Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, September 06, 2017

The Times of Israel Guessing Game (Judean Rose)

I have a little game I like to play. I like to see if I can guess by the title of a piece if it's a Times of Israel piece. Ian's Linkdumps, here at Elder of Ziyon, serve me well for this purpose.

Here's where I'm going to confess that these linkdumps are my go-to source for Israel news and commentary. I scroll through Ian's links and if I see something interesting, I'll open it in a new tab and share it on Facebook with a pull quote. I'd rather not, however, give page views to publications I deem harmful to Israel. That means I'd rather not click a title I suspect is from the Times of Israel.

Instead, I'll hover over the hyperlinked title with my mouse, so that the full URL appears in the taskbar. That way I can then see with what publication a given link is associated. And if it's a Times of Israel article, I give it a miss.

The thing is, I've gotten so good at spotting Times of Israel titles that it's almost creepy. Basically, Times of Israel articles fall into three categories: A) Articles that show Israel in a negative light, B) Holocaust articles, and C) articles about old guys having bar mitzvahs and other dying Jewish things.

Here's an example from a September 3 linkdump: "Palestinian suspect shot by IDF said to die of wounds."

Implied IDF Cruelty

I knew right away this was going to be a Times of Israel piece, because the emphasis is on the implied cruelty of the IDF as opposed to the suspect's misdeeds. The phrase "shot by IDF" makes it sound as if the guy had been shot with malice and forethought. "Said to die of wounds" implies suspicion that the IDF is not being truthful, that the army is hiding something here; some terrible act that should be investigated, but probably will not be, because ISRAEL (sarcasm).

I didn't need to read Ian's pull quote to confirm my suspicions. I just knew it was the Times of Israel from the title. The piece falls into the first of the three categories outlined above: it makes Israel look bad. But just to show I know my stuff, I took my mouse and hovered over the title. Bingo! A Times of Israel link.

I win. Yay me. Now that was even more fun than the other game I play—the one where I see if I can put away all the clean dishes in the two minutes it takes to heat a mug of water in the microwave. Man, I lead an exciting life!

To clarify, there is no doubt there's a lot more to the story than this Times of Israel headline. The IDF is a moral army: an army deserving of admiration and respect. IDF soldiers don't just go shooting people dead without cause. Yet this is how the Times of Israel chose to present this story.

To prove the point, I found the back story in this headline from Israel National News: "Terrorist dies a month after being shot." The dead guy was a terrorist, but you wouldn't know that from a quick glance at the Times of Israel headline. Why not? Because it's not in the interests of the Times of Israel to disseminate the facts in a headline. It's apparently in the interests of the Times of Israel to demonize Israel.

There is no other way to understand that headline.

Three Flavors

As I said, Times of Israel articles generally come in three flavors. I went to google to dig up an example of old guys having bar mitzvahs for the purpose of this column. I typed: "Times of Israel septuagenarian bar mitzvah" and laughed out loud when the first result was "70 years on, Holocaust survivors get bar mitzvahs." Why did I laugh? Because first of all, the piece appeared only two days ago at the time of this writing (way to prove a point). And also: this piece actually combines categories two and three (old guys having bar mitzvahs AND the Holocaust).

How perfect is that?

Let's analyze this briefly (because longer will make me upchuck.) Articles depicting Israel in a negative light can be taken straight up: The Times of Israel hates Israel and sees it as an entity that rules over another people by force. The only way Israel can expiate this sin is to give the Arabs everything they demand which means that Israel will then no longer exist and the world will live happily ever after. Then they, the staff of the Times of Israel, at least those among them who are Jews, will be GOOD Jews, unlike the, ahem, callous unfeeling settlers and cruel IDF soldiers (more sarcasm). The Times of Israel helps this process along by making Israel look really, really bad at every possible opportunity, thus making Israel the focus of world enmity. Not to mention supplying the Arabs fodder for their propaganda machine.

As in our earlier example above, it's easier to see how this is done when you compare a Times of Israel title to one from a pro-Israel publication. Here is a Times of Israel title from September 5: "Palestinian Family Evicted from East Jerusalem." Compare this headline to that of the Israel National News piece on the same subject: "Arab squatters evicted from Jewish property in Jerusalem"

The Times of Israel piece focuses on the cruelty of Israeli courts in throwing a family out of its home. There are photos of mighty Israeli policemen, a sad Arab dad peeking out of a graffiti-stained door, and a crying Arab mama accompanying the piece.

One can almost hear the simmering undercurrent of umbrage: Where is Israel's mercy? A family evicted! Does it matter whether this is a Jewish or an Arab family??? Is this how Jews should act?? TIKUN OLAM!!!!

But if you are smart enough not to take your news from a single news outlet, you might read the INN piece, which gives you several good reasons the court ruled as it did, including the facts that this is a Jewish property and that the illegal tenants damaged that property:

Police evicted an Arab family from a Jewish-owned home in the Shimon Hatzaddik neighborhood (Sheikh Jarrah) in eastern Jerusalem Tuesday morning, returning the property to Jewish hands.

The home, which had been built and inhabited by Jews prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948, was seized by Jordan during the occupation of eastern Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967.

Despite the liberation of the area in 1967, for the past 50 years the home has been occupied by local Arabs.

While the law enables Jewish landowners who were deprived of their property during the Jordanian occupation to sue for its return, the legal process can take decades, especially if there are people living in the home.

Police were ordered to evict the family Tuesday after a court declared them illegal squatters, following their refusal to pay the Jewish owners rent, as well as causing damage to the property.

Officers closed the entrances to the Shimon Hatzaddik neighborhood (Sheikh Jarrah) ahead of the evacuation before forcibly removing the squatters after they refused to comply with the eviction orders.

A small group of Arabs and left-wing activists protested the squatters’ eviction.

The last sentence is especially telling. The Times of Israel made a big hoo-hah over this story. Such a hoo-hah that the story got picked up by a bunch of mainstream media outlets including ABC and the BBC. That doesn't mean those outlets got the story from the Times of Israel, but the Times of Israel coverage of the story does certainly help spread the word—especially via that headline! Meantime, the event was no big deal here in Israel. Only a small group of protesters showed up. No. Big. Deal.

This is how a small story is distorted and blown up out of proportion to damn Israel. And in my opinion, it's pure antisemitism. It's done simply to generate hate against Israel and the Jews. This story was a nothing burger and remains a nothing burger, except for the way in which it is slanted and abused to hurt Israel.

As for the second category, the heavy focus on Holocaust stories, this is the Times of Israel underscoring the idea that Obama so loved: that Jews think they have a right to Israel only because of the legacy of the Holocaust and that it's not the Arabs' fault that Jews were murdered, so why should they have to suffer the consequences?

