Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Kneeing Prager in the Nuts (Judean Rose)

Ari Y. Kelman, associate professor and Joseph Chair in Education and Jewish Studies at the University of California-Davis, has been in the news of late. That's because Kelman authored a study which suggests that campus antisemitism isn't a thing (for background see: New campus study claiming little antisemitism on campus severely flawed by Daled Amos). Kelman came to this conclusion by handpicking just 66 subjects from five separate campuses who have no interest in Israel or things Jewish, thus insuring the very non-randomized study would generate the results he sought. Which led to some cognitive dissonance when a reader drew my attention to a June 14 Times of Israel profile of Dennis Prager in which author Lisa Klug cited Kelman as an expert.

Dennis Prager
Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Prager is known for stating clear simple truths in language that anyone can understand. In the Times of Israel interview he says, “Non-Jews who think anti-Semitism is only the Jews’ problem need to read about miners’ canaries — about miners who think that when canaries die of noxious fumes those fumes won’t kill them,” he says, and “Nothing better identifies incipient evil than anti-Semitism.”

Ari Y. Kelman

This is a true statement, crafted for actual people. Instead of acknowledging the point, Klug suggests that Prager's careful wording might be seen by some as "oversimplification." The use of the word "oversimplification" might, on the other hand, be seen by others as "bias by description." In bias by description, authors use adjectives and characterization to paint a favorable or negative picture of a person, political view, or story. When a reader suspects an article contains bias by description, that reader should look for balance within the piece or in the wider news outlet as a whole.

In terms of this particular piece, Klug brings us the opinions of two academics, both of whom use several negative descriptors in their characterizations of Prager with "balance" provided by the CEO of Prager University, Marissa Streit. The academics are (SURPRISE!) Prof. Ari Kelman of the bogus study, and Daniel Schwartz, an associate professor of history and the director of the Program in Judaic Studies at The George Washington University. Kelman is meant to be the progressive voice:

“Prager’s comments are spurious, overly broad, and, basically inaccurate,” writes Ari Y. Kelman, Jim Joseph Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at Stanford University. “They do not represent the general conditions of Jewish student life on college campuses, and they do not represent the experiences or intentions of many of the faculty associated with Jewish Studies with whom I have spoken."

All 66 of them!

"And I am fairly certain that I have more interaction with both students and faculty than Prager does, which leads me to wonder where he gets his information from."

Perhaps the other tens of thousands of Jewish students Kelman didn't interview?

Klug offers context for citing Kelman as an expert on campus antisemitism.

"Kelman, who also serves as associate director of Stanford’s Berman Jewish Policy Archive of some 40,000 journal articles and research reports is in the midst of a student-focused research project. He and his own students have interviewed about 80 enrollees on five California campuses, Kelman says."

Uh, no. Not "about 80 enrollees." Just 66. And even if it were 80, that would not be an impressive number. (Can you spell "miniscule.")

“I can speak with some authority about the lives of college students because my students and I are in the middle of a research project on how Jewish students are making sense of politics around Israel, being Jewish, Palestine, and other issues on campus,” says Kelman.

Authority. Uh huh. We know how that turned out. Sixty-six handpicked uninvolved Jewish college kids making sense of something they could care less about, including the nonexistent aforementioned state.

But let's move on to Daniel Schwartz, the other academic cited by Klug. His CV's seem to promise Schwartz will generate the balance in this piece. Schwartz, we're told, is an active member of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) which is against BDS and supports academic freedom, for instance. So far, so good. A glance at the organization's mission statement, unfortunately, suggests the AEN may be crippled by political correctness. Note the phrasing of this sentence: "The Academic Engagement Network aims to promote more productive ways of addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Daniel Schwartz

Compare this phrasing to say, the unabashed forthrightness of Professor Ruth Wisse of Harvard, who speaks of the Arab war against the Jews. A partial transcript:

Ruth Wisse

People talk about the 'Arab Israel conflict' I think the term itself is a lie, and if at all possible, the term should be avoided. What you have is the Arab war against Israel and I would put it even more strongly; what you have is the Arab war against the Jewish people.

The Arab league was created in 1945. It was created the same year as the United Nations and I think one of the main reasons that the Arab League was created, it was not that these Arab countries were so much in love with one another—as we can see the conflicts in the Arab world among the countries themselves are almost as great as their conflict with the Jewish State—but the Arab League came together around one thing more than anything else and that was the prevention of the creation of the State of Israel, and then what has remained the glue of the Arab: of pan-Arabism, of the Arab League formerly, and of what the Arab League represents: the common enmity to a Jewish state, so that the role of opposition to Israel is at the very foundation of Arab politics.

It's frightening in the sense of how important it is to Arab countries because sometimes when one sees it from their point of view, you sort of wonder: What would draw them together if it is not common enmity to the State of Israel? No wonder they have to keep this war going for so long.

It is so essential to their political life and to their internal political life, not only vis-à-vis one another but really in terms of scapegoating, in terms of explaining what's going wrong, in terms of blaming and creating a grievance against another country. So I think it makes no sense to talk about an Arab Israel conflict, because when you use these terms, it almost seems as if you're talking about two entities which are at war with one another. It's almost as if you're thinking of the Franco-Prussian War, where you would have France and Germany in conflict over some territory, or even the Polish Russian War where it was a conflict over whether this country would have the land, or that country would have the land.

Well, what we're talking about is not that kind of conflict. It is the conflict of countries, over 20 countries, with an enormity of land, with more land than they know what to do with, that refuse to allow one people its land. It is a very essential refusal to accept the principle of pluralism, to accept the principle of the possibility of the existence of another people with its own legitimacy. And until that realization begins to be spoken of more openly, and until that realization is really forced back into the Arab world, we don't have a chance of ever solving what that conflict is.

And it's not enough for people outside of the conflict to begin to recognize this truth, the most important thing is for people within the Arab world to begin to acknowledge what they have denied the Jewish people for over 60 years.

