Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, November 03, 2018

11/03 Links: Bari Weiss: When a Terrorist Comes to Your Hometown; Ben Shapiro: Israel is protecting Western civilization; The not-so-sweet taste of hypocrisy about anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Bari Weiss: When a Terrorist Comes to Your Hometown

I want to tell you what it is like when your neighborhood becomes the scene of a mass murder.

The first thing you should know is that when your phone pings with a text from your youngest sister saying, “There is a shooter at tree of life,” your brain will insist that it is not true, that it is a hoax.

But your fingers will write back immediately, unthinking: “is dad there.”

Your mouth will turn to cotton while you wait for your mom to confirm that your father, who goes to one of Squirrel Hill’s synagogues every Shabbat morning, was not in the building.

Then another of your sisters will send a link to the police scanner and you will listen as the calls come in from the scene. You hear an officer report that the shooter declared he wants to “kill all the Jews.” He has hit officers. “Shots fired. Shots fired. Shots fired.”

You will cancel all your plans and book a flight home. Before you are even on the plane you will start to hear rumors — a couple has been killed, a doctor. You will wonder which families in your neighborhood will be shattered.

The numbness will break only when you find out that Cecil Rosenthal — the intellectually disabled, gentle giant of a man your mother has known since grade school — was murdered along with his brother, David. You will picture him as a proud usher standing in the entrance to services, and you will wonder if he greeted the killer, too. And you will weep.

When an anti-Semitic murderer mows down Jews in the synagogue where you became a bat mitzvah, you might find yourself in the sanctuary again. But instead of family and friends, the sanctuary is host to a crew of volunteers — the chevra kadisha — who will spend the week cleaning up every drop of blood because, according to Jewish tradition, each part of the body must be sanctified in death and so buried.

Ben Shapiro Interview: Israel is protecting Western civilization

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro‘s star has been rising in the US in recent years. He’s only 34 years old, but he began his career 17 years ago, writing a syndicated column, and now he has his own news site, The Daily Wire, “The Ben Shapiro Show,” a podcast with millions of listeners.

In between, he managed to become editor-at-large of the far-right – these days, some would say alt-right – website Breitbart, and resigned in 2016. Shapiro accused Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon, an eventual adviser to US President Donald Trump, of turning the site into “Trump’s personal Pravda.”

Later that year, the Anti-Defamation League identified Shapiro as the No. 1 target of online antisemitism among Jewish journalists in the US, and he received the most hate by far.

Shapiro continues to be targeted from all ends: from the Left, because he’s staunchly conservative, and from the Right, because he is not a Trump cheerleader, and doesn’t hesitate to criticize the president.

His no-nonsense attitude and caustic humor have attracted admirers and detractors; “facts don’t care about your feelings” is his most famous slogan, and he sells coffee mugs that are labeled “leftist tears.” He’s found allies in the self-described Intellectual Dark Web, a group of thinkers – their day jobs include academia, journalism and comedy – who don’t fit perfectly into mainstream media’s liberal or conservative labels, and have found wild success producing their own content online.

Although Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew and a vocal supporter of Israel, his content is aimed at a broader American audience, and therefore he doesn’t often focus on those areas.

In a conversation with The Jerusalem Post last month from his LA podcast studio, the father of two – married to a Moroccan-Israeli doctor about whom he often sweetly scheps naches (expresses great pride) – discussed American Jewish identity, support for Israel and more, in his typically no-holds-barred manner. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Caroline Glick: Israeli Cabinet Minister Challenges Propaganda on Trump and Antisemitism

Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Naftali Bennett kicked in the foundations of the left’s case against President Donald Trump on Tuesday. And they didn’t like it.

Since Saturday’s massacre of 11 mostly elderly Jews at prayer at the Tree of Life Synagogue, prominent left-wing American Jewish activists and Never Trump pundits have blamed Trump for the massacre by insisting that he has empowered antisemitic forces in the U.S.

The “proof” these commentators provide for their incendiary allegation is the Anti-Defamation League’s 2017 report on antisemitic incidents in the U.S. The ADL alleged that during Trump’s first year in office, there was a 57 percent rise in antisemitic incidents.

Bennett flew to Pittsburgh Sunday as the representative of the Israeli government to show solidarity with the Jewish community in the aftermath of the massacre. Before travelling back to Israel, he participated in a roundtable discussion of antisemitism in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations.

