Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 02, 2017

11/02 Links Pt2: Prosor: A century of missed opportunities; The Plame Truth About Anti-Semitism in America

From Ian:

David Collier: Gilad Atzmon, solidarity in Reading and RISC – the anti-Israel hosts

Last week, Gilad Atzmon gave a talk at the Reading International Solidarity Centre (RISC).

This blog isn’t about free speech. You want a racist book? You want to subscribe to a white supremacist magazine that hates Jews, blacks and gays? Then go ahead, nobody is stopping you. But you shouldn’t expect the National Lottery fund to subsidise the product. The public purse can be legitimately discerning about where it provides funding. That is not an argument over free speech.

Which is why publicly funded Reading International Solidarity Centre were so outrageously ‘off the mark’ when they allowed this event to go ahead.

Gilad Atzmon the idiot
Gilad Atzmon is an idiot with a highly exaggerated sense of his own intelligence. Just as any functioning computer, Gilad Atzmon operates with the data he has to play with. If some founding pieces, have been contaminated, then the final output is likely to be an incoherent mess. Thus, Gilad Atzmon remains oblivious to the fact that his basic reasoning is badly flawed and his conclusions are askew. A consensus opinion held even by many of those who ‘hate’ Israel. Gilad Atzmon has been outed as an antisemite by many in the anti-Israel camp.

The event in Reading highlighted all this perfectly. In effect, you have to be unbelievably stupid or an antisemite yourself, not to see the antisemite in Gilad Atzmon. There is a working processor churning away behind Gilad Atzmon’s ideology. He correctly identifies some serious problems in society – discussing identity politics, political correctness, automation, and the related scary cliff we face over the possibility of a growing disenfranchised ‘underclass’. Gilad Atzmon’s problem is an infected operating system. Gilad Atzmon has a virus called antisemitism.

Grilli: Antisemitism is always cruel

Whether it’s the “blood libels” of early modern Europe, Germany in the 1930s, Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, or even Occupy Wall Street, any person of good will should be able to detect the pattern: Jews are the canary in the coal mine. In a society with a large population of Jews, when things start to go wrong, that’s where we unfortunately point fingers. In American culture, it is certainly a disgrace on the right.

The work William F. Buckley Jr. did to rid the conservative movement of the John Birchers seems to have lost some of its power as the tiki-torch wielding Jacobins of Charlottesville rose together as to speak with one voice, chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” This would be enough of an embarrassment but it only gained steam when President Trump gave one of the more mealy mouthed denunciations when addressing the horror that took place in Charlottesville, which resulted in the death of an innocent woman. It seems, however, that this issue has gone under reported on the left, for it is certainly a problem on the political left as well.

When Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz went to the University of California, Berkeley recently to discuss the liberal case for Israel, the student newspaper, the Daily Californian, ran a cartoon that could have easily sprung from the mind of Joseph Goebbels. The cartoon depicted Dershowitz as all anti-Semites depict Jews: ugly, exaggerated features, while he propped up the murder of Palestinians by an IDF soldier.

This blatant anti-Semitism would no doubt be explained away in terms of anti-Zionism, not anti-Semitism. It is convenient how often the two intersect. The same conspiratorial language is often used and, as one can see here, the same horrifying stereotypes are often employed. In Charlottesville, hundreds of people felt comfortable enough in their anti-Semitism to march in one of the nation’s most prominent college towns. In Berkeley, the editorial board at the newspaper of one of the better respected universities in the country, felt comfortable enough to print an anti-Semitic cartoon. The comfort of both of these groups of people is quite disturbing.

The Plame Truth About Anti-Semitism in America

Having encountered only scattered social media reaction to like-minded tweets in the past, Plame’s initial reaction to angry responses on Twitter was to double down, insisting that “many neocon hawks ARE Jewish” and admonishing her followers to “read the entire article,” which she called “provocative, but thoughtful.”

Only when the backlash began to draw mainstream media inquiries did Plame begin to backtrack, first by implausibly feigning ignorance of both the article (claiming only to have skimmed it) and of UNZ.com, then with a more full-throated apology and letter of resignation from the board of Ploughshares Fund.

What’s astonishing about this affair is that Plame wasn’t drunk or distressed in any way (unless she found the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah distressing), nor was she caught unawares on a hot mic. Her grotesque expressions of bigotry were premeditated, public and purposed, however clumsily, to advance a political agenda. And they were largely ignored until they reached the threshold of Zyklon B metaphors and forcing Jews to display outward identification.

Even then the reaction among liberal commentators was apologetic and circumspect.

The Washington Post columnist Molly Roberts bemoaned Plame’s “casual, careless anti-Semitism” not because it is deeply unsettling to Jews or encourages the worst instincts in the rest of us, but because it undermines critiques of Israel “that might otherwise hold merit” and does a “disservice to those who want to have a wider discussion about Israel’s influence” in Washington. Liberals tend to view rampant anti-Semitism in universities and other bastions of the far left in much the same way — if they acknowledge it at all.

The truth about anti-Semitism in America is that we are further away from dispelling it than we are other forms of bigotry. Those who peddle overtly racist dogma do not sit on the boards of reputable NGOs, do not land lucrative speaking gigs and certainly do not get admonished in The Washington Post for carelessly undermining more legitimate criticism of African-Americans. Liberals for whom Plame was, and will likely remain, a cause célèbre should ponder why the equivalent cannot be said of anti-Semites.

From "The New Zealanders in Sinai and Palestine," published in 1922 under the authority of the government of New Zealand:

For a very long time there had been a feeling of bitterness throughout the forces on account of the many acts of the natives and the manner in which they were protected against the troops. Claims for damage, alleged to have been done by our men were always supported and the men had to pay up. This began as far back as Sinai where regiments were made to pay for damage alleged to have been done to the date palms there. Later in Palestine our troops suffered very much from the thieving propensities of the Arab. Here again if any damage were done to crops or stock of a native the claim was upheld, but no redress was ever obtained against a native for theft. At Rafa some natives attacked two of our men severely wounding one and killing the other and also stealing his horse. Subsequently the dead on the Rafa battle-field were dug up and stripped. This happened again after the action at Ayun Kara which took place close by Surafend and there is not the slightest doubt that these villagers were responsible. All troops round Surafend had been suffering from the depredations of the Arabs and could get no redress. Many times our men suffered by being fired upon by the native inhabitants and it must be remembered also that the murder of this New Zealander was not the first that had been committed by the Arabs in this district. An Australian had been shot here only a short time before.