Playing up the Holocaust is about covering up any prior history that proves the Jewish people are indigenous to Israel. It's the Times of Israel saying, "Yes. We know we suffered in the Holocaust. And that is real. But it doesn't give us the right to lord it over another people. In fact, having gone through the Holocaust we should not be making these poor Arab people suffer as we did."

As if there is anything comparable in Israel's treatment of a belligerent minority to the systematic gassing and burning of the six million (shakes head).

Judaism: Quaint and Outdated

That leaves us with our third category of Times of Israel articles: old guys' bar mitzvahs. This is about showing the world how modern they are at TOI. And how quaint and outdated is the Judaism of our ancestors. The Judaism of old is corned beef and matzoh ball soup and old guys having bar mitzvahs. The new Judaism is voting for Hillary and giving money to Linda Sarsour. Judaism is now whatever we want it to be (and not what God wants it to be). It is giving money to Slutwalk Chicago while eating shrimp! It is the far left.

In other words, there is no religious reason, no VALID reason, for Jews to be in Israel. Because Judaism has EVOLVED. There is no longer any reason to hold onto the idea of Israel as the land of the Chosen People, or even to see that people as "chosen." These are all outmoded ideas that belong on the garbage heap of history along with delis, Allan Sherman (who?), and old people with Russian "hecksents."

The Times of Israel wants you to remember that old Judaism with nostalgia and fondness, but not to take it seriously. They want you to move on (and out of Israel). Unless, of course, you're ready for your Jewish children to mix with Arab children until there is one people, one culture, one nation. A nation that is neither Jewish nor Arab but a joyous amalgamation of the two.

Which can only begin with the destruction of the Jewish State.

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In Next Conflict, IDF To Spray Marijuana Smoke Over Hamas, Hezbollah (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Kibbutz Zikkim, September 6 - Defense officials came to this community abutting the border with the Gaza Strip today to oversee a groundbreaking ceremony for large fans that will blow marijuana smoke onto enemy positions and compromise the opponent's desire to fight.

More than six hundred powerful windmill-like devices will be deployed by spring 2019, according to plans unveiled today, along the security barrier that separates Israel from the Hamas-run coastal territory. Similar units are already under construction along the border with Lebanon to the north, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization has threatened to invade Israel, and not merely fire rockets. The fan installation marks the first of a two-phase project, the second part of which will see weed-processing units attached to the fans to feed the air stream with the smoke - smoke that contains THC, the chemical component of marijuana that has been shown to reduce aggression and make a robust military operation by the militant group less tenable.

In anticipation of another outbreak of war with Hamas - there have been three in the last ten years - Israel has taken numerous preventive steps to improve its tactical and strategic situation. The marijuana fans represent only a part of a revamped preventive strategic approach, where deterrence alone once played the most prominent role. Iron Dome protects most of the country's population from incoming missiles, while a new underground wall aims to remove the threat of infiltration by armed militants via tunnels. Marine units have trained extensively and deployed new equipment to combat possible infiltration by sea, and the marijuana installations will ease combat conditions for the IDF if it becomes necessary to enter the Gaza Strip to neutralize further threats. The fans will operate mostly when winds are calm, to allow the smoke to spread only over enemy positions. Several local residents voiced disappointment with that policy, but acknowledged the advantages of precision targeting.

"This is a poetic moment," declared Minister of Defense Avigdor Liberman. "THC was first isolated by Israeli scientists decades ago. Today, we combine generations of Israeli know-how and innovation in the defense of our communities from evil. I salute the engineers who made this day possible, and acknowledge the project could have reached this stage sooner if not for a persistent leak in the system that released smoke into the testing facility that for some reason the personnel there were not inclined to repair in a timely manner."

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09/06 Links Pt1: In a Reversal of Roles, Israel Sends Aid to American Jews; Phillips: The tumult continues

From Ian:

Elliott Abrams: In a Reversal of Roles, Israel Sends Aid to American Jews

It was bound to happen, sooner or later.
With the rapid increase over the years in Israel's GDP and in its population, Israel is no longer a poor country that needs the philanthropy of American Jews to survive. And the balance between the American Jewish population and the Israeli Jewish population has shifted as well. Depending on exactly how you count, there are more Jews in Israel today than in the United States--or if not, there will be soon.
The terrible damage wreaked by Hurricane Harvey affected, among other communities in Houston, the Jewish community there and its physical establishments, such as schools and synagogues. And now, as the Jerusalem Post reports, Israel is giving foreign aid to this American Jewish community. Here is part of the article:
Diaspora Affairs Minister Bennett has pledged $1 million in relief aid for the Jewish community of Houston, saying, “The Jewish state is measured by its response when our brothers around the world are in crisis.”
According to a statement released by the ministry, this aid will be transferred through the Israeli Consulate in Texas, and will be used to help repair and restore the communal infrastructure – schools, synagogues and JCC – which are not funded or supported by the state.
The Jerusalem Post calls this a "rare move," but I'd bet it will be less rare over time. It is logical to expect Israel to show, in ways such as this, that it is steadily becoming the largest and most important Jewish community in the world. Once upon a time, the center of world Jewish life was in Israel; then it moved to Europe; then to the United States; and now it is moving back to where it all began.

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Forgotten Palestinians

Ayman Qawasmeh and Issa Amro would have been better off being arrested by Israeli authorities. Had that happened, their stories would have made it to the pages of major Western newspapers. CNN or NBC might have dedicated an entire program to their ordeal. Without a way for the Western media outlets to implicate Israel, however, their tale remains buried -- along with their freedom.
The group also points out that it has documented some 472 cases of deaths consequent to torture in Syrian detention centers and prisons over the past few years.
Would anyone like to know about the true apartheid laws applied to Palestinians in different Arab countries? The information is readily available: all that needs to happen is for the Western media and the rest of the international community to reconsider their obsession with Israel and to start paying attention to the real Palestinian victims -- those living in the Arab countries.

Melanie Phillips: The tumult continues

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network my new occasional feature Loony Lefty libels, America’s cultural civil war between the left and the far-right, and whether new revelations suggest that the inquiry into the Hillary Clinton email scandal was fixed to exonerate her even before the investigation was completed.

Don't cry over these kids. They would have died anyway.

From Tablet:

A major United States Holocaust Memorial Museum study of the Obama Administration’s Syria policy was put on hold last night after portions of the study given to Tablet were greeted with shock and harsh criticism by prominent Jewish communal leaders and thinkers.