When asked about the ADL data, Bennett said that he wasn’t certain that the report was accurate. “I’m not convinced those are the facts,” Bennett said adding, “I’m not sure there’s a surge in antisemitism in the United States.”

“We need to look at the facts. I understand that the ADL themselves have stated there is a drastic reduction in violent anti-Semitic events, but that has for some reason been hidden from the public discourse,” he maintained.

📆101 years ago today, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, endorsing the Jewish people’s right to a national home.

“The Balfour Declaration puts Britain on the right side of history.”
—@IsraeliPM

📷Inspecting the original Declaration with Mrs Netanyahu at @BritishLibrary pic.twitter.com/JwXN5xwu7e
— Mark Regev (@MarkRegev) November 2, 2018

Iran threatens Gulf states, Israel, with missiles

From Ma'an:

Member of the Iranian Fatwa Council Ahmad Al-Huda warned of dire consequences for the countries of the region in the event of damage to his country's economy.

"The Iranian navy will control the Straits of Hormuz and three Saudi tankers will cross this strait every day, so if necessary we will stop the three vessels, confiscate the oil and take the workers to the families," he said in a Friday sermon.

"If they try to attack Iran, six international airports will be destroyed in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Riyadh, Bahrain and Qatar within 30 minutes using our missiles. The global economy and stock markets, especially those owned by Arab countries, will plummet and oil will reach $ 400 a barrel. "

"If Iran decides, within 90 minutes, all the Persian Gulf states will be eliminated, and the UAE and Saudi Arabia will be destroyed within 60 minutes, and above all Israel."

What's Israel have to do with it?

Obviously, everything! As always.

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11/02 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: American Jewry’s false prophets; Most Progressive Israelis Are Zionists; UK police launch criminal probe of anti-Semitism in Labour

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: American Jewry’s false prophets

Contrast Trump’s actions with Obama’s actions. Not only did Obama refuse to transfer the US Embassy to Jerusalem, he rejected even symbolic acceptance of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. The Obama State Department erased all the captions on archival photos of American dignitaries in Jerusalem that referred to the location as Jerusalem, Israel. This petty act demonstrated a deep-seated hostility to the history of the Jewish people and was nothing if not bigoted.

Yet, by the lights of Foer, Ioffe, Milbank and their fellow American Jewish Trump-haters, Obama was a friend of American Jews, and Trump and his Jewish supporters are their enemies.

Likewise, Trump’s decision to remove the US from the congenitally antisemitic UN Human Rights Council which Obama joined despite its open bigotry against Jews; his ending of funding to the genocidal, antisemitic UN Refugee Works Agency for the Palestinians (UNRWA), which Obama expanded; and his decision to cut funding to the terrorist-financing Palestinian Authority – which Obama increased – and close the PLO diplomatic mission in Washington – which Obama upgraded, were moves of historic significance in the fight against antisemitism and for Jewish rights. Trump is the first president in a quarter century to make the Palestinians and their international enablers pay a price for their rejection of peace and facilitation of terrorism and armed aggression against Israel and Israeli Jews.

Are these actions bad for American Jewry? When Trump says that Israel has a right to defeat its enemies and respond to aggression, is he harming American Jewry?

Of course not.

TRUMP’S JEWISH antagonists in the US media and their partner, ADL executive director and former Obama White House official Jonathan Greenblatt, insist that under Trump, antisemitic incidents in the US have risen 57%. But as David Bernstein demonstrated this week at Tablet magazine, the ADL data everyone is citing tells the exact opposite story. The claim that antisemitic incidents have risen under Trump is not supported by the ADL data.

What the data do show is that violent antisemitic attacks in the US have decreased significantly since Trump took office, while they increased significantly during Obama’s presidency. And as the blogger Elder of Ziyon noted this week, the data show no causative relationship between either administration and the level of antisemitism.

What is clear is that Trump has spoken far more seriously about antisemitism and the need to combat it than Obama ever has.
In January 2015, an Islamic terrorist massacred and held Jews hostage at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris. Obama refused to acknowledge that it was an antisemitic attack and that the victims were killed because they were Jews. Instead he referred to them as “a bunch of folks in a deli.” (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Melanie Phillips: Grappling with the roots of anti-Semitism after Pittsburgh

For to acknowledge that fact would be to admit things that would shatter their view of themselves as wholly virtuous, and that the Muslims or Palestinians they support are always virtuous victims.