The regiment considered what to do about the Arabs who were stealing from them, killing some and robbing graves.

In the end, they burned the village to the ground and 30 Arabs were killed or injured. The book refers to this as a "disturbance."

[A]t the inquiry it was found impossible to get any evidence as to who took part in the disturbance. But such evidence as was obtained showed that parties from units outside the Division took part in the disturbance which was probably organised in the murdered man's unit. The evidence showed clearly that many small parties came over from Ramleh, Ludd and G.H.Q. at Bir Salim.

It appears that the murdered man's comrades feeling aggrieved that the murderer was not immediately brought to book went to the village and demanded his surrender. They were met by an insolent answer from the head man of the village so they determined to find him and the searching of the houses led to a collision with the natives which resulted in a riot.

There is only slight embarrassment in the book about this incident.

As a result of this disturbance the Commander-in-Chief did not forward names of officers or men of Anzac Units which were camped at Surafend at the time and who had been recommended by the Divisional Commander for inclusion in the Peace Despatch; but subsequently he relented out of consideration for the good work of the Division and forwarded most of the names in a supplementary despatch.

This is the sort of historical event that no one wants to remember. It shows that the Arabs were murderers and thieves, and that the New Zealand army took matters into their own hands to destroy the entire Arab community in retaliation.

The former wouldn't be reported today because it sounds like anti-Arab racism. The latter makes it sound like enlightened armies engaged in routine gross violations of human rights.

And who wants to talk about that unless the army is Jewish?

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

On Monday, the IDF blew up a tunnel that crossed under the border between Gaza and Israel, and reached a point approximately 2 km from Kibbutz Kissufim.

At least 7 terrorists were killed who were in the tunnel when it exploded, or who entered it afterwards to try to rescue survivors, and numerous others were injured (Israel radio reports this evening that Hamas claims as many as 14 dead). Some of them were members of the Iran-supported Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), while others were associated with Hamas. Two of the dead were identified as “senior commanders” of PIJ.

Although PIJ leaders claimed the purpose of the tunnel was to facilitate the capture of IDF soldiers that could then be held for ransom in order to release PIJ terrorists in Israeli jails, the location of the tunnel so close to a civilian kibbutz suggests that it could also have been a target.

IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis explained Monday that the operation had been defensive and that it had taken place in Israeli territory. He also said most of the fatalities were from smoke inhalation, dust and landslides, and not the detonation, itself.

"Only conventional measures were used," he said. "The IDF used the same measures it uses regularly. The secondary damage underground [apparently from explosives stored in the tunnel - vr] resulted in fatalities."

"There was no intent to target any specific individual. The operation took place in our territory. Their people were killed in their territory," he added.

Some right-wing politicians, like Jewish Home’s Naftali Bennett, found the tone of the statement less than satisfactory.

“We must not apologize for our success in eliminating terrorists,” Bennett, a member of the security cabinet, tweeted. “I will clarify: These are terrorists who were digging a tunnel of death – in Israeli territory – which was meant to kill Israeli women and children.”

I must admit that at first I agreed with Bennett. After all, the tunnel was a clear violation of Israeli sovereignty, an act of war if there ever was one. And I shudder to imagine the prospect of heavily armed, professional killers emerging from under the ground inside a kibbutz while the residents sleep. The job of the IDF is to defeat our enemies, which – perhaps to the consternation of some post-modern military analysts – requires killing them, even if some of the dead happen to be “senior commanders.” The apologetic tone of the statement suggests that it emanated from a university dean of diversity relations and not an army spokesperson.

But some research uncovered a little-known document that sheds light on the thinking behind the IDF Spokesperson’s statement. Apparently there is more historical precedent for his approach than I thought. I present the document here for your perusal:

Cheshvan 10, 1078 BCE
From: Office of the Israelite Army Spokesperson
To: Media
Subject: Destruction of Philistine Temple of Dagon

Today the Shimson unit of the Israelite Army destroyed the Temple of Dagon in Gaza by a controlled detonation. The operation was carried out using very old, but effective, technology. The Army wishes to stress that the unfortunate death of 3,000 Philistines was secondary damage caused by the roof falling in. At no time did we intend to kill any particular Philistine, even if he was King of Philistia.

As the great Jewish comedian Jack Benny liked to say, “but seriously, folks.” There is no historical precedent for a victorious army being apologetic for killing the enemy. Jewish tradition teaches that when someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first. Even Christian armies don’t follow Jesus’ injunction to turn the other cheek to the one that smites you. Stop trying to make us better Christians than the Christians.

The tunnel constituted an act of war, and using it as planned would have been a war crime. In this case Israel did not cower behind its Iron domes or high-tech barriers, but acted proactively according to the best military doctrine.

Hamas, Fatah, the EU, the UN, the BBC and others may complain, but what they are actually complaining about is Jews defending themselves, for once. We have nothing to explain, nothing to apologize or feel regret for. It doesn’t matter if they died from blast or smoke inhalation. It doesn’t matter if they were on their side of the fence or ours, or if we blew up part or all of the tunnel, or if there were explosives stored in it. It doesn’t matter what effect it has on “Hamas/Fatah reconciliation.” And especially, it is good thing, not a bad thing, that we killed “senior commanders.”

They came to kill us, but we rose early and killed them first.

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11/02 Links Pt1: Times of Israel Hacked by Turks; Radical leftists nearly lynched by Arab mob

From Ian:

What goes on under the surface of UNRWA schools is not the problem

UNRWA does indeed condemn Hamas activity underneath UNRWA schools.