According to a publicity email sent by the Museum, the study was set to be launched at an event at the US Institute for Peace in Washington, DC on September 11th and was overseen by former Obama NSC and intelligence officer Cameron Hudson, now director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide. The paper argued that “a variety of factors, which were more or less fixed, made it very difficult from the beginning for the US government to take effective action to prevent atrocities in Syria, even compared with other challenging policy contexts.” Using computational modeling and game theory methods, as well as interviews with experts and policymakers, the report asserted that greater support for the anti-Assad rebels and US strikes on the Assad regime after the August 2013 Ghouta chemical weapons attack would not have reduced atrocities in the country, and might conceivably have contributed to them.

The intervention of the Holocaust Museum in a hot-button political dispute—and the apparent excuse of official US government inaction in the face of large-scale mass murder, complete with the gassing of civilians and government-run crematoria—alarmed many Jewish communal figures. “The first thing I have to say is: Shame on the Holocaust Museum,” said Leon Wieseltier, the literary critic and fellow at the Brookings Institution, who slammed the Museum for “releasing an allegedly scientific study that justifies bystanderism.”

The Museum’s exercise in counter-factual history, he suggested, was inherently absurd. “If I had the time I would gin up a parody version of this that will give us the computational-modeling algorithmic counterfactual analysis of John J McCloy’s decision not to bomb the Auschwitz ovens in 1944. I’m sure we could concoct the fucking algorithms for that, too.”...

So what gives? Well, besides the former Obama staffer overseeing the study, we have:

At least one of the architects of the Obama administration policy in Syria, former deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, was appointed to the museum’s Memorial Council during the closing days of the Obama administration. The Council also includes Obama NSC alumni Grant Harris and Daniel Benjamin. Other Obama NSC alumni, including Hudson and Anna Cave, have joined the Museum’s staff.

And;

Some Jewish communal leaders suggested both privately to Tablet, and in conversations with board members and staff at the Holocaust Museum, that the Museum’s moral authority had been hijacked for a partisan re-writing of recent history, and alleged that the museum had absolved the Obama administration of any moral or political error in its response to mass atrocities in Syria.

It sure looks like it, doesn't it?

To have the Holocaust Memorial Museum issue a study that justifies inaction in the face of mass atrocities is mind-boggling. This is outrageous politicization of the purpose of the memorial. Wieseltier summed it up perfectly - anyone can make an algorithm to put a pseudo-scientific cloak on a political issue. (Amnesty has an entire website dedicated to demonizing Israel with slick algorithms and disproven data, and stands by it.)

If indeed the former Obama officials have been heavily involved in conceiving and writing this, they should be fired from the Museum. They have done more damage to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's reputation than anyone can imagine and there is only one way to get it back.

(h/t Ian)

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The ICRC did the exact opposite of what was needed in Gaza in its meeting with Hamas

The New York Times eagerly reported in 2015:

GAZA CITY — A new training regimen for fighters in Hamas’s armed wing employs slide presentations and a whiteboard rather than Kalashnikov rifles and grenades. The young men wear polo shirts instead of fatigues and black masks. They do not chant anti-Israel slogans, but discuss how the Geneva Conventions governing armed conflict dovetail with Islamic principles.

The three-day workshop, conducted last month by the International Committee of the Red Cross, followed numerous human-rights reports accusing both Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, of war crimes in their devastating battle last summer, and came as the International Criminal Court prosecutor conducts a preliminary inquiry into that conflict.

The Red Cross developed its program in conjunction with Islamic scholars several years ago, but ramped it up after last summer’s deadly battle. So far this year, it has conducted six sessions for a total of 210 fighters from Hamas’s Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades and two other Gaza armed groups. Another workshop is scheduled for this week.

...Red Cross leaders say they have seen an increasing commitment from Hamas leaders and linemen alike, if only because they now consider their international image a critical component of their struggle.

Mamadou Sow, who heads Red Cross operations in Gaza, said that in April he presented a critique of Hamas’s conduct during the 2014 hostilities to its top political and military leaders, and that they “welcomed it” and “indicated that they are a learning organization.”

“For the first time,” said Jacques de Maio, director of the Red Cross delegation in Israel and the Palestinian territories, “Hamas is actually, in a private, protected space, expressing a readiness to look critically at a number of things that have an impact on their level of respect for international humanitarian law.”

He added, “Whether this will translate into something concrete, time will tell.”

Hamas' actions are predictable, but only to those who understand the honor/shame mentality.

Hamas isn't interested in adhering to international law because it is the right thing to do.Hamas is interested in appearing to adhere to the minimal standards of international law to avoid being shamed.

Which brings us up to yesterday:

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross on Tuesday discussed the fate of two Israeli civilians and the remains of two Israeli soldiers believed to be held by Hamas in a meeting with the leader of the Islamic militant group.

Officials on both sides said the status of the missing Israelis was one of a host of issues discussed in the meeting between ICRC President Peter Maurer and Yehiyeh Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza.

A Hamas official said that Maurer "heard the movement's firm position" Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.

Sinwar has said Hamas will not release any information about the missing Israelis until Israel frees 54 Palestinian prisoners who were re-arrested after being released in a 2011 prisoner swap.

Hamas has successfully learned the lessons taught by the ICRC. It is using the language of international law to insist that its prisons adhere to some sort of standard, but of course it will not allow the Red Cross to visit any actual Israeli prisoners.

The fundamental issue that Hamas has managed to obfuscate is that these "prisoners" are not prisoners - but hostages. The reason Hamas didn't allow Maurer to speak with the Israelis who for whatever reason ended up in Gaza is because it wants to use them as bargaining chips to get Israel to release terrorists and achieve other goals, and even the promise of showing proof of life is something that Hamas sees as something to be bartered..

Hostage-taking, of course, is a grave violation of international law. But Maurer, as far as we can tell, never uttered the word "hostage" to Hamas - but Hamas pretends that these Israelis are prisoners of war, or criminals.

If Maurer would have spoken out loud, ahead of the meeting, about how these Israelis are hostages and hwo the very act of demanding something for their return is illegal under international law, he could have made a difference - because Hamas would have been shamed and it seeks to avoid shame. But instead Maurer treated Hamas with respect (=honor) and Hamas now has less incentive to adhere to international law.

For Hamas and other members of the shame culture, it is all about appearances, not ethics. Maurer's meeting with Sinwar enhanced Hamas' standing in its eyes - photos of the meeting are featured in Hamas' website - but the issues are only meant to be manipulated to Hamas' advantage, not to be taken seriously.

For Hamas to change, it has to be shamed. The ICRC did the opposite, making Sinwar look like a world leader while getting nothing in return.