Ruth Wisse isn't the only academic who might have provided balance for Klug's hit piece on Prager. At least 8 of them come to mind. But Klug culled Schwartz from an organization hampered by a need to find balance where there is none—in the Arab war against the Jews. Klug writes:

Daniel Schwartz, an associate professor of history and the director of the Program in Judaic Studies at The George Washington University, says he is “all too familiar with Prager’s right-wing extremism.”

But Schwartz needs to be the balance to Kelman, so he offers his creds through an assertion of his opposition to BDS:

Schwartz, an active member of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), says he would not have joined if “I weren’t concerned about the rash of BDS initiatives on college campuses in the US in the past few years.”

Of course, he doesn't believe that BDS has made it at all difficult for Jewish college kids, contrary to consistent reports of harassment and even violence against them by pro-BDS, anti-Israel, and antisemitic students and groups.

“I am generally skeptical of the notion that boycott and divestment campaigns have created an atmosphere on college campuses that is ‘hostile’ to robust forms of Jewish self-identification and expression, just as I tend to be skeptical of the way the current generation of college students speaks obsessively about a need to feel ‘safe’ on campus, in a way that tends to favor the suppression of certain kinds of speech,” Schwartz says.

This is balance? It's just more psychobabble leftist-speak for "We hate Prager." We KNOW that Jewish students not only do not "feel" safe on campus, but that they actually feel scared and endangered (and with good reason). We also know that BDS is part and parcel of the ethos of the people who threaten those Jewish students and have left them feeling so frightened and alone and so afraid to speak up for Israel. We don't need fake academics to tell us this, because we read about campus incidents nearly every day in the Algemeiner and Israel National News.

The Times of Israel article ends with a brief interview of Streit, but not before Klug makes a snide

Marissa Streit

comment about Streit's office being littered with "made in China" PragerU swag, with Streit, seemingly apologetic, explaining that the water bottles and totes are sent to donors. Streit describes how PragerU works:

A group of about 500 students comprise PragerForce, in which they make a commitment to share content, Streit says. In addition to aggressive online marketing, Streit says the “secret sauce” of PragerU is that the organization has “clear, factual and easy to understand content combined with a very robust marketing platform.”

What I said: clear, simple, easy to understand, factual. What Klug characterizes as "oversimplification." Also, 500 students, versus Kelman's 66. Natch?

Klug asks Streit one final question:

Will the organization’s methods produce a lasting impact?

To which Streit responds:

“If people could hear Dennis and see a video again and again, that could help people to articulate with intellectual ammunition,” Streit says. “If you are pro-American, you are pro-Israel. The more people you bring to American values, the more people you bring to Israel.”

That would have been a great place to end the piece. It's always nice to end on a positive note, with a quote. But no. Klug must sow doubt in the reader's mind over the viral effect of PragerU videos, because this is the anti-Conservative Times of Israel. She must deliver the coup de grâce, kneeing Prager and his followers in the testicles one final time:

Like the future of on-campus debate itself, the legitimacy of this argument remains to be seen.

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Education Ministry Replaces Academic Grades With Racism Scale (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jerusalem, September 13 - In an effort to keep Israeli educational practices on pace with standards elsewhere in the developed world, the Ministry of Education will direct schools to replace the current outdated system of assigning grades based on student academic achievement with a more relevant approach that assesses only the level of a student's racism.

Ministry Deputy Director for Academic Standards Lee Berl announced today that beginning with the 2018-2019 academic year, teachers will be instructed to assess each student's level of racism at several points during the academic term, and only those students whose racism remains lower than a certain threshold will advance to the next grade, or be permitted to graduate.

Berl informed school principals and teacher representatives today of the impending change, which will require her division to complete the formulation of a system to evaluate racism in 5-18-year-olds. Ministry staff voiced confidence they would meet the challenge.

"We're a diverse group, and that's what important," insisted Ayam Woak, a district inspector. "The question is not whether we will meet the specific criteria of rolling out the grading reform by a target date, but how inclusive are we? the sooner we let go of divisive and, let's face it, Eurocentrist, imperialist concepts such as 'grades' and 'achievement,' the happier we will be."

"Academic scores might serve some purpose, but only insofar as no one's feelings get hurt as a result," added Tala Rint, a high school curriculum supervisor. "That's why a subsequent phase of the grading reform calls for the elimination of certain problematic subjects from the classroom entirely. Western civilization, for example, will only be taught through the lens of populations that suffered at the hands of Europeans or Americans, and never on its own terms. Biology will be considered only from a gender-fluid perspective."

"We cannot eliminate hurt feelings entirely," continued Berl. "But we can do our best to restrict hurt feelings to populations that are OK to hurt, such as Ashkenazi males, for example. Come to think of it, that's the only population it's OK to hurt. And that will be reflected in the way the racism assessments are conducted, with members of marginalized populations given much more lenient treatment than oppressor groups. Can you imagine having the same standard of racism applied to everyone, as if they're equal? I shudder to consider assigning the same racism score to an Arab and an Asheknazi male who perform an identical action."

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09/13 Links Pt1: If Israel played by America's rules, Iraq and Syria would have nuclear weapons; The Palestinians' "Jewish Problem"

From Ian:

If Israel played by America's rules, Iraq and Syria would have nuclear weapons

Israel and North Korea are on opposite sides of the Asian landmass, separated by 5,000 miles. But Israelis feels close to the nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang. They have faced this sort of crisis before, and may again.
In the mid-1970s, it became clear to Israel that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was working on acquiring nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. Saddam had already demonstrated an uninhibited brutality in dealing with his internal enemies and his neighbours. He aspired to be the leader of the Arab world. Defeating Israel was at the top of his to-do list.
After coming to office in 1977, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin tried to convince the U.S. and Europe that Saddam was a clear and present danger to the Jewish state, and that action had to be taken. Begin was not taken seriously.
But Begin was serious, and in 1981 he decided that Israel would have to stop the Iraqi dictator all by itself. His political opponents, led by the estimable Shimon Peres, considered this to be dangerous folly. Foreign minister Moshe Dayan, the legendary former military chief of staff, voted against unilateral action on the grounds that it would hurt Israel’s international standing. Defense minister Ezer Weizmann, the former head of the air force (and Dayan’s brother-in-law) was also against a military option. He thought the mission would be unacceptably risky.
Begin had no military expertise. But his family had been wiped out in the Holocaust. He looked at Saddam, who was openly threatening Israel, and saw Hitler. To Begin, sitting around hoping for the best was not a strategy; it was an invitation to aggression. If there was going to be a cost—political, diplomatic, military—better to pay before, not after, the Iraqis had the bomb.