Yet UNRWA says nothing about Hamas activity inside the UNRWA schools.

Hamas, defined as a terror group by the US, the UN, the EU, the UK, Canada and Australia, has won successive elections since 1999, to lead both the UNRWA workers union and the UNRWA teachers union.

Hamas influences generations of descendants of the 1948 war to engage in the 'right of return' through jihad - holy war - to take back Arab villages that existed before 1948.

New school books used by UNRWA teach that the Jewish presence in Palestine is “temporary.”

Since 2016, the name "Israel" has disappeared in all UNRWA texts, replaced by the expression "Zionist occupation."

UNRWA school books list thirty inflammatory accusations against Jews starting with its usurpation of Palestine and the expulsion of the original inhabitants, through massacres, murder of Palestinian children, assassination of Palestinian leaders, aggression against neighboring Arab states, destruction of Palestinian cities and villages, desecration of Muslim and Christian holy places, mass arrests, attempts at the elimination of Palestinian identity and cultural heritage, besieging the Palestinians by the separation fence, damaging Palestinian economy and harming Palestinian society, and ending in perpetuating the state of ignorance among Palestinians and responsibility for intra-family violence and drug abuse in Palestinian society.

Times of Israel Hacked by Turks

The Times of Israel has been hacked by a Turkish Islamist group calling itself ‘Gazzeye’ or ‘Akincilar’, on Thursday afternoon.

Visitors to the TOI home page found the Turkish flag and a symbol with the name Akincilar, which is also the name of a town and a district of Sivas Province of Turkey.

The Jewish Week online edition, a New York based newspaper, which merged into the Times of Israel site last year, was also hacked in the process.

Cyber-security expert Paul Goldenberg has previously told The New York Jewish Week, “the Jewish community is highly susceptible to these attacks; the threat cannot be underestimated.”

In 2015, Russel Neiss, a technology consultant, told The New York Jewish Week, “This sort of attack should be easily avoidable with only a small amount of prevention by a staff member of the organization with a moderate amount of technological knowledge or an attentive contractor.”

Sruli Shaffren, the sysadmin for JewishPress.com offered a different perspective, “Any site can be hacked. Any server can have hundreds if not thousands of holes. The system administrators and programmers try to close them all, but a hacker has to only find one in order to succeed. That said, there are steps that can be taken, and people should do whatever they can to keep their sites secure.”

Switzerland admits drone test bungle in Golan Heights

Switzerland's Defense Ministry has admitted sending staff to test reconnaissance drones in contested land held by Israel – an embarrassing blow for the neutral European country's status as an honest broker in the Middle East.

Swiss officials visited an airfield in the Golan Heights region on three occasions in 2012, 2013 and 2015 to monitor tests of the Israeli-built Hermes 900 aircraft that they are buying for $265 million.

The Hermes 900, produced by defense contractor Elbit Systems, is a medium-altitude, multi-payload, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle, designed for tactical missions. It has an endurance of over 30 hours and can fly at a maximum altitude of 30,000 feet, with a primary mission of reconnaissance, surveillance and communications relay.

The officials' visits, which lasted several days, took place in an area that Switzerland does not recognize as being part of Israel, as it was seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Following an internal review this year, the Swiss found the presence of their personnel at the airfield contradicted the Swiss position on the Middle East conflict, the ministry said.

The visits took place without the knowledge of the Swiss Foreign Ministry. No further visits have taken place since the affair came to light, it said in a statement.

Zionist Jews created modern Israel, not Balfour

The Balfour Declaration was in important document symbolically, but it was merely a step on the way of modern Jewish self-determination. It was preceded and succeeded by some amazing Zionist diplomatic accomplishments in the international arena. (The Martin Kramer essay from June is a must-read.)

When Great Britain essentially abrogated the intent of Balfour (and the League of Nations) with the Peel Commission and the White Paper, the Zionist Jews kept building up their nascent nation, not only creating a government-in-waiting but also building cultural and educational institutions as well as defense forces that would be necessary to build a state. They didn't get international funding for this - they just did it.

Too many articles about Balfour give Great Britain credit for creating Israel, just like articles at the end of this month will credit the UN partition plan 70 years ago with creating Israel. Neither is true. Israel was created through the sweat and blood and hard work and foresight of a group of Jews who saw how important it was to have a Jewish state. They used international instruments to help them but the entire enterprise was created, sustained and completed by Jews alone, to rebuild the Jewish state that Jews have yearned for over two millennia.

The contrast with Palestinianism is striking. Palestinians haven't been building institutions - they have been sitting back and letting the world community build them. They haven't been creating an effective government - they have been taking NGO money to create their plans. Their leaders aren't craving the responsibility behind building a real state - they are being dragged, kicking and screaming, into doing the bare minimum to be take seriously.

Most importantly, Palestinianism is not nationalism in the sense that they want to live free and independently. It is anti-nationalism. because its entire purpose is the destruction of the Jewish state, not the building of another Arab state. if it wasn't for Israel the Palestinians would happily have become Jordanians and Syrians and Egyptians, depending on how history would have played out. There was certainly no Palestinian government in waiting in 1947. All the major Palestinian leaders in the 1930s had been involved in violence and incitement, not nation-building like the Jewish leaders were.

The Balfour Declaration didn't create Israel and it didn't destroy "Palestine." Jewish genius and creativity and hard work created Israel, and Palestinian hate, rejectionism and antisemitism is what ensured - and continues to ensure - that there will never be a viable, independent Palestinian state.

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At the @NYTimes, car rammings in New York and Barcelona and London are terror - but not in Jerusalem

The New York Times immediately described the Manhattan truck attack as "terror" multiple times:

Readers complained about why this attack was considered "terror" and not the attacks in Las Vegas and elsewhere. The response pointed readers to an "Interpreter" column on that topic, where he doesn't specifically talk about the NYT editorial standards but a more general definition of terrorism:

On the surface, this could be considered a straightforward question of motive. Terrorism is defined as an attack on civilians meant to frighten a larger community for political purposes.
But the new generation of Islamist terrorism, conducted by individuals citing far-off inspiration, has blurred the distinctions between terrorist and disturbed loner. So have recent mass shooters who show signs of both mental illness and an attachment to vague ideological causes.