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A Palestinian columnist named Hesham Manour has a new twist on a popular Arab conspiracy theory.

He says that Israel is behind the wave of terror attacks across Europe. That's not new. What's new is the reasons.

Since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising against the occupation called "the uprising of knives" and then the spread of the operations of ramming cars into people, the occupying entity has been surprised and astonished at the indifference of Western and European specifically in condemning what it calls "Palestinian terrorism." The sympathy elicited from the old continent was not sufficient from the point of view of the entity of occupation, And [Israel] found no way to push the world to empathize with it first, ..so it managed and facilitated terrorist operations against civilians in Europe, and to attach them to Daesh to secure European and international sympathy later against the Palestinian resistance operations aimed at soldiers and herds of settlers on the occupied territory in Palestine.

...The European operations always result in the execution of the attackers and not their arrest, in an attempt to obliterate the facts and to obstruct investigations. The real purpose of the entity of the occupation is the desire for European governments not to engage in confrontation with the occupation entity, and reveal its fingers in these operations - and later to be accused of Anti-Semitism.

How can Daesh succeed in its terrorist operations without a strong intelligence service behind the facilitation of its logistical operations, such as Mossad, and the elimination of the attackers is a sign of the desire of European governments to conceal the Israeli security breaches.

It is most appropriate that Hesham Manour's last name is a homophone to his writings.

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09/05 Links Pt2: Phillips: 'Has truth lost all meaning' For Israel-haters, yes; The accidental Zionist

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: 'Has truth lost all meaning' For Israel-haters, yes

Thomas Suarez is an Israel-hater. He is about to embark on a tour of America. He recently concluded a tour of Scotland. He has spoken at universities in the United Kingdom. A book he wrote, published last year, which vilifies and defames the state of Israel and which references and has been endorsed by other Israel-haters, was honoured with a launch inside a meeting room in the House of Lords.
Two indefatigable fighters against anti-Jewish bigotry, David Collier and Jonathan Hoffman, have written a detailed analysis of this book’s methodology and its claim to be a serious work of, ahem, scholarship. They retraced the author’s primary sources, examined dozens of files at the National Archives in Kew, bought and analysed several of the key writings that are cited and made contact with academics and historians who specialise in the subject matter. They write:
“The distortion created within the book’s argument is drawn from every level of error imaginable. The author made basic historical research mistakes, such as an over-reliance on, and disproportionate inclusion of, ideologically selected material. In addition – and more worryingly – the source material for the most part contradicts the author’s writing. And finally, there are several clear examples of such total distortion and inversion of meaning that it is difficult to conclude anything other than deliberate intent. The book is dripping with racial hatred against Jews.
“We conclude that in our opinion, this book is an antisemitic fraud. We do not use that phrase lightly… This raises important questions that must be addressed. How is it that such a badly put together distortion, riddled with historical inaccuracy, misquotes and racial hatred, is being welcomed by any part of our society? Just a rudimentary check brought to light unacceptable errors that warranted further investigation. The additional factcheck uncovered an unsupportable pyramid of fictions.
“Has truth lost all meaning? How can a university professor endorse such a book? We are sure that the sheer scale of the shoddy research and blatant manipulations described in this report will shock those who read it. Perhaps almost as much as it shocked those who uncovered it.”

President to dedicate memorial to Munich massacre victims

President Reuven Rivlin will take part in a ceremony to dedicate a memorial to the 11 Israeli athletes murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics on Wednesday. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier had invited Rivlin to participate in the ceremony.
Before departing for Munich on Tuesday, Rivlin said the memorial would serve as a "silent testimony of the cruel consequences of terrorism and the promise that we will exact a price from those who carry out and encourage acts of terror throughout the entire free world."
On Wednesday, Steinmeier, together with Bavarian Minister-President Horst Seehofer, will accompany Rivlin at the dedication of the memorial as well as a memorial center in honor of the athletes and coaches murdered in the Munich massacre. Representatives from the bereaved families will also take part in the ceremony.
Following the dedication ceremony, Rivlin will visit the Dachau concentration camp. He will then fly to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Munich Olympics terror attack haunts Israeli widow

On September 5, 1972, Palestinian militants from the Black September group jumped over the fences at the Olympic Village, entered one of the apartments of the Israeli team and took 11 Israeli athletes hostage who were later killed in a botched rescue operation. The militants wanted the release of more than 200 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Ankie Spitzer lost her husband, Andre, in the attack. He was the coach for the Israeli fencing team and killed during the rescue attempt. Spitzer and relatives of the other victims spent decades asking the Olympic Committee for a formal acknowledgement and a ceremony for the victims inside the Olympic village. Although there is a commemorative plague outside the apartment where the hostages were held, and a sculpture in the Olympic Park, it is only now, 45 years after attack, that a permanent memorial and a museum will be opened in memory of the victims.
It took 45 years for the German authorities to finally build this memorial and a museum in Munich. How do you feel about that?
We wanted some place that reminded the world about what happened at the Olympic village. In 1978, Ilana Romano (widow of weightlifter Yossi Romano) and I asked then Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher if the building where it happened could be turned into a small museum. And they said no, it is private property. This went on for many years. We wanted the history to be told, the biographies to be shown and we wanted also an educational part so that young people can learn about it. For us the opening will be a mixture of emotions, on the one hand we're very grateful that it will finally open, on the other hand very sad because we know what happened there.
Why do you think took it so long for German authorities to go ahead with the memorial?
It should have been the most simple and basic thing. But I am sure at that time, after the attack in 1972, we were facing officials who were totally uninterested. I saw it also as antisemitism. But today, the new generation of leaders in Germany have a different mindset and don't carry the burden of the history, of the Nazi-past and they understood why it is necessary to do it.
Right after the attack, the German authorities had a very hostile and humiliating attitude towards us. One of the German officials told me after the attack: 'You Israelis, you brought terrorism on German soil. You brought your war to Germany.' For 20 years we asked for the ballistic reports, for the pathological reports. We wanted to know what happened to our husbands. For 20 years they told us, we don't have those files. Until 1992, when the German authorities had to admit that they had all the files.

Arabs are the "settler-colonialists," not Jews

From Dr. Alex Joffe at BESA:

One of the mainstays of the modern university is the idea of settler-colonialism. This argues that certain societies are birthed by settlers implanted in a foreign territory, either directly by or with the consent of an imperial power. These colonists then dominate and eradicate the indigenous population. They develop bellicose cultures that eliminate the natives from historical, literary, and other narratives. Primary examples often cited are the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa and Rhodesia, and Israel.

The settler-colonial argument against Israel posits that Zionism was an imperial tool of Britain (or, alternatively, that Zionism manipulated the British Empire); that Jews represent an alien population implanted into Palestine to usurp the land and displace the people; and that Israel has subjected Palestinians to “genocide,” real, figurative, and cultural.

According to this argument, Israel’s “settler colonialism” is a “structure, not an event,” and is accompanied by a “legacy of foundational violence” that extends back to the First Zionist Congress in 1897 or even before. With Zionism thus imbued with two forms of ineradicable original sin, violent opposition to Israel is legitimized and any forms of compromise, even negotiation, are “misguided and disingenuous because ‘dialogue’ does not tackle the asymmetrical status quo.”

But Middle Eastern history is not amenable to these formulations. Among the many concepts abused and perverted by the Palestinians, accusations of Israeli “genocide” rank the highest for blatant audacity, and for twinned calumny and odiousness. The settler-colonial idea deserves attention for three reasons: its comparatively recent adoption by Palestinians and their advocates; its broader currency in the academy; and its obvious and ironic falsity.

The idea of Jews as “settler-colonialists” is easily disproved. A wealth of evidence demonstrates that Jews are the indigenous population of the Southern Levant; historical and now genetic documentation places Jews there over 2,000 years ago, and there is indisputable evidence of continual residence of Jews in the region. Data showing the cultural and genetic continuity of local and global Jewish communities is equally ample. The evidence was so copious and so incontrovertible, even to historians of antiquity and writers of religious texts, some of whom were Judeophobes, that disconnecting Jews from the Southern Levant was simply not conceived of. Jews are the indigenous population.

...Ironically, the same cannot be said for the Palestinian Arabs. A recent analysis by Pinhas Inbari reviewed the history of Palestine (derived from the Roman term Palaestina, applied in 135 CE as a punishment to a Jewish revolt). Most notably, he examines the origin traditions of Palestinian tribes, which continue even today to see themselves as immigrants from other countries. ...

...Palestinian genealogies that show their own tribes originating outside the Southern Levant are prima facie evidence of Arab settler-colonialism. And while narratives of the Arab conquests of Byzantine Palestine and North Africa cannot be taken at face value, they are pure ideological expressions of settler-colonialism. In 634-37 CE, Muslim armies commanded by the Caliph Umar conquered the entirety of the Levant before invading Armenia and Anatolia in 638 and Cyprus in 639.

The subsequent Islamization and Arabization of the Levant was a long and complex imperial process that entailed reorganizing the region into administrative provinces, instituting new social categories for the purposes of taxation and control, implanting settlers and reapportioning lands as estates, and encouraging conversion to Islam. Over the centuries, other settlers migrated and were intentionally implanted, including, in the 19th century alone, Egyptians fleeing from and imported by Muhammad Ali from the late 1820s to the 1840s, as well as Chechens, Circassians, and Turkmen relocated by the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s after its wars with Russia. Tribes of Bedouins, Algerians, Yemenis, and many others also immigrated during that century.

....It is, then, the Palestinians who are the settler-colonialists, not the Jews or even the Zionists. Does this realization change anything? Does removing a term from the rejectionist toolbox bring the cause of negotiation and peace any closer? This seems unlikely. But in the longer term, facing certain truths will be necessary for Palestinians and Israelis alike. One is that rejection of Israel, at its core, is not a function of Palestinian nationalism and local identity but Islamic religious opposition to Jewish autonomy and sovereignty. Another is that tendentious categories like “settler-colonialism,” which ironically undermine Palestinian claims to indigenous status, should be dispensed with in favor of honest appraisals of history.

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Over and over I keep hearing the word “narrative”. Most often it is spoken by people who insist on the importance of understanding and respecting the “Palestinian narrative.”

How many people have actually paused to consider what “narrative” means? More importantly, how should we respond to a narrative that is not our own?

As a storyteller, a marketer, narrative is something I am very familiar with, something I deal with every day. The narrative is critical, it is a driving motivator, it is what convinces people to “swallow the bait”, to buy whatever it is that you are selling.

The thing is that “narrative” is just that – the story you tell. There is a perspective, a narrative and then there are facts. These words are not synonyms. Each is important and none should be confused with the other.

Perspective is an individual point of view, the way a person sees the world.

Is your glass half full or is it half empty? Is an event positive or negative? These are decided by personal perspective.

The way an individual is raised and the culture he or she is immersed in, effects their perspective but does not control it. Often the individual will automatically conform to the reigning attitudes of society, but not always. If I am raised in a strictly mannered culture it is most likely that I will adopt the social norms and mores as my own however, my individual perspective might see the strictness as oppressive and stupid, leading me to rebel and be different. This is what led the invention of the bra, to women wearing pants and many other sudden deviations in the way things were always done – one person saw things differently, behaved accordingly and in response others changed their perspective as well.

Narrative is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves and our place in the world.

Every individual has a story he or she tells themselves about themselves and the life they are living. Nations also have a narrative, a story that is collectively used to define that people or state. Narrative on both the individual and national levels shapes the way you feel about yourself and, subsequently, the way you are treated by others.

Facts are well... facts.

We may be living in a “post-factual” world but that doesn’t mean that facts have ceased to exist. It is true that history books are written by the winners and good vs bad are often a matter of perspective (or in the case of nations, narrative), however, even if these things are true, there are still undeniable, provable, facts. People can dispute facts all they want but cannot make them go away without lying or turning the argument in to something that has no relation to facts (emotion based arguments).

Your perspective does not influence where or when the sun rises and sets. Perspective cannot make water cease to be wet or fire cease to be hot. Perspective may determine a war to be a triumph or a tragedy but there is no arguing when it happened or who emerged victorious.

What do they teach in school these days?

I recently had a conversation with a history teacher who teaches Zionism in a prominent Israeli school. Disturbingly she seemed unable to differentiate between perspective (the individual point of view), narrative (on the national level) and facts.

It is popular to focus on understanding the “other”. In Israel, this always seems to mean teaching Jews to understand the Arab narrative (“We are victims, you victimized us”). Somehow teaching Arabs to understand the Jewish narrative never seems to come up.

The rationale is: “If we (the Jews) don’t understand the perspective of the other (the Arabs), how can we have a discussion with them?”

And I agree with that.

Being familiar with the story of the “other” facilitates effective discussion. Understanding that this story motivates behavior is critical. At the same time, understanding that someone thinks a certain way and behaves according to the way they were raised is very different from accepting their behavior or accepting their narrative.

Narrative is a story, it is not facts.

I might feel like a princess. My guy can call me a princess all day but that doesn’t mean I have a kingdom to rule over (unless we are calling my kitchen a kingdom). A person or a nation can say that I or my people victimized them all day but that doesn’t make it true.

One can dispute whether or not certain policies are appropriate or not. Certainly, many of Israel’s policies towards our Arab citizens and Arab neighbors are hotly disputed. At the same time, there are facts that are undisputable (unless the arguments are based on lies and utter disregard for facts):

· The land of Israel is historically the land of the Jewish people. This is known from the bible, through countless archeological finds and references in the cultural documents of other nations (including the Koran).

· There never was a Palestinian Nation State.

· There has been a continuous Jewish presence in the land for 3000 years.

· Religious Jews pray facing Jerusalem three times a day, every day. The Jewish people have been yearning to return to Zion for 2000 years and in the last century – we did.

· In 1948, the nations of the world officially acknowledged Israel to be an independent homeland for the Jewish people.

· In 1948, 1967, 1973 Arabs tried to wipe the Israel off the map and failed.

The “Palestinian Narrative” is important to understand because that is the driving force behind activists of the younger generations. Those that are too young to have witness these events themselves are not raised with facts, they are raised on a story and that story has become the only “truth” they know. The Palestinian story is told so often and with such passion that even many of the older generations, people who should know better because they were there, are getting confused.

When we forget the facts we end up comparing stories

Why does this matter? If the facts don’t matter what we end up comparing stories. Everything being equal, it is the better story, the story told with more passion and conviction, that wins – with no connection to right or wrong, justice, rhyme or reason.

At the moment, the “Palestinian narrative” is winning, hands down. This should not be happening, not only because the facts do not support that story but because the Jewish story is so much more glorious and empowering.

Why would you root for the story of the perpetual victim when you could choose the story of those who miraculously overcame all odds? Why would you choose the story of violence and hate over the story of self-sacrifice and love?

To put it in a completely different light, the “Palestinian” narrative is most damaging to Arabs. Their story does not inspire the creation of a better life for the downtrodden. In fact, it is a story that keeps the downtrodden, down. It teaches Arab youth that they are victims of the Jew, that the path to improving their lives is to throw their own lives away in attempt to be rid of the Jews. Instead of teaching life, this story teaches death – for the Jew and often for the Arab as well.

And while the majority of the Arab population is busy hating the Jew, fighting the Jew, Arab rulers are busy enjoying the opulence of their corruption. The Arab people suffer while their rulers have access to all the comforts and pleasures of life. More than it is used against the Jewish people, the “Palestinian” narrative is used by Arab and Muslim leaders to distract, control and retain power over their own people.

If we truly want peace, we must unravel the narrative.

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09/05 Links Pt1: Haley: How the US Is Stepping Up Efforts Against Hezbollah; UN's Glass-House Syndrome

From Ian:

Nikki Haley: How the United States Is Stepping Up Efforts Against Hezbollah

That status quo with UNIFIL was unacceptable, so the United States refused to accept it. Last week, when the peacekeeping mission’s mandate came up for renewal, we pushed for changes to make sure UNIFIL is doing its job – and, critically, when it’s prevented from doing its job, that we know about it.
Following tense negotiations with just a day left before UNIFIL’s mandate expired, we reached agreement in the Security Council on a series of changes to how the mission will operate.
Our changes will make UNIFIL step up its patrols and inspections which will help disrupt Hezbollah’s illegal activity. UNIFIL will now enhance its visible presence on the ground and its ability to detect and deter incoming fighters and weapons.
Most importantly, our changes require UNIFIL to report when it is prevented from seeing something it wants to inspect. From now on, when the peacekeepers encounter a Hezbollah roadblock, they have to tell us the details of where, when and why they got stopped. This transparency will put an end to the ignorance about what’s really going on in southern Lebanon. When UNIFIL is prevented from doing its job, the Security Council will know about it. And if the UN refuses to act on this information, the world will know about it.
For the United States, this is a time for strength, resolve and accountability at the United Nations. That’s what our effort at strengthening UNIFIL was all about.
This is an important step, but there is much more to do. As the proxy for the outlaw Iranian regime, Hezbollah will not give up its terrorist goals. But just as Hezbollah is stepping up its efforts, the United States, and now the United Nations, are stepping up our efforts against them.

Russia Threatened to Veto anti-Hezbollah Move Led by Israel and U.S. at UN

"Russia worked behind the scenes to protect Hezbollah during last week's discussions in the UN Security Council on a resolution to renew the mandate of the UN peacekeeping forces (UNIFIL) in southern Lebanon, talks with Israeli officials indicated. A classified cable sent from the Israeli UN delegation to Foreign Ministry headquarters in Jerusalem reinforces that view.
Unlike in previous years, last week's decision to renew UNIFIL's mandate was not just a technical matter. Under American and Israeli pressure, several paragraphs were added to the text saying that the UN forces must increase their presence in the area south of the Litani River in southern Lebanon, and explicitly stating that UNIFIL forces have full authority to act to prevent violations of UN Resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War.
However, during the negotiations over the wording of the resolution, significant portions endorsed sought by the United States and Israel were removed, chiefly the direct reference to Hezbollah as conducting prohibited military activity in southern Lebanon that is in violation of Resolution 1701. It was Russia that ensured all mention of Hezbollah was omitted.
Two Israeli officials said that during the talks over the wording of the decision, the American delegation inserted several paragraphs relating to Hezbollah's illicit activity in southern Lebanon. One referred to the press tour that several armed Hezbollah men conducted along the Israeli border – an action that violated Resolution 1701.
The Israeli officials say the Russian diplomats who took part in the discussions about the wording of the decision opposed the American version and said that if the final version included any mention of Hezbollah, Russia would exercise its veto. Israel's UN delegation described the Russians' stance in a cable sent to the Foreign Ministry last Friday. 'The Russians watched from the side and their red line was that they would not consent to Hezbollah being named in the resolution,' said the cable.

Hezbollah reacts to IDF drill: We are ready for any act of Israeli stupidity

A senior Hezbollah official taunted Israel Tuesday, saying that "we are ready for any attack or Israeli stupidity."
The official, who was quoted by several Lebanese media sources but was left unnamed, spoke out in reaction to the IDF's announcement Monday that forces have launched the largest military drill in the past twenty years in preparation for a potential war against the terror organization.
"We [Hezbollah] are fully alert and ready at any time for any possible scenario," the official was quoted as adding. He had also reportedly retorted that "The Israelis won't succeed in surprising us, because Israel knows full well [what] Hezbollah's capabilities are after the loss it suffered in 2006, which deterred the IDF."
The official had also allegedly assessed that the IDF launched "the large military drill" due to "Hezbollah's military capabilities."
Other Hezbollah associates who were also unidentified by Lebanese media were quoted as speculating that Israel is carrying out the immense drill in order to prepare to face a renewed battle. The Jewish state is going to be forced to confront an entirely different and strengthened entity than the one it faced a little over a decade ago during the Second Lebanon War, they threatened.
IDF commanders have repeatedly affirmed this claim in recent years, saying that Israel has indeed been preparing itself to contend with an enemy that no longer fights in guerrilla-style groups and has amassed a significant arsenal of weapons as well as knowledge and training.