Those in the West who deny the true, metaphysical nature of anti-Semitism also fail to realize that it fuels the threat they themselves face from Islamist aggression. They think the Muslim world in general hates the Jews because it hates Israel, but they have this precisely the wrong way round. The Muslim world in general hates Israel because it hates the Jews—and much of the hatred of the West by radical Islamists arises from their conviction that the West is run by the Jews.

Blaming Israel is a way of blaming the Jews for anti-Semitism. People do this not just out of their own bigotry, but because they cannot acknowledge the unique and uniquely evil nature of the phenomenon.

They ask the question: Why are the Jews hated so much? And they conclude that the only possible explanation is that it must be the Jews’ own fault.

It is a tremendous mistake to assume that anti-Semitism arises from any political activity or ideology. It is a pathology based on the wish to exterminate the Jewish people—a moral and spiritual sickness unique in human history, and which morphs and mutates across religious, secular and political systems.

The continued existence of the Jewish people in the face of expulsion, exile and persecution defies rational explanation. Anti-Semitism is a never-ending evil that also defies reason.

But while the murdered Jews of Pittsburgh are mourned, the Jews remain the eternal people; and whether anti-Semitism comes from left, right or anywhere else, its diabolical goal will never be achieved.

Melanie Phillips: Jews and conservatism an idea whose time has come

This has all left American Jews in particular difficulties. Unlike British Jews, most of whom vote for the political party that at least calls itself Conservative, some three quarters of American Jews vote for a Democratic party that has embraced the identity politics, grievance culture and enraged narcissism that threaten to destroy American society.

Worse, these liberal Jews either embrace or minimise the animus against Israel and open antisemitism displayed on campus by the left and by personalities embraced by the Democratic party. Worse still, they have told themselves that these universalist, secular “liberal” values are authentic Jewish values. They are in fact the very antithesis of Judaism.

Thus liberal Jews – the overwhelming majority in America – are on course to destroy themselves as a community while aiding the left in the undermining of America.

That’s how bad it is. But here’s the hopeful thing. Last year saw the JLC’s first conference on Jews and conservatism and some 300 people turned up. This year, 800 attended with a further 200 on the waiting list, some reportedly offering in desperation black market prices for a ticket.

Something out there is changing, and in the right direction. The people, the ordinary, decent people who understand and value the basic principles of western culture and want to defend them, the American Jews who realise the terrible danger to their own community and who feel a duty and responsibility to help save American civic society, all those disenfranchised, silent millions are now beginning to stir. Conservatism, even for American Jews, is an idea whose time has come.

11/02 Links Pt1: Imagining Israeli-Palestinian Peace; Florida Friday Sermon: Palestine Must Be Liberated 'Even If This Leads To The Martyrdom Of Tens Of Millions Of Muslims'

From Ian:

Cliford D May: Imagining Israeli-Palestinian Peace

Security Council Resolution 2334 sent Palestinians a message that the ethnic and religious "cleansing" of the Jews was not wrong, and that the Hamas narrative was right. Because if Jews don't belong even in the Jewish Quarter, they don't belong anywhere in the region, have no history or homeland here, and are not a people.

From that, the delegitimization of Israel and the dehumanization of Israelis ineluctably follow. That's not the precondition for a two-state solution. It is the precondition for a final solution.

The resolution also told Palestinians there was no need to negotiate or compromise: Appeal instead to the "international community," which will demand much of Israelis and nothing of you.

I'm willing to believe Obama intended none of that. The fact is, however, that Security Council Resolution 2334 placed an enormous obstacle in the path of any peace process undertaken thereafter.

Repealing a Security Council resolution is virtually impossible, but Trump did the next best thing: He moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, thereby reaffirming and re-emphasizing U.S. support for the legitimacy of Israel and for Jerusalem as its capital.

This does not rule out the possibility of Palestinians also having a capital in Jerusalem or adjacent to it. But such an outcome would have to be the result of negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis.

In addition, Trump last month ordered the closing of the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington, the de facto Palestinian embassy. The PLO "has not taken steps to advance the start of direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel," the U.S. State Department said, adding that Palestinian leaders also have "condemned a U.S. peace plan they have not yet seen and refused to engage with the U.S. government with respect to peace efforts and otherwise."

Also helpful: In late August, Trump slashed funds to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which provides services to Palestinian refugees – and to millions of their descendants, whom UNRWA also designates as refugees.