In tacitly defending the use of the word "terror" to describe the truck attack, the Times defines terror - accurately - as "an attack on civilians meant to frighten a larger community for political purposes." the Las Vegas attack does not neatly fit into that definition.

Attacks in Israel that are virtually identical to the vehicle attack in New York definitely fit exactly into the definition of terror that the Times gives. Yet - they were never called terror by that newspaper:

Two separate 2008 attacks by Palestinians plowing a construction vehicle into civilians was not called terror, except when quoting Israeli police.

A 2014 car ramming attack killing a baby in Jerusalem was not described as terror.

A 2015 car ramming attack at a Jerusalem bus stop was not described as terror.

Even an analysis of the string of car ramming attacks in Israel, with Palestinian social media being quoted as encouraging it, did not use the word "terror:"

One cartoon circulating on social networks on Thursday depicted a car as the barrel of an automatic weapon, captioned in Arabic, “Revolt and resist, even by your car.” Another showed an odometer with the slogan, “Oh, revolutionary, use more gasoline, so we can have Palestine back.” A third simply had a vehicle in the red, white and green of the Palestinian flag hitting two men with Jewish stars on their black hats.

These cartoons prove that the car ramming attacks in Israel were "meant to frighten a larger community for political purposes."

Yet the New York Times studiously avoided the word "terror" in reporting these attacks.

Was it only because the ramming was in New York and therefore closer to home? Not at all. The New York Times described the Barcelona attack as terror. It described the ramming attack in London as terror.

Only in Israel are vehicle ramming attacks dismissed as mere "attacks."

There is only one reason that this is the case. When there are Islamist terror attacks around the world, the editors of the New York Times are perplexed. The attacks are "senseless." The goals are nebulous - destroying the US or Europe? That's crazy!

But Palestinian attacks on Israel, they can understand. After all, they have reported extensively on Israeli actions that make Palestinians uncomfortable, like blockading a territory from where thousands of rockets have been fired. To them, these attacks aren't "senseless" - there is some justification that they can understand. Killing Israeli Jews is normalized, understandable, routine. But killing British or American citizens is outrageous.

The attacks are identical. The motives - to destroy the host country - are identical. The underlying religious justifications of martyrdom are identical. But in Israel's case, the Jewish victims have an amount of culpability that European and American victims do not.

This is clear, direct anti-Israel bias. And while the NYT bends over backwards to explain the difference between attacks Las Vegas and New York, they don't want to tell the world why they see a difference between attacks in Jerusalem and New York, It would reveal their hypocrisy.virtu

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Haaretz has an article by Mya Guarnieri Jaradat, an Israeli who married a Palestinian Muslim and who supports BDS and dismantling the Jewish state, who is now upset that the American Jewish community doesn't make her feel comfortable.

If my husband and I had stayed in Israel-Palestine, we would have never sent our daughter to a preschool of any religious orientation. We probably would have remained in the West Bank, where his family would have helped with childcare. She would have been raised a Muslim Palestinian.

But I likely would have brought her in to Israel with me for the holidays and the occasional Shabbat on the beach in Tel Aviv. There, she would have absorbed my brand of secular Judaism - chagim and Hebrew.

Guarnieri Jaradat wants her child to have Jewishness without Judaism, Israeliness without Israel, and for good measure to be Muslim without Islam.

And she's whining that she cannot find this mythical community - in America.

... I needed to find childcare. Fast. None of the secular preschools I visited were a fit; the JCC was certainly out of question. I remembered the place where my friend’s son had his brit milah. I dropped by. There was no Israeli flag out front but there was Hebrew inside.

What’s the harm in a little religion? I asked myself. I signed my daughter up.

While I initially felt encouraged by the place’s welcoming attitude. I told them about our unique family situation and they seemed accepting. But I became concerned about the content. However silly, I was disappointed that their sort of Hebrew wasn’t the Hebrew I’d learned in Israel. Sukkot isn’t "Sukkot" but, rather, “Sukkos.” It’s not shabbat shalom but "gut shabbos." The kids don’t study the alef-bet. No, it’s the alef-beis.

Something else wasn’t sitting right with me. On Rosh Hashanah when I accompanied my daughter to the children’s program, I figured out what it was: . When they did a mock tashlikh, the children fished "good" and "bad" things out of a bag, tossing the "bad" into a large piece of paper, painted blue, decorated with fish, representing a body of water, and receiving candy for the "good."

"Good" and "bad"? I didn’t want her internalizing the labels and feeling the guilt or shame common to religious people of all the Abrahamic faiths. I was uncomfortable with how black and white it all was, I was uncomfortable with the moralizing.

Someone who has written dozens of articles for +972 and other sites, who literally hates Zionism, is upset at the "moralizing" of teaching children that some behaviors are good and some are bad???

One of the blurb-writers for Mya's anti-Israel book, Neve Gordon, refers to the Israeli government as representing "the intricate webs of evil." Mya doesn't object to that kind of moralizing. Only the kind that tells children that listening to parents is good and hurting others is bad.

What a thoroughly messed-up person. She wants to teach her daughter that there is no such thing as good and bad - except if course for the twin evils of Israel and the Jewish religion.

How terrible that she cannot find a community of like-minded people that trash their religion and their nationality while listening to Hebrew popular music.

We already knew that Guarnieri Jaradat was a hypocrite. But this is such self-absorbed crap - trying to damn the American Jewish community but unwittingly telling the world what a twisted and sick person she is.

No wonder that Haaretz considers it worthy of publication.

