Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, April 23, 2018

A Disproportional Response (Divest This!)

The boycotters have been wetting themselves over last week’s “victory” getting 50 student groups at New York University (NYU) to jointly pledge a boycott of not just Israel, but campus groups (i.e., organizations created and run by other NYU students) and off-campus groups (such as Birthright, StandWithUs and the ADL) that support the Jewish state.

While the effort to get student organizations to join together to ostracize Israel supporters was one major goal of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) who drove the NYU measures, the pledge also helped SJP achieve another vital goal: rulership over left-leaning politics within a university.

As I’ve noted before, the intersectional pecking order tends to lead to domination by the ruthless. Allegedly, the intersectional construct assumes every injustice is linked with every other, requiring all oppressed groups to join together in solidarity. Such solidarity tends to be a one-way street, however, which is why alleged Israel “oppression” is on the intersectional-left’s agenda while the murder of woman and gays throughout the rest of the Middle East will never be.

The initial response to the NYU outrage has been the usual supportive (if tepid) criticism of the boycott by school administrators, coupled with sorrow-and-regret statements by local students and Jewish leaders on and off campus. What is missing is outrage, and an agenda fueled by the outrage that should accompany this level of injustice.

As long-time readers know, I tend to council caution in turning to authority figures (especially government) when dealing with BDS-related issues that could be solved by on-the-ground activists, including student activists. But the organization of dozens of campus groups to attack their Jewish schoolmates reeks of such overreach that it demands a response beyond what even the most capable campus groups can generate.

With that in mind, here are a few steps that would have a high impact on the situation at NYU:

1. Alumni donors who care about Israel or just care about the toxic atmosphere at their alma mater should contact the school and alert them that their donations are on hold until the school gets its house in order. Efforts to stem the flow of donor dollars to the school should extend to campaigns within the donor community to get others to pledge to not give to NYU while the campus is ruled by mobs engaging in illegal discrimination.

2. Speaking of illegal discrimination, legal support groups should immediately contact city, state and national bodies mandated to battle discrimination and provide whatever is needed for them to open investigations into whether anti-discrimination law is being violated at NYU.

3. Such investigations – which can be supplemented by private civil and criminal lawsuits – should target not just the school, but the campus groups and individual members of those groups to make sure everyone who might be involved with illegal discrimination is required to live with the consequences of their choices (rather than force others – like school administrators – to take the brunt of consequences for irresponsible student behavior).

4. While I’m not sure how student groups are funded at NYU, on most campuses this is done through a mandated student fee that bodies within student government get to distribute. But if it turns out that funds are being used to support student groups actively discriminating against other students, that means fees students are forced to pay are being used to fund potentially illegal activity. Given this, there may be legal grounds to halting such funding immediately (or during the next academic year), or replacing mandated fees with a voluntary opt-in (vs. opt-out) alternative.

5. During the outrage that would ensure if any or all of these suggestions are put into place, our side should refrain from talking about (or even mentioning) the Middle East. Rather, all of our talking points should focus on “illegal discrimination,” using the phrase as incessantly as our opponents use “Apartheid.”

These are certainly harsh measures likely to make the atmosphere on campus even more toxic. But right now, the only people being targeted are Jewish students leaving the Israel haters free to spew their poisons without consequence.

School administrators tend to make decisions based on who will cause them the most vs. the least trouble, which is why they are not likely to come down hard on 50 campus groups who could take over their offices, especially if the countervailing threat comes from a Jewish community writing them tearful letters about feeling unsafe. But visits by civil rights lawyers from the city and state of New York, as well as the Federal Department of Education (especially one run by Ken Marcus) would definitely change leadership calculus, hopefully causing them to take the reins of the school they allegedly lead.

As noted before, legal responses should be limited to just those situations where political options have been blocked or are impossible. But if one chooses to go down the legal route, such a response should be overwhelming, even (dare I say it) disproportionate, in order to let the world know that an assault on Jews is no longer cost free.

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Most Palestinians think Israel intends to forcibly expel them

The recent PCPSR poll of Palestinian Arabs shows that they are completely brainwashed as to Israel's goals.

In answer to the question "What do you think is the long run aspiration of Israel?" more than half think that Israel's goals coincide with the Kach party - that was outlawed by Israel.

Again, the Western media won't report on this - because it seems racist to show that an entire population of Arabs is so delusional.

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Holocaust cartoon competition winner Carlos Latuff disappoints some fans (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

As long as the Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff focused on bashing Israel, his fans could see nothing wrong with his participation in the “International Holocaust Cartoon Competition” organized by an Iranian newspaper in 2006. Latuff won the second prize with one of the countless images he produced on the antisemitic theme presenting Israel as today’s Nazi Germany, while the Palestinians appear as victims suffering like the Jews under the Nazis.