Soon afterward, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat announced that he was replacing UNRWA in east Jerusalem's Shuafat refugee camp. Charging that the agency had "failed utterly" to provide adequate sanitation, health care, education and welfare, and that it not only tolerated but incited terrorism, Barkat committed the municipal government to assuming responsibility for Shuafat's 30,000 residents who, he said, should be treated "like any other residents" of the capital.

If this initiative succeeds, it could constitute a kind of peace process, albeit one carried out by people in the streets rather than diplomats in drawing rooms. Over time, it could shift the views of Palestinians in the West Bank, and perhaps even those in Gaza.

Imagine what it would mean if the next generation of Palestinian leaders did not oppose "normalizing" relations with Israelis. Imagine if jihadist terrorists were no longer glorified as martyrs in Palestinian mosques and media. Imagine if Palestinians willing to work with Israelis for the benefit of both peoples were no longer condemned as apostates and traitors.

I don't expect any of that to come to pass while Trump is in the White House. But he has fixed what his predecessor had broken. And he has made it clear that the Palestinians can have a state of their own, but only if they recognize that a two-state solution implies two states for two peoples, both willing to coexist peacefully. That may not amount to the "deal of the century," but it is more than any past peace process achieved.

MEMRI: Pompano Beach, Florida Friday Sermon By Imam Hasan Sabri: Palestine Must Be Liberated 'Even If This Leads To The Martyrdom Of Tens Of Millions Of Muslims'

In an October 12, 2018 sermon, Imam Hasan Sabri, of the Islamic Center of South Florida (ICOSF) in Pompano Beach, Florida, stated that a "believing Muslim's" position is that Palestine is "Islamic waqf land that was occupied by force" – and that it should be liberated "even if this leads to the martyrdom of tens of millions of Muslims." Sabri also said "Allah wants each and every one of you to be a man with a cause... for which he lives and dies," noting that the Palestinian cause "is being plotted against" with "the Deal of the Century." The sermon was posted on the ICOSF YouTube channel.

According to Pompano Beach elected officials, Sabri has recited invocations annually at Pompano Beach city meetings since 2005, and the ICOSF has had a peaceful, 25-year presence in the city, even serving as a polling station.[1] In September 2017, Imam Sabri was a panelist at "Interfaith and Race Relations Peace and Acceptance Conference" at Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth, Florida. The invitation described the event as "promoting peace and acceptance for building a just community," adding that it would "highlight the importance of interfaith relations, education, and community involvement in combating racial discrimination" and that it was "a joint effort by the clergy and the education community to combat hate and bigotry across religious and racial lines."[2]

The ICOSF Facebook page lists the Islamic Center of Boca Raton (ICBR) as a related page. In June 2003, Bassem Alhalabim, an ICBR president,[3] was charged by the U.S. Commerce Department with illegally shipping a $13,000 military-grade thermal imaging device to Syria.[4]

A building that is listed as the address of the ICOSF, 507 NE 6th Street in Pompano,[5] is owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).[6] In 2007, NAIT was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist financing case in America history, U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, which resulted in convictions and imprisonment of several U.S.-based Hamas leaders. Then-NAIT chairman Gaddoor Saidi, now on the NAIT Board of Trustees,[7] also appeared on the government’s co-conspirator list.[8]

It's really a shame that the Western media ignore the insanity that Israel's supposed "peace partner" spouts.

The latest is a reaction to the news that Hamas has agreed to calm things down in Gaza.

Munir Al-Jagoub, a Fatah Information Office official, warned of the dangers of this "truce." He said that by Hamas negotiating separately, it divides Palestine and threatens the entire national project.

He also said that this "truce" shows that Hamas supports Donald Trump's "Deal of the Century."

Al-Jagoub called on Gazans to reject this move by Hamas - perhaps by making sure that they keep breaking through the fence so they can be killed.

Meanwhile, Saeb Erekat issued a statement on the occasion of the Balfour Declaration saying, "More than a hundred years ago, Britain facilitated the process of ethnically cleansing Palestine, and in flagrant violation of the values of international justice, celebrated this occasion last year, and held proud of its colonialism and its denial of the rights of our Palestinian people. Unfortunately, the Balfour Declaration continues to inspire the occupation government to continue ethnic cleansing and to end the Palestinian presence, in addition to the support of the US administration and its peace team attempting to liquidate the Palestinian cause."