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11/01 Links Pt2: Palestinian leaders need to have ‘that’ Santa conversation with their people; Judo Shame

From Ian:

Britain’s Hard Left Has Come to Resemble a Religion, in Which “Zionists” Are among the Devils

Secularization has dramatically reduced the autonomy of this social sphere, as whole areas of social life have become the business of the state to police. The state is fast becoming a secular church, the fount of moral legislation, and is busy imposing a uniformity of belief on its citizens every bit as intrusive as the theocratic states of the past, where the distinction between church and state was likewise unknown.

From this development, it has followed that politicians have been only too willing to step into the role of prophets or high priests; and it is not surprising, therefore, that someone like Corbyn, who appears to offer a coherent worldview and gives clear guidance as to what people should believe, should be able to acquire a following.

That is one part of the story. The other major trend is simply the wholesale abandonment of the moral teaching associated with the Bible. For it is the first rule of Judeo-Christian morality that evil is to be found within us. . . . It is a prescription for humility which may be considered to be the very foundation of a gentle and harmonious social life.

The strength of this moral teaching is that it inoculates us against the self-righteousness that sees the world in dualistic terms, as divided between us and them, between the children of light and the children of darkness. For in the . . . vision of the Corbynistas, we are wholly virtuous, wholly pure, and wholly innocent; evil has nothing to do with us, but wholly to do with them, those wicked bankers, capitalists, neo-imperialists, Zionists, Tories, and racists, who must in due time be punished for their sins.

Alan Dershowitz: The Forward’s Defense of an Antisemitic Cartoon Is Unacceptable

When the official newspaper of Berkeley published a color caricature of me as a spider-like creature with one leg stomping on a Palestinian child and another holding an IDF soldier spilling the blood of an unarmed Palestinian, there was universal condemnation of what was widely seen as a throwback to the antisemitic imagery of the Nazi era. The chancellor condemned the cartoon, stating that, “its antisemitic imagery connects directly to the centuries-old ‘blood libel’ that falsely accused Jews of engaging in ritual murder.”

Writing in the Daily Cal, students from a pro-Israel organization at Berkeley debunked the claim that the cartoonist and the student paper editors at the Daily Cal could not have known that this cartoon was seeped in traditional antisemitic stereotyping, when considering its deep roots in European, and even American, publications.

In the cartoon, Dershowitz is depicted with a hooked nose and a body of a large amorphous black sphere. His exaggerated head and contorted legs and hands evoke images of a spider. The rhetoric of Jews as ‘invasive’ insects in society, trying to take over resources and power, has long been used to justify violence, persecution and murder. The two elements of the cartoon, with Dershowitz’s face in the front and the black body in the back, plays into the antisemitic trope of Jews as shape-shifting, sub-human entities using deception and trickery in order to advance their own agendas. This rhetoric is nowhere more common than in Nazi propaganda, and can be traced far beyond WWII in European and American media.

The students also wrote about the “pain” the antisemitic cartoon had caused them:
To a Jewish student on this campus, seeing this cartoon in the Daily Cal is a reminder that we are not always welcome in the spaces we call home…

Telling Jews that we can or cannot define what is offensive to us, because of our status as privileged minority in the United States, is antisemitic.
Some students also pointed to the swastika that had defaced my picture on a poster outside Berkeley Law School, as evidence of a pervasive antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism on that campus.

Not surprisingly, it was only an op-ed writer for the Forward who not only denied that the imagery was antisemitic, but actually justified it:
The mere appearance of blood near a Jew is not a blood libel. The State of Israel has an army, and that army sometimes kills Palestinians, including women and children. When you prick those people, I am told, they bleed. It is perverse to demand of artists that they represent actual, real Israeli violence without blood, just because European Christians invented a fake accusation.

Palestinian leaders need to have ‘that’ Santa conversation with their people

It can’t be easy for a parent to tell their child, after years of excitement, that in fact there’s no rotund, white-bearded man who lives at the North Pole, flies around the world on a sleigh with supersonic reindeer, comes down chimneys, drinks milk, eats a cookie then leaves you presents. The news must be devastating, and at least for a while, there must be a distinct lack of trust between parent and child. That’s presumably why most parents put off telling their children for as long as possible.

I’m not comparing the Palestinian population to children, but certainly their leadership is selling their own version of the Santa story to them.

“The problem for Palestinians is that we are surrounded by Israel” said a Palestinian commentator on radio this week. This throwaway remark, amid a series of rehearsed and anodyne platitudes about Palestinian national unity flowing from the rapprochement of Hamas and Fatah in Gaza and the West Bank, revealed the real motives of this entente.

Let’s think about that opening sentence for a minute. That’s a bit like saying that the problem with the Czech Republic is that it is “surrounded by Germany and Poland.” Does the Palestinian commentator regard a future Palestinian State as an island like Tristan de Cunha, devoid of neighbors? A blissfully isolated utopia? Sadly, the answer is much less fanciful, but just as absurd.

The Palestinian leadership, and by proxy the population as a whole, cannot get their heads around the fact that the “Nakba” (the disaster, as they refer to the creation of the State of Israel) is not a flash in the pan, and that some 70 years later, Israel exists, is flourishing and isn’t going anywhere.

Y. Ben-David was the pseudonym of a man who was quiet and unassuming in his everyday life. A talented engineer, he eschewed the ways of the big names in his field, preferring to go about his work with diligence but without fanfare, as a relatively unknown, but loyal cog in the wheel. Like Clark Kent, however, he was leading a double life.

Everyone thought Clark Kent a mild-mannered reporter. No one knew that in reality, he was Superman, a guy with superpowers who battled the most monstrous people and evils imaginable—and WON.

Superman was this buff handsome guy with a cape, while Clark? He was just this nice guy with

glasses. Even the woman Kent loved, Lois Lane, overlooked him. Lois was, meanwhile, nursing a serious yen for Superman, never suspecting that Clark and Superman were one and the same guy/superhero.

You'd think it would make Clark Kent boiling mad. But he just sucked it up. It came with the superhero territory.

Y. Ben-David, a secret superhero in the flesh, would put in a day's work at the office, then come home to battle evil antisemites at night, online. Armed with nothing but a keen knowledge of Jewish history and current events, he would confront the haters. And just like Superman, when and where he was needed, Y. Ben-David was there.

