Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

07/11 Links Pt2: PalExpo: Outside and Inside; Isso Amro: A Pretext for NGO and UN Lawfare

From Ian:

First the good (and exclusive) news about PalExpo, the event at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London which happened at the weekend. Mark Taylor, the CEO of the Conference Centre, was not in London at the weekend. Because he was on vacation. In Israel! #BDSFail.
The other good news was the resistance to the event, led by the StopPalExpo Coalition.
Sharon Klaff in particular worked really hard to ensure there was a pro-Israel anti-extremist presence outside the venue on both days. Well done Sharon and to all who came in support and helped in any way, especially the Zionist Federation.
Thanks also to the Met who ensured our safety, without in any way disrupting the sometimes very heated debates in the blazing sunshine outside the venue.
Now the not-so-good news. This event should never have been allowed to happen at a publicly-owned venue. Because it was organised by Friends of Al-Aqsa, which has been charged with expressing support for terrorists. And because it featured 25 speakers who have either supported terrorism, expressed antisemitism or defamed Israel – or its supporters – with lies (this booklet says 24, but Hatam Bazian was a late addition).
We have to conclude that after the election the government is too weak to act against this part-hatefest (there was also an unobjectionable cultural element). And too preoccupied with Brexit – and at DCLG (the Department responsible for the QEII Centre), too preoccupied with the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower inferno.
The organisers have defended one speaker, Shaykh Ebrahim Bham, who quoted Goebbels in a sermon (“People tell me that Jews are human beings. Yes, I know they are human beings. Just as fleas are also animals. Just as fleas are also animals, they are also part of human beings like that”).

How East Germany and the West German Left Waged War on Israel

The historian Jeffrey Herf, in Undeclared Wars with Israel, tells of East Germany’s vicious anti-Zionism, which went well beyond condemning Israel and expressing solidarity with those seeking its destruction: indeed, the German Democratic Republic provided funds and weapons to both Arab regimes and the PLO. For its part, Herf relates, the West German far left equated opposition to the government in Bonn with opposition to Israel, often crossing the line into anti-Semitism and, for the most committed, active participation in terrorist attacks against Jews. Allan Arkush writes in his review:
Unlike other Soviet-bloc nations, East Germany didn’t break relations with Israel after the Six-Day War—because it never had them in the first place. This was mostly due to its refusal to pay reparations for the crimes of the Nazis. But it did denounce Israel as the aggressor and likened it to the Nazi regime. . . . In the ensuing years, East Germany’s sales of armaments to the Arab world . . . ran in to the hundreds of millions of dollars. . . .
The West German far left, [meanwhile], emerged in a society that believed its own legitimacy to be bound up with a Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) that entailed not only repudiation of the Nazis but reparations to their Jewish victims. While East Germany was denying any responsibility for the Nazi regime and excoriating Israel, West Germany was transferring massive amount of money to it and offering the country its broad support. . . .
As the New Left turned against Israel after 1967, West German leftists followed suit and, in Herf’s words, “redefined the meaning of Vergangenheitsbewältigung” to justify the equation of the Jewish state’s alleged crimes with those of the Nazis. Leftists in the Federal Republic began speaking of the malign effects of Germany’s “Jewish complex” and condemning philo-Semitism.

NGO Monitor: Isso Amro: A Pretext for NGO and UN Lawfare

The trial of Isso Amro, which began on July 9 with charges of unlawful activity including violence, is deeply intertwined with the political complexities and narratives of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This issue has become an opportunity for advocacy NGOs and the UN officials closely linked to these organizations to falsely impugn the Israeli justice system and distort international law along the way. This campaign is a form of lawfare, exploiting the language of justice and aimed at demonizing and delegitimizing Israel.
Two UN officials, Michael Lynk and Michel Forst (Special Rapporteurs for Palestinian territories and human rights defenders, respectively), released an absurdly prejudicial statement (July 7, 2017) that “If the Israeli military court convicts Mr. Amro on any of the charges against him, the convictions will be stained by reasonable doubts about the system’s ability to ensure justice.” Likewise, Amnesty International prejudged the case before any evidence was presented and announced (November 22, 2016) “If he is convicted we will consider Issa Amro a prisoner of conscience.”
These statements do not point to the quality of the Israeli justice system, but rather to the possibility of an outcome that these ideological advocates do not like. The claims of the UN officials and Amnesty notwithstanding, the legitimacy of the verdict in this case will be established by the evidence presented by the prosecution and defense. Israel’s military courts employ the same evidentiary rules as civilian courts, and their standards are on par or exceed any system in the world. (Under international law, specifically the Geneva Conventions, Israel is required to try Palestinians domiciled in the West Bank and arrested on security offenses in military courts.)
In other words, either Amro violated the law, or he did not. Being automatically labeled a “human rights defender” does not generate immunity from prosecution.

A Palestinian human rights NGO has confirmed the story we mentioned recently that the Palestinian Authority has greatly reduced the number of permits allowed for Gazans requiring hospitalization to leave the enclave.

PCHR has the statistics:

Data collected by PCHR indicates there is a gradual decline in the number of medical referrals issued for the Gaza Strip patients, as the number reached 2,190 referrals in March, but declined to 1,756 in April at a rate of 19.8%. Moreover, the medical referrals decreased in May to 1,484 at a rate of 32.2%. The information collected by PCHR shows that the number of referrals in June did not exceed 500, which points out that they declined at a rate of over 75%. On the other hand, the External Medical Treatment Department adopted a new mechanism when dealing with serious cases, under which patients are referred upon the approval of the Department’s Director, as the “financial coverage is offered later and following the coordination needed”. On Thursday, 15 June 2017, this mechanism stopped upon the instructions given by Ramallah’s Ministry of Health to the External Medical Treatment Department in Gaza. The number of medical referrals approved by the Higher Medical Committee in the Gaza Strip since early June is over 2,500 referrals so far for patients suffering from serious diseases that have no treatment in Gaza. These patients are awaiting for the approval on the financial coverage for their treatment abroad. However, Ramallah’s External Medical Treatment Department issued only 400 referrals. This raises concerns on the delay of about a month and a half, in addition to the decline in the number of medical referrals despite the approval of the Higher Medical Committee in the Gaza Strip.