It's Time to Update America's Important Anti-Boycott Law for Israel

Bipartisan legislation is making its way through Congress that would bar Americans from joining in boycotts by international organizations against companies doing business in Israel. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act has attracted criticism from free-speech advocates. These concerns are unfounded.
In 1977, the Carter administration supported and Congress passed legislation that prohibited American companies from complying with boycotts imposed by foreign governments against nations friendly to the U.S. The measure aimed squarely at the Arab League's secondary boycott of Israel. Over 40 years, the law helped to break the back of the Arab boycott.
The Israel Anti-Boycott Act would extend the 1977 law to international organizations. It couldn't come at a better time. Already, the UN Human Rights Council is creating a database of companies that operate in or have business relationships in the West Bank beyond Israel's 1949 Armistice lines, which includes all of Jerusalem, Israel's capital.
Under this legislation, companies and individuals would not be able to boycott Israel at the behest of international governmental organizations, just as they are now prohibited from doing at the behest of Arab nations. Congress has wide constitutional authority to limit such discriminatory international commercial conduct that lawmakers find contrary to U.S. national interests.
Jonathan A. Greenblatt is chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. Stuart Eizenstat helped negotiate anti-boycott laws in 1977 as President Jimmy Carter's chief White House domestic policy adviser.

Coca-Cola, Teva on UN blacklist of settlement-friendly firms — report

A United Nations blacklist of companies operating in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights includes some of the biggest firms in Israeli industry as well as some household names in the US.
Among those on the UN Human Rights Council list are Coca-Cola, TripAdvisor, Airbnb, and Caterpillar, Channel 2 reported on Tuesday.
The US has threatened to withdraw from the international forum if the list is published.
Israeli companies on list reportedly include pharmaceutical giant Teva, the national phone company Bezeq, bus company Egged, the national water company Mekorot and the country’s two largest banks, Hapoalim and Leumi.
Some of the international companies — namely Airbnb, Caterpillar, and TripAdvisor, as well as Priceline — were previously reported by The Washington Post to be on the list.
The list was recently delivered to the Foreign Ministry, the report said.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, on a working visit to US, said in a statement that “the UN is playing with fire.”

The only people in the world without human rights protection are the Jews of Judea and Samaria

As I was researching my last post, I came upon a damning quote from the Encyclopedia of Human Rights, Volume 1:

This would seem to be obvious. Every human being has human rights, by definition, no matter where they live. Human rights law and the Geneva Conventions is dead-set against forcing people to move against their will (outside clear security necessity) and in most cases forcible transfer is considered a grave war crime.

But this section was not talking about Jewish settlers in their ancestral homelands. It was talking about Turkish settlers in Northern Cyprus.

In all the thousands of articles about Israeli settlements and international law, I cannot even once recall seeing a single word about the human rights of the settlers. The only mention I can find is B'Tselem - still insisting that they all be forcibly removed against international law - says they should be compensated as a matter of human rights. (I found another about how Israel's Supreme Court has treated settlements.)

International law is as clear as can be - forcible population transfer is a crime, regardless of circumstances, again with the exception of compelling security concerns. Wikipedia summarizes it:

There is now little debate about the general legal status of involuntary population transfers: "Where population transfers used to be accepted as a means to settle ethnic conflict, today, forced population transfers are considered violations of international law."^[5] No legal distinction is made between one-way and two-way transfers since the rights of each individual are regarded as independent of the experience of others.

Article 49 of Fourth Geneva Convention (adopted in 1949 and now part of customary international law) prohibits mass movement of people out of or into of occupied territory under belligerent military occupation:^[6]

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.... The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

An interim report of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (1993) says:^[7]

Historical cases reflect a now-foregone belief that population transfer may serve as an option for resolving various types of conflict, within a country or between countries. The agreement of recognized States may provide one criterion for the authorization of the final terms of conflict resolution. However, the cardinal principle of "voluntariness" is seldom satisfied, regardless of the objective of the transfer. For the transfer to comply with human rights standards as developed, prospective transferees must have an option to remain in their homes if they prefer.

The same report warned of the difficulty of ensuring true voluntariness:

"some historical transfers did not call for forced or compulsory transfers, but included options for the affected populations. Nonetheless, the conditions attending the relevant treaties created strong moral, psychological and economic pressures to move."

The final report of the Sub-Commission (1997)^[8] invoked numerous legal conventions and treaties to support the position that population transfers contravene international law unless they have the consent of both the moved population and the host population. Moreover, that consent must be given free of direct or indirect negative pressure.

"Deportation or forcible transfer of population" is defined as a crime against humanity by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 7).^[9]

There are no exceptions listed in international law for the reasons a population is where it is.

While is is obvious to legal scholars that dismantling entire communities and forcing the population to move elsewhere is a serious violation of international human rights law, the only people on the planet that no one cares about in this context just so happen to all be Jewish. Every one of them. (Arabs who moved cross the Green Line, and there are thousands of them, are not considered "settlers" and therefore, have human rights.)

No one is saying to dismantle settlements in Crimea or Western Sahara or Northern Cyprus and force the civilians there to move. And this includes scores of legal scholars who have not said a word against the widespread assumption that Jewish settlers must be forcibly transferred.

This is more than just bias. This is the culmination of decades of anti-Israel propaganda that has affected international law itself and how legal scholars think. The hypocrisy and the double standards literally could not be any more clear. Arab and socialist propaganda combined with biased "human rights" groups and supposed "impartial" bodies like the UN and the ICRC have cumulatively decided that some 800,000 Jews simply are not protected by international humanitarian law the way every single other person on Earth is.

It is literally a worldwide antisemitic conspiracy.

The scandal is that this is not considered a scandal.

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HRW makes up international law, again

From Bloomberg:

Loans to West Bank Settlers Violate International Law, HRW Says

Human Rights Watch called on Israeli banks to halt the financing of settlement activity in the West Bank, arguing that the legal justification they use for doing business there isn’t valid.

Israel’s five biggest banks, led by Bank Hapoalim Ltd. and Bank Leumi Le-Israel Ltd., are contributing “to serious human rights and international humanitarian law abuses” by financing construction in the settlements, the New York-based group said in a report published on Wednesday.

“Israeli banks are making existing settlements more sustainable, enabling the expansion of their built-up area and the take-over of Palestinian land, and furthering the de-facto annexation of the territory,” the report said.

The headline is slightly misleading, but HRW is still making us its own version of international law for Israel and another for the rest of the world.

Here is what HRW says about the legality of what Israeli banks do:

Israeli banks would have a responsibility in all circumstances to seek ways to honor the principles of internationally recognized human rights.

And

Settlements are unlawful under international humanitarian law. ...International humanitarian law forbids an occupying power from using land except for military purposes or for the benefit of the local population living under occupation.

If HRW was serious about Israeli banks having the "responsibility" to honor principles of internationally recognized human rights, it would say that no company can do business in any country - and certainly cannot loan money to any country - that engages in alleged human rights abuses.

Yet, according to HRW and every other human rights organization, virtually every country is guilty of human rights abuses.

Only Israel has such a uniquely evil system called "settlements" where Jews can live in their historic homeland that deserves the demand that even domestic companies must divest from them.

Oh, wait. Morocco builds settlements. "Hundreds of thousands of Moroccan settlers were encouraged to enter Western Sahara with state-subsidised property and employment, under the army's protection." Yet HRW does not say a word about international humanitarian law and Moroccan settlements. It would be laughable to see a paper by HRW demanding that Moroccan banks stop giving loans to Moroccans living in land Morocco occupies. After all, the EU even invests in companies in Western Sahara.

Turkey builds settlements. "A group of mainland Turkish people ... settled in Northern Cyprus since the Turkish invasion in 1974. It is estimated that these settlers and their descendants (not including Turkish soldiers) now make up about half the population of the North." Yet HRW does not demand any company stop investing in Turkish settlements in Northern Cyprus.

Only for Israel does Human Rights Watch keep adding restriction upon restriction - even when Israel's settlement policy is far better grounded in international law than those of other countries. (For one thing, there was no recognized High Contracting Power to the Geneva Conventions whose territory was seized, so the territory is not legally considered occupied under the Geneva Conventions. Any law or international instrument Israel can be accused of violating was written after Israel already held the territories - meaning, laws written specifically for Israel and no other country, such as the Rome Statute.)

This new report doesn't show or indicate any violation of international law, or humanitarian law, at all. But it does show yet again that Human Rights Watch does not hold any country to anything near the standards it demands of Israel.

And that is yet more proof of HRW's obsessive bias against Israel.

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If Zionism is White Supremacy, guess who is a racist?

Here's one way to illustrate the absurdity of the pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist so-called "progressive" crowd.

There are others that have made that odious and false comparison, of course. And the reason is because they love to pretend that Jews are the ones who are guilty of racism.

There's a word for that...

(h/t Paul M)

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09/12 Links Pt2: Pro-Palestinian is anti-Israel, anti-Jewish; Germany Redefines Most Anti-Semitism Out of Existence

From Ian:

David Collier: Pro-Palestinian activism. Violent, intolerant, dangerous and racist

Pro-Palestinian is anti-Israel, anti-Jewish
I titled this blog with the use of the term ‘Pro-Palestinian’. I did so deliberately to highlight the stupidity of people using it. There is nothing ‘pro-Palestinian’ about any of this. These are racist, violent thugs, who target Jews because of their identity, and are willing to hound them out of business and violently attack them. Anti-Israel, or anti-Jewish (or both) are the best names for this activism. We have to stand up to them, and to anybody who gives them cover. Our opposition needs to be relentless.
These racist thugs, turn to the tiny minority of Jews (the 5%) to artificially give them cover. Just this week, a Scottish Blog called Bella Caledonia, incredibly published a piece that tried to excuse people posting material from white supremacy websites. The piece was written by one of the 5%. It actually blamed the victims of racism for the racism. A horrific, disgraceful piece, that highlights how twisted these people are willing to become to protect their fetish. Bella Caledonia actually gave cover to Nazis. Imagine what you could do to any minority, if it was legitimate to find their 5% to use as a cover to attack them.
What is clear, is that these groups are dangerous. For decades they have collected money across the UK. They do so by pushing tragic pictures of the ugly face of conflict. But they are thugs, they are intolerant, they are racist and they are dangerous. Their motivation, just as with the attacks on Nisan, is all about the Jews.
One other thing to remember too. For all the money they have collected, for all the claims that they are doing it for the betterment of Palestinians. The number of Jewish businesses they have successfully forced to close in the UK, is larger than the number of Palestinian refugees they have helped out of refugee status. More Jewish businesses closed, than schools or hospitals built. It isn’t about making things better for the Palestinians at all, it is about making things worse for the Jews. Think about that.

