgent politics disrupt across the West. In other words, the timing’s exactly right to apply Lewis’ argument to the Palestinians. Actually, Israel successfully pursued a strategy of forcing the taste of defeat on its enemies through its first 45 years, so this would be a return to old ways.
That strategy starts by recognizing that, since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Palestinians and Israelis have pursued static and opposite goals. The Palestinians adopted a policy of rejectionism with the intent to eliminate every vestige of Jewish presence in what is now the territory of Israel. Differences among Palestinians tend to be tactical: Talk to the Israelis to win concessions or stick to total rejectionism? The Palestinian Authority represents the first approach and Hamas the second.
On the Israeli side, nearly everyone agrees on the need to win acceptance by Palestinians (and other Arabs and Muslims); differences are again tactical. Show Palestinians what they can gain from Zionism or break the Palestinians’ will? The Labor and Likud parties argue this out.
These two pursuits — rejectionism and acceptance — have remained basically unchanged for a century. Varying ideologies, objectives, tactics, strategies and actors mean that details have varied, even as the fundamentals remained remarkably in place.

Report: East Jerusalem Christmas Tree Decorated With Photos of Palestinian ‘Martyrs’ Killed While Attempting to Murder Jews Attracts Enthusiastic Visitors, Including Greek Orthodox Archbishop

A Christmas tree in east Jerusalem decorated with photos of Arab “martyrs” killed while committing terrorist attacks against Jews has been attracting prominent Arab Muslims and Christians, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Sunday.
According to the report, one such member of the Christian community was Theodosios, the Archbishop of Sebastia from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, who told passersby about the importance of the Palestinian people’s struggle for their land and holy sites.
The tree, declared Theodosios – known more commonly in the West as Atallah Hanna — constitutes a “Christmas message” from “the heart of Palestine” — that “we are one nation defending one issue…standing firm and remaining in the holy land.”
Other people who stopped by to gaze at the tree — which resembles a similar evergreen erected last year on the campus of nearby Al-Quds University – were even more outspoken in their praise for terrorists, according to Channel 2. Some went as far as to laud those who died during the “Al-Quds Intifada,” a reference to the surge in Palestinian terrorism, which began in September 2015 and has been characterized by stabbings, car-rammings and other acts of violence against Israelis.
In a video obtained by Channel 2, Israeli Border Police are seen arriving at the tree late at night and removing pictures of the “martyrs” hanging from its branches.

Israel Is Not the Occupier

This past summer, the section of the Republican Party’s platform on Israel included a key statement made in anticipation of President Obama’s betrayal of our great ally: “We reject the false notion that Israel is an occupier.”
The United Nations Security Council’s passage of Resolution 2334, an outrageous act of hostility personally engineered by President Barack Obama against the state of Israel, has rightly evoked great anger across all parts of the American political spectrum.
Given the anticipated effects of Resolution 2334, this policy statement is critical as it represents the central tenet of what will now unquestionably be the policy of the Trump administration and the pro-Israel community.
“Occupier” is nothing more than a polite way of calling Israel a thief, suggesting that Jewish invaders colonized territory belonging to the Arabs — territory that therefore must be restored to its rightful, victimized owners. The term is intentionally misused against Israel in order to shape negative misperceptions of its history and legitimacy, while perpetuating a sense of Palestinian-Arab victimhood. To suggest that the Jews are occupiers in a region that has been known as Judea for over 3,000-plus years is no less ridiculous than to suggest that Arabs are occupiers in Arabia.
“Occupier” is a legal term whose definition does not apply to Israel under the law. Israel’s legal title and rights to all of its present territory stem directly from an act of international law made in the post-World War I San Remo Agreement, which was then further recognized and incorporated in subsequent binding acts — from the Covenant of the League of Nations all the way through Article 80 of the United Nations’ charter. None of the national and political rights recognized as inherit to the Jewish people have ever been revoked, nullified or superseded by a subsequent act of international law.

Fifty years from now Barack Obama will be known to most Americans as, quite simply, the first African-American president of the United States. Aside from this he will have precious little to distinguish himself other than in the notable electoral deterioration of the Democratic Party under his tenure.

While future historians may join Alan Dershowitz in considering him among the worst foreign policy presidents in U.S. history, he will probably hold a very special place in the hearts of Jewish people throughout the world. This is true because he will likely be known as the American president who, whatever his honest intentions, did more than any to divide the Jewish people from one another and from the Jewish state.

The genius in this bit of Jewish slicing-and-dicing is in its multifaceted aspect.

Obama did not merely rub poison into the cleavage between progressive-left Jews and the rest of us. Nor did he merely drive a wedge between American Jews and Israeli Jews. He even managed, much to my astonishment, to divide pro-Democratic Party Jews among themselves and between themselves and, increasingly, the party as a whole.

Now that is quite an accomplishment.

Let's briefly go through it.

Dividing American Jews from One Another

Barack Obama can hardly be blamed for creating Jewish divisions over Israel, as Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor would readily agree. Nonetheless, it must be understood that while Obama may appreciate certain Jews as individuals he has never been friendly or sympathetic to the Jewish people as a whole... or so we can reasonably deduce from his posture toward the Jewish state.

On the contrary, along with figures like Mahmoud Abbas, Louis Farrakhan, George Galloway, Rashid Khalidi, Jeremy Corbyn, and Keith Ellison, Obama regards Israel as a rogue state imposing itself upon the "indigenous" Palestinian-Arab population. The Jewish people who live there are considered by their very presence, an impediment to peace.

Among the various ways that Obama's influence, therefore, served to crack Jewish solidarity, the first was in hammering the wedge between progressive-left Jewish Democrats, who generally show greater sympathy toward his views on Israel, and the rest of us who do not.

By insisting that Jews in Israel should be allowed to live in some places, like Tel Aviv, but not in others, like Hebron, the Obama administration animated a confrontation within American Jewry. Those loyal to the Democratic Party, like Peter Beinart and Alan Dershowitz, agreed that the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, in and of itself, represented an obstacle toward resolving the conflict. Beinart and Dershowitz may not agree on much, but they definitely agree on that. Others, like Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), believe (along with me) that Jewish people have every right to build housing on the lands of our ancestry. Furthermore, in a recent piece for the Jerusalem Post Isi Liebler acknowledged Klein as the ONLY American Jewish leader of national consequence to be consistently critical of Obama's transparent flaws and who, he says, "has been more than vindicated" in his views.

I couldn't agree more.

Given the existential nature of the long Arab aggression against the Jews in the Middle East, Obama's hostility toward Jews who live in the wrong place set Jew upon Jew in a manner that grew increasingly acrimonious throughout the period of his tenure. By supporting J-Street while devaluing AIPAC, Obama agitated this split. He also put his sincerest American-Jewish friends on the defensive before those of us who believe in Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria. Obama thereby forced his Jewish devotees into the position of justifying an unjustly racist stance toward the Jews of Israel.

Dividing American Jews from Israeli Jews

If Obama encouraged political divisions within the American Jewish community he also encouraged political divisions between American Jews and Israeli Jews. Because Israeli Jews understood how Obama's policies encouraged Palestinian-Arab violence and intransigence on the so-called "peace process," the vast majority of Israeli Jews quickly learned to distrust the man. Jewish Democrats who wished to maintain their progressive bona fides were thereby leaned into ideological tensions with friends and relatives in Israel.

In order to maintain good-standing with their fellow Democrats, Jews who care about Israel were put into an exceedingly uncomfortable position. They could support Obama or they could support Jewish rights to property on ancestral Jewish land, but they could not do both. And, again, Obama did not create this dilemma, he simply forced the issue. Obama used the two-state solution as a reason for opposing Jews like our friends Joseph and Melody Hartuv who live in Hebron and thereby allegedly stand as an obstacle to peace. He was not even the first president of the United States to do so, but he was certainly the most insistent.

Hebron, of course, is the site of the Cave of the Patriarchs. This is a place that, with a little encouragement from Obama, the United Nations decided belongs to Arabs. Through the unjust, if not racist, insistence that the "settlers" represent an obstacle to peace by their mere presence, Obama encouraged his American Jewish supporters to join him in condemning their fellow Jews. He managed this while still maintaining a pro-Israel face to his Jewish followers. Furthermore, by playing along with the erasure of Jewish history on the ancestral lands of the Jewish people, Obama also encouraged the dilution of American-Jewish support for that country and those people.

Dividing American Jews within the Democratic Party

I have considerable sympathy for Jewish Democrats.

Many in their own party hold them in contempt for defending Israel, while much of the rest of the American Jewish population casts a gimlet eye upon their never-ending pro-Obama apologetics and sycophancy. These are Jews who, from political and ideological standpoints, are getting smacked around by all sides and finding it increasingly difficult to walk the "progressive Zionist" tightrope. Divisions thereby emerged between the true Obama devotees and those going wobbly watching Obama's year-in-and-year-out hostility toward Israel.

In this way, within the Democratic Party, there are good Jews and bad Jews.

Good Jewish Democrats support Barack Obama while bad Jewish Democrats question the wisdom of breathing life into the corpse of Oslo. Good Jewish Democrats believe that if only Netanyahu had pushed Yosef and Melody out of their home in Hebron then peace could be achieved through the offices of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Bad Jewish Democrats tend to doubt this. They understand that Palestinian-Arabs have no desire to create a state for themselves in peace with Israel. Indeed, why should Palestinian-Arabs hope for a conclusion of hostilities via a negotiated two-state settlement when Obama and the UN want to give them a state on Jewish land in a manner that maintains those hostilities?

Whatever happens going forward, however, the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel are, and will continue to be, one.

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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Chanukah Extra: Israel Philharmonic, Maoz Tzur

As we say goodbye to Chanukah, here is the Israel Philharmonic (with Yedidya Wexler singing) playing the grandest version of Maoz Tzur you are likely to hear.

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Humanist Israeli leftists refer to Israelis they don't like as "vermin"

Dror Etkes loves all humans. His Twitter account includes this anti-racist cartoon:

But his love for all humans doesn't extend to Jews who want to live in Judea and Samaria.

Haaretz quotes him as saying "Israel’s racist education minister is busy trying to find ways to make vermin like the Amona outpost kosher."

So while he loves all humans, he draws the line at vermin.

This is not the only ironic use of the term by a left-winger who pretends to be against racism. Before the 2013 elections, Yehonatan Geffen wrote (also in Haaretz), without the slightest sense of shame:

Watching the televised campaign ads physically turns your stomach: The religious parties are busy sowing hatred while the right-wing parties, as usual, are focused on fear-mongering.

I am not particularly interested in disclosing who's got my vote, but I can tell you that it rhymes with sheretz [also the Hebrew word for vermin].

Yet the real vermin is the country's stable coalition,

Literally two sentence after pretending to be outraged at people who are "sowing hatred" he refers to his political opponents as "vermin." And Meretz is a party that explicitly puts human rights in its platform.

It's bad when anyone dehumanizes people, but it is the height of hypocrisy to pretend to be an advocate of human rights and anti-hate while at the very same moment being in the forefront of pushing hate yourself.

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Lies, damn lies and New York Times-quoted statistics

One of the easiest ways for people to make their points about what Israelis and Palestinians supposedly want is by cherry-picking surveys on the matter and then using those results as proof.

Causal readers of the articles generally aren't attuned to the specifics (or quality) of the surveys and give outsized importance to them.

Bernard Avishai in The New York Times uses a combination of pseudo-statistics and his own observations to make sweeping generalizations that, in the end, have little basis in reality.

Mr. Friedman’s allies in Israel’s right-wing Likud Party and its nationalist and Orthodox coalition partners see the land, including the West Bank, which they call Judea and Samaria, as holy. They regard any strategic territorial compromise entailing a withdrawal of Israeli sovereignty as sinful. In this respect, they benefit politically from the violence produced by the occupation.
Perhaps 40 percent of Jewish Israelis hold these attitudes, which imply others, such as theocracy over Supreme Court defenses of individual dignity, or privileges for Jewish citizens over Arab citizens, whose right to vote they consider provisional. A clear majority of these rightists want the release of Yigal Amir, who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. They see Europeans as anti-Semitic unless proven otherwise, Reform Jews as apostates, and Islam as terrorism’s gateway drug. Last week, the editor in chief of Haaretz, Aluf Benn, warned that Greater Israel zealots have moved to control the news media, schools, courts and army. “That means replacing the heads of cultural institutions and threatening a halt to government funding for those who don’t go with the flow,” he said.
People in Tel Aviv are cut from different cloth. Invite friends from Tel Aviv to dinner in Jerusalem, and they raise an eyebrow, as if you’re asking them to leave Israel for the ancient Kingdom of Judea.
The ethos of Tel Aviv — which runs, in effect, up the seaboard to Haifa — reflects the attitudes of another 40 percent of the Israeli Jewish population, which declares itself secular. One can slice the data many ways, but these Israelis see themselves as a part of the Western world and Israel’s Jewishness as custodianship of a historic civilization, not Orthodox rabbinical law.
Zionism, to them, means a culture. There may be a sentimental attachment to the rhetoric of Zionism’s insurgent period around independence: “redeeming” the land of Israel, “answering” the Holocaust, building a “majority” of people with J-positive blood, and so forth. But for most liberal Israelis, Zionism concretely means building a modern Hebrew-speaking civil society that can assimilate all comers.
There are some less liberal, who might call themselves “centrists.” They fear (or loathe) Arabs — about a third of secular Israelis would entertain expulsion — and have given up on the Oslo peace process, if not the two-state solution in the abstract. Yet they think the occupation, for which their conscripted children provide the backbone, should be run according to civilized norms. They fear (or loathe) settlers, too. In 2016, reflecting on the influence of the settlers, senior military and political leaders worried publicly about the growth of Israeli “fascism.”

Avishai divides up Israeli society into 40% religious fanatic bigots, 40% enlightened secular humanists, and 20% part-time bigots. He cites no figures to back up these claims outside a link to a Pew article that doesn't ask those questions.

But that Pew article links to another Pew poll which shed some, but not enough, light on how Israelis are divided. And the situation is far more complex and very different from how Avishai says.

Starting with that poll, we see that a strong plurality of Israeli Jews, 42% saying continued settlement building helps Israel's security to 30% saying it hurts Israel's security, with 25% saying it makes no difference.

Avishai's 40% figure for the Tel Aviv-style Jews is clearly wrong. But so is his characterization of secular Jews in Israel.

On that same question, among secular Jews, the numbers are flipped: 42% say settlements in the West Bank hurt Israel’s security, while 31% say they help, and the rest think they do not make much difference or do not take a position either way.

Which means that less than 20% of Israelis - 42% of 40% - have the viewpoints on settlements that Avishai implies.

This isn't the only way that the 40% who define themselves as secular don't espouse the views Avishai claims they do. In every way, they are far more to the right than he says. For example, 36% favor expelling some Arabs from the country (the survey question was very vague so it is unclear how they interpreted the question.)

Most Hilonim, 62%, place themselves in the political center, and 24% on the Right, with only 14% identifying with the Left. This directly refutes most of Avishai's thesis.

The Hilonim who belong to political parties most commonly are affiliated with Likud, again contradicting Avishai's implication that Likud is a party that supports a theocracy in Israel.

The Pew survey goes on to say that 87% of Hilonim say they hosted or attended a Seder last Passover, and about half (53%) say they at least sometimes light candles before the start of the Sabbath.

Avishai is equally wrong in implying that 40% of Israelis are fundamentalist religious fanatics. Only 18% identify as hareidi or dati. And even many datiim would not recognize themselves as Avishai describes them.

Israeli society is much less religiously conservative than Avishai claims, but much more politically conservative.

If Avishai so badly mischaracterizes a survey that he clearly read, how can you believe anything he writes about how Israeli society is? Avishai is not just spinning facts - he is knowingly lying about them.

And the New York Times fact checkers are doing exactly what they always do when the "facts" support their biases - they don't bother checking them.

(h/t POTerritory)

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This is just...bizarre.

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