Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, July 07, 2018

07/07 Links: Are Palestinians ready to tell ‘supporters’: ‘WE’RE NOT YOUR TOY’?; Can the Islamic State be defeated?; Reinventing the Israeli discussion on campus

From Ian:

Are Palestinians ready to tell ‘supporters’: ‘WE’RE NOT YOUR TOY’?

YET SOME observers are optimistic. Towler noted a change in how the British media treated the Gaza situation in the following days.

“Initially, the deaths of ‘innocent protesters’ were seen as marks on Trump – the human cost of his arrogance. For 24 hours the media joined in the clamor against Trump, and against the State of Israel.

But then, when Hamas admitted that over 50 of those who died that day at the border fence were in fact Hamas members, they realized they had been played by Hamas.”

With media outlets apologizing, Towler notes a significant departure: “In the past they would never have accepted fault. The press would have ignored the evidence and continued the campaign against Israel.”

Towler believes this is indicative of a broader change in attitude.

But it is not just in Europe where people are beginning to realize that intervention in Palestinian affairs is wrong. The same is happening in Iran, which has also “drafted” the Palestinians for its own cause. But last week, Iranians protesting the funding of external wars were chanting “Death to Palestine!” In both the European boycott and the Iranian military cases, Palestinians are victims of policies that are meant to help them, but in reality hurt them.

Nevertheless, Kontorovich does not think that recognition of this would lead to a change: “Palestinians will certainly suffer economically from any boycott of settlements, but that fact is unlikely to deter European boycotters, who are not truly trying to help the Palestinians but rather to hurt Israel.”

“Palestinians feel abandoned,” a Westerner working with them in the West Bank observed. They feel abandoned by the Arabs, who are cozying up to Israel; by the US, which moved its embassy to Jerusalem; and by Europe, whose actions promote conflict and perpetuate their narrative of victimhood.

Could this be an opportunity for Palestinians to get closer to Israel? After all, unlike in Europe where the conflict with Islam is viewed by many as a clash of civilizations, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a dispute. Bitter as the conflict might be, Israelis and Palestinians often actually like each other and get along well. That is clear in places where they interact (such as workplaces, malls and entertainment events) and evident in the decades that preceded the outbreak of violence.

Palestinians telling Europeans and others who hijacked their cause “We are not your toy” could help unleash the massive untapped potential in Palestinian society – and indeed lead to peace.

At the UNHRC this week, the world's worst dictators scapegoated the Jewish state. When UN Watch's @HillelNeuer took the floor to call out their hypocrisy, the outraged Syrian delegate tried to interrupt.

Watch the full video: https://t.co/lkYr6eCGka
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) July 6, 2018

Seth Frantzman: Can the Islamic State be defeated?

This week a delegation of US senators, including Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Warren, toured the Iraqi city of Mosul. After seeing some alleyways festooned with rubble from last year’s battle with Islamic State, they saw the historic al-Nuri Mosque that ISIS destroyed last June. Even though bodies are still be found in the rubble of Mosul and bombs left behind by ISIS are still a threat, the senators walked without body armor alongside Iraqi officers, including Nineveh plains commander Gen. Najim al-Jabouri.

The tour was optimistic and illustrated the continued US commitment to the battle against ISIS. Across the border in Syria warplanes from the anti-ISIS coalition and fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces are bearing down on the last pockets of ISIS in an operation called Roundup. According to the coalition ISIS has lost 300 square kilometers of ground over the last months, as the operation enters “phase two.”

However, ISIS is still active in a swath of territory that stretches from the Sahel in Africa all the way to the Philippines. It exploits ungoverned spaces, weak governments and ill-defended borders to percolate among existing extremist groups that have sworn allegiance to it. These include Boko Haram in Nigeria, an ISIS affiliate in Niger that killed four US soldiers last year, “Sinai Province” in Sinai, the Khalid bin al-Walid faction in Syria next to the Golan, increasingly deadly fighters in Afghanistan and other affiliates throughout the world.

The 70-member anti-ISIS coalition that the US helped put together starting in August 2014 has an impressive list of members. But its mission is less clear today. The coalition recently met in Morocco, where 52 delegations, including 24 from Africa, attended. Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition against Daesh, helped preside over the event. He was appointed under Obama and is one of the few high-level holdovers who has stayed on in the Trump administration. He provides consistency to the anti-ISIS campaign, but the campaign itself is not entirely clear on where it is headed.

07/06 Links Pt2: The Iraqi Farhud stymies invented Arab history; UK Labour's new guidelines show it is institutionally antisemitic

From Ian:

Edwin Black: The Iraqi Farhud stymies invented Arab history

The Arab claim that they have no responsibility for the Holocaust is overturned by the Farhud, as is their claim to a unique refugee status.

When International Farhud Day was proclaimed at a conference convened at the United Nations headquarters on June 1, 2015, its proponents wanted to achieve more than merely establish a commemoration of the ghastly 1941 Arab-Nazi pogrom in Baghdad that killed and injured hundreds of Iraqi Jews.

Farhud means violent dispossession. The Farhud was but the first bloody step along the tormented path to the ultimate expulsion of some 850,000 Jews from across the Arab world. That systematic expulsion ended centuries of Jewish existence and stature in those lands.

Jews had thrived in Iraq for 2,700 years, a thousand years before Mohammad. But all that came to end when the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, led the broad Arab-Nazi alliance in the Holocaust that produced a military, economic, political and ideological common cause with Hitler. Although Husseini spearheaded an international pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish Islamic movement from India to Central Europe to the Middle East, it was in Baghdad—a 1,000-kilometer drive from Jerusalem— that he launched his robust coordination with the Third Reich.