Meanwhile, no one at the office had any inkling of his extracurricular superhero work.

I first learned of Y. Ben-David's true identity 10 months ago, the day after he left a lengthy and intelligent comment on my piece, Ten Most Hateful Points About Kerry's Post-Abstention Speech. He wrote, in part:

I was not surprised at all at what Obama and Kerry did. I was expecting it. They both view Israel as an anachronistic, colonialist vestige that has no right to exist. However, as smart politicians who reached high positions without having any real credentials they, as Democrats, felt they had to play up to influential Jews by pretending they "love Israel" (BTW-any time anyone like them or TV commentators prefaces his comments with "I love Israel", you can know they really despise Israel).

There were open hints of this in the past...when Obama refused to send a high-ranking official to the big Paris demonstration in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo Massacre. Obama didn't view the attack as terrorism, he thinks of it as understandable payback for the legacy of French colonialism Same with his comment about the Jewish victims of the Hypercachere attack as "random folks in a deli".

Kerry also showed what his real views are when he snuck in an underhanded antisemitic comment which was "while the US is cutting its budget, it in increasing its aid to Israel" thereby implying that Jews are taking food out of the mouths of hungry Americans...which is nonsense since virtually all the aid money is spent in the US as a subsidy for the American defense industries.

Now, I always note a thoughtful, intelligent commenter, so I filed the name Y. Ben-David in my mind for future reference. But it wasn't long before I heard the name again. In fact, it was the very next evening.

A friend and I were in a car on the highway coming home from an event, when my friend shyly asked if I'd seen a comment from Y. Ben-David on my latest blog. Knowing that my friend, while deeply Zionist, is not especially political, I wondered how she knew this.

"Y. Ben-David is my son," she told me, a note of pride in her voice. "He goes on all the anti-Israel websites to fight the haters. He knows everything about the State of Israel, everything about Jewish history. He fights the haters with facts.

"I kept telling him he had to read your blogs. So he did. He likes what you write," said my friend, who added, "No one knows he does this, so don't tell anyone. It's why he doesn't use his real name. He doesn't want anyone to know."

I could picture this man at his computer. Scholarly, earnest, someone who loved his people and his nation. And now I was proud of him, too. Why not? He was one of my people, doing this amazing thing, expecting no praise, wanting none, doing it all anonymously from a pure heart. One of the best!

I never got to meet Y. Ben-David and now I never will. At least not in this life. He died suddenly on Monday morning, without fanfare. It was the same unassuming way he'd lived his life, as a mild-mannered engineer by day, but a fearsome warrior for Israel at night, in the privacy of his study. His ultimate struggle had occurred in private, too.

I paid a shiva call to my friend today, and she reminded me that her son had done this amazing work, and how no one knew about it, how everyone thought he was just this quiet guy who kept to himself. As I was leaving, my friend clasped my hands hard, tears in her eyes, and said, "If there is any way you can commemorate him, the work he did, we would be so grateful."

There would be no photo of him to accompany my piece. No airing of his real name. And in fact, my friend let on that Y. Ben-David had more than one alias. His influence was wider than anyone could have imagined.

No one knew it was him, but he was out there fighting the Richard Silversteins, Brant Rosens, and +972 Magazines of the world, every single night. Google Y. Ben-David and you'll see he was everywhere. Fighting the bad guys, and doing it right, with provable facts and intelligent analysis.

Y. Ben-David was a warrior for his people and his nation, which he saw as indivisible.

The loss is keen.

May his memory be a blessing and may his family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

[EoZ] Y. Ben-David's actual email address was named after Bar-Kochba, meaning that Varda's characterization of him as a "warrior" is more on-target than she perhaps realized. He commented here hundreds of times since 2011. Baruch Dayan Emet.

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Theorists Struggle To Posit Israeli Move Not Deemed Blow To Peace Process (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Stanford, November 1 - Scientists testing the principles of theoretical physics have so far been unable to create hypothetical situations in which an action by Israel will not be construed as a threat to the peace process with the Palestinians, a news brief in the journal Physics reports.

Writing to report on the latest developments - or lack thereof - in the Israeli-Palestinian niche of the field, a group of scientists indicated that through sixteen months of calculations, diagrams, experimentation, and analysis, they have yet to posit a move by Israel that would not immediately be characterized as undermining the peace process or the Two-State Solution.

"We will continue our work," one scientist was quoted as saying. "But so far the results have proved disappointing."

In an interview, research team leader Professor Palli Wood described the various ways in which each hypothetical Israeli move would meet its ignominious fate. "So far, and this might serve as the basis of an interesting model to explain the dynamic, the possible imprecations involving such moves fall into three categories," she explained. "The most common reaction to an Israeli action involves painting it as directly opposite to peace, or to a desire for peace. That's the simplest and easiest to predict."

"The second type of negative reaction takes an Israeli move that, if performed by some other party, might be ignored or considered unremarkable," she continued. "But because Israel is the party performing the action, the very neutrality or irrelevance of the action becomes a demonstration of Israel's lack of commitment to the peace process or the Two-State Solution. If Israel were serious about peace, the argument goes, it would not waste its time on moves that, while they do nothing to hinder the peace process, do nothing to advance it, either, and therefore call into question whether Israel really wants peace."

Professor Wood finds the third type of response most worthy of study, however. "Finally, when Israel does do something positive, something constructive, or manifestly in keeping with the letter and spirit of the agreements that govern the peace process, there's still a way it's turned into a blow to that very process," she remarked. "Instead of demonstrating willingness to pursue peace, instead these moves become proof that Israel is merely engaging in deceit, 'peacewashing,' if you will, attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community. It could not possibly be that Israel is interested in peace, an axiom that leads to the inevitable conclusion that any Israeli moves in the direction of peace as envisioned by the stewards of the process must perforce be insincere, diversionary, or otherwise a threat to peace."