Evelyn Gordon: Germany Redefines Most Anti-Semitism Out of Existence

A debate rages among American Jews as to whether right-wing or left-wing anti-Semitism poses the greater danger. Germany has come up with a novel solution to this dilemma that will undoubtedly delight denialists of the left-wing version: Simply redefine Jew-hatred as a “politically motivated right-wing extremist crime,” and by definition, you’ve eliminated all other kinds of anti-Semitism.
Last week, the German Interior Ministry released a report on anti-Semitism which stated that during the first eight months of this year, a whopping 92 percent of anti-Semitic incidents were committed by right-wing extremists. That sounded suspicious for two reasons, which I’ll get to later, but since I don’t speak German, I couldn’t scrutinize the report for myself. Fortunately, the German daily Die Welt found the results equally suspicious, and this week, Benjamin Weinthal of the Jerusalem Post reported on some of the problems it flagged.
Weinthal explained that in a federal report on anti-Semitism issued by the German government earlier this year, “the crime of ‘Jew-hatred’ is classified in the category of ‘politically motivated right-wing extremist crime.’” But once Jew-hatred has been declared a right-wing crime by definition, most of its perpetrators will inevitably be classified as far-right extremists, even if they shouldn’t be.
Die Welt cited one particularly blatant example from summer 2014 when Israel was at war with Hamas in Gaza. The war sparked numerous anti-Israel protests, and during one, 20 Hezbollah supporters shouted the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil” at pro-Israel demonstrators in Berlin. Hezbollah supporters are Islamic extremists, not neo-Nazis, even if they chose to taunt German Jews by hurling Nazi slogans at them. Nevertheless, the incident was classified as a far-right extremist crime, thereby neatly removing a case of Islamic anti-Semitism from the statistics.
There are two good reasons for thinking the linguistic acrobatics, in this case, represents the rule rather than the exception. First, a 2014 study of 14,000 pieces of hate mail sent over a 10-year period to the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Israeli embassy in Berlin found that only three percent came from far-right extremists. Over 60 percent came from the educated mainstream–professors, PhDs, lawyers, priests, university and high-school students. And these letters were definitely anti-Semitic rather than merely anti-Israel; they included comments such as “It is possible that the murder of innocent children suits your long tradition?” and “For the last 2,000 years, you’ve been stealing land and committing genocide.”

UN Watch: Moral Courage: Mexico’s Former UNESCO Ambassador Receives Human Rights Award

United Nations Watch, the Geneva-based non-governmental human rights group, today presented Dr. Andres Roemer, the former Ambassador of Mexico to UNESCO, with its 2017 Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, at a ceremony held in Geneva, Switzerland, next to the United Nations human rights office.
Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, addressed the ceremony to pay tribute to Roemer, as did Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Aviva Raz-Shechter.
Dr. Roemer is a renowned public intellectual, humanitarian, and author of 16 books. Click here for bio.
In October 2016, while serving as his country’s representative to UNESCO, Roemer refused to obey instructions from Mexico City to vote for an Arab-drafted resolution that denied the Jewish and Christian heritage of Jerusalem, and which referred to the Temple Mount only with Islamic and Arabic names.
Instead, in an unprecedented move, Roemer stood up for his beliefs and walked out of the room. His principled defiance cost him his job, but ultimately Mexico changed its position, announcing its withdrawal of support for the biased resolution.
“It was personally moving to see you leave the room during the vote in order to actively avoid the vote against your conscience,” wrote Amb. Shama-Hacohen, Israel’s UNESCO ambassador, in October, who posted a photo of the two after the vote.
“I am at peace with what I did,” said Roemer, after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month in Paris. “These votes do not have a place in an educational and cultural organization, and hurt us all.”
“It is now a great honor to receive this recognition and award from UN Watch, a leading voice for human rights,” added Roemer.

Over the weekend, Haaretz' major troll Rogel Alpher wrote another of his endless supply of articles that compete with each other for their desire to say something outrageous so he and his paper can gain a little more notoriety.

In this case, he asserted that Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is literally a fascist, just like Mussolini.

Shaked should not be called a fascist metaphorically, as hyperbole or a provocation. The justice minister, who champions a moral revolution based on giving national missions preference over universal individual rights, is literally a fascist.

Never mind that by his definition every single Arab government, as well as the PA, are far more fascist than Shaked could ever dream to be. One of the main decision making bodies in Mahmoid Abbas' political party is called a "revolutionary council."

Facts and context are not Rogel Alpher's friends.

But right after he wrote that, Shaked said that Israel should allow more Palestinians to have jobs in Israel, not less.

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked asserted on Monday that Palestinians living in the West Bank should be able to work easily in Israel where they could replace African migrants in the workforce.

Speaking at the annual international conference held by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism held in Israel’s coastal city of Herzliya, Shaked affirmed that Palestinians from the West Bank should be commuting daily to take part in Israel’s labor force and be employed in Israeli businesses, which would contribute to coexistence between the two sides and help improve the Palestinian economy.

“It should take an hour for a person living in Jenin,” Shaked said, referring to the West Bank city, “to get to (the central Israeli town) of Kfar Saba.”The justice minister said that the checkpoints Palestinians have to cross in order to enter Israel should be improved.

The international community should also help the Palestinian economy advance and develop, according to Shaked, as economic development could be the key to preventing future acts of terror.

Shaked is not saying anything different than NGOs like Gisha and HRW say. But when she says it, the haters will find a way to twist it into how evil these ideas are; how Israel wants to enslave Palestinians to work for double the wages in the territories or some such nonsense. (More likely they will emphasize Shaked's desire to reduce the number of illegal African migrants and ignore her statements on Palestinians.)

Reality has a way of ruining anti-Israel propaganda. So the haters must suppress reality at all costs.

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The epic tale of enemies coming together and collaborating to save the life of an eagle:

A rebel chief with a passion for birds of prey captures an eagle on the battlefield.

Realizing that the bird is an endangered species and is being tracked by animal conservation experts from the bird’s place of origin, the rebel reaches across enemy lines, to the experts who know how to save the bird’s life. Together they embark on a journey through three different battle zones, setting aside personal gain and deeply embedded traditions in order to save the life of one magnificent animal.

This may sound like the synopsis for a movie (a super-duper, eco-friendly, anti-war, let’s all be green movie). It’s not.

This is just another day in Israel.

Few would have dreamt this eagle’s breathtaking journey was possible and yet, it happened and now he is back in Israel, in the hands of experts who will nurse him back to health.

The eagle had been released back in to the wild four months ago. Two weeks ago, the bird’s tracking device could no longer be seen on the radar. No one knew that he had flown over the border, into Syria. Not until Gal Lusky was contacted by a Syrian who told her: “We have an Israeli eagle.”

Gal is the founder of Israeli Flying Aid, an NGO that has been providing humanitarian aid to Syrians for the past six years (since the war began). IFA was founded in 2005 and focuses on life saving aid and relief to communities in areas stricken by natural disaster or territorial conflicts, specializing in countries that lack diplomatic relations with Israel.