In 1941, Iraq still hosted Britain’s Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which controlled the region’s oil. Hitler wanted that oil to propel his invasion of Russia.

The Arabs, led by Husseini, wanted the Jews out of Palestine and Europe’s persecuted Jews kept away from the Middle East. Indeed, Husseini persuasively argued to Hitler that Jews should not be expelled to Palestine but rather to “Poland,” where “they will be under active control.” Translation: send Jews to the concentration camps.

Husseini had visited concentration camps. He had been hosted by architect of the genocide Heinrich Himmler, and the Mufti considered Shoah engineer Adolf Eichmann not only a great friend, but a “diamond” among men.

Nazi lust for oil and Arab hatred of Jews combined synergistically June 1–2, 1941 burning the Farhud into history. Arab soldiers, police, and hooligans, swearing allegiance to the Mufti and Hitler, bolstered by fascist coup plotters known as the Golden Square, ran wild in the streets, raping, shooting, burning, dismembering, and decapitating. Jewish blood flowed through those streets and their screams created echoes that have never faded.

Eurovision organizers: No interest in 'rumors' about 'Toy' plagiarism

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the body that oversees the Eurovision, said this week that it is paying no heed to reports of copyright accusations against Israel's Eurovision-winning song "Toy."

The EBU told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that it considers the plagiarism accusations "baseless rumors."

On Tuesday, the composer of "Toy" confirmed he had received a letter earlier this month from Universal Music Group, alleging similarities between the song and the 2003 White Stripes track "Seven Nation Army."

Composer and musician Doron Medalie told the Post on Tuesday that “it’s not a lawsuit, there’s no court here. It’s a letter of clarification, so we’re clarifying.”

Despite Hebrew media reports to the contrary, the EBU told the Post Thursday that it is not concerned with the issue.

"As we are busy working with KAN, preparing for next year's Eurovision Song Contest in Israel, we are not interested in entertaining such rumors," it said.

Muslim Congress this week in Florida includes antisemitic, anti-gay, Holocaust denying speakers

From the ZOA:

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) denounced the Muslim Congress for its plan to feature anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying, anti-gay, and pro-terrorist speakers at its 14th annual conference – entitled “Islam: Religion of Hope”—on July 6-8 in Orlando, Florida.

The Muslim Congress represents itself as a charitable 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization whose objectives are “to promote Islamic knowledge, morality, divine values and cooperation among members living in various Muslim communities of North America.” Yet the speakers that the Muslim Congress chose to feature at its conference...promote hateful and divisive views, making false accusations against Jews, denying the Holocaust, inciting violence against gays, and promoting Islamic terrorist groups that have wreaked havoc on innocent civilians, including by kidnapping and raping young girls and women, and engaging in suicide bombings, beheadings, and other violence.

Kevin Barrett, one of the featured speakers, has falsely blamed Jews for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, claiming that “neoconservative Zionists” are the main suspects in what was allegedly an inside job.

Barrett has also denied the Holocaust, stating “There are very serious questions about the so-called Holy Trinity of the Holocaust story . . . Anne Frank is a sub-myth of the larger myth of the Holocaust.”

The Muslim Congress conference is also scheduled to feature Sheikh Hamza Sodagar, who endorses killing gays, and in excruciatingly horrific ways: “The punishment for homosexual men . . . the easiest one maybe is to chop their head off. Second, burn them to death. Third, throw them off a cliff. Fourth, tear down a wall on them. Fifth, a combination of the above.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yX7n89m1qI. Sodagar’s incitement of violence is even more appalling considering that the 2016 terrorist attack at Pulse, a gay nightclub, was perpetrated by an Islamic extremist not far from where the Muslim Congress conference is taking place.

Asad Jafri, another scheduled speaker at the conference, has promoted safeguarding Islamic terrorists and called for Israel’s destruction. At a rally in Toronto, he implored, “Leave ISIS alone, leave Al Qaida alone, leave Al Nusra alone, leave Boko Haram alone . . . down with Zionism!” He also threatened, “You will see the destruction of Israel very soon.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFLsEu7UTGY.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

07/06 Links Pt1: No paying for slaying; Expose the Palestinian 'Refugee' Scam; Glick: Why the concern for UNRWA?; The Iran opportunity and European infamy

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: No paying for slaying

We commend MKs from all parties except Meretz and the Joint List who together passed the Israeli version of the Taylor Force bill on Monday night, weakened version though it may be. We especially praise two coalition leaders, Avigdor Liberman and Naftali Bennett, for standing up to the prime minister’s delaying tactics; and Elazar Stern, who wrote the original draft of the bill, and his co-sponsor, Avi Dichter. That’s four different parties represented.

The new bill is aimed at stopping the Palestinian Authority from giving terrorists and their families monthly stipends. The Knesset bill is modeled along the American Taylor Force Act passed by Congress in March – also with bipartisan support – that cuts all US aid to the PA until it stops paying terrorists and their families.

This week, Australia gave its support as well, redirecting $10 million away from the World Bank’s Multi-Donor Trust Fund over concern that the money was being used by the PA to pay terrorists to kill.

Though it may be weaker than the Taylor Force Act, the Knesset law passed this week will require the government to deduct NIS 1.2 billion a year that the PA pays terrorists – money Israel withholds from the taxes and tariffs it collects for the Palestinians. The American law, on the other hand, requires the US government to hold back all discretionary funds for aid.

The Israeli legislation was nicknamed the anti-pay-for-slay bill, but it’s not some jingo that makes for a good headline. This is life and death. This is a war being waged against all Israelis, wherever they live – but not just Israelis.