The scientists noted the opposite dynamic with regard to Palestinian behavior, concerning which the theorists have yet to posit an action or set of actions so heinous that international consensus might question Palestinian willingness to make peace.

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11/01 Links Pt1: Ahead of Balfour 100, UK enshrines Churchill’s headstrong case for Israel; The Terror Tunnels of Gaza

From Ian:

Bibi: " Do Not Test the Will of the State of Israel or the Army of Israel."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara attended a memorial ceremony to honor the Australian and New Zealand soldiers who fell during World War One. The ceremony is part of the events marking 100 years since the battle for Be'er Sheba. Also attending the ceremony were Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his wife and New Zealand Governor General Patsy Reddy and her husband.

Transcript of Bibi's speech:
"Thank you, ANZAC soldiers and the families of the brave Aussies and Kiwis who fought here and died here.

Nearly 4,000 years ago, Abraham came to Be'er Sheba, the City of Seven Wells. Exactly 100 years ago, brave ANZAC soldiers liberated Beer Sheba for the sons and daughters of Abraham and opened the gateway for the Jewish people to reenter the stage of history. The heroism of your fallen men will never be forgotten. The brave soldiers who are buried here played a crucial role in defeating the Ottoman Empire, liberating the Holy Land, ending 400 years of Ottoman rule in one great dash.

This momentous occasion was a historic milestone in the natural kinship between our peoples. When I say natural, I don’t just mean the way we address life and each other, that easy informality, that warmth. That was evident from the moment our people met your people. I mean something deeper, because there’s a historical significance of what happened here. ANZAC soldiers went on to capture Jerusalem, Tiberius, Megiddo, then continued northward. They were actually retracing the footsteps of the heroes of the Bible. They were stepping on the verses of the Bible, and they knew it, and their clergy who spoke of this so movingly a moment ago, they knew it too.

This partnership began two years earlier, in 1915, with a great defeat. In the defeat at Gallipoli, two things were forged. One, the absolute resolve of the ANZAC forces to redeem their fallen brethren and establish this glorious victory here. And the second thing that was forged was the first meeting between ANZAC fighters and Jewish fighters, the first Jewish fighters who stood shoulder to shoulder with them in Gallipoli, the first Jewish fighting force in 2,000 years. And that continued here with the Jewish Legion that helped liberate Palestine here, in this campaign that we mark today. This was a point, a partnership that has historic significance today.That’s the spirit of the army of Israel. It stands today. We set out a simple policy: We seek peace with all our neighbors, but we will not tolerate any attacks on our sovereignty, on our people, on our land, whether from the air, from the sea, from the ground or below the ground. We attack those who seek to attack us. And those who contemplate that, I strongly advise you: Do not test the will of the State of Israel or the army of Israel.

PM Netanyahu & Australian PM Turnbull at Battle of Be'er Sheba Centenary Service

PMW: PA accuses Israel of using "poisonous gas" while exploding terror tunnel

Yesterday, Israel carried out a controlled explosion to destroy an attack tunnel dug by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror group that started in the Gazan city of Khan Younis and crossed into Israeli territory.

A member of Islamic Jihad, Khaled Al-Batsh, explained [in Al-Dustour (Jordanian newspaper), Oct. 31, 2017] that the tunnel that Israel attacked "was intended for freeing prisoners from the Israeli occupation prisons." Al-Batsh was implying that the purpose of the tunnel was to facilitate the entry of Islamic Jihad terrorists into Israel, to kidnap Israelis who would then be used as hostages to force Israel to release prisoners.

At least seven members of the Islamic Jihad and Hamas terror organizations, including senior terrorist commanders, were killed in the explosion of the tunnel.

Instead of condemning the digging of the terror tunnel, Mahmoud Abbas's PA and Fatah chose to accuse Israel of using "poisonous gas" in breach of International law.

JCPA: The Terror Tunnels of Gaza

Since the end of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, the terror organizations in the Gaza Strip – headed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are close to Iran – have been engaged in an unprecedented military buildup. The aim is to rehabilitate their military capabilities which were damaged in the war against the IDF. According to Israeli security sources, the Palestinian organizations have managed to bring their capabilities to a point well beyond what they had in 2014.

That has included manufacturing a large number of rockets, developing new weapons such as drones, building up elite units such as naval commandos, and digging new attack tunnels into Israel, which Hamas and Islamic Jihad view as a “strategic weapon.”

The tunnel-digging is a large-scale project that employs thousands of people and costs tens of millions of dollars. Hamas and Islamic Jihad receive financial and technological assistance from Iran for the project. A large portion of the financial resources also comes from tax revenues that are supposed to alleviate Gaza’s electricity, water, and employment shortages but are diverted to the tunnel project.

On October 24, 2017, Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza who is also commander of its Izzadin al-Qassam military wing, boasted that the military wing can now fire in 51 minutes the same number of rockets it fired at Israel during the 51 days of Operation Protective Edge.

Sinwar also revealed that Hamas has managed to smuggle large quantities of weapons into Gaza. “The quantity of weapons we brought into the Strip in 2015-2016 is much larger than the entire quantity we brought into the Strip during the past 10 years,” he said.

As noted, Hamas and Islamic Jihad see the tunnels into Israeli territory as a “strategic weapon” that deters Israel.

The Western media never grasps the sheer amount of time and money that Iran spends on demonizing Israel (and America.) It is a truly psychopathic obsession.

From Mehr News:

The second meeting of International Union of Resistance Scholars has kicked off Wed. with presence of over 700 prominent Shia and Sunni scholars from 80 countries in Beirut, Lebanon.

Participating at the event are the head of the Resistance Scholars Union, Sheikh Maher Hammoud; Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah; and Secretary General of the World Forum for proximity of the Islamic Schools of Thought Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, giving their speech over the critical situation of Palestine and its leading role in boosting unity and solidarity among Muslims.

That tells the entire story. Iran wants to be the leader of the Muslim world, and there is only one thing that has historically unified that world: hatred of Israel.