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Antisemitism is hate first, politics are just an excuse

Yesterday, Bret Stephens - Jewish and conservative opinion writer for the New York Times - wrote about how Trump's inflammatory rhetoric is partially responsible for creating a universe where a right wing terrorist like Robert Bowers was empowered to seek out and murder Jewish worshipers.

What bothered me most about the column is that Stephens defended his thesis by saying that one must use accurate, plain language and not euphemisms:

Maybe we should refer to Saturday’s massacre of 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue, along with the campaign of mail bombs that preceded it, as “man-caused disasters.”

That was the euphemism then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano used in lieu of the word “terrorism” during congressional testimony in 2009. Conservatives like me never let her live it down. How can you address a problem if you won’t even call it by its proper name?

Conservatives objected again when President Obama went to great lengths to use the acronym ISIL or ISIS instead of Islamic State, lest there be any association between a religion and the barbaric deeds carried out in its name. And we objected a third time when liberals tried to suggest that personal derangement, not Islamist sympathies, explained acts like Omar Mateen’s 2016 rampage at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub.

So conservatives should be just as clear about what we saw last week. There is no reason to think that Pittsburgh shooter Robert Bowers and alleged Florida mail bomber Cesar Sayoc are “deranged.” There is every reason to believe their acts are politically motivated. They are not “crazies” in the category of Gabrielle Giffords shooter Jared Lee Loughner. They are terrorists in the class of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, or Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter.

To call them anything else is to engage in the same evasive wordplay for which conservatives once scolded liberals. And it’s no less evasive to avoid drawing conclusions about the political basis of these acts.

I agree with everything but I'm not so certain about the last sentence.

If Stephens wants to call things as they are, then why does he take pains not to call this attack antisemitic, and instead apply its reasons to a rightist political viewpoint?

Let's talk plainly: When one targets and kills Jews, it is because he hates Jews. It isn't because of immigration or political power or controlling the banks or because Jews are Christ-killers. Those are excuses, and it is very dangerous to give credence to the excuses as if they are valid.

The murderer hated immigration, but he didn't murder immigrants - he murdered elderly Jews at prayer.

Attacking Jews because they support immigration is like attacking Jews because they support Israel, or because they support capitalism, or because they support socialism, or because they act different, or because they try to integrate. Taking away the excuse won't stop the hate.

The Jew haters are Jew-haters first and foremost. They twist that hatred into whatever is trendy to hate in the circles they already inhabit.

In my recent research of anti-Zionism in academic papers, the trend is so clear as to almost be comical. Anything that is considered evil by the leftist writers is assigned to Israel ex post facto no matter what the facts: colonialism, racism, misogyny, terrorism. In one paper I saw the author argue that Israel's giving full citizenship to Palestinians is a way to oppress them. Others argue that the IDF not raping Arab women shows their racism. An award-winning book that argues that the IDF shooting not to kill proves how much it hates Arabs.

It isn't liberalism or even leftism that causes such unhinged thinking - it is antisemitism, garbed as anti-Zionism, that leads the thinking, and the excuses come after the fact.

There is no fact that cannot be twisted against Jews, and nothing Jews can do to stop people from hating them. Which is why looking at the political affiliation of the haters is meaningless - there is no logic to hate, and by assigning categories we implicitly say that if the circumstances were different, they wouldn't hate Jews so much.

Jew hatred precedes the reasons given, and the reasons given are mere excuses. If Jewish refugee organization HIAS didn't exist, Bowers would have killed Jews anyway. Making these links is, in a small way, making it easier to "understand" the "motivations" of the shooter. That is wrongheaded.

When someone so consumed with hatred of Jews gives a "logical" reason for it, why do we give it any credence? No one would take seriously a KKK member who gives "reasons" to hate black people, because the idea that blacks should be treated differently than anyone else based on what they supposedly do or believe is prima facie absurd. No one would believe it if a racist says that his racism comes from black people dominating sports, but when people say they hate Jews for dominating the media their argument is given enough of a measure of respect that we spend time refuting it.

The real reason for anti-black racism is that they are perceived as being different from the haters. And that is the only reason people hate Jews and Israel. Everything else is window dressing.

Yet everyone treats the reasons for Jew-hatred as if they are semi-legitimate excuses that must be argued against. Pointing out that Marx was baptized and the Jews were victims of Communism will not suddenly enlighten Jew-haters who claim that Jews were responsible for the deaths of 60 million people in the Soviet Union.