Back in 2005, the mother of all solutions to the the problem of Gaza was Israel's Disengagement from Gaza.

The favorable opinions at the time illustrated, in hindsight, how poorly the Disengagement and Gaza were understood, especially by even the most respected pundits.

Map of Gaza. Credit: CIA World Factbook. Source: Wikipedia

August 15, 2005, Roger Simon wrote about Abbas's responsibility following the dismantling the settlement and moving Israelis out of Gaza:

But if events continue without a major snafu, the ball will soon enough be in Mohammed Abbas' court. Gaza will be his playground and he will have Hamas and Islamic Jihad to deal with. I don't envy him.... As we used to say on our own playground, "No backsies!"
Of course, Israel lives right next door to this Gazan "playground" and they are the ones suffering from the fact that there are "No backsies". It is the Disengagement that has made the city of Sderot so famous. And synonymous with Hamas missile attacks.

August 19, 2005, Charles Krauthammer wrote that following the withdrawal from Gaza, deterrence will bring the Palestinians themselves to shut down the rockets:

Israel should announce that henceforth any rocket launched from Palestinian territory will immediately trigger a mechanically automatic response in which five Israeli rockets will be fired back. There will be no human intervention in the loop. Every Palestinian rocket landing in Israel will instantly trigger sensors and preset counter-launchers. Any Palestinian terrorist firing up a rocket will know that he is triggering six: one Palestinian and five Israeli.

Israel would decide how these five would be programmed to respond. Perhaps three aimed at the launch site and vicinity and two at a list of predetermined military and strategic assets of the Palestinian militias.

...Once Israel leaves, there is no way to dismantle the rockets. Deterrence is all there is. After but a few Israeli demonstrations of "non-massive retaliation," the Palestinians themselves will shut down their terrorist rocketeers. [emphasis added]

Aside from the fact that such a solution is untenable, in the early years of the Palestinian "democracy" many overestimated how far free elections can take a country that freely chooses to elect terrorists to lead them.

August 20, John Derbyshire on National Review's "The Corner" wrote that the disengagement would create a Gazan state, bringing a sense of responsibility that would curb Palestinian aggression:

The Arabs should be very worried about this. If I am just a state, and you are just a state, then we might go to war, as states do, given any of the traditional definitions of casus belli.

Israel has fought wars against Jordan, Egypt, and Syria; but she has never fought a war against Palestine. What would an Israeli-Palestine war look like? If I were a Palestinian Arab, I think I'd hope never to find out.

With Western influence and pressure available to keep Israel perpetually in check, it is debatable just how afraid Palestinian Arab leaders actually are.

Of course, not everyone was blind. Natan Sharansky understood the consequences of the Disengagement. In an interview in the Winter 2005 edition of the Middle East Quarterly, Sharansky showed he knew what was coming:

MEQ: Is your opposition to the Gaza disengagement plan a matter of principle, or are you concerned over its practical implementation?

Sharansky: Questions of principle and practical matters are always connected for me. I was against the disengagement plan not because I believed we should stay in Gaza but because one-sided concessions could transform Gaza into a beachhead for a terrorist state. If a Palestinian democracy developed, then a Palestinian state would not be dangerous. As I said many years ago, it is very important that the depth of our concessions match the depth of democracy on the other side. If disengagement were linked to democratic reforms, I would be all for this plan. But I object to any plan that leaves territory for terror. [emphasis added]

Natan Sharansky. Credit: Nathan Roi - The Jewish Agency for Israel, Source: Wikipedia

Krauthammer wrote in December 2, 2005 about amazing recent progress in defusing the Arab-Israeli dispute:

...the Gaza withdrawal was a success. On the Israeli side, it was accomplished with remarkable speed and without any of the great social upheaval and civil strife that had been predicted. As for the Palestinians, without any fanfare whatsoever, their first-ever state has just been born. They have political independence for 1.3 million of their people, sovereignty over all of Gaza and, for the first time, a border to the outside world (the Rafah crossing to Egypt) that they control.

...As a result, Israel's regional isolation is easing, as Islamic countries from Pakistan to Qatar to Morocco openly extend or intensify relations, while anti-Israel rejectionists such as Syria and Hezbollah are isolated and even condemned by name in the U.N. Security Council.

How did this come about? Israeli unilateralism and Palestinian maturation.
Then Krauthammer himself punctures the balloon and admits it's all about Israel's military prowess, and not about Israeli concessions nor Palestinian maturity:

It's not that many Gazans would not like to continue the romance of revolutionary terrorism and jihad. But they no longer have the means. The separation fence makes it almost impossible to launch attacks into Israel. And rockets launched into Israeli towns are met by retaliatory Israeli artillery barrages that make the rocketeers rather unpopular at home. A similar equilibrium will be achieved on the West Bank when the fence is completed next year.
All this goes to show that hindsight really is 20-20. And that's a good thing -- considering that the accuracy of pundit predictions is not even close to 50-50.

For example, even now the people who are supposed to have a grasp of the situation are still coming up empty.

Last week Trump's Mideast Peace Envoy Jason Greenblatt declared that PA Must Rule Gaza, Hamas Has Failed to Meet People's Basic Needs:

Jason Greenblatt, U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, said on Wednesday that the Palestinian Authority needs "to resume its role in the administration of Gaza," in light of the damage that Hamas has caused to the Gaza Strip. Greenblatt made this statement during a tour of the Israel-Gaza border area together with IDF Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories.
Odd that there is no mention of Abbas by Greenblatt in that article.

Also, the article notes that Obama tried the same thing, pushing for a UN Security Council resolution to reinstate the PA in Gaza following the 2014 Gaza war. But nothing came of it -- because both the Israelis and the Palestinian Arabs objected.

Is it any wonder the mainstream media in the West ignored this story.

After all, consider Abbas's poor record on Gaza.