But that solidarity is cracking, as the Arab world grows more sick of the Palestine issue. Iran must stoke the flames any way it can because without that there is nothing left but the Shiite/Sunni schism which has always been much more pronounced - and deadly.

Opening the conference, the head of the Resistance Scholars Union, Sheikh Maher Hammoud stressed that “the Israelis believe in the certainty of their collapse more than the Muslims.”

Well, there's some wishful thinking there.

Ayatollah Khamenei also gave a message about how everyone needs to unite to destroy Israel.

The group was created in 2014 and held its first conference in 2015. which sounded a great deal like this one.

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Jews praying at the tomb of Yaakov Abuhatzeira before the ban by Egypt

From Egypt Today:

Israeli Ambassador to Egypt David Govrin visited the tomb of Yaakov Abuhatzeira in the Beheira governorate’s city of Damanhour, a security source in Beheira said on Tuesday.

The Israeli ambassador’s visit came amid tight security, and then he left the tomb after 30 minutes, heading to the embassy’s premises.

In December 2014, the Administrative Court of Alexandria banned the annual festivities, previously attended by hundreds of Jews at Abuhatzeira’s gravesite in the Nile Delta city of Damanhur, where the rabbi was buried in 1879 en route to Israel.

Times of Israel reported in 2015 about Egypt's ban on the celebrations of Rabbi Abuhatzeira's birthday:

In December 2010, the last time a large group of 550 Israelis traveled to Egypt, they were met with signs reading “death to the Jews.”

Egypt’s Nasserist party launched a campaign titled “You shall not pass on my land,” calling on the government to disallow any “Zionist” presence in Egypt.

Reports at the time about the Egyptian court case to ban the celebrations noted that the decision mentioned "outraged local sensibilities over the annual festival, saying villagers objected to the mingling of men and women and celebrants' drinking of alcohol."

Egypt's Al Masry al-Youm notes with sadness that the Egyptian court only banned the marking the anniversary of Rabbi Abuhatzeira's birth (which usually falls in January), so they legally couldn't do anything to prevent Govrin's visit.

However, the Al Masry al-Youm article adds some details about the Alexandria court decision that had never been reported in English before:

Among its considerations in the verdict, the court mentioned that the Jews had no influence that is worth mentioning on Egyptian civilization/culture, and they have not contributed at all to human knowledge of the history of civilization/culture.

This isn't a judicial determination of facts. This is raw antisemitism in an official Egyptian court ruling.

Moreover, the court ruling overturned a 2001 Egyptian decision to consider the site a protected Egyptian antiquity and instructed the state to inform UNESCO not to consider the site to be special any more.

In addition, it said that it is forbidden to move the rabbi's remains to Israel.

At the time of the decision in 2014, human rights groups in Egypt were notably silent about the obvious antisemitism around the verdict.

A number of heads of Egyptian human rights organizations and others concerned with religious freedoms refused to comment on the verdict, requesting time to consider it and examine the extent of its contradiction in regard to the religious freedoms of the Jewish comunity in Egypt. Article 64 of the 2014 Egyptian Constitution covers the freedom to hold religious rites.
Some human rights groups have remained silent about the verdict because of social and cultural pressures. Their silence is to prevent the new government from possibly being accused of favoring Israel or allowing the entry of Israeli tourists into Egypt under the pretext of celebrating Abu Hasira's birth should their objection to the court decision force the executive to overturn the ruling.
Ali el-Samman, president of the International Union for Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogue and Peace Education (ADIC), told Al-Monitor, “Everyone is required to respect the judicial verdict and not to comment on it.”

It isn't that human rights organizations don't believe that Jews have human rights. It's just that, by sheer coincidence, in any case where they might be asserted, any Jewish human rights must always take a back seat to some other more important considerations - like the Jew-hating attitudes of the locals and the political situation that makes the topic of Jews touchy.

(h/t Ibn Boutros and Abdallah Mashaallah)

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Haaretz, apparently thinking it cannot find enough Israel haters on its staff, has a guest op-ed from Donald Macintyre who used to cover Gaza for The Independent:

Mahmoud al-Bahtiti, who has been fixing car and truck engines in Gaza City for the past 50 years didn’t vote in the 2006 Palestinian elections because he trusted neither Fatah nor Hamas.

But on Britain, he has definite opinions – or at least, about Britain circa 1917. He doesn't need a centenary commemoration to bring up the Balfour Declaration with a British visitor.

Last year, his business struggling for lack of customers, he asked me a question. Given that "We [Palestinians] are still suffering as a result" of the Declaration, wouldn’t an apology from the British government be in order?

Mahmoud wasn’t trying to get back what is now Israel. In his words: “The Jewish people took their rights after Hitler committed massacres against them. But who will give us our rights? Britain gave our lands to the Israelis and they never cared to give us our rights."

Obviously, Macintyre thinks that Mahmoud is speaking some deep truth here.

But guess what? The Palestinians could have had a state in 1937. And 1947. And 2000. And 2001. And 2008. And even under the Netanyahu government in 2014!

They have rejected every single peace plan. But hateful pseudo-experts like Macintyre know that the Palestinians are without any blame. Let's blame Great Britain for their plight. (News flash, Donald: If there was no Balfour Declaration and the Zionists weren't successful, there would still not be a "Palestinian state." It would have been gobbled up by Jordan, Egypt and Syria. You know this is true because in 1917 there were essentially no such thing as Palestinian nationalism.)

Macintyre isn't done with his idiocy and hate, though:

If the British government wanted, 100 years after Balfour, to rethink its historic role in the conflict, it could begin by persuading its EU partners (while, pre-Brexit, it still has any) to reinforce the one initiative currently in play: The attempt at Hamas-Fatah reconciliation. To commemorate a point in history when the conflict deepened with support for a process of unification, at least on the one, weaker side.

He writes this a day after Hamas was discovered to be building a tunnel into Israel to perform war crimes. War crimes which Fatah condoned. So, Macintyre is saying the best chance for peace is to allow two terrorist groups to unite - and for Britain to encourage it.

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