Expose the Palestinian 'Refugee' Scam

"If President Trump wants to promote peace in the Middle East, his first step should be to declassify a key State Department report that would end the myth of Palestinian 'refugees.'

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is singularly devoted to the Palestinian refugee issue. Unrwa labels more than five million Palestinians 'refugees'-an impossible figure. The first Arab-Israeli war, in 1948, yielded roughly 800,000 Palestinian Arab refugees. Perhaps 30,000 remain alive today, but Unrwa has kept the refugee issue alive by labeling their descendants-in some cases great-great-grandchildren-as 'refugees,' who insist on the 'right of return' to their ancestors' homes. Israel categorically rejects this demand.
...
If Mr. Trump wants his peace plan to have a chance, he has to challenge false Palestinian narratives. He did this by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the U.S. Embassy there. For decades, Palestinian leaders issued maximalist claims on Jerusalem. Mr. Trump's move sent the message that making peace requires accepting reality.

Mr. Trump can send the same message by declassifying one document. In 2012 Congress ordered the State Department to disclose how many Palestinians currently served by Unrwa fled the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and how many are merely their descendants. The Obama administration classified the report, citing national security-as if revealing foreign census data were a threat to America..."

Caroline Glick: Why the concern for UNRWA?

With less money, UNRWA becomes a less attractive option for millions of Arabs for whom accepting cradle-to-grave welfare payments from UNRWA has substituted work as an economic model. “Employed” on the UNRWA dole, they have been able to take low paying jobs as terrorists.

Obviously, as former UN ambassadors, the seven signatories know all of this. So obviously, they weren’t motivated to write due to some sort of deep seated desire to improve the welfare of the Palestinians. They were also clearly not motivated by genuine concern for Israel’s security, much less for the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Indeed, given what we know – and what they know – about UNRWA, it is impossible to attribute any positive justification to their actions. Rather, the only logical explanation for their decision to sign and send the letter to Pompeo is that they want to perpetuate US assistance to UNRWA because they like what it does. They think it is a good idea to doom Palestinians to perpetual misery and ensure that they will never, ever accept Israel’s right to exist in secure borders unmolested by war and terrorism and demonization.

That is, like UNRWA, the seven former senior diplomats were motivated by rank hostility to Israel. This is remarkable.

Power, Rice, Pickering, Perkins, Albright, Richardson and Negroponte represent the top tier of Washington’s bipartisan foreign policy clique. Together, they have played key roles in shaping US policy towards Israel for 30 years. And they like UNRWA.

Pompeo should thank them for their letter. He should thank them for reminding him to reconsider the administration’s position on the UN agency. And then he should follow Haley’s advice from January and end all US funding to UNRWA.

Furthermore, Pompeo should declassify the data on the actual number of Palestinian refugees and he should call for their cases to be dealt with by the UNHCR, without prejudice. And then he should announce that out of concern for the welfare of the Palestinians and in the interests of peace and regional security in the Middle East, the US believes the time has come to shut UNRWA down completely.

Article on EoZ and other pro-Israel activists in Makor Rishon. Even a photo!

Four months after the conference in Jerusalem for pro-Israel activists, the article about it was finally published in Makor Rishon.

It shows a little more of me than I'm thrilled with, but there you go.

Photo: Avishag Shear-Yeshuv

A rough translation of the section on EoZ:

In order to meet with Elder, a veteran pro-Israel blogger who came to the conference, I first have to promise that his identity will not be revealed in the article. Even his badge shows only his nickname from the virtual world. "As a high-tech worker, I do not want my name to come up on Google as a pro-Israel activist, and if I look for work in the future, it can hurt me," he explains. All that can be revealed is he an American Jew in his fifties, a resident of the East Coast, who comes from an haredi background [not really] and defines himself as modern Orthodox [not quite.] Since 2004 he has been running the "Elder of Ziyon" blog, which draws nearly half a million views every month and boasts tens of thousands of social networking followers. At his workplace they know nothing of his side-business.

Every day, Elder publishes about four articles on his blog, including original content in a variety of fields. "I was active in Yahoo forums, when they were still very popular, and I argued there with others on issues related to Israel, until I realized that it was a waste of time."

On the Elder of Ziyon, he says: "This is a blog that provides analyses of current Middle East issues, or news you have not seen elsewhere, the agenda is to attack anti-Israel incitement and talk about anti-Semitism in general. There are many stories in Arabic that expose terrible anti-Semitism and distortion of facts. "

One of his first articles dealt with the concept of "Palestinian." "I went to the New York Times archives and searched for articles that were published before 1948 [with the word "Palestinian."] I saw all the references to the Jews living in the area, and I posted a lot of screen shots with pictures of Jewish pioneers, and I wrote, 'That's how Palestinians looked before the establishment of the State of Israel '".

Eldar speaks at a dizzying pace. His mind works very quickly, which is also reflected in the unique content he brings to the blog. In 2012, when an BBC reporter reported on a Palestinian child killed by an Israeli missile during the "Pillar of Defense" operation, Elder looked at the pictures and immediately understood that this was a deception. "I said to myself: It looks like a Qassam," he says. His acquaintance, an expert on the subject, looked at the picture he had given her and determined with certainty that it was not a Western military missile, certainly not the IDF's, "Following the article I published on the subject, many people pressured the BBC to reexamine the details. The reporter turned to the boy's father again, but did not really research the subject. They spoke of missile types and decided that it was still an IDF missile, but a UN report published several months later stated explicitly that there were several Palestinian children killed by Hamas rockets, ...From the details I understood that one of them is this boy."