Although he was elected chairman of the PLO in October 2004 and then president in January 2005 with 66% of the vote, by the end of 2005, Abbas's popularity was at such a low point that there were rumors he might resign. Symbolic of his lack of control was his inability even then to put a stop to the Qassam rockets being fired from Gaza into Israel:

Abbas even said that the Qassam rockets being fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel are "Israel's problem" and that he does not intend to interfere. "Let the Israelis deal with it," he said.
Not surprisingly, a July 2017 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 62% of Palestinian Arabs want Abbas to resign.

And Trump's envoy advocates a return to PA control of Gaza?

The best analysis I ever heard of the situation in the Middle East was the one given by George Will. Years ago, in addressing the problem of the Arab-Israeli conflict he said it was not a problem, it was a mess. The difference between a problem and a mess, he said, is that a problem has a solution.

When Trump suggested that he was willing to let the two sides work things out and he would support it, regardless if it was a two-state solution or something else -- that was a different, and necessary, approach.

Trump's about-face is not good for either the parties involved nor for the US.

During the heady days of the Disengagement in 2005, one could understand the idyllic optimism that had politicians as well as the pundits seeing peace over the horizon.

Today, the Trump administration has no excuse.

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Now the Houthis (and their Iranian sponsors) are accused of being "Zionist"

Old habits die hard, and the Arab penchant to call anyone you oppose a "Zionist" is one that will be around for a while.

A writer named Dr. Adel Al-Shuja, who seems relatively prominent, wrote an essay, picked up by several Arabic news sites, where he claims that Houthis in Yemen are actually Zionists, following the orders of their Iranian Zionist masters.

"The leaders who lead the Houthi group are aware that they are working for Zionism while the vast majority of this group does not realize this," Al-Shuja says. That's how the Houthi logo can say "Death to Israel, Damn the Jews" while it is really Zionist.

Yousee, Israel's ties with Iran remained strong even after the Shah was toppled. The Ayatollah Khomeini may have hated everything about the Shah but apparently he shared his love for Israel. But he kept that part of his philosophy quiet.

But what does Israel want to take over Yemen for?

Glad you asked. You see, "Yemen is the light of civilization that sheds light on human civilizations." This "disturbs neighboring countries that have no civilization or history. " Those Jews, jealous of the rich emeni culture, want to steal it.

The second reason is because Mount Dod in Saada is really the "Mountain of David" supposedly mentioned in the Torah. So it is very important to Jews.

The Jews who used to live in Yemen before 1948 lived in the Beit Baws section of Sana'a, and now that section of town (after 69 years of being a slum) has become a hot real estate market. Those Jews again.
Of course, the fact that the Houthis are destroying beautiful Yemeni cities like Sana'a is really all the proof you need to know that they are "Zionist."

Finally, we have this proof:

I will show you, for example, the similarity between Zionism in Palestine and Houthi Zionism in Yemen. Zionism in Palestine bought Palestinian lands and properties to expel them from their land. This is just like the Houthi Zionists, who buy houses and land in Sa'ada, Amran, Sana'a, Hajjah and Hodeidah in preparation for the expulsion of the Yemenis.

Al-Shuja warns his readers: "We are in a critical stage. Either we eliminate this Zionist seed, while it is still in its infancy, or we become what the Palestinians have become."

At least Dr. Al Shuja admits that the Jews bought the land!
.

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Sometimes you just can't parody these idiots.

From Steven Salaita, the professor who keeps losing his teaching positions, at The New Arab, referring to a NYT column by Bari Weiss where she says that cultural appropriation is a good thing:

Weiss knows, or should know, that the controversy about Israel's appropriation of Palestinian food - most infamously its claim to hummus, a lucrative product in Europe and North America - has nothing to do with Jews eating Arabic food. In fact, it has nothing to do with Jews at all. That ludicrous idea is possible only because Zionists aggressively conflate Jewishness with Israel.

Instead, it has everything to do with a deliberate, decades-old programme to disappear Palestinians. Referencing Arab defensiveness about traditional dishes without mentioning colonisation or ethnic cleansing is a whitewash.

Weiss provides a textbook example of liberal Zionist disdain presenting as multicultural devotion. Palestinians are well familiar with that hustle.

When Zionists (or their oblivious collaborators) claim Arabic food as Israeli, it's not a paragon of intercultural harmony but the studious destruction of Palestinian culture. We can mitigate ambiguity by avoiding the word "appropriation," which doesn't adequately capture the dynamics of Israel's voracious appetite for anything that can be marked "Indigenous," which it needs to shore up an ever-tenuous sense of legitimacy.

"Theft" is more accurate. It is also rhetorically superior. Discourses of modernity exalt cultural interchange, but no good liberal supports piracy.

We should remember that while chefs, shopkeepers, and propagandists validate the theft, the main culprit is the Israeli government, which brands falafel the "national snack" and advertises a plethora of Levantine dishes as authentically Israeli in tacky Brand Israel campaigns.

State involvement in the pilfer of Palestinian food illustrates that we shouldn't reduce the issue to individual consumption. It's a systematic effort to validate settler colonisation.

It's no shock, then, that Palestinians and their neighbours get salty whenever hearing the phrase "Israeli hummus." Using Arabic food as a symbol of Zionist identity hands over the day-to-day victuals of the native to the coloniser. It's a project of erasure, a portent of nonexistence, a promise of genocide.
...
Such is to be expected of an ideology defined by a rapacious appetite for other people's possessions. "Israeli" couscous, hummus, falafel, shawarma, fattoush, mjuddera, and knafeh, like the state forever aggregating glory from deception, is merely a rawboned fantasy nourished by a gluttonous diet of empty calories.

Calm down, Steven. Count to ten and breathe.

You are an idiot.

Israelis aren't trying to erase Palestinian history - because there is no history to erase. Hummus and falafel are no more "Palestinian" than they are Israeli.

And, yes, no Israeli who matters claims that these are originally Israeli foods! Salaita builds his entire bizarre rant on the idea that Israelis are claiming that these Levantine foods are less than 70 years old, and no one says that.

Saying that falafel is Israel's national dish does not imply that Israelis claim to have invented it (although the falafel sandwich in pita with salad actually was invented in Israel by Yemenite immigrants.) It doesn't mean that Israelis want to steal Arab cuisine. It only means that Israelis like falafel a great deal. It really isn't that difficult to understand.

And yes, Israeli chefs (like all good chefs) take foods from other cultures - and often change them so much as to make them their own.

In this essay, Salaita shows how poor an academic he is. Salaita thinks of Israelis as thieves first, as his last paragraph shows, and then he writes this entire crazed article so he can twist the facts into that slander.

Moreover, saying that the phrase "Israeli hummus" is a "promise to genocide" should be, in a sane world, a guarantee that no university will ever hire Salaita - on the grounds of sheer stupidity.

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