The eagle was being held by a Syrian rebel commander (for more on who the “rebels” are please read: Who are the good guys? here: https://inspirationfromzion.com/2017/04/06/syria-101-the-simple-version/). Luckily for the eagle, the commander has a predilection for birds of prey and some experience in handling them. The commander proudly told Israelis: “I saw the bird on the battlefield when we were preparing ambushes against ISIS. I had a gun but I didn’t kill him. I walked up to him very slowly and caught him with my hands. He was a living creature, a living soul.”

Generally speaking Arab culture does not promote the idea of animals as pets or anything to do with animal rights. Animals are seen as something to be used: a food source, a source of profit or a status symbol. The commander could have easily decided to keep the eagle as a status symbol but he realized that the bird needed medical care and, seeing the tracking device that marked the eagle as S-98, he understood that the people caring for the bird up to that point were Israelis. He knew that the best thing for the eagle would be to return him to Israel. But how?

Through their contact via Israeli Flying Aid the Syrian rebels sent notice that they were holding the eagle and requested instructions on how to properly care for him. They were afraid that someone would steal the eagle and try to sell him. Following instructions from Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority, the rebel commander instructed his soldiers to provide the eagle with two chickens to eat every day. This is extraordinary considering that the soldiers, who were suffering from lack of food, provided the chickens for the eagle while they ate bread during the weeks it took to return the eagle to Israel. They sent video of the eagle eating to Israel, to prove that they were taking proper care of him (see in the Channel 2 item linked below).

The Syrians had to travel through not one but THREE different militia territories before they were able to hand the eagle over to the IDF.

So, what does this story mean? That there are good guys on the other side? That peace is possible?

No.

It means that Israeli compassion to Syrians in need has made an impact. Now there are many in Syria who understand that Israelis are not the monsters of Islamist propaganda but rather people who strive to ease the suffering of others – human and animal alike. It means that there are those who have learned from Israel’s example, that it is possible to choose compassion over killing, to choose to collaborate even with the enemies on the other side of the fence.

“I had a gun in my hands but I caught him with my hands, I didn’t kill him.”

Does this story mean that the unnamed Syrian rebel commander is a “good guy”? No. But he did do something good for this eagle.

Save one life and it is as if you have saved the world. All life is sacred – that of our neighbors living next door, that of the Syrians fighting on the other side of our border and that of an eagle who just wants to be able to fly free. All lives matter. Here, that’s not a slogan, it’s just another day in Israel.

Here is the news story as it was reported on Israel’s Channel 2.

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09/12 Links Pt1: Abbas’ advisor: US Ambassador “motivated by satanic urge”; Israel Rescues the Middle East, Again

From Ian:

PMW: Abbas` advisor: US Ambassador was motivated by "satanic urge"

Mahmoud Abbas' advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash has described US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman and Americans in general, as being motivated by a "satanic urge" and having "lost all morals."
In an interview Friedman gave to The Jerusalem Post, he rejected that Israel occupies any land by using the term "alleged occupation." Abbas' Advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs and the PA's Supreme Shari'ah Judge Mahmoud Al-Habbash referred to Friedman's statement as "idiocy," and added that he and "these people," presumably Americans in general, are motivated by "satanic urges" and "have lost all morals":
Al-Habbash: "One of the representatives of the superpowers - who some people consider to be the most expert and knowledgeable people, the greatest supporters of justice, and the greatest democrats - one of them [US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman] spoke several days ago about the occupation, which is clear even to the biggest idiot, and all the more so to a wise man. Regarding the Israeli occupation of the land of Palestine - he [Friedman] said that it is an 'alleged occupation,' in other words: 'You claim there is an occupation? It isn't really an occupation.' What idiocy is this? What satanic urge motivates these people? These are people who have lost all morals, who watch the oppressed and support the oppressors and stand by their side." [Friday sermon in presence of PA Chairman Abbas, Official PA TV, Sept. 8, 2017]
Al-Habbash said this during his Friday sermon at the mosque at the PA headquarters in Ramallah, in front of Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen. The sermon was broadcast live on official PA TV.

Caroline Glick: The State Department's strange obsession

The law of Occam’s Razor, refined to common parlance, is that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
If we apply Occam’s Razor to recently reported positions of the US State Department, then we can conclude that the people making decisions at Foggy Bottom have “issues” with Jews and with Israel.
Last Friday, JTA reported that the State Department intends to abide by an agreement it reached in 2014 with the Iraqi government and return the Iraqi Jewish archives to Iraq next year.
The Iraqi Jewish archives were rescued in Baghdad by US forces in 2003 from a flooded basement of the Iraqi secret services headquarters. The tens of thousands of documents include everything from sacred texts from as early as the 16th century to Jewish school records.
The books and documents were looted from the Iraqi Jewish community by successive Iraqi regimes. They were restored by the National Archives in Washington, DC.
The Iraqi Jewish community was one of the oldest exilic Jewish communities.
It began with the Babylonian exile following the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem 2,600 years ago. Until the early 20th century, it was one of the most accomplished Jewish communities in the world. Some of the most important yeshivas in Jewish history were in present-day Iraq. The Babylonian Talmud was written in Iraq. The Jewish community in Iraq predated the current people of Iraq by nearly a thousand years.
It was a huge community. In 1948, Jews were the largest minority in Baghdad.
Jews comprised a third of the population of Basra. The status of the community was imperiled during World War II, when the pro-Nazi junta of generals that seized control of the government in 1940 instigated the Farhud, a weeklong pogrom. 900 Jews were murdered.
Thousands of Jewish homes, schools and businesses were burned to the ground.
With Israel’s establishment, and later with the Baathist seizure of power in Iraq in the 1960s, the once great Jewish community was systematically destroyed.

Israel Thrives: We cannot sit still for this

The JTA has reported over the weekend that the Iraqi Jewish Archive will return to Iraq in September 2018 with the end of its exhibition at the Jewish Museum of Baltimore. According to the article, the State Department announced that the return of the archive to Iraq can be delayed as long as there is an agreement between the Iraqi government and an institution that will exhibit it. The Iraqi government claims that the archive is part of the country's patrimony and could serve as a domestic education tool of the country's Jewish history. I need not tell readers of this blog the Iraqi government came into possession of the archive by looting it from the Iraqi Jewish community. The issue is what to do about it.
As a stopgap, it is possible that another institution could make an agreement with the Iraqi government to host it for another period of time. However, that would only be a stopgap. To permanently prevent the archive's return would require either the United States Government to renege on the agreement or for the Iraqi government to decide to waive its rights. There have been voices in Congress pushing for the US Government to do exactly as I describe. However, their voices have not gained traction for wider publicization. Without broad awareness of the archive's existence, let alone the travesty of it returning to Iraq, the State Department will not consider holding the archive without the Iraqi government's permission.
Similarly, the Iraqi government will not consider waiving its rights unless they are shamed into acknowledging that their possession of it is a result of looting the Jewish community. Shaming them will require mass awareness. A few things we need in order create this mass awareness. One is that we need protests at Iraqi diplomatic missions highlighting that the archive is looted. The second part is to get friendly voices in the media to write about and broadcast about it in outlets that are viewed by the large public. This isn't to claim that doing so will definitely prevent the archive's return to Iraq, but can anything think of a better approach than shaming the Iraqi government and is there any way to shame the Iraqi government without creating mass awareness?

Last week, Ari Y. Kelman, associate professor and Joseph Chair in Education and Jewish Studies at the University of California-Davis, came out with a study entitled "Safe and on the Sidelines." Its purpose is to challenge the results of other studies that have reported on the hostility and intimidation of antisemitism on college campuses, to the extent that campuses themselves have become "hotspots of antisemitism."

"Safe and on the Sidelines" disputes the impression given by the other surveys, and claims that on the contrary, those surveys are not representative of the Jewish student experience on campus:

...Contrary to widely shared impressions, we found a picture of campus life that is neither threatening nor alarmist. In general, students reported feeling comfortable on their campuses, and, more specifically, comfortable as Jews on their campuses.

Interviewees reported low levels of antisemitism or discomfort. When they did encounter discomfort, they traced it either to the carelessness of student speech or to tensions within campus debates about the Israel-Palestine conflict, which they characterized as strident, inflammatory, and divisive. They held both supporters and critics of Israel responsible for creating this environment. The tone of student activism created a divided campus that left little room for reasoned, productive debate. (from the Executive Summary)

"Safe and on the Sidelines" has taken issue head-on and has itself drawn fire.

While Prof. Kelman claims that the other surveys create an impression that "does not represent the experiences of Jewish students at the campus level," others point out that Kelman's own survey is limited to the undergraduate students at five California universities: Stanford, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, UCLA, and UC Irvine.

Emblem of Stanford University. Source: Wikipedia. Motto: The Wind of Freedom Blows

The sampling of the study itself is based on interviews with 66 of those undergraduate students.

But "Safe and on the Sidelines" is a qualitative study, trying to understand the student's perspective through interviews, finding common themes and using the students' own language in the report. Those other studies are quantitative and are based on information which is then analyzed through numerical data and statistical inferences.

Still, one would expect similar conclusions.

The issue of numbers and location are enough that in an interview with Tablet Magazine, Prof. Kelman admits his study is based on a "limited sample that was not a representative sample of Jews on campus."

Considering that the 66 students interviewed come from 5 different universities, one can argue that not only was the sample not representative of Jews on campus -- it was not a representative sample of Jews on any campus.

Another bone of contention is the sampling group itself. Kelman describes how the survey was designed:

We intentionally sought out Jewish students who were either unengaged or minimally engaged in organized Jewish life on their campuses. Our rationale for selection reflected the understanding that students who fit our profile represent the vast majority of Jewish college students...we screened students with respect to their activities in order to determine whether or not they fit our general criteria so as to minimize those with vastly different definitions of “involvement” than ours. [emphasis added]

Caroline Glick attacks this aspect of the study's methodology. In When Great Institutions Lie she writes that

There is certainly a valid argument to be made for researching the views of uninvolved Jewish students about antisemitism on campus. But the researchers didn’t do that. They didn’t survey a random, and therefore statistically meaningful sample of uninvolved Jews.

They went to great length to ensure that the “uninvolved” Jewish students were their sort of “uninvolved” Jewish students. As they wrote, “We screened students with respect to their activities in order to determine whether or not they fit our general criteria so as to minimize those with vastly different definitions of ‘involvement’ than ours.”

In contrast, the Kosmin and Kaysar National Demographic Survey of American Jewish College Students 2014 Anti-Semitism Report, which interviewed 1,157 self-identified Jewish students, used open-access databases of college students across the country. The Jewish student random sampling was extracted by isolating distinctive Jewish names.

Prof. Leonard Saxe and his group, in their study Hotspots of Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Sentiment on US Campuses, used as their sampling applicants to Birthright Israel who were undergraduates at one of the 50 schools selected for their study. They included both students who ended up going on the trip as well as those who did not -- the understanding being that "Birthright Israel applicants represent a broad spectrum of the Jewish student population, although they likely differ from Jewish students who did not apply to the program on some dimensions".

These two studies, based on statistical analysis, conclude there is a problem of antisemitism on campus.
The fact that the Kelman study, based on what Glick considers a non-random sampling, comes to an opposite conclusion has her fuming.

Another issue that should be mentioned is that there are errors in the report, where quotes from one study are attributed to another. On page numbered 6 in the study, Kelman writes

Kosmin and Keysar also found that antisemitic incidents, while on the rise, are still “relatively rare, and the vast majority of Jewish students report feeling safe on their campuses.”

Later, on the page numbered 11 in the study, Kelman writes:

Kosmin and Keysar wrote, “While it is important not to conflate anti-Semitism with every incident of anti- Israel activity, the rise in anti-Israel events on college campuses contributes to what some students experience as a hostile campus environment."

In fact, neither of these quotes attributed to Kosmin and Keysar are theirs. Instead, they are found in the ADL's Anti-Israel Activity on Campus, 2014-2015: Trends and Projections, which is also quoted in Kelman's report.