To date, Elder has uploaded about 30,000 posts, which rank high on Google searches. His dream is to set up a website parallel to The Electronic Intifada, the BDS homepage, which gathers all the information and articles published by other organizations related to the boycott movement. "I would like to collect all the articles from the Blue Network [the network of activists at the conference,] where everything will appear in one place, and I also want to see to it that there is a variety of opinions and approaches."

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Diversity, Palestinian style: Fatah honors a black woman terrorist

From the Fatah Facebook page:

This is Fatima Bernawi, one of the earliest female terrorists.

In October 1967 she placed a bomb at the Zion Cinema in (west) Jerusalem. The bomb didn't explode. Israeli police arrested her and she claims, ludicrously, that she was arrested because of her skin color - not because she placed a bomb in a movie theatre.

Bernawi was released after 10 years of a life sentence and returned to Fatah, where she became a police chief in Gaza. Yasser Arafat was quoted once as saying "if he would marry anyone it would be [Fatima] Bernawi."

Though the bombing was a failure, Bernawi insisted it was successful, saying, "This is not a failure, because it generated fear throughout the world. Every woman who carries a bag needs to be checked before she enters the supermarket, any place, cinemas and pharmacies."

This is the very definition of terror - instilling fear for political purposes. Bernawi is a true pioneer of terror, and therefore she must be honored by the Palestinians whose entire sense of self-worth is based on how successful they are in attacking Israeli Jews.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Palestine Today published this video showing young arson terrorists preparing a set of balloons tethered to burning materials to fly to Israel to start fires.

Notice that there is a cloth covering the helium tank.

My guess is that the helium tanks have markings on them either identifying them as coming from a specific hospital, or with the name of the NGO that donated them for medical purposes.

The people making the video didn't want the world to know that Gazans use helium that was earmarked for medical purposes for terror.

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07/05 Links Pt2: Claude Lanzmann, acclaimed director of documentary 'Shoah,' dies at 92; I’m Jewish and Pakistani… let me go to Israel; Debunking claims about Israel’s “apartheid” wall

From Ian:

Claude Lanzmann, acclaimed director of documentary 'Shoah,' dies at 92

French Director Claude Lanzmann, whose 9½-hour masterpiece “Shoah” bore unflinching witness to the Holocaust through the testimonies of Jewish victims, German executioners and Polish bystanders, has died at the age of 92.

Gallimard, the publishing house for Lanzmann’s autobiography, said he died Thursday morning at a hospital in Paris. It gave no further details.

The power of “Shoah,” filmed in the 1970s during Lanzmann’s trips to the barren Polish landscapes where the slaughter of Jews was planned and executed, was in viewing the Holocaust as an event in the present, rather than as history. It contained no archival footage, no musical score — just the landscape, trains and recounted memories.

Lanzmann was 59 when the movie, his second, came out in 1985. It defined the Holocaust for those who saw it, and defined him as a filmmaker.

“I knew that the subject of the film would be death itself. Death rather than survival,” Lanzmann wrote in his autobiography. “For 12 years I tried to stare relentlessly into the black sun of the Shoah.”

“Shoah” was nearly universally praised. Roger Ebert called it “one of the noblest films ever made” and Time Out and The Guardian were among those ranking it the greatest documentary of all time. The Polish government was a notable dissenter, which dismissed the film as “anti-Polish propaganda” (but later allowed “Shoah” to be aired in Poland).

Long before Israel, Claude Lanzmann stirred Poland’s wrath

Claude Lanzmann was mostly amused by the “truckloads of calumny” unloaded across the front pages of the livid Polish press after the 1985 release of his nine-and-a-half hour landmark “Shoah” documentary.

Preoccupied with raising money for further copies of his pioneering cinematic masterpiece on the genocide of six million Jews during the Holocaust — and pressed with a sense of urgency to disseminate the accounts of the survivors — the French Jewish journalist and filmmaker had casually shrugged off the torrential, raging criticism emerging from then-Communist Warsaw.

“And yet, while I may have been amused, I did not realize that the Polish lobby disposed of some heavy artillery. Compared to their firepower, the Jewish lobby was barely capable of a skirmish,” Lanzmann wrote in his 2012 memoir, “The Patagonian Hare.”

Lanzmann died on Thursday at the age of 92, some 33 years after he first cast his lens on many ordinary Poles, offering up some piercing accounts of horrific wartime actions and deeply rooted anti-Semitism, and violently upending narratives of untarnished Polish victimhood.

Yad Vashem slams ‘highly problematic’ Israeli-Polish Holocaust statement

The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center on Thursday slammed an agreement between the governments of Israel and Poland regarding the latter’s record during the Holocaust, saying it would stifle free research on the subject.

A joint declaration issued by Warsaw and Jerusalem “contains highly problematic wording that contradicts existing and accepted historical knowledge in this field,” the institution said in a press release.

The statement is an embarrassing blow to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who last week hailed the agreement and the joint statement that was issued on the occasion as safeguarding “the historic truth about the Holocaust.”
.....
On Thursday, Yad Vashem released a long press release in which its historians detail why they not only contest the joint statement’s historical veracity, but are also dissatisfied with the Polish amendment to the controversial law.

“A thorough review by Yad Vashem historians shows that the historical assertions, presented as unchallenged facts, in the joint statement contain grave errors and deceptions, and that the essence of the statute remains unchanged even after the repeal of the aforementioned sections, including the possibility of real harm to researchers, unimpeded research, and the historical memory of the Holocaust,” the statement read.

Indeed, the statement “contains highly problematic wording that contradicts existing and accepted historical knowledge in this field,” the statement continued.

The joint Israeli-Polish declaration “effectively supports a narrative that research has long since disproved, namely, that the Polish Government-in-Exile and its underground arms strove indefatigably — in occupied Poland and elsewhere — to thwart the extermination of Polish Jewry.”

Bennett: Israel-Poland Holocaust declaration ‘a disgrace, saturated with lies’

Education Minister Naftali Bennett on Thursday led a chorus of widespread condemnation for a joint Israeli-Polish declaration signed by the two nations’ prime ministers that appears to accept Poland’s official position that it is not responsible for the crimes of the Holocaust.

The outrage from across the political spectrum came following a statement from the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center saying it would stifle free research on the subject.

“The joint declaration of Israel and the government of Poland is a disgrace, saturated with lies, that betrays the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust,” Bennett said in statement put out on Twitter. “As minister of education, entrusted with passing on the memory of the Holocaust, I reject it completely. It has no factual basis and won’t be studied in the education system,”

The Jewish Home leader added that he would be demanding”the prime minister cancel the declaration or bring it to the government for approval.”

As a cohort, Jewish millennials have acquiesced to the half-baked scenarios presented by the radical left-wing group IfNotNow. They've strategically branded themselves as ardent advocates for social justice and human rights in Israel, "to see the full picture," a description in this case synonymous with anti-Israel—and by extension, anti-democratic—sentiment. It’s unfathomable to me how effective their campaigns to band young Jews against Israel has proven, and it’s frightening to consider that millennials are the impending leadership of of American Jewry.

Despite being highly biased against Israel’s existence (IfNotNow refuses to recognize the legitimacy of Zionism), it’s elementary to comprehend why IfNotNow has grown so rapidly and their message believed by so many of my generation. Their leaders present the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts in the most oversimplified, cut-and-dry terms, allowing American Jews to easily grasp the Palestinian narrative without delving into the Israeli perspective and grappling with the reality that each side possesses legitimate concerns. IfNotNow continually employs broad and generalized rhetoric to depict the ‘Palestinian struggle,’ spouting fallacies like "Israel denies Palestinians freedom and dignity by depriving them of civil, political and economic rights" and making generalized claims like "the out-of-touch establishment to continue leading us down a path of isolation and fear that is wreaking havoc on the lives of millions of Palestinians and alienating a generation of young American Jews." Without question, the vast majority of the group's statements have no genuine basis in fact, but it’s the much simpler stance to adopt in the matter: no one ever supports the reigning champ, they invariably stand with the underdog, no matter how illegitimate or reckless a choice that may be.

And compared with the host of prominent pro-Israel organizations, IfNotNow is composed of a far more savvy leadership. They know how to systematically reach and interact with young Jews, utilizing emotional and loosely-factual stories of despair in addition to coordinating high-profile and disruptive protests—-in effect speaking the ‘millennial language’ of taking to the streets in opposition. "Will we unite to fight the occupation, and in doing so, resist the burden and bonds of a victim narrative and make Judaism relevant and meaningful to our generation?" These are fighting words for millennials, tackling an establishment--Israel--head-on in order to restore some perceived justice is what politically-charged young people have done in recent years. IfNotNow banks on this fighting spirit of millennials to garner support and combat Israel in swathes. Their rhetoric coupled with a robust social media presence, far outclassing many pro-Israel groups, has piqued the attention of the millennial cohort unlike any Israel-centric organization to date.

Last week IfNotNow furthered their agenda to "end American youth support for the occupation " when five of their activists sabotaged a Birthright trip in order to visit Hebron and, in true IfNotNow fashion, to grab a few headlines and incite internal conflict among Jews.

Reservists on Duty noted that this infiltration and deliberate disruption of a consensus organization, Birthright, is a new low connived by IfNotNow’s leadership, and a blatant attempt to disrespect Birthright, Israel, and the Jewish faith. They took to politicizing the trip by dispatching undercover operatives, an extremely unethical act reflective of the malicious intent of IfNotNow as an organization.

Since it’s inception, Birthright has prevailed as a cultural and religious multi-day experience to tens of thousands of young American Jews who travel throughout Israel and foster their connection to Judaism and their religious and cultural connection to the land--a land which IfNotNow—a Jewish-led movement—continuously refutes and rejects vehemently. And the assertions made by IfNotNow against Birthright are largely unfounded, as Benji Davis, a Birthright tour guide of seven years, writes that Birthright participants do learn the Palestinian story, of settlements, and of the dilemma of collective security against collective rights, presenting matters from a bipartisan standpoint and sharing all accounts with attendees, contrasting the accusations lobbed at Birthright from IfNotNow. Whereas Birthright daily attempts to bridge the divide between American Jews and their Israeli heritage, IfNotNow burns those bridges to indoctrinate and mobilize the next generations of Diaspora Jews against Israel.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Today I read a very interesting piece by Times of Israel editor David Horovitz, an interview with David Brog, who runs Sheldon Adelson’s Macabee Task Force. The objective is to fight delegitimization of Israel and BDS on college campuses; but rather than applying a predetermined formula, the group cooperates with local pro-Israel students and community members to determine what works, in a very practical way. It was fascinating to me, as someone who spent years trying to counteract anti-Israel incitement in my own small community – and to a great extent, failed to do so.

One paragraph that stuck in my mind was this:

…when it comes to demonizing Israel on campus, there is no comparable effort focused on any other country. No remotely comparable effort. There’s intensive, relentless bashing of Israel… and of no other nation on earth. Not Syria, where President Bashar Assad has massacred hundreds of thousands of his own people. Not North Korea, which runs re-education and concentration camps. Not Venezuela, Cambodia or Afghanistan, which head the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index. Not China or Russia, singled out in the latest US State Department report on human rights practices. Not Yemen, Turkey or Saudi Arabia, prominently criticized in Amnesty International’s latest human rights audit. Just Israel. Israel. And Israel.

What is true on American campuses is true for Western society as a whole. As Brog notes, here and there one finds demonstrations or campaigns for one cause or another, but anti-Israel agitation and propaganda is everywhere, despite the fact that the relative number of people hurt or killed in our little conflict is minuscule. Bashar al-Assad has killed half a millionSyrians and turned his country into a bloody shambles, and yet he gets less media coverage than Israel killing a few dozen Palestinians trying to penetrate our border and murder our citizens.

This almost cries out for a conspiracy theory. Who is behind it? Who pays the bills and gives the orders? The answer is “quite a lot of people,” and while some of them are secretive, it is not exactly a conspiracy. Financing comes from governments of disparate nations like Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia (despite our new-found common cause), Germany, Norway and Sweden; from the EU and the UN; from Oxfam, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the multiple charitable enterprises associated with George Soros; from the Danish National Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Mennonite Central Committee, the American Friends Service Committee, and the Presbyterian Church USA; and from the pockets of millions of liberal Americans, mostly Jewish, who give to the New Israel Fund or J Street.

That’s just a small sample, which doesn’t begin to cover all of the sources of funding for anti-Israel causes. Did you participate in one of the US-wide CROP Hunger Walks sponsored by Church World Service? Then you, too, became part of the worldwide demonization-of-Israel project. Many other charitable organizations support the Palestinian Cause (the end of the Jewish state) in one way or another. Are you a college student in the US or the parent of one? Then the student activities fee that you or your child pays supports Students for Justice in Palestine, which has almost 200 active chapters in American universities.

It made news when Black Lives Matter (now called The Movement for Black Lives) published its platform which accuses Israel of “genocide” against the Palestinians and calls it an “apartheid state.” But virtually every progressive or left-wing group – including the left wing of the US Democratic Party and the British Labor Party – shares its point of view. The leaders of South Africa’s ruling ANC party called Israel a “blight on humanity,” compared it to Nazi Germany, and recalled its ambassador over the Gaza crisis. The Swedish Foreign Minister recently promised Palestinians at a PLO-sponsored event that Sweden would “fight with you and for you.”

And these are countries and organizations associated with the West. It isn’t necessary for me to add what officials and media in Iran, Turkey, and Arab countries (including those that have signed peace treaties with Israel) have to say about us every day.

Perhaps we are too close to it to recognize the historical uniqueness of the massive tsunami of anti-Israel sentiment that has washed over the world since it began, possibly aided by the Soviet KGB, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I certainly can’t think of anything comparable.

It becomes even more difficult to understand both the extent and viciousness of worldwide Israel-hate when one looks at the dimensions of the Israel-Arab conflict. Casualties in all the major and minor wars and terrorism from the 19^th century to today amount to about 115,000 on both sides, about the number of Syrians killed by Bashar al-Assad in one year. The “mistreatment” of Palestinians by Israel, which is said to be so heinous, still leaves the Palestinian Arabs – at least, those in areas under Israeli control – among the healthiest and most prosperous Arabs in the Middle East. The Arab population between the river and the sea has tripled since 1970 (so much for “genocide”).

The Palestinians themselves are not so lovable. Their main contributions to modern society seem to be the popularization of airline hijacking, suicide bombing, and vehicular attacks. They glorify terrorism – Yasser Arafat once addressed the UN wearing a pistol. The father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a Nazi sympathizer who broadcast propaganda from Berlin and raised a Muslim division for the SS. Israel, on the other hand, has been responsible for countless innovations in medical and agricultural technology, and sends delegations of medical personnel and aid to disaster sites around the world, including its Syrian border.

And yet, it continues. Irrational and vicious, it even grows. Palestinian terrorism is excused as a legitimate response to “occupation,” while Israeli medical aid is dismissed as an attempt to distract from its oppression of Palestinians. Palestinian violence against gays is explained as an unfortunate cultural artifact, while Israeli tolerance is called “pinkwashing.”

Maybe there is a reader who can explain it to me. Explain how Israel is so villainous that the good that Israelis do can be dismissed. Explain why it is so important that its conflict overshadows all the other disputes in our contentious world. Explain why they support “solutions” that imply the replacement of Israel by a Palestinian Arab state.

I can come up with only one explanation: Israel is the Jewish state, and the imperative to despise the Jewish people is so deeply ingrained in Christian and Muslim traditions, that the embodiment of Jewish sovereignty, the State of Israel, has become the Devil for them.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

07/05 Links Pt1: Terrorists involved in the brutal murder of Israeli soldiers in 2000 honored as “heroic” by PA TV; Did Israel have a hand in thwarting an Iranian plot in France?

From Ian:

PMW: Terrorists who participated in brutal murder of Israeli soldiers in 2000 honored as “heroic” by PA TV

In October 2000, two Israeli reserve soldiers, Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami, accidentally entered Ramallah. They were lynched by a Palestinian mob who brutally murdered them and mutilated their bodies. Many remember the following photo of one of the Palestinian murderers joyously displaying his bloody hands to the frenzied Palestinian mob.

One of the participants in the lynch, Aziz Salha, displaying the blood of the victims.
Israel released him in the Shalit prisoner exchange deal with Hamas in 2011

Three of the Palestinians who participated in the murders and are imprisoned in Israel were recently honored by official Palestinian Authority TV in an episode of Giants of Endurance - a program about terrorist prisoners. While visiting the families of murderers Habbes Bayyoud, Muhammad Nawarah, and Jawad Abu Qara, the PA TV reporter referred to each of them as “heroic.” A sister of one of the murderers also emphasized how her brother makes the family “raise their heads and feel proud”:

Official PA TV host: “I’m with the family of heroic prisoner Habbes Bayyoud... We are now at the home of heroic prisoner Muhammad Nawarah...”
Sister of terrorist Muhammad Nawarah: “Muhammad is a handsome guy and makes one proud. I am proud that I have a brother like Muhammad... Thanks to him, we raise our heads and feel proud...”
PA TV host: "We have now arrived at the house of heroic prisoner Jawad Abu Qara...”
[Official PA TV, Giants of Endurance, June 16, 2018]
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As Palestinian Media Watch has documented, these murderers are not only honored by the PA in words. Since their arrests, the PA has generously rewarded them each with a salary as is stipulated by PA law. Their salaries, as of June 2018, have reached a combined total of 2,023,600 shekels ($583,606).

The PA policy of honoring terrorists as well as the ongoing PA practice of rewarding them with salaries are two of the many ways the PA supports terror. Earlier this week, PMW's findings and documentation played a central role in the creation and passing of the Israeli law to deduct from PA tax money a sum equivalent to what the PA pays in terrorist salaries.

Did Israel have a hand in thwarting an Iranian plot in France?

A planned Iranian terrorist attack on French soil "wasn't thwarted by chance," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday, hinting that Israel had a role in preventing the attack.

Iran has set up terrorist and intelligence ‎infrastructure across Europe with the aim of ‎assassinating exiled Iranian dissidents and moderate ‎Arab leaders, particularly those whose countries ‎rival Iran in the Persian Gulf, intelligence experts ‎told Israel Hayom Tuesday.‎

According to both Israeli and foreign intelligence ‎experts, the vast Iranian infrastructure was set up ‎to serve the Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite black-‎ops arm, the Quds Force. ‎

One foreign intelligence official said that a prominent Arab ‎leader had recently canceled a visit to Europe ‎following solid information suggesting that an ‎Iranian terrorist cell was planning to assassinate ‎him.‎

‎Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, meanwhile was visiting the Austrian capital, where his country's nuclear agreement with world powers was drawn up three years ago, in an effort to salvage the deal after the withdrawal of the United States in May.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu criticized European leaders for meeting with Rouhani while his country ‎was plotting against the continent. ‎The prime minister made the comments at an event marking the American ‎‎‎Independence Day, hosted by U.S. ‎‎‎Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

The truth about Palestinians in Lebanon

A long essay at Synaps Network describes the situation of Palestinians in Lebanon in more detail than anything else I've read.

Highlights:

Despite their degree of assimilation, Palestinian youth suffer from discriminatory measures imposed by the Lebanese government precisely to prevent their gradual—and, it is feared, permanent—integration. They are formally forbidden from work in at least 39 different professions. They are locked out of such essential fields as healthcare, transport, fishing, accounting, engineering and the judiciary. A 2001 law even barred Palestinians from acquiring property on Lebanese soil. These restrictions have knock-on effects for the ability of Palestinian youth to reach a normal form of adulthood, since securing a job and buying real estate are the traditional gateways to marriage.

Perhaps the most oppressive aspect of the environment in which Palestinians live is of a more psychological nature. Lebanon’s various religious sects tend to view their assimilation as a threat. Maronites often seem to nurture the trauma of the civil war, during which Palestinian militias turned Lebanon into a staging ground for their fight against Israel—committing ugly crimes in the process. Shia, for their part, fought bitterly against Palestinian militias, and also worry that integrating a predominantly Sunni Palestinian community would disrupt the country’s delicate sectarian equilibrium. Lebanese Sunnis, for their part, resent increased competition in what is often an intensely sectarian job market, where Sunnis vie against one another more often than they contend with, say, Maronites.

All in all, Lebanese regard Palestinians with overwhelming negativity. This bias is mostly latent but occasionally explosive...

There is no better illustration of the growing apathy among younger Palestinians than their reaction to the American decision, in late 2017, to recognize Jerusalem as the official capital of Israel—a symbolic move widely condemned internationally, given the city’s contested status. Youth groups briefly took to the streets in front of the US embassy, and the Lebanese faction Hezbollah organized a mass protest on its turf in the southern suburbs of Beirut, but Palestinian camps themselves remained eerily quiet.

This doesn’t mean that refugees are willing to surrender the sacrosanct “right of return,” nor the dream of establishing, someday, a sovereign Palestinian state. Young Palestinians, rather, are forced to reconcile their sense of patriotism with current realities, which in turn pushes them toward a more pragmatic rapport with their national identity. Cut off from Palestine and squeezed in Lebanon, many look at emigration as the sole remaining option. “You will hear the same words in every family in the camp,” said a housewife in Beddawi. “All the young people want to leave.”

In December 2017, the results of the LPDC census addressed Palestinian demographics, long perceived as a time bomb. Notwithstanding some disagreements regarding methodology, the figures mostly dispel perceptions of a large, growing Palestinian population that Lebanon cannot possibly assimilate. The census found that Palestinian refugees and their descendants officially represent something like 175,000 individuals, not the half-million previously thought to live in a country with around four million Lebanese.

Despite significant humanitarian involvement, everyday living conditions in refugee camps have deteriorated noticeably in recent years, putting growing pressure on today’s youth compared to earlier generations. Palestinians rely primarily on a dedicated international entity, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, for certain basic services, notably education, healthcare and sanitation. This enormous organization also provides steady employment to large numbers of refugees, who in turn support their extended families.

These functions, however, are increasingly under strain. Donors have grown fatigued with the organization’s archaic structures, and indeed with the very premise of a UN agency dedicated solely to Palestinian refugee affairs. ...In 2016, funding shortfalls led UNRWA’s offices in Lebanon to abruptly decrease reimbursements of health expenses from 100 percent down to 90 or 85 percent, depending on the nature of the care or medicine provided. This move sent shockwaves through a community that is excluded from Lebanon’s National Social Security Fund—a form of discrimination made all the more galling by the fact that employers are required, legally, to pay almost 15 percent of Palestinians’ salaries to an NSSF scheme from which Palestinian employees themselves cannot benefit.

(h/t Reuven)

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"Palestinian fetus a proud martyr in his mother's womb"

From Palestinian Media Watch:

"The First Direction of Prayer" by Syrian singer Assala Nasri:
“Our Martyrs are convoys and our bones are mountains
We don’t surrender to the lowly
We aren't deterred by imprisonment
Palestine is etched on the heart of the fetus
A proud Martyr in his mother’s womb
And the Arab state will remain ours - Arab, Arab Palestine...
We [hold] the rifles to our chests and our eyes are raised to you
Our homes are trenches and our souls are the sacrifice for you
O Jerusalem, you will not remain stolen.”
[Official PA TV, June 19 and 26, 2018]

Interestingly, it appears that Nasri first wrote/sang this song in 2011:

Her YouTube page is pretty dead and her website mentioned in the earlier video is no longer around, the domain bought by a Chinese face cream advertisement.

Apparently, Nasri's career has been on the skids and she is using the violent pro-Palestinian song as her way to stage a comeback.

Naturally, the main audience for such an attempt is the official Palestinian Authority TV channel. You cannot even imagine one of them saying "no, this video does not promote peace, it is unacceptable to be shown here."

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani claimed that Iran has always had close and very good relations with the Jews of the world.

At a press event with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Rouhai said that it was "Zionists, as an occupying and unjust group," who are persecuting people, imposing a siege on the people of Gaza, bombing innocent civilians, and - in a most ironic statement - intervening in Syria.

"The Iranians have sheltered the Jews in Babylon, so they are always indebted to Iran and the Iranians," Rouhani told the news conference.

Bizarrely, Rouhani is quoted by Iranian media as saying, "Our ultimate goal is to bring security and peace in the Middle East."

For his part, Kurz said in front of Rouhani that he considers it “absolutely unacceptable” to question the right of Israel to exist or call for the state’s destruction, as well as to deny or minimize the Holocaust as Iran has done numerous times.

All of this came as a Vienna-based Iranian diplomat was arrested for his part in planning a terror attack in France against an anti-Iran rally.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

07/04 Links Pt2: Netanyahu Praises Trump, Calls on Europe to Break Relations With Iran, In July 4 Message; Israelis overwhelmingly prefer Trump to Obama; The environmental impact of war

From Ian:

Netanyahu Praises Trump, Calls on Europe to Break Relations With Iran, In July 4 Message

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid tribute to the historic alliance between Israel and the US at a July 4 reception at the newly-opened American Embassy in Jerusalem.

“We’re grateful for America’s independence,” Netanyahu declared. “We’re grateful for America’s strength. We’re grateful for America’s alliance with Israel.”

Netanyahu also singled out US President Donald Trump for special praise. “You remember that Iran nuclear deal? Remember that?” the Prime Minister asked. “President Trump decided to leave this bad deal and he did the greatest thing for the security of the world and for the security of Israel.”

Commenting on the arrest of an alleged Iranian terror network operating in France by French, Belgian and German authorities, Netanyahu remarked: “This Iranian terror plot was planned on the soil of Europe on the same week that the European leaders are supposed to meet the President of Iran about circumventing the sanctions on Iran.”

Netanyahu called on European nations to break relations with Iran.

“Here’s my message to the European leaders: Stop funding the very regime that is sponsoring terrorism against you and against so many others,” he said. “Stop appeasing Iran.”

Israelis overwhelmingly prefer Trump to Obama — poll

Israelis overwhelmingly favor US President Donald Trump over his predecessor Barack Obama, according to a poll released on Wednesday, and are lukewarm in their support for the immigration of American Jews to the Jewish state.

The survey, conducted for Haaretz newspaper to coincide with US Independence Day, found that almost half of Israelis — 49 percent — strongly approved of Trump (and 23% slightly approved), while only 22% disapproved of the US president.

However, when asked about Obama, only 19% of respondents strongly approved of him (while 30% slightly approved), compared to a substantial 46% who disapproved of the former American leader.

Trump came to Israel last year in his first overseas trip as president and visited Jerusalem’s Western Wall, becoming the first American president to do so. In December, he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and in May the US embassy in Israel was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In his views vis-à-vis the Palestinian Authority, Trump has been seen as more favorable to Israel than his predecessor.

His approval ratings in Israel eclipsed his support at home, where he only enjoys a 41.8% approval rating, according to 538’s poll aggregator.

According to the Haaretz poll, 44% of Israelis believed Trump’s peace plan would be pro-Israel, while only 7% thought it would be pro-Palestinian (31% thought it would be balanced).

Jerusalem’s Past and Jerusalem’s Future

Among his other prominent roles in the public life of the Jewish state, Dore Gold has served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations and director general of the Israeli foreign ministry. In conversation with Eric Cohen, he discusses efforts to deny the Jewish historical connection to Jerusalem, 20th-century debates over the city’s fate, America’s decision to relocate its embassy, and the changing face of relations between Israel and some Arab states.