But the down-with-Israel camp that never had a problem with antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism is no longer one big happy family united in hate for the world’s only Jewish state. The horrors committed in Syria by Assad and his allies Iran and Russia have convinced some people that Assad’s ardent hatred of Israel isn’t quite enough to embrace him – though there are still many veteran Israel-haters like Max Blumenthal and his ilk who remain ardent defenders of Assad’s regime.

I wrote already in fall 2016 about the backlash against Blumenthal’s determined efforts to make butcher Assad and his allies look good; at around the same time, Blumenthal’s good friend and fellow-Israel-hater Rania Khalek also lost some of her erstwhile fans over her eagerness to embark on a career as an Assad apologist.

Now it seems that Holocaust cartoon competition winner Carlos Latuff has managed to alienate a few of his fans with a cartoon that smears Syria’s famous White Helmets – a volunteer rescue group that tries to help civilian war victims – as Islamist terrorists.

And just like with Max Blumenthal, erstwhile fans of Latuff are now disappointed that he “even glorified the Russian invasion and bombing of Syrian civilians as some fight against terrorism and imperialism.”

It’s welcome news that more people seem to realize that “Carlos Latuff is a fascist and a smear merchant. He is motivated by hate and resentment. He has no regard for truth or justice. If you use his crude and racist cartoons, you do your cause a great disservice.”

Arguably though, it’s a bit late to come to this conclusion more than ten years after Latuff got a prize at Iran’s “International Holocaust Cartoon Competition.”

And in any case, it seems that most so-called “pro-Palestinian” activists remain ardent fans of Latuff’s vile output.

The notorious “hate site” Mondoweiss features his cartoons regularly; one good example of Latuff’s endless recycling of the antisemitic meme presenting Israel as today’s Nazi Germany and the Palestinians as the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s is a cartoon Mondoweiss published last October “to celebrate the IDF’s 70th birthday.”

Here are some additional examples of Latuff’s largely undiminished popularity among those who think the slaughter that has been going on in Syria for years should not distract anyone from the urgent task of demonizing the world’s only Jewish state.

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04/23 Links Pt1: PA fails to implement terms of Taylor Force Act; Israel strikes Syrian army position after mortar shell hits Golan; NIF, EU, Trying to Stall US Embassy move

From Ian:

PMW: PMW Submission to US State Department: PA fails to implement terms of Taylor Force Act

Dear Mr. Acting Secretary and Mr. Secretary Designate,

Re: The Taylor Force Act - Certification of the Secretary of State
Failure of the Palestinian Authority to fulfill the requirements of TFA

Section 4 of the Taylor Force Act (TFA), passed on March 23, 2018, requires that the Secretary of State certify that the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and any successor or affiliated organization "are taking credible steps to end acts of terrorism"; "have terminated payments for acts of terrorism"; "have revoked any law, decree regulation or document authorizing or implementing a system of compensation for imprisoned individuals"; and "are publicly condemning such acts of violence" or face a limitation on the US aid provided to the PA.

In the report, PMW shows that the PA and its leaders entirely rejected, and continue to reject, the actions required by them under section 4 of the TFA.

Action requirement I: Credible steps to end acts of violence

Since the passage of the TFA, the PA media has not reported any steps to end acts of violence by Palestinian terrorists against Israeli and American citizens. On the other hand, it has continued to glorify and honor terrorists. (See Action requirement IV, below)

Action requirements II + III: Termination of payments for acts of terrorism and revocation of the Prisoners' Law and ordinances

Just days following the passage of the TFA, the Palestinian Authority publicized the PA budget for 2018, which had recently been approved by Mahmoud Abbas. PMW's analysis of the budget demonstrated that the PA had not fulfilled the terms of TFA and were continuing to pay salaries to terrorists and allowances to families of "Martyrs". In fiscal year 2018 the PA allocated 550 million shekels ($158 million) for the payment of salaries to terrorist prisoners and released terrorists and 687 million shekels ($197 million) were allocated to the payments to families of "Martyrs" and wounded.

Palestinians: New Twist on an Old Lie

In keeping with the Palestinian tradition of double-talk, Zomlot informed his Jewish audience, in English, what he would never dare say in Arabic -- that the Palestinians will one day recognize the Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

Addressing the annual conference of J Street on April 16, the PLO envoy said that Palestinians would "celebrate the Jewish connection to Jerusalem" once a Palestinian state was established with East Jerusalem as its capital.

"Once a state of Palestine is established, once that state has East Jerusalem as its capital, that city will not only recognize the Jewish connection, but we will celebrate the Jewish connection to Jerusalem," Zomlot said.

These are nice words to hear from the mouth of a senior representative of the PLO -- which Palestinians themselves often refer to as the Professional Liars Organization. But would this PLO representative ever dare to make such a statement in front of a Palestinian or Arab audience? The answer, bluntly, is No.

If Zomlot made such a statement in his native Arabic language, he would be denounced as a traitor -- if he were very lucky. If he were less lucky, he would end up in a hospital or morgue.

Just as Zomlot was lying to his Jewish audience, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were chanting the famous battle cry: "We will march toward Jerusalem, we will sacrifice millions of martyrs."

So, while the PLO representative is promising to celebrate the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, his people are promising to march on the city and kill as many Jews as possible in order to liberate it from the Jewish "occupiers."

Zomlot knows that he can always deny (in Arabic) what he said in English. This tactic is also not new to the Palestinian political landscape.

JPost Editorial: End ‘Occupation’

Putting aside for a moment the intricacies of international law, anyone with a modicum of intellectual honesty and a basic ability to reason can recognize the weakness of the claim that the West Bank is “occupied” by Israel.

The term “occupied” implies that Israel took, even stole, this land from another people. That is not the case. After Britain’s decision to end its mandate over Palestine, the War of Independence broke out and Jordan unilaterally annexed the West Bank, which Jews refer to as Judea and Samaria.

It is difficult to ascertain what the precise status of the West Bank was at the time Jordan took control of it. Geographically speaking, it makes sense to view the territory west of the Jordan River as an integral whole. Documents such as Churchill’s White Paper of 1922 stated specifically that the Balfour Declaration – which called for the creation of a Jewish national homeland “in Palestine” – purposely did not refer to Transjordan, which was also part of the British Mandate.

At the same time there was an understanding, as reflected in the UN Partition Plan of 1947, that both an Arab and a Jewish state would be created in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

The Arab nations’ rejection of the plan was not their forfeiting claims to this land. The converse is true: They were declaring their right to the entire land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

In any event, the status of the West Bank was never properly sorted out. Numerous attempts to reach a negotiated agreement have failed since 1988, when Jordan relinquished claims to the West Bank and recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people. The West Bank remains a “disputed” territory with two sides – Palestinians and Israelis – claiming that some, or all, of the land is rightfully theirs.

Now, eliminating “occupied” when referring to the West Bank has become official US policy.

I recently applied for a grant to promote Holocaust education at local middle schools through field trips, a unit of Holocaust studies, and survivor testimonies. My grant application was rejected, which wasn’t completely surprising given the volume and quality of competing applications. But I was taken aback by the verbal feedback I received from the grant’s benefactor who told me something along the lines of this: “The Holocaust was a terrible thing, and it should be remembered, but its significance is not as meaningful today. Your project is not something we can turn into an annual occurrence.”

How could someone minimize the relevance of the Holocaust and trivialize its intergenerational impact? I was stunned. I began researching the Holocaust education implemented by my school and other schools. In a private school with a significant Jewish student population, I expected a robust layering of Holocaust studies across grade levels. Instead, I found one unit on Anne Frank in middle school and an overview of the Holocaust in the European history elective. This lackluster effort to incorporate Holocaust education into the regular curriculum nor any special programming on important dates left me wondering about students’ exposure to genocide studies and the specific case study of the Holocaust.

Maybe it’s my personal observations and bias clouding my objectivity, but I imagine that my school is indicative of a much greater trend. Per a [2005 report by the Education Commission of the States](http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/62/34/6234.pdf), Holocaust education is mandated in some form by only seventeen states. Alabama, California, Georgia, Mississippi. Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia have created commissions and task forces on the Holocaust. California Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Washington State have passed laws requiring or encouraging that education of the Holocaust be part of the curriculum. The prescribed commissions and task forces are the sole bodies responsible for implementation. Many of the members of the task forces are volunteers.

The report also states that “eight states have statutes that specifically require or encourage instruction of the Holocaust be part of the state education curriculum.” Each state has curricula and learning standards for each grade level, with the task of curricula development delegated to educators, policymakers, and higher education content experts. Yet only the state of New York enforces its policies by -- wait for it -- reserving “the right to withhold public funds appropriated to schools that do not meet the curriculum requirements.”

Without any proactive enforcement, what good can these policies produce? What sizeable impact can be had? There’s wiggle room for teachers and educators to eschew Holocaust education, not necessarily out of malintent, but for convenience or pressure to “cover” major units of studies. The rationale is understandable, sacrifice this effectively optional state ‘encouragement’ for the more typical school curriculum, in preparation for State tests or other components of compulsive education. And this is assuming that teachers at the school level are even made aware of the requirements by their supervisors...

There is certainly visible variation in the productivity of the respective state commissions -- New Jersey’s commission coordinates hundreds of programs annually for tens of thousands of students in grades K-12, per their [2016 report](http://www.nj.gov/education/holocaust/centers/2016gov.pdf). But as a broad statement, the legislation around mandated Holocaust studies and implementation are feeble. Sometimes, ‘encouragement’ is not sufficient to motivate action. The Holocaust is irrefutably one of the most significant tragedies and genocides in history and the legislation passed and rhetoric by states reflects this basic understanding. But when it comes to remembrance through education, it seems that bureaucracy impedes effective and authentic implementation.

My personal Holocaust education has included my family’s visit to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC, hearing from survivors, reading testimonies, reading Night by Elie Wiesel and commemorating the Shoah annually. The Shoah means more to me than a chapter (or page) in a history textbook, and I hope for Jews and non-Jews across the nation to share this sentiment. But as of now, it appears that the majority of my generation of activists, entrepreneurs, and intrepid thinkers may be losing an essential component of American and global history.

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Two thirds of West Bank Palestinians are afraid to criticize Abbas' government

A recent survey from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research shows that a vast majority of Palestinian Arabs say that the Palestinian Authority is corrupt.

Answering the question "Do you think that there is corruption in PA institutions of the Palestinian Authority? " 78% said "yes."

But it goes beyond financial or similar corruption. The people are frightened of their own government, as in all autocracies.

In answer to the question "In your view, can people in the West Bank today criticize the authority
without fear?" an astonishing 65.% of those living under that authority answered "no."

If the PA is corrupt and citizens are afraid to say anything against it out loud, then what kind of a state would it become?

Moreover, if citizens are afraid to critcize their leadership, what does that indicate about the Palestinian media's freedom to criticize Abbas and the PA? Doesn't this indicate that their media isn't free and therefore their reporting should be considered anything but objective?

Yet the Western media will report what the PA media (which often copies and pastes articles from the official Palestinian news agency) says without any caveats.

The entire system of getting accurate information from the PA- and Hamas-controlled territories is inherently broken. And no one wants to talk about it.

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The firebomb kites from Gaza are starting fires in Israel (photos, video)

Palestinian media show photos of at least two separate fires in Israel that were started by Molotov cocktail kites launched from Gaza on Sunday.

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If you can handle the music, there's video too:

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The Independent (UK) adds to the long list of deprivations that Gazans are forced to live through.

For thirteen long years, the desperate Gazans have been unable to directly attack Israeli soldiers.

Since Israel’s decision in 2005 to withdraw its troops from bases inside Gaza, redeploying to the perimeter with a blockade at sea and control of the skies, it has been even harder for ordinary Palestinians to resist in the way Ahed Tamimi did.

In the days of the old intifada any Palestinian could land a stone on a soldier with no trouble, as the soldiers were in amongst them. “Now we can’t be like Ahed because we can’t even see a soldier, never mind hit them with stones. We never get close enough to kick or punch. If only we could,” a young man complained.

For those in Gaza this inability to see or hit back at the enemy has created a uniquely desperate despair, which has spilled out into the buffer zone protests of recent weeks. Perhaps for this reason, Hamas understood it could not hold back any protester and allowed women to protest too.

It is a sad fact that Western media cannot find any Gazans who have starved under Israel's brutal siege. They cannot blame Israel for withholding fuel or electricity or medicines - that is the Palestinian Authority that does that. They cannot blame Israel for withholding salaries for workers - that is both Hamas and the PA, depending on the circumstances.

But, dammit, they can blame Israel for withdrawing Jews from Gaza, which makes it so much harder for Palestinians to attack them! It is a truly awful feeling, not being able to attack Jews directly, and it causes a "uniquely desperate despair" that forces Hamas to allow women who are compelled to throw stones towards the border.

It is truly awful not to be able to attack soldiers and Jews with impunity like they used to. They want so much to be like Ahed.

Speaking of, some new video surfaced of Ahed Tamimi's kicking, punching and grabbing at soldiers from 2017. So heroic, to attack people who she knows will not fight back because she is a minor.

(h/t Yisrael Medad, Daled Amos)

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Work (tunnel) accident!

Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades announced the death of Thaer Nayef Al-Zuraie, 30, from Deir Al-Balah in the center of the Gaza Strip.

He died Sunday "while working in a tunnel for resistance."

The usual flowery language asking Allah to recognized him as a "martyr" (so he can rape lots of young virgins in Paradise) follows.

He was apparently a father as well.

Hamas is still spending millions on digging tunnels - but the people who pretend to be "pro-Palestinian" never mention that when they blame Israel for Gaza's economic woes.

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04/22 Links: All the Fake News That’s Fit to Print; Fox News Channel Airs Geraldo Rivera’s Anti-Israel Disinformation; Palestinian Lies go whole hog

From Ian:

All the Fake News That’s Fit to Print

On Saturday, Nellie Bowles, a technology reporter for The New York Times, wrote a piece about Campbell Brown, the former news anchor recently hired by Facebook to help the social media giant improve its relationship with the news media. One obvious problem is Facebook’s contribution to the dissemination of fake news, which Brown is now fighting. How? Let the Paper of Record tell you all about it.

“Ms. Brown,” wrote Bowles, “wants to use Facebook’s existing Watch product — a service introduced in 2017 as a premium product with more curation that has nonetheless been flooded with far-right conspiracy programming like ‘Palestinians Pay $400 million Pensions For Terrorist Families.’”

As those of us who are in the reality based community know, the Palestinian Authority’s financial support of terrorists and their families is very, very far from a conspiracy, far-right or otherwise. Reading Bowles’s report, for example, Lahav Harkov, the Knesset reporter for The Jerusalem Post, took to Twitter to share some of her meticulous reporting on the Palestinian pay-for-slay program with Bowles: Read the real news, and you’ll learn that, in 2017, the PA doled out more than $347 million to families of terrorists who had murdered Jews, increasing the amount to $403 million this year. Between 2013 and 2017, the PA spent $1.12 billion on supporting terrorists and their families, as Yosef Kuperwasser, the former head of the IDF intelligence’s research branch, reported in Tablet last May.

New York Times' Nellie Bowles: PA Payments For Terrorists, a 'Far-Right Conspiracy'

Moreover, does The Times' Bowles consider her own paper part of the vast "far-right conspiracy"? The Times has repeatedly reported the fact that the Palestinian Authority pays the families of terrorists. See for example, the May 2, 2017 Times article ("G.O.P. Pressures Trump to Take Tough Stance With Mahmoud Abbas") which confirms that not even the Palestinian officials try to deny that their government is providing the families of suicide bombers with funding:

The issue of payments to families of suicide bombers and others who commit violence has become a frequent complaint by Israel and its supporters. The Palestinian Authority spends about $315 million a year to distribute cash and benefits to 36,000 families, according to Sander Gerber, a New York hedge fund executive and fellow at the Jerusalem Center Public Affairs, who has studied the issue and brought his research to American lawmakers. . . .

Palestinian leaders defend the payments, saying they are meant to help widows and orphans of "martyrs," as they call suicide bombers and others killed in attacks, as well as destitute families of prisoners, not to promote terrorism. . . .

But Mr. Rajoub also signaled that Palestinian leaders would be willing to reconsider the payments as part of a "broader negotiation." . . . (Emphasis added.)

In 2015, The New York Times reported ("Palestine Groups Are Found Liable at Terror Trial," Feb. 24):

But citing testimony, payroll records and other documents, the plaintiffs showed that many of those involved in the planning and carrying out of the attacks had been employees of the Palestinian Authority, and that the authority had paid salaries to terrorists imprisoned in Israel and had made martyr payments to the families of suicide bombers.

As far back as 2006, Steven Erlanger wrote in The Times ("Hamas: Rivalry Breeds Extremes") July 2, 2006:

Syria and Iran, which support the Hamas leaders in exile, have no interest in a calm Israeli-Palestinian relationship, and they are masters at manipulating the third rail of Palestinian politics -- the need to payrespect and honor to those who fight Israel and ''the occupation,'' including prisoners and suicide bombers.

CAMERA has contacted Times editors to request a correction. Stay tuned for an update.

Bret Stephens: Jewish Power at 70 Years

The armchair corporals of Western punditry think this is excessive. It would be helpful if they could suggest alternative military tactics to an Israeli government dealing with an urgent crisis against an adversary sworn to its destruction. They don’t.

It would also be helpful if they could explain how they can insist on Israel’s retreat to the 1967 borders and then scold Israel when it defends those borders. They can’t. If the armchair corporals want to persist in demands for withdrawals that for 25 years have led to more Palestinian violence, not less, the least they can do is be ferocious in defense of Israel’s inarguable sovereignty. Somehow they almost never are.

Israel’s 70th anniversary has occasioned a fresh round of anxious, if not exactly new, commentary about the rifts between Israeli and Diaspora Jewry. Some Diaspora complaints, especially with respect to religion and refugees, are valid and should be heeded by Jerusalem.

But to the extent that the Diaspora’s objections are prompted by the nonchalance of the supposedly nonvulnerable when it comes to Israel’s security choices, then the complaints are worse than feckless. They provide moral sustenance for Hamas in its efforts to win sympathy for its strategy of wanton aggression and reckless endangerment. And they foster the illusion that there’s some easy and morally stainless way by which Jews can exercise the responsibilities of political power.

Israel denies assassination of Palestinian scientist in Malaysia

From Reuters:

Israel’s defence minister said on Sunday a Palestinian scientist shot dead in Malaysia was a rocket expert and “no saint”, but dismissed suggestions by Hamas that Israel’s Mossad spy agency assassinated him.

Two men on a motorcycle fired 10 shots at Fadi al-Batsh, an engineering lecturer, in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, killing him on the spot, the city’s police chief, Mazlan Lazim said.

Hamas, an Islamist militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, said one of its members had been assassinated in Malaysia. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Mossad had been behind past attempts to kill Palestinian scientists, and the attack on Batsh “follows this sequence.”

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said it was likely that Batsh was killed as part of an internal Palestinian dispute.

“We heard about it in the news. The terrorist organisations blame every assassination on Israel - we’re used to that,” Lieberman told Israel Radio.

“The man was no saint and he didn’t deal with improving infrastructure in Gaza - he was involved in improving rockets’ accuracy ... We constantly see a settling of accounts between various factions in the terrorist organisations and I suppose that is what happened in this case.”

Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said on Saturday the suspects in the killing, who fled the scene, were believed to be Europeans with links to a foreign intelligence agency, state news agency Bernama reported.

He added that Batsh was active in pro-Palestinian non-governmental organisations, describing him as an expert in electrical engineering and rocket-building.

He could have been seen as “a liability for a country that is an enemy of Palestine,” Zahid was quoted as saying by Bernama.

I would have thought that this was Mossad, and Israel doesn't usually issue blanket denials. Then again, Lieberman is not the most diplomatic speaker.

Here's gruesome video of al-Batsh after he was shot:

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After fierce criticism, Natalie Portman now claims that her problem with accepting the Genesis Prize has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with Israel's prime minister.

"I did not want to appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to be giving a speech at the ceremony," she said.

Somehow when she accepted the prize in December she didn't notice that Netanyahu is always the main speaker at the Genesis Prize ceremony.

While her attempt at damage control might mollify her liberal Zionist friends who were fearful at how BDS was now openly welcoming her as one of them, Portman's antipathy towards Netanyahu is misplaced. Because, while he definitely has faults and has made some major mistakes, Netanyahu has been one of Israel's best prime ministers by any measure.

Bibi has managed to balance his short term political interests in remaining in power with a long-term strategy for Israel that has been astonishingly successful. His economic policies are in no small part responsible for Israel's status as the "Start-Up Nation." He has pivoted Israel from political dependence on the US to creating and strengthening Israel's ties with Russia, China, many African countries and especially India, which has turned from an enemy into a friend.

From a peace perspective, his emphasis of strategy over tactics has completely changed the politics of the Middle East, as Israel is now a de facto ally of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, in addition to never-better security and economic cooperation with Jordan and Egypt. This is not just amazing; it is miraculous. That's the stuff that, in a sane world, would win a Nobel Peace Prize.

As far as I can tell, Portman has only specifically condemned Netanyahu once, calling him a "racist" when he said "Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them in buses.”

But that quote was taken out of context and misunderstood, and Bibi clarified his statements quickly. His record in serving Arab communities in Israel is almost certainly better than any other prime minister, both before and after the comments (which apologized for, twice.) Also under his tenure Israel has shown itself to be more liberal in its stance towards Muslims than most European countries are. The number of Arabs working in Israel's civil service and volunteering for the army has increased dramatically under Netanyahu.

Portman seems to have missed all of this.

And if Portman is oh-so-offended by Bibi's comments in 2015, then I am anxiously awaiting her severe condemnation of Haaretz editor Amos Schocken's tweet last week to a Sephardic Jewish woman saying "My family led the Zionist movement when you were still swinging from trees."

Portman and her liberal Zionist friends were quite silent about that episode.

It doesn't end there. Even on the Palestinian peace front, Bibi has shown himself to be far more willing to compromise for peace than the other side.

To be sure, Bibi's flip-flop on African immigrants this year was bad for many reasons. He has made other mistakes and gaffes. However, a clear-eyed view of Netanyahu's policies show that he has helped make Israel into a more secure nation while tremendously helping its economy, its international standing and its minority citizens. All while keeping his right-wing coalition intact.

The anti-Bibi media ignores most of these accomplishments, but Portman has no excuse. If she is going to wade into political statements and gestures, it is her responsibility to actually do the research and not to mindlessly parrot the lies.

Bibi has done more for Israel than any other politician could have done.

Portman has done more to damage Israel's reputation than any other celebrity has done, and even her clarification accused Israel of unspecified "atrocities."

If she has any morals whatsoever, she should apologize abjectly for her ignorant statements.

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Israel's critics never tire of pointing out that Israel supposedly violates UN resolutions, resolutions that were drafted and passed by Israel's sworn enemies.

But somehow, when Hezbollah's leader literally brags in public about the extent of how much he is flouting a UN Security Council resolution, those defenders of the UN seem to disappear mighty quickly.

From Palestine Today:

The Secretary-General of the Lebanese Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said that the Islamic resistance today has the ability and strength and missiles that can hit any target in Israel.

But UNSC 1701 does not allow Hezbollah to even exist in southern Lebanon. It says that no one can bring in any weapons besides the Lebanese Army.

"The resistance in Lebanon proved the deterrence with the Israeli enemy, which is the result of accumulations of sacrifices and we can not give them up, They are our existence and our dignity," Nasrallah said on Saturday evening.

He stressed that "Hezbollah will not leave the resistance and will not give up it is not for sale or exchange, it means our existence and our pride."

Oh, there must be a UN loophole that says that any resolution can be overridden by Arab or Muslim assertion of dignity and pride. If dismantling Hezbollah hurts Hezbollah's feelings, then of course we must respect that.

As far as I can tell, Muslim and Arab pride are the top priority at the UN and soon in all of Europe as well. Pointing out 1701's existence is not polite.

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04/21 Links: Trump’s State Department no longer calls West Bank ‘occupied’; Mossad blamed for death of Hamas engineer in Malaysia; Natalie Portman: ‘I didn’t want to appear to endorse Netanyahu’

From Ian:

Trump’s State Department no longer calls West Bank ‘occupied’ in annual report

The US State Department released its annual report on human rights violations around the world on Friday, and there was at least one discernible difference from past reports: It no longer refers to the West Bank as “occupied.”

Whereas previous iterations of the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices had a section on “Israel and the Occupied Territories,” this year’s document refers instead to “Israel, Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza.”

Last December, it was reported that US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman asked the State Department to stop calling the West Bank occupied, which would make a noted departure in US policy.

No indication of any change in that regard had materialized — until now.

In the past, Friedman had made remarks that were rebuffed by Washington as not reflecting official policy. Last September, for instance, he told Israel’s Walla news site he thought “the settlements are part of Israel.” State Dept. Spokesperson Heather Nauert later told reporters his comments marked no shift in the US position. Before his confirmation to the diplomatic role, Friedman was a staunch settlements supporter and columnist for right-wing Israeli publications.

The report released Friday also noted that the final status of Jerusalem, which US President Donald Trump has formally recognized as Israel’s capital while making plans to relocate the US embassy there, was still a matter of talks between both sides.

“On December 6, 2017, the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” the report said. “It is the position of the United States that the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem are subject to final status negotiations between the parties.”

Most of the rest of the report is similar to prior years, cataloging human rights abuses by by the Israeli Defense Forces, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

Liberman hails US decision to drop ‘occupied’ from West Bank terminology

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday hailed a decision by the US State Department to drop the term “occupied” in a report referring to the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights, saying that the truth was finally being made plain.

“The lie of the occupied Palestinian territories is being exposed. They say that if you repeat a lie enough, it eventually becomes the truth, but the truth will always be stronger,” Liberman tweeted. “The announcement by the US state department is proof of that.”

Liberman, who as defense minister is responsible for administering the West Bank, was commenting after the US State Department released its annual report on human rights violations around the world on Friday, and no longer refered to the West Bank as “occupied.”

Whereas previous iterations of the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices had a section on “Israel and the Occupied Territories,” this year’s document refers instead to “Israel, Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza.”

Abbas: We will continue to fight Trump’s Jerusalem decision

The Palestinians will not allow US President Donald Trump or anyone else to say that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday.

The Palestinians, Abbas said, will continue to fight Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as they have been doing for the past few months.

“The Palestinians will not allow any country to move its embassy to Jerusalem before there’s a solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict],” Abbas said, during a meeting with Arab delegates attending a conference in Ramallah on laboratory medicine.

On May 14, the US will hold an official dedication ceremony for the US embassy in Jerusalem’s Arnona neighborhood.

Trump, who formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announced the embassy relocation on December 6, had mulled attending the inauguration but reportedly decided against it.

So far, the US and Guatemala are the only two countries that have formally announced such a move, but Israel says other countries are also mulling moving their missions.

Abbas told the delegates that he hopes that their next conference will be held in Jerusalem, “our eternal capital.”

04/20 Links Pt2: Glick: Time to cut JVP down to size; Attacking Jews, the whole antisemitism crisis, will ‘be positive for Labour’; Shame on Natalie Portman; Gal Gadot makes 'Time 100' list

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Time to cut JVP down to size

Jewish Voice for Peace is a marginal group, by all accounts. The Jewish-run, anti-Zionist organization has perhaps a couple of dozen employees and anywhere between a few dozen and a couple of hundred committed activists in the US. Its positions – that Israel is evil and must be destroyed and that Jews should be disenfranchised and ostracized because they support Israel – is anathema to the overwhelming majority of American Jews.

Yet despite the fact that its bigoted positions are rejected by just about everyone, this group, which the Anti-Defamation League has listed as “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the United States,” is becoming increasingly influential in the US.

As the ADL report on JVP notes, in recent years, the little group has received millions of dollars in donations and has vastly expanded its operations. It has 35 chapters across the US including at several campuses. It has nearly a half million followers on Facebook and 75,000 followers on Twitter.

JVP doesn’t only attack Jewish supporters of Israel. It also attacks Judaism. JVP’s “rabbinical council” issues resolutions and publications in the name of the Jewish religion that are inherently antisemitic.

In 2012 for instance, JVP’s “rabbinical council” published an “alternative Haggada,” which included anti-Israel themes inside the Passover story of the liberation of the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. One of the four cups of wine for the Passover Seder was dedicated to the BDS movement. Readers were instructed to add an olive to the traditional Seder plate to symbolize Palestinian suffering under Israeli rule.

JVP is open about its determination to serve as a Jewish fig leaf for antisemitic groups and operations. Its website states this mission explicitly, arguing that the group’s Jewish veneer gives it a “particular legitimacy in voicing an alternative view of American and Israeli actions and policies” and the ability to distinguish “between real antisemitism and the cynical manipulation of that issue.”

Melanie Phillips: In Britain and Poland, Anti-Semitism’s Ugly History Repeats Itself

In Britain, liberals are in a similar state of denial over their anti-Semitism. This is because they view themselves as anti-fascist and anti-racist and so think it is simply impossible they could be anti-Jew.

In fact, anti-Semitism on the left has a long lineage. Marx himself, after all, was virulently anti-Jewish. There’s more to it, though, than just being anti-capitalist or even anti-Zionist. The modern left has junked Biblical morality for libertarian lifestyle choice. And the Jews represent the conscience they are at such pains to deny.

I came up against this years ago without realizing the full implications until much later. As I recount in my memoir Guardian Angel, also published recently, when in the 1990s I started writing about the undermining of the traditional family I was called an “Old Testament fundamentalist.” And when in 1982 I first questioned the double standard over Israel at the anti-racist Guardian newspaper where I then worked, I was told that since the Jews claimed moral superiority over everyone else they should be judged by higher moral standards.

Despite such attitudes, the left believes that because it stands for the betterment of the world it embodies unimpeachable virtue. Anyone not on the left is therefore not just wrong but evil. Only the right can be anti-Semitic. It is therefore impossible for the left to be so. If they were to admit it, their entire moral and political personality would fall apart.

Anti-Semitism, however, is not created by one viewpoint or another. It is a form of derangement which observes no political or cultural boundaries. Whether in London or Warsaw, if it is not recognized as such it will not merely remain a permanent stain on those societies. It will eventually destroy them.

Delusions of Justice

American Jews should wake up to which side their most dangerous enemies are on.

Since the election of Donald Trump, prominent American Jews, notably in the Reform movement and among the intelligentsia, have lamented the resurgence of right-wing anti-Semitism, seeing it as the greatest threat to their community in the United States. The rise of xenophobic and often marginally anti-Jewish parties in Eastern Europe—even with fewer Jews left there to persecute—has deepened the alarm. Yet by far the greatest threat to Jews, not only here but also abroad, comes not from zombie fascist retreads, but from the Left, which is increasingly making its peace with anti-Semitism.

This shift was first made clear to me about 15 years ago when, along with my wife Mandy, whose mother is a Holocaust survivor from France, I visited the legendary Nazi-hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld. They predicted that the primary threat to Jews in Europe increasingly would come not from the centuries-old French Right, some of whom had supported the Nazis, but from the Left, in alliance with a growing Muslim population. Time has proved their assertion to be, for the most part, on target. In Sweden, for instance, never known for its persecution of Jews, only 5 percent of all anti-Semitic incidents, notes the New York Times, involved the far Right, while Muslims and leftists accounted for the rest. Germany’s recent rash of anti-Semitic incidents has coincided with the mass migration of people from regions where hostility to both Jews and Israel is commonplace. At European universities, where pro-Nazi sentiments were once widely shared, anti-Israel sentiments are increasingly de rigueur. The growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, aimed at cutting all ties with Israel, often allies itself with anti-Jewish Islamist groups, some with eliminationist agendas for Palestine’s Jews.

Of course, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not identical. One can criticize some Israeli policies—as many American Jews do, for example, on the expansion of settlements—without being an anti-Semite. But, as the liberal French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy argues, targeting the Jewish state while ignoring far more brutal, homophobic, and profoundly misogynist Muslim states represents a double standard characteristic of anti-Semitic prejudice. European progressives increasingly embrace this double standard. Generally speaking, the further left the European politician, the closer his ties to Islamist groups who seek the destruction of Jews in Palestine. Many left-wing parties—the French socialists, for example—depend more and more on Arab and Muslim voters, who come from countries where more than 80 percent of the public holds strongly anti-Jewish views. The Left’s animus toward Jewish causes has spread to Great Britain, where Labour Party head Jeremy Corbyn counts the leaders of openly anti-Semitic groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as allies. If Corbyn becomes Britain’s next prime minister—no longer inconceivable, given his strong showing in the last election—the consequences for Israel, and for Britain’s dwindling Jewish community, could be troubling.

Some, like Barcelona’s chief rabbi, think that it’s time for Europe’s Jews to move away, and many, particularly in France, are already doing so. Europe’s Jewish population (roughly 1.4 million) is less than half what it was in 1960, and a mere fraction of its pre-Holocaust size (9.5 million). (h/t MtTB)