The first quote in particular is actually the opposite of what the Kosmin and Keysar report concludes.

When I emailed Prof. Kosmin to let him know about the error, he invoked Caveat Emptor, let the buyer beware.

Then there are the issues of interpretation. As a qualitative study, the impressions of the students are presented in their own language. The study categorizes their responses, but its conclusions are not always obvious.

For example, according to the section "Rejecting the Conflation of Jewish and Israel"

Many students traced whatever discomfort they felt to the tone of campus activism related to the Israel- Palestine conflict, and they generally did not identify activism as antisemitic. Nevertheless, fierce critiques of Israel left some of our interviewees feeling unsettled or attacked, regardless of their political attitudes. Our interviewees traced some of their discomfort to assumptions that they, as Jews, support Israel and its policies, and they offered careful explications of how they understood the relationship between their Jewishness and their politics. [emphasis added]

But what are the examples of "activism"?

Lindsey (junior, UCLA) described her discomfort after seeing a cartoon drawing of the Israeli Prime Minister in the local student newspaper. (the content of the cartoon is left to our imagination)
Emily (junior, Stanford) recalled the personal nature of her reaction to the student senate discussion of a divestment resolution that took place during her first year on campus.
Amanda (senior, Berkeley), reported being made uncomfortable not by the criticism itself, but from being erroneously “blamed for what people perceive as the crimes of the Israeli government.”

If a divestment resolutions, singling out Israel for economic action does not qualify as antisemitic or at least anti-Israel, but rather as mere activism, then the nature of the mere discomfort seems suspicious.

And what is one to make of being held responsible for "the crimes of the Israeli government" just because one is Jewish, yet feeling only "uncomfortable"?

The study does make clear that of the 66 students, there were 6 who "expressed their understanding that anti-Israel sentiment was, by definition, antisemitic," but if BDS is being perceived as a political as opposed to an anti-Israel action, then it may be that even fewer than 6 would see the problem.

Kelman justifies his sampling of 66 Jewish students who were "unengaged or minimally engaged in organized Jewish life on their campuses" based on his understanding that they represent "the vast majority of Jewish college students."

In an interview with Prof. Leonard Saxe, I ran that past him -- and he disagreed. He feels that a vast majority feel "substantial connection." There was not enough time to delve into that, so it may be that Prof. Kelman and Prof. Saxe may be defining the idea of "engaged" differently. However, there is an aspect of that where they clearly do not agree. Kelman is adamant that the students in his study are knowledgeable:

Speaking up, either in support of Israel among students who were critical of Israel or as a critic of Israel among Jewish students seemed, to many, to be too heavy a burden. This was not for a lack of knowledge. We interviewed many students who regularly read the news or majored in International Relations, or elected to write about these issues in other classes. [emphasis added]

The omission of books as a source of knowledge is as conspicuous as his insistence that following the news gives you the facts.

On this point Prof. Saxe disagreed, and here I do too.

We live in a world where we can easily access thousands of videos of "man in the street" interviews, where people are regularly shown up to know less than what they think they do.

Ami Horowitz can get donations to Hamas terrorists while on the campus of a US university

More to the point, Prof. Saxe described how he found that Jewish graduate students were incapable of distinguishing between the geographic locations of Tel Aviv and the West Bank.

At issue is more than just methodology. There is an unavoidable problem of interpretation involved in assessing comments of the students in a study of this sort. A discussion to divest from Israel is seen as only a bunch of activists talking while being told that as a Jew you are responsible for Israel's actions is just a source of discomfort from someone talking out of turn.

Glick, for her part, blames the researchers of the report for convincing the students "that antisemitism isn’t antisemitism," but that may not be accurate.

The study, which is considered a report about antisemitism, is entitled "Safe and On the Sidelines," but it is subtitled "Jewish Students and the Israel-Palestine Conflict on Campuses and on the Sideline." No mention of antisemitism. Similarly, a quick search in the study for the word "Israel" shows that it comes up 181 times. The words "antisemitic" and "antisemitism" appear 29 and 48 times respectively for a total of 77 times.

The message of the study that seems to come across is that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism -- but merely a bit of discomfort.

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PA accuses Israel of prison "war crimes" while terrorists have lavish meals, university courses and access to Facebook.

Issa Qaraqe, the Palestinian Authority head of prisoner affairs, has accused Israel of "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" over its treatment of Palestinian prisoners.

Qarqa'a said that Israel is committing collective punishment against prisoners, arbitrary arrests, unfair trials, detention of minors, arbitrary administrative detention, and crimes of torture, ill-treatment and medical negligence.

He urged international pressure and and legal instruments to protect them.

As Daled Amos reported last May, here is the Facebook page of one of these poor tortured prisoners:

Here are some of the prisoners enjoying lavish meals that they prepared themselves:

I don't need to go into details of the absurdity of calling how Israel treats prisoners "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity," the most serious charges possible in international law that normally apply to genocide, wartime rape and similar horrendous acts.

On the one hand you can say that this Palestinian insistence that they are the most oppressed people on Earth is a sort of mass delusion, where they live in a permanent feedback loop bubble reading delusional news stories of how terrible their lives are even as they are living what can only be described as pretty decent lives compared to the average person on Earth.

On the other hand, this mass delusion is rewarded with attention from the media, sympathy from academia, support from NGOs and aid organizations who are diverting funds from people who are actually in real need.

I

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President of New Israel Fund says Israel is evil

On Monday, Haaretz editor Amos Schocken tweeted this to promote an article by professional Israel-hater Amira Hass:

Translation: "Is Israel an evil country, or is it just committing ethnic cleansing on a regular basis?"

Talia Sasson, a member of Meretz and the president of the New Israel Fund, "Liked" this post.

And then she answered it:

"It is both."

She deleted the tweet soon after

Here is a person who is the leader of the major left-wing fundraiser for Israeli causes - who explicitly says that Israel is evil (and commits ethnic cleansing, of course.)

It is nice to see the Israeli Left admit publicly that they don't criticize Israel out of love, as they pretend when they are criticized and when they are fundraising.

They simply hate Israel.

(h/t Yoel, Mida)

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