Not only that, but patients that do get permission to go to the West Bank for treatment are being rejected by the hospitals themselves!

PCHR is shocked as the West Bank hospitals has started rejecting hospital appointments for the Gaza Strip patients with medical referrals from the External Medical Treatment Department although these hospitals used to reserve a bed for the referred patient under the term “financial coverage offered later“. The new measure taken hinders the Gaza Strip patients’ access to those hospitals and aggravates the health situation.

The PA has shown time and time again that it doesn't care about its own people.

Why should the rest of the world prioritize helping those who actively and consciously allow their own people to die?

Is Abbas' decision to stop electricity, medicines, anesthetic, medical equipment and other life saving material from Gaza morally different from Bashar Assad's siege of Yarmouk? Yet Assad is considered a monster and Abbas a peacemaker.

It goes to show that facts have little to do with how (or even if) things are reported.

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The BDS movement recently celebrated their 12th anniversary with a list of 200 "victories."

They include:

June, 2010 – The Pixies cancel concert in wake of Mavi Marmara massacre

The Pixies are playing in Israel later this month.

June, 2011 – Basketball legend and actor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar cancels visit to Israel in response to “Nakba Day violence”

Basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons were among the guests at an event at the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles marking the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

December, 2013 – American Studies Association endorses academic boycott of Israel by sweeping majority membership vote after national council passes unanimously

The ASA reversed itself almost completely a year later.

June, 2010 – Carlos Santana cancels concert in Tel Aviv following boycott calls

Santana played in Israel last summer.

January, 2014 – Hollywood Star Scarlett Johansson resigns as Oxfam International Global Ambassador due to deal with Sodastream

Um, doesn't that mean that she rejects BDS?

June 6, 2014 – Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation divests from G4S

This is one of several "victories" they claim for investors selling their stakes in, or not choosing to hire G4S, Veolia and others that had nothing at all to do with Israel.

These guys just can't stop lying.

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07/11 Links Pt1: Phillips: ISRAEL WON! NOW GET OVER IT; 120,000 Palestinian Children Attend Summer Terrorist Camps

From Ian:

New Knesset lobby unveils plan for peace: Total Palestinian surrender

Israel has already defeated the Palestinians. All that’s left is for them to surrender.
That, at least, was an argument being made in Jerusalem this week. Led by the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, pro-Israel leaders and analysts gathered here to highlight local support for their aim of reframing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict internationally.
“After more than a century, the conflict is really over,” Daniel Pipes, the forum’s president, told JTA. “As an American, I would like my government to say to the Israeli government, ‘Do what you need to do to convince the Palestinians they lost.’”
Pipes on Sunday night held an English-language event at the Begin Heritage Center to cheer Tuesday’s launch of a Knesset lobby committed to forcing the Palestinians to admit defeat. He said he hoped the Knesset Israel Victory Caucus — along with a public opinion poll he released Sunday to JTA — would help them convince US policymakers to “let Israel win.”
In an article in the December 2016 issue of Commentary, Pipes described the things Israel might do to “encourage Palestinians to accept Israel and discourage rejectionism.” They include charging the Palestinians Authority for material damage from terrorism; blocking Palestinian Authority officials from returning to the West Bank if their colleagues incite violence; quiet, anonymous burials for Palestinians killed attacking Israelis, and shutting off water and electricity supplies to punish violence by Palestinians.
“Inducing a change of heart is not a pretty or pleasant process,” wrote Pipes. However, he continued, “Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted the will to fight.”

Melanie Phillips: ISRAEL WON! NOW GET OVER IT

The Middle East Forum held a meeting in Jerusalem last night to discuss Daniel Pipes’s “Victory Caucus“, his project for breaking the Arab-Israel impasse. He urges that the conflict should be reframed as a war which Israel has won and the Arabs have lost rather than a never-ending impasse with demands upon Israel for negotiations, peace processes and compromises. I spoke briefly at this meeting. You can watch my comments on this clip from the Facebook Live video below. You can also watch the video of the whole meeting here. A transcript of my remarks follows beneath the clip.

If the Palestinians Care about Peace, Why Do They Pay Salaries to Terrorists?

All over the world, people take the side of the Palestinians without knowing much about them and their collective beliefs and intentions. Palestinians who go abroad looking for praise and propaganda seem pleasant. They don’t find it hard to convince innocent Westerners that they have justice on their side.
But sometimes, even in the Middle East, a window opens and the truth peeks out. At the moment, the struggle over official payments to Palestinian terrorists provides an exceptionally useful vantage point.
For many years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) or one of its offshoots has been paying regular salaries to the families of dead or imprisoned terrorists. The 2016 PA budget says it now pays relatives of “martyrs” the equivalent of $183 million a year and families of imprisoned terrorists $135 million. According to the Times of Israel, the Palestinians have paid out $1.12 billion during the last four years to terrorists and their families. The money, all in U.S. dollars, comes from foreign aid grants.
The new administration in Washington has decided this practice should end. At his meeting in Bethlehem with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the PA, Donald Trump said: “Peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded or rewarded.”

How many UN agencies does it take to screw in a Palestinian light bulb?

Here is an almost complete list of UN agencies that work in the Palestinian territories.

Name	Full
FAO	Food and Agriculture Organization
ILO	International Labour Organization
ITC	International Trade Center
OHCHR	Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
UN Habitat	UN Habitat
UN Women	UN Women
UNCTAD	United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNDP	UN Development Program
UNDSS	United Nations Department of Safety & Security
UNEP	UN environment
UNESCO	United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNFPA	United Nations Population Fund
UNICEF	United Nations Children's Fund
UNIDO	United Nations Industrial Development Organization
UNMAS	United Nations Mine Action Service
UNODC	United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
UNOPS	United Nations Office for Project Services
UNRWA	United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees
WFP	World Food Programme
WHO	World Health Organization

There are so many UN agencies in the territories that another organization, UNDAF (United Nations Development Assistance Framework) is needed to coordinate the other 20-odd agencies.