Giving credence to Bowers' claims that he hates Jews because of immigration elevates the excuse and minimizes the unhinged hate.

The whole Left/Right argument over antisemitism misses the point. Jew-hatred is completely independent of the "reasons" the haters give.

Are The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion a left-wing or a right-wing talking point? It is used by both, either in its original form or when respected academics write a book called "The Israel Lobby." It is pure antisemitism and the "arguments" of hidden Jewish/Zionist control of the nexuses of power appeal to extremists and haters of all political wings.

We can learn about today's antisemitism by looking at history.

Here is an excerpt from a popular antisemitic tract published in England in 1703 that argued that Jews should again be expelled from not only England but from all of Christiandom:

We can look at this 18th century antisemitism and recognize it now for the hate it was then. We can see the lies. It is obvious that the antisemites were making up and spreading calumnies to gain more haters to their cause.

That's what is happening today as well. From all sides.

I do want to be clear: there is a responsibility by the people who create environments where Jew-hatred is considered acceptable. That is what is happening on the Left in academia with the bizarre anti-Zionist "research" that keeps trying to find more and more reasons to hate Israel, and it happens in the cesspools of the extremist Right websites. There is such a thing as incitement to hating Jews among the Left, the Right, among Christians and Muslims and even among some Jews themselves. There is no shortage of people who are more than willing to believe anything that can make them feel better about themselves by demonizing others. Weak-minded people do follow crowds, and in that sense we must of course fight the toxic environments that can foster such thinking.

But it isn't politics or ideology that creates Jew-hatred. The hate is deep within the hater first and foremost, and the justifications happen afterwards. Don't elevate the "reasons" given for the hatred because that gives the reasons legitimacy.

Hating Jews (or any other ethnic or racial group) is disgusting, full stop. Saying that Pittsburgh proves something about "the other side" waters down the horror of the reality. Antisemitism needs to be attacked directly, and its philosophy of hate must be treated contemptuously.

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Ma'an reports that the organizers of the weekly riots at the Gaza fence will continue their protests today, under the slogan of "Down with the Balfour Declaration."

Somehow it doesn't sound like they are against "occupation."

But the report says that the terror factions of Gaza - Islamic Jihad, Hamas, PFLP and others - have informally agreed to reduce the number of incendiary balloons, to reduce the number of burning tires, and to discourage people from cutting the fence, "in order to reduce the casualties and keep the marches in their peaceful nature."

Which is an admission that the "marches" were never peaceful.

According to the report, an Egyptian security delegation will be at the border to monitor the protests, so there is extra incentive to keep things calm today.

We'll see soon enough.

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11/01 Links Pt2: The Many Faces of Jew-Hatred; Holocaust survivor faces evil, cheats death for second time; Ben & Jerry's Israel distances itself from political U.S. flavor

From Ian:

Anne Frank, the Beloved Victim of the Nazis Who Never Had the Chance to Write about the Holocaust

Seeking to answer the question of why Anne Frank’s diary is the best known, most widely read, and most popular book about the Holocaust, Dara Horn reaches some unsettling conclusions, most notably that “people love dead Jews” far more than living ones:

This disturbing idea was suggested by an incident this past spring at the Anne Frank House, the blockbuster Amsterdam museum built out of [the] series of tiny hidden rooms where the teenage Jewish diarist lived with her family and four other persecuted Jews for over two years. . . . [W]hen a young employee at the Anne Frank House in 2017 tried to wear his yarmulke to work, his employers told him to hide it under a baseball cap. The museum’s managing director told newspapers that a live Jew in a yarmulke might “interfere” with the museum’s “independent position.” The museum finally relented after deliberating for six months, which seems like a rather long time for the Anne Frank House to ponder whether it was a good idea to force a Jew into hiding. . . .

[This, and other] public-relations mishaps, clumsy though they may have been, were not really mistakes, nor even the fault of the museum alone. On the contrary, the runaway success of Anne Frank’s diary depended on playing down her Jewish identity. . . .

[By contrast], an Anne Frank who lived [through the Holocaust] might have been a bit upset at the Dutch people who, according to the leading theory, turned in her household and received a reward of approximately $1.40 per Jew. An Anne Frank who lived . . . might have told people about what she saw at Westerbork, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, and people might not have liked what she had to say. . . .