As a result of this infantilizing of Palestinian Arabs, they have no idea how to do anything themselves.

Think about it. The PA has existed for over 20 years now. Yet basic services that one would expect a nascent nation to do are still not done, and Israel is blamed instead of them acting like adults.

A tiny example from a recent newsletter I saw from the "Directorate of Joint Service Council Ministry of Local Government Japan International Cooperation Agency" which helps the PA with waste management.

The newsletter says:

Open dumps (or so-called “random dumps”) have a negative impact on the environment and on the public health and safety. The impact of open dumping is potentially affects water resources, and some additional expenditure on waste management, which could provide clean water cheaply (ISWA, 2017). Now is the time to consider closing or upgrading open dumpsites and changing waste disposal practices. In West Bank - Palestine, non-negligible number of open dumps were in operation.

MoLG-JICA’s project supports the initiatives for Joint Service Councils (JSCs) to change the final disposal works from open dumps to designated landfills where the waste is better contained and covered, and where environmental impacts from waste disposal are progressively reduced. In order to promote the initiatives, the project has focused on five JSCs for their capacity development in waste management. Since January 2015, three out of the five JSCs, successfully closed 4 open dumps, but still 17 open dumps are in operation.

Why can the PA not close open waste dumps and create proper facilities after 20 years? If they asked for the money from the international community with a specific plan, they'd get it. But they wait for the Japanese to come in and tell them "Hey! You are dumping waste where it can hurt people!"

Why do the Palestinians need outside people to tell them how to keep their own areas clean?

This, and hundreds of other NGO projects, create a cycle where Palestinians depend on the rest of the world to do basic services for them and Palestinians themselves act like spoiled brats who cannot assume any responsibility for their own actions.

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Later this month, a romance novel called "The Last Kibbutz" by Sabrina Abreu will be published.

Set in an Israeli kibbutz, the story about a Brazilian woman named Sofia, who decides to work as a volunteer picking apples leaving behind her professional life in São Paulo in search of new loves, friends and experiences.

The author lived on a kibbutz for a year so she knows a bit about the subject.

But she received a letter from an editor at her publishing house, nVersos, demanding that she add criticism of Israel in her novel. The note said, "At first glance, the work is not meant to be political, and therefore does not defend Zionism or Israel. For those who follow the conflict, however, the absence of critical commentary on Israel's actions toward Palestine is obvious. While extolling a way of life that is disappearing - the collectivism of kibbutz - it ends up defending Israel."

Another editor's note suggested that she consult "an expert on the Middle East" to make her book more in line with the publishing house's idea of political correctness. Another note asked her explicitly if she would change the novel.

Abreu says, "They suggested that my approach would be naïve because it does not address the Palestinian issue, something that does not influence people's daily lives there."

The publishing house claims that she agreed to the changes to add an anti-Israel element to the book. However, she changed publishers, and the book is being released by Simonsen.

(h/t Golan Shahar)

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From B'nai Brith Canada:

B’nai Brith Canada is strongly condemning an anti-Israel art exhibit on display at Western University's McIntosh Gallery which received grants from a federal funding agency, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).The display, entitled "Choreographies of Resistance," glorifies the actions of Palestinian protesters, including stone-throwers who promote violence under the guise of resistance. In Israel, a reported fourteen civilians have been murdered by Palestinian stone-throwers, including infants such as Adele Biton and Yehuda Shoham, as well as three Israeli Arabs who were attacked because they were mistaken for Jews.The creator of the exhibit is Rehab Nazzal, the sister of Palestinian terrorist leader Khaled Nazzal. In 2014, Rehab drew condemnation for a similar display at Ottawa City Hall which glorified Khaled and other Palestinian terrorists. Rehab continues to justify terrorist attacks plotted by her brother, including the 1974 massacre of 22 Israeli schoolchildren, describing him as a "martyr" who fought for "justice."Despite Rehab's abuse of art to whitewash acts of terror, research by B'nai Brith shows that the SSHRC handed her $35,000 in 2015 in order to continue her work."It is irresponsible that taxpayer dollars are being used to finance this anti-Israel exhibit," said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B'nai Brith Canada."The false narrative of victimhood on display at this exhibit deliberately ignores Palestinian car rammings, suicide bombings, the recent knife intifada and lethal use of rocks targeting civilians due to a continual campaign of incitement. Rehab Nazzal's public support for her terrorist brother is deplorable."

The description of the exhibit (and the graphic that celebrates violence) is quite disgusting:

The exhibition, entitled Choreographies of Resistance, includes photographs, video, and sound works that focus on the Palestinian struggle against settler-colonialism in one of the world’s most volatile hotspots, Nazzal notes. It includes a video installation seen through the “eyes” of a gas-mask, and an installation in which photographic images are projected onto hundreds of handmade slingshots as it pays tribute to Palestinians who have lost their lives in what the artist notes is an "intifada, or uprising."
“This will be an immersive journey for visitors, as these works will transmit Palestinian civilians’ experiences from the streets of the occupied West Bank to the gallery space of London, Ontario,” she said.

Really? Palestinians wear gas masks all day because of random Israeli tear gas that happens to land where they live, nothing at all to do with the proud "resisters" hurling rocks and firebombs that she is celebrating?

It is sickening that this "artists' who glorifies the deaths of Jews is being funded by Canadian tax dollars in the name of "art."

Her previous exhibit was discussed here.

(h/t Josh K)

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Just some more BDS hypocrisy about Lincoln Center

A group of anti-Israel artists - including, of course, Roger Waters - signed a petition to force Lincoln Center not to show a play that was partially funded by the Israeli government. As the NYT reports:

More than 60 artists, including four Pulitzer Prize winners and other prominent writers, actors, directors and playwrights, have signed an open letter calling on Lincoln Center to cancel performances of a play co-produced by two Israeli theater companies and backed by the Israeli government.

The play, “To the End of the Land,” is produced by the Cameri Theater of Tel Aviv and Ha’Bima National Theater of Israel and is based on a critically acclaimed 2008 novel by David Grossman about a mother who tries to escape from her worry over her son’s military service by going on a hike in the Galilee.

The play, part of the Lincoln Center Festival, is being presented July 24-27 “with support of Israel’s Office of Cultural Affairs in North America,” according to a news release. This is the main point of contention in the letter, even though Mr. Grossman, the play’s author, has been an outspoken critic of the Israeli government in the past. The letter was organized by Adalah-NY, an advocacy group that calls for the boycott of Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.

“It is deeply troubling that Lincoln Center, one of the world’s leading cultural institutions, is helping the Israeli government to implement its systematic ‘Brand Israel’ strategy of employing arts and culture to divert attention from the state’s decades of violent colonization, brutal military occupation and denial of basic rights to the Palestinian people,” the letter reads.

Debora Spar, the president of Lincoln Center, rejected the calls for the play’s cancellation.

“While we acknowledge the feelings of those who would prefer that we not allow that performance to continue, we will not be canceling it,” Ms. Spar said in a statement.

The pro-Israel Creative Community for Peace responded with their own letter with 45 high-level entertainment industry executives denouncing the attempt to ban the play.

But in their counter-letter, the CCFP brings up an interesting point:

As we know, government support is crucial for the arts. Just this month, in fact, there are at least three other events at Lincoln Center that include support from governments around the world:
The film “Birdshot” — funded by the Doha Film Institute, a Qatari organization headed by the ruling Al Thani family — was screened there on July 6.
From July 3-8, the American Ballet Theatre — funded by the US federal government together with the governments of New York City and New York State — is performing its “Tchaikovsky Spectacular.”
And from July 26-30, the Bolshoi Ballet — which lists as its partners two Russian government news agencies — will perform “The Taming of the Shrew.”
While some of us at CCFP (and perhaps even at Lincoln Center) may disagree with various actions of these governments, we can all agree that punishing artists from these countries by shunning them for receiving crucial funding from their governments is not the answer. Depriving audiences of their work, their perspectives, and their contributions to culture around the world is imprudent.
Punishing artists from Only One of these countries — as the signatories of open letter are attempting with Israel — is both imprudent and discriminatory.

Yes, there is no one protesting Qatari or Russian involvement in subsidizing the arts. Only Israel.

Apparently, the BDS folks have no problem with those who subsidize Islamic terror or those who support Syrian war crimes when they subsidizing art. Only Israel.

Now, why might that be?

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(This post is pinned to the top on July 10, scroll down to see other posts for today.)

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07/10 Links Pt2: Waking up to a world where political allies are enemies of the Jews; Lancet again levels false accusations against Israel.

From Ian:

Waking up to a world where political allies are enemies of the Jews

One such dreamer who may be slowly snapping out of it is ADL National Director Jonathan Greenblatt, whose recent article in TIME magazine carries the headline, “Anti-Semitism is Creeping into Progressivism.” But to claim that it is “creeping” into the landscape of the political left is shockingly ignorant. It has been an integral part of it for decades.
Unfortunately, many decent liberals have turned a blind eye to left-wing anti-Zionist agitation that is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism. Those who say they wish to deny Jews statehood, the right of self-defense or the ability to live in peace in their homeland are practicing discrimination against Jews. This is the definition of anti-Semitism. And it is on the left, not the right, where support for such hatred, whether in the form of backing for the BDS movement or cultural boycotts, is growing.
It isn’t alt-right internet trolls who are orchestrating anti-Jewish protests like those of Sarsour or efforts to boycott Israeli plays at Lincoln Center, where the appearance of even the work of a critic of the Jewish state like David Grossman was enough to generate protest from mainstream artists. Nor is it Trump who is responsible for turning universities into places where Jewish students no longer feel safe to express their Jewish identity.
But unfortunately, all too many liberals would still rather believe Trump—their main political foe—is the real reason anti-Semitism is growing.
It’s long past time for the Jewish community to understand that its best allies in this struggle are conservative Christians with whom they disagree on social issues, while it is their alleged friends on the left who are preaching intolerance for Jews. That doesn’t obligate them to abandon their political principles, but they need to understand the world is a complicated place where Jewish safety can be endangered by solidarity with the left.

New study reveals Europe’s rising anti-Semitism forces Jews to leave or hide

Why do half of French Jews want to leave France? The rise of violent anti-Semitism beginning around the turn of the century has made French Jews justifiably concerned about their personal safety.
A University of Oslo study published in June is one of the most methodologically sophisticated and comprehensive reports in dissecting the growth of Europe’s anti-Semitism problem.
Authored by Dr. Johannes Due Enstad of the Center for Research on Extremism, the study documents violent anti-Semitism from 2005-2015, analyzing seven countries based on comparable data for France, the U.K., Germany and Sweden, with additional non-comparable data for Norway, Denmark and Russia.
Since they feel unsafe as a direct consequence of violent anti-Semitism, one in five Jews in Sweden and the U.K., one in four in Germany, and as mentioned previously, half of the Jews in France have considered emigrating. But it is not just something that Jews think about. In 2015, 10,000 Western European Jews departed for a new life in Israel, the largest number leaving Europe since 1948.
There is no upward or downward trend in the period measured. There is a consistently elevated level of anti-Semitism compared to the 1990s.
French Jews are more likely than German, Swedish and British Jews to have personally experienced a violent attack in the final five years covered by the study. Although the incidence of anti-Semitism for France is the highest, responses about personal attacks during the study’s final five years from Swedish and German Jews is not far behind. The largest gap in anti-Semitism is between British Jews and Jews living in Norway, Denmark and Russia.

Fred Maroun: We Arabs are damn lucky that Jews do not behave like Arabs

When I see Arab hatred directed at Israel, such as the Palestinian Authority’s repeated attempts through UNESCO to deny Jewish history in Jerusalem, I shake my head in disbelief. The hypocrisy is astounding.
Arab countries, even Egypt and Jordan which have signed peace agreements with Israel, gag pro-Israel opinions and promote antisemitic fallacies, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion forgery. In Lebanon, it is a criminal offense to communicate with an Israeli for any reason.
If Jews behaved like us, Israeli media would ban any criticism of Israel and the Israeli government would disseminate lies about Arabs and Muslims. Instead, Israeli media and the Israeli parliament provide platforms for a wide range of opinions, including the most extreme anti-Israel opinions. In the Knesset, the Arab members who support Hamas, a terrorist organization openly calling for the killing of Jews, are free to speak just like everyone else. When Israel’s prime minister made a comment that was perceived as anti-Arab, he was widely denounced by other Israelis, including the Israeli president, and the prime minister later apologized.
During the Israel-Arab war in May 1948, Azzam Pasha, the General Secretary of the Arab League, announced, “This will be a war of extermination, a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades”. Before the Israel-Arab war of 1967, Syrian Defense Minister Hafez Assad boasted, “The time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation”, and Egypt’s President Abdul Nasser threatened, “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel”.

The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture
Yoram Hazony
Cambridge University Press
2012

I was inspired to read this work as I responded to an article by David Hazony, Yoram's brother, on how to keep young Westerners interested in Judaism. Rather than concentrate on importing Israeli values into the West, which I believe is only a stopgap, I felt that there was a lot of intellectual appeal to Judaism that is outside the traditional Orthodox/yeshiva framework that has not been exploited, and I used this book as an example of how Judaism can be made relevant to the next generation.

But of course I needed to read it myself to make sure that what I said was true. And I am very glad I did.

Yoram Hazony's work here is a challenge to many basic beliefs and ideas that are widely held..

First of all, it is a challenge to traditional philosophy. In Hazony's telling, there has been a huge divide in Western culture between Scripture and classical philosophy and , the first being identified with "revelation" and the latter with "reason." For the last several centuries, "reason" has been elevated and "revelation" denigrated in academia.

Hazony demolishes this idea from two directions. He shows how some influential Greek philosophers framed their own ideas in terms of "revelation." But more importantly, he shows how Western thought has mistakenly conflated Christian Scripture, which indeed is revelation, and Hebrew Scripture, which Hazony argues is far more inclined towards reason. He gives many examples of how God punishes people for doing things that they were never explicitly commanded against, and rewarded for things they were never commanded to do, in stories such as Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, Sodom, Shifra and Pua and many others. In these cases it is expected by Hebrew Scripture that people would know what the right thing to do is by using only their own logic.

Hazony shows that Jeremiah holds his own against the Greek philosophers and indicates that the only reason he is not studied with the same attention as a philosopher is because of the idea that the entire Bible has nothing relevant to say about reason. He dedicates an entire chapter on Jeremiah's epistemology.

Hazony also writes a tour de force on the differences between how philosophers have understood truth up until recently and how the Biblical authors understood it, in a way that only now the Western world is catching up to. Very briefly, Hazony shows that from Aristotle onwards, "truth" has been defined as a quality of speech agrees with reality (correspondence theory.) But in Hebrew Scriptures "truth" is a radically different idea - "truth" applies not only to speech but to objects and ideas directly.

Hazony postulates that the Hebrew words normally translated as "truth" and "belief" (emet and emunah) are cognates of each other - something I am not yet convinced of - but he does make a strong case that both words in Hebrew Scripture are different aspects of trustworthiness or reliability. He masterfully hinges his proof that the Hebrew Scripture does not distinguish between word and object with the word "davar" which means both. "Devarim" (plural) are what can be true or false (sheker) , and the only way that a "davar" can be considered true is if it is found to be what it is supposed to be after time and circumstances allow one to see the big picture. (I hope this oversimplification is not inaccurate.)

Only in the last century has philosophy started ti question the idea of the independence of words and reality - yet Judaism always understood the two to be related if not identical.

Secondly, and in a related fashion, this book is a challenge to Christian thought. Hazony highlights the definition of "faith" created by early Church thinker Tertullian, who not only highlights the difference between faith and reason but exults in it, almost bragging that the basic ideas of Christianity are absurd to men of reason. "...You have discovered what they are will you find anything to be so foolish as believing in a God that has been born, and that of a virgin, and of a fleshly nature too, who wallowed in all the before-mentioned humiliations of nature? ... Other matters for shame find I none which can prove me to be shameless in a good sense, and foolish in a happy one, by my own contempt of shame. The Son of God was crucified; I am not ashamed because men must needs be ashamed of it. And the Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. And He was buried, and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible."

Jewish Scripture does not think like Tertullian. There is no catechism in the Hebrew Scripture that describes everything that must be believed, as Christianity has. On the contrary, the characters in the Hebrew Scripture must work hard to understand the ways of God and even the best of them, Moses, could only glimpse a tiny aspect of them. God's wisdom described in the Hebrew Scripture, or at least a great part of it, is attainable by man through thinking.

Finally, this work is a challenge to traditional Orthodox yeshiva-type thinking. Hazony creates what can only be called a "hiddush" (novelty) in claiming that the Hebrew Scripture makes a distinction between shepherds, who symbolize creativity and even disobedience, with farmers/city builders who symbolize adherence and kingdoms, which the Torah is suspicious of. God instructed man to toil in the fields in his curse after the sin of Adam and Eve, but Abel chose to be a shepherd instead - and God preferred his offering over Cain's. The shepherds, from Abel through Abraham and Moses and David, are not shy about challenging God - and God likes them and rewards them for it. This is not a point that one will be taught in a yeshiva or seminary, but Hazony buttresses his argument well.

Altogether, this is a very important and challenging work. yet it is only meant as an introduction and framework for what hopefully will be a much larger field of philosophy (and, Hazony emphasizes, political theory) based on Hebrew sources.

My point that I made in my earlier article mentioning this book stands: Judaism can offer a great deal of knowledge and wisdom to non-religious Jews. This is, I believe, the key to making Judaism relevant again - the source material from thousands of years ago is relevant today and yet that aspect of it is ignored by most non-religious Jews (and plenty of religious Jews as well.)

For those who like to think, I highly recommend this book.

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Linda Sarsour’s jihad – with all the context her fans prefer to ignore (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

If you are a Trump supporter, Linda Sarsour is a dream come true: no matter how outrageous her views and statements are, the mainstream media will always rush to defend this leader of the “resistance” by dutifully echoing her self-serving claims that her critics are evil right-wingers motivated by Islamophobia and other vile resentments. In the process, being left-wing – let alone progressive – is redefined in ways that will be unpalatable to many reasonable left-leaning people (like me!). While few who identify as center-left might ever consider supporting Trump, the cult of Linda Sarsour will surely help many understand why a lot of Americans used their vote to express disgust with the liberal elites.

Sarsour’s latest achievement is making it somehow “progressive” to call on Muslims to engage in “jihad” against Trump and his administration. Calling for “jihad” these days is, as far as Sarsour’s apologists are concerned, an entirely harmless thing – after all, Sarsour just meant a “jihad” of political activism fueled by the perpetual outrage she so often advocates…

But we should actually all agree with Sarsour and her fans that the context matters, because tellingly, many of her defenders preferred NOT to link to the video that shows Sarsour’s relevant remarks in full. So let’s check out the truly shocking context of her call for “jihad” during her keynote address at a convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

Early on in her speech (at around 3.45), Sarsour emphasized her conviction that “we are on this earth to please Allah and only Allah.” She repeated this theme towards the end of her speech (after 20.00):

“Our number one and top priority is to protect and defend our community; it is not to assimilate and to please any other people and authority. […] And our top priority, even higher than all those [other] priorities, is to please Allah and only Allah.”

As Sarsour explained, she came to this insight thanks to her greatly admired “mentor, motivator, encourager” Siraj Wahhaj (who was in the audience). According to Wikipedia, Siraj Wahhaj is “an African-American imam of Al-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn, New York and the leader of The Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA).” Born Jeffrey Kearse, Wahhaj converted to Islam as a young man and joined the Nation of Islam, where it was acceptable to voice his belief that “white people are devils.” He eventually became a Sunni Muslim and “has made statements in support of Islamic laws over liberal democracy.” He has endorsed sharia punishments such as stoning for adultery and mutilation for theft and has expressed the view that “Islam is better than democracy. Allah will cause his deen [Islam as a complete way of life], Islam to prevail over every kind of system, and you know what? It will happen.”

Given the admiration Sarsour professed to feel for Wahhaj and the fact that she indicated he also admires her, it’s perhaps time to wonder what exactly she means when she so often emphasizes that she is “unapologetically Muslim”.

Unfortunately, the small part of her speech that her defenders quote as the relevant context for her call to wage “jihad” against Trump and his administration is hardly reassuring given that Sarsour depicts the US as a country where minorities suffer terrible oppression under the cruel rule of “fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes.”

Sarsour was no doubt delighted when her defenders rushed to post articles claiming that “the right freaked out” about her call for “jihad” because “they don’t know what it means.” The problem with the argument that Sarsour’s evil right-wing critics don’t know what “jihad” really means is that it focuses on complex and contentious theological debates among Muslim scholars while conveniently ignoring centuries of Muslim imperialism, starting with Islam’s founder Muhammad, who has been politely described as “Islam’s first great general and the leader of a successful insurgency.” Less politely, Muhammad has been called a “warlord” – and if you don’t like what Sam Harris has to say on the topic, you can turn to the immensely influential “Global Mufti” Yusuf Qaradawi, who once explained:

“Allah wanted Muhammad’s life to be a model. For instance, if we examine the question of marriage, he who has one wife can follow the Prophet Muhammed since most of the time Muhammad lived with one woman; whoever has more than one wife can also [follow Muhammad’s example]. He who marries a virgin, he who marries a non-virgin… He who marries a young woman, he who marries an old woman [all can follow Muhammad’s example]. … Similarly, Allah has also made the prophet Muhammad into an epitome for religious warriors [Mujahideen] since he ordered Muhammed to fight for religion.”

And the very first time Muhammad fought a bloody “jihad” for the religion he founded, he justified it with exactly the kind of threats that US Muslims face according to Linda Sarsour. Sarsour’s speech was full of alarming hints about the dangers threatening Muslims in America, where “fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes [are] ruling in the White House.” She issued an impassioned call for Muslim unity in the face of threats from the “Islamophobia industry” (after 10.00) and even went so far as to assert: “Unity is about survival for the Muslim community.” She also invoked the scenario of “a potentially horrific time that could come if we as a community are not united as one ummah as we are supposed to be.” Sarsour insisted that Muslims were unprepared for “the potential chaos” that the Trump administration might inflict on them and asserted that Trump was determined to test how much US Muslims “can endure.”

It is also noteworthy that in the wake of the controversy that erupted after her call for “jihad” against the Trump administration, Sarsour tried to claim that “the majority of Muslims” and “experts” would not misunderstand what she meant when she encouraged “jihad”.

Unfortunately, this is a very shaky claim given that throughout Islamic history, the kind of threats that US Muslims face according to Sarsour have been used to justify “jihad” as understood by most of Sarsour’s critics. It is no coincidence that “the 199 references to jihad in the most standard collection of hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari, all assume that jihad means warfare.”

There seem to be very little reliable data on how “the majority of Muslims” nowadays understand jihad. Gallup once asked the question in a survey conducted in 2002 and admitted rather reluctantly that “a significant minority” of the responses “did include some reference to ‘sacrificing one’s life for the sake of Islam/God/a just cause,’ or ‘fighting against the opponents of Islam’” and that in some of the countries surveyed, responses like these even constituted “the single most identifiable pattern.”

But there are a lot of reliable surveys showing that hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world supported Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and believe that “suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies.”

It is hardly encouraging that support for this kind of jihadi terrorism dropped most dramatically in countries where Muslims learned the hard way that they themselves could become targets when some of their fellow Muslims feel they are not sufficiently pious.

Moreover, given that Sarsour often emphasizes her Palestinian identity, it’s rather dismal to contemplate what kind of “jihad” was popular among the majority of Palestinian Muslims in the first years after 9/11.

Last but not least, it seems doubtful that there is much reason to cheer when it turns out that “only” eight percent of American Muslims think that suicide bombings targeting civilians in defense of Islam are often or at least sometimes justified, while another five percent feel they are “rarely” justified. To be sure, 81 percent of US Muslims told pollsters such acts of terrorism can never be justified, but if Sarsour is right and there are about five million Muslim Americans, the results from the cited 2013 survey would mean that 50.000 US Muslims think suicide bombings of civilians in defense of Islam are often justified; another 350.000 feel such acts of terrorism are sometimes justified, while an additional 250.000 see them as rarely justified.

Furthermore, given Linda Sarsour’s frequent efforts to mobilize young Muslims, the alarming results of a Pew poll published ten years ago are particularly noteworthy:

“the survey finds that younger Muslim Americans – those under age 30 – are both much more religiously observant and more accepting of Islamic extremism than are older Muslim Americans. Younger Muslim Americans report attending services at a mosque more frequently than do older Muslims. And a greater percentage of younger Muslims in the U.S. think of themselves first as Muslims, rather than primarily as Americans (60% vs. 41% among Muslim Americans ages 30 and older). Moreover, more than twice as many Muslim Americans under age 30 as older Muslims believe that suicide bombings can be often or sometimes justified in the defense of Islam (15% vs. 6%).”

Sarsour has worked as a Muslim community organizer for some 15 years, and as her rhetoric shows, she is encouraging the trend to more religiosity and less assimilation while studiously avoiding any criticism of the extremism that has been espoused by a not inconsiderable number of young US Muslims. Instead, she advocates enthusiastically for a convicted murderous terrorist like Rasmea Odeh and preaches perpetual outrage while calling for “jihad” without acknowledging what jihadist have wrought just in the 21st century.

Lee Smith put it best in a Tablet post:

“The reality is that the debate over Islamic semantics has already been resolved—not in American newsrooms or the partisan halls of US politics, but on the killing fields of the Middle East. The people who are cutting each other’s heads off on both sides of the sectarian divide across Syria and Iraq, crucifying civilians, making sex slaves of women and children, and indulging in other inhuman depredations, have justified the murder of their co-religionists and others according to the logic of jihad. By all means, feel free to challenge that particular interpretation of the word, but at least have the decency to acknowledge your intervention comes in the context of nearly half a million dead.”

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07/10 Links Pt1: Interrogation of terrorist proves: PA payments motivate terror; Hebron Ties and Lies

From Ian:

PMW: Interrogation of Palestinian terrorist proves: PA payments motivate terror

Interrogation of Palestinian terrorist proves: PA payments motivate terror
Palestinian terrorist: "I've accumulated large debts... if my son wants a shekel, I have nothing to give him... I decided to do something serious, such as committing murder, something in which I will both kill and die, and then my family will get money (i.e., from the PA) and will live comfortably... If I'm not able to kill soldiers, I'll try settlers, guards - in other words any Israeli target - the important thing is that I will die and they will kill me, so that my children will receive a [PA] allowance and live happily"
[From transcript of Israeli Police interrogation of Palestinian terrorist]
In anticipation of the hearing this coming Wednesday in the US Senate on the Taylor Force Act, which would cut all US funding to the Palestinian Authority until it stops paying salaries to terrorists and allowances to families of terrorist "Martyrs," Palestinian Media Watch is releasing a transcript of the Israeli Police's interrogation of a Palestinian terrorist, which PMW received and translated from the original in Arabic.
The terrorist, Khaled Rajoub, was caught after an unsuccessful attempt to murder Israelis. During interrogation, he explained that his motivation for the planned murder was so he himself would also be killed and his family would then receive monthly payments from the PA. In his own words: "... any Israeli target - the important thing is that I will die and they will kill me, so that my children will receive a [PA] allowance and live happily."
Had Khaled Rajoub been killed by Israel during his terror attack, the PA would have declared him a "Martyr" and this would secure his family a monthly PA lifetime allowance of 2,800 shekels/month: 1,400 base pay, 400 for his wife and 200 for each of 5 children.
Khaled Rajoub's statements show that the PA's financial rewards to terrorists and "Martyrs'" families definitely constitute motivation for terror.
Throughout the interrogation, terrorist Rajoub kept emphasizing his determination to kill Israelis in order to receive PA allowances for his family:

How to Depoliticize Palestinian Refugee Status

In a bold reversal of longstanding Israeli policy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently called for dismantling the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and rolling its functions into the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), which handles the rest of the world's refugees. Previously, despite the multitude of failings of UNRWA, Israel has long cooperated with the group and hitherto opposed proposals to shut it down, fearing the humanitarian consequences and resulting instability.
"I regret that UNRWA, to a large degree, by its very existence, perpetuates — and does not solve — the Palestinian refugee problem," Netanyahu said, referring to UNRWA's expansive definition of a "refugee."
The prime minister's call was well-timed: UNRWA just used a picture of a Syrian child as propaganda, suggesting incorrectly she was a Gaza resident, and revelations of Hamas using UNRWA schools as cover for tunnels aimed at kidnapping and murder have flooded the news. While UNRWA was initially intended to resettle refugees, it has since dropped that task from its mission. Indeed, it resists resettlement and has continually changed its definition of a refugee to include people generations removed from the conflict, people who are citizens of new states, and people who are in their internationally recognized home of the West Bank and Gaza. No other organization uses a similar definition.
While the U.S. originally protested UNRWA's evolving definition, in recent years, the State Department has defended UNRWA's current definition. In practice, this means is that while there were about 700,000 refugees in 1950, there will be a projected 6.4 million faux "refugees" in 2020, even though most live normal lives for people in the region. An estimated 2 million are Jordanian citizens. This bizarre definition is purely political, aimed at protecting the so-called "right of return," a novel legal claim that people generations removed from the conflict have the right to return to a country their ancestral leaders tried to destroy.

JPost Editorial: Justice delayed

On January 27, 2013, Kirchner announced she had reached a nonbinding agreement with Iran to set up a “truth commission” that did not call to prosecute the suspects. This was her response to a nearly 300-page report Nisman had submitted to a federal judge two weeks before.
Its 60-page summary was released to the media, accusing Kirchner of “an aggravated cover-up and obstruction of justice regarding the Iranians accused of the AMIA terrorist attack.”
While Argentina simmered with conspiracy theories that blamed everyone else for Nisman’s death – the CIA, Mossad, even MI6 – Kirchner’s website first endorsed the “finding” that it was a suicide. Three days later, she asserted that he had been murdered in a plot to discredit her.
Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has been involved in some of the most extensive terrorist activity around the globe. Before Kirchner announced the Iran agreement, Nisman’s staff had produced a 500-page report on Hezbollah and Iran’s terrorist infiltration in Latin America.
Jewish community leader Waldo Wolff eulogized Nisman for his 20-year crusade to provide justice to the victims of the AMIA bombing. His death, “and the macabre plot around his death,” Wolff told the mourners, allowed us “to see what actually lies underneath them: the dark labyrinth of power hidden in the most open parts of our society.”
Twenty-three years after the AMIA attack, it is not too late to bring Iran to justice. The 85 slain and the more than 300 who were wounded deserve this, but it is also an important message that even as time passes, crimes are not forgotten.
Terrorists will be hunted down and pay for their actions.

A couple of years back, I took enough interest in the Mennonite Church’s flirtation with divestment to pen this piece regarding some back-and-forth I had in the comments section of an editorial in a Mennonite newsletter regarding the subject.

The reason this church divestment debate didn’t generate the kind of obsession I developed over the Presbyterians’ decade-long fight over divestment is that (1) I never realized Mennonites still existed until this controversy hit my BDS radar; and (2) decisions by a tiny sect (there are currently between 75,000-80,000 Mennonites in the US – or a quarter of the number of number of Jews just in Massachusetts) don’t pack the same propaganda punch as votes by well-established (if also declining) churches whose members number in the millions.

The church’s historic eschewal of violence likely made them a tasty morsel for a propaganda campaign like BDS desperate to portray themselves as non-violent, despite the BDSers flipping between refusing to renounce and actively encouraging violence within the wider anti-Israel “movement.” So while it’s clear what the boycotters get out of owning the Mennonite “brand,” it’s still not particularly understandable what the Mennonites get out of such a deal.

Their desperation to join the BDS project, whatever the cost, is apparent in the “Third Way” concept they came up with in the two years between 2015 (when church support for BDS was tabled based on further contemplation) and 2017 when divestment was voted in nearly unanimously. This “Third Way” consisted of the church balancing its divestment decisions targeting Israel (and Israel alone) for financial punishment with a commitment to devote time and energy confronting the Church’s own history with regard to anti-Semitism, particularly, as it relates to the Holocaust.

Now I will admit that the Mennonite role in the attempted annihilation of every Jew in the world was unknown to me, but apparently church history during World War II does lend itself to some soul searching. Personally, I have no interest in tarring today’s Mennonites with things their forefathers said and did, but if current member want to spend some time probing those issues, more power to them.

Trouble is, what they claim to be a long-overdue confrontation with their own past (1) only began when they started talking about joining a project (BDS) dedicated to assaulting the most important Jewish project of the last century (the creation of the Jewish nation); (2) established as a “Third Way” the equivalence between the behavior of that Jewish nation and the murderous anti-Semitism of the last century; and (3) refused to even acknowledge any role for contemporary anti-Semitism in the conflict they’ve decided to threw themselves into.

A church that has supposedly dedicated years to contemplating the problem of anti-Jewish bigotry might, for example, notice that they are allying with traffickers in Jew-hating rhetoric as incendiary as those they condemn themselves for ignoring decades ago. To grasp such an obvious fact does not even require them to wade into the quagmire of defining where anti-Zionism ends and anti-Semitism begins. It just requires them to pay attention to the fact that Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elder of Zion are best sellers and staples of political discourse among the very societies today’s Mennonites are dedicating their entire historical reputation to support.

The rhetorical techniques to avoid these matters I saw in play during my brief foray into discussion with church members are always available to Mennonites to justify their morally unjustifiable behavior, as are the usual tricks of claiming Jewish support from marginal groups like Jewish Voice for Peace to “prove” divided Jewish attitudes towards their project.

But a genuinely moral movement dedicated to grappling with tough issues before lending their reputation for justice and non-violence to those actively supporting one side in a violent conflict would not rely such devices to avoid the moral conversation they simultaneously claim to crave.

While I have engaged with fewer Mennonites than I have with members of other Churches, I suspect as individuals they are no less intelligent and decent than the many religious men and women I’ve debated over the years on matters related to Israel and BDS. Which leaves open the question of how smart and honorable people could have come up with (and now celebrate) something as immoral and intellectually vacuous as their “Third Way.”

Once again, the drug of choice that inevitably leads to such intellectual and moral rot goes under the name of BDS.

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An article in Ma'an by Dr. Ali Awar says that the Jewish connection to the Western Wall is a relatively recent phenomenon. He claims that in fact the Kotel is meaningless to Jews and Judaism, and uses (as proof!) that Yassir Arafat denied that there was any Temple in Jerusalem during Camp David talks, saying that maybe it was in Nablus.

He admits that the Ottomans allowed Jews to worship there (because they were so kind!) but that Muslims always knew that it was a Muslim shrine, the Buraq Wall. (The site of the Kotel was never identified with the story of Mohammed's magic steed until the 20th century.)

Awar says "The Wailing Wall is exploited by Israeli politicians to extinguish the status of religious legitimacy on this holy place for Muslims."

He also claims that the deadly 1929 pogroms against Jews broke out because the Jews wanted to put up a partition at the Kotel to separate Jews from Muslims! (The temporary partition was meant to create separate men's and women's sections for Yom Kippur prayers.)

This is the quality of Arab scholarship as seen in media that is funded by foreign governments and NGOs.

For "quality" journalism.

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