The line most often quoted from Frank’s diary—“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart”—is often called “inspiring,” by which we mean that it flatters us. It makes us feel forgiven for those lapses of our civilization that allow for piles of murdered girls—and if those words came from a murdered girl, well, then, we must be absolved, because they must be true. That gift of grace and absolution from a murdered Jew (exactly the gift, it is worth noting, at the heart of Christianity) is what millions of people are so eager to find in Frank’s hiding place, in her writings, in her “legacy.” It is far more gratifying to believe that an innocent dead girl has offered us grace than to recognize the obvious: Frank wrote about people being “truly good at heart” three weeks before she met people who weren’t.

Ruth Wisse [WSJ - click twitter link bellow]: The Many Faces of Jew-Hatred

This Jew-hatred dates from the year Germany surrendered in World War II, when anti-Semitism became the dominant ideology of the Arab and Muslim Middle East. Just as Europeans organized politics against the Jewish “usurper” among them, the Arab League sought to expel the Jewish people—their fellow Semites. And just as European anti-Semitism united left and right, revolutionaries and traditionalists, internationalists and nationalists, populists and elites, so too anti-Zionism unified otherwise adversarial Arab and Muslim countries.

Assailing Israel deflected blame for domestic flaws in Arab societies. It still does. It redirects grievances against the Jews, inspiring national and religious fervor through opposition to a common enemy. The Jews, a small minority whose power is hugely inflated, are a perennial target, though they have no incentive for counteraggression and every reason to seek acceptance in their usual position among much larger surrounding nations. The typical reaction of the Jews of Pittsburgh was not to call for the death penalty but to reveal that Jewish doctors had treated the shooter. The Jews of Israel imprison but do not execute those who slaughter their women and children. Mr. Bowers has rightly been called a coward for attacking the innocent; so are those who attack Israel.

The most discouraging feature of the anti-Israel brand of anti-Semitism is its penetration of Western societies, including the U.S. That a single shooter wants to kill the Jews is less dangerous to this country than Louis Farrakhan’s smiling designation of Jews as “termites,” broadcast to a vast audience, or the vicious movement to boycott Israel—an extension of the Arab boycott launched in 1945. The incursion of fanatical anti-Israel politics into the American campus and the Democratic Party is a threat not to the Jews alone but to what they represent in liberal democracy.

Even as we try to comfort the mourners and suggest better security measures, we must stop the scourge before a full-fledged anti-Semitic politics emerges in America under the unifying banner of “intersectionality.” Anti-Semitism is the only ideology that can unite the far left and far right. Its success would signify America’s failure.

"The incursion of fanatical anti-Israel politics into the American campus and the Democratic Party is a threat not to the Jews alone but to what they represent in liberal democracy."

A woman of wisdom weighs in, and her warning should be heeded https://t.co/IZmPC4dZ1m
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) November 1, 2018

Ben Shapiro: Fighting Anti-Semitism Should Be Bipartisan

Trump’s words on the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting themselves are far stronger than any words we’ve ever heard from a president before: “If you seek the destruction of Jews, we will seek your destruction.” Furthermore, we must distinguish between the alt-right, a relatively new phenomenon, and the persistent white supremacist movement, which has routinely attacked Jews; Trump wasn’t a gleam in the political eye when a white supremacist shot up the West Valley Jewish Community Center in Woodland Hills in 1999.

All of this suggests a certain gross partisanship on the part of people who, without sufficient evidence, blame Trump for the Tree of Life Synagogue murders. That’s particularly true of people who seem fully complacent with the Democratic Party’s open embrace of Keith Ellison, Linda Sarsour and Louis Farrakhan; people who brushed off President Obama labeling an anti-Semitic terror attack in France as “random”; people who shrugged away Obama’s statements about Iranian anti-Semitism (he said that they would only act in anti-Semitic fashion “at the margins”); people who pooh-pooh the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement and Hamas.

Here’s the reality: If we wish to be accurate, we shouldn’t link normal but heated political rhetoric with anti-Semitic violence. If we wish to fight anti-Semitism, we should label all anti-Semitic rhetoric and anti-Semitism-enabling rhetoric for what it is, regardless of partisan persuasion. And if we wish to have a country, we ought to stop conflating politics we dislike with incitement to violence.

"Students for Justice in Palestine" conference logo: UCLA Bruin flying a Palestinian kite (UPDATE)

From The Jewish Journal:

National Students for Justice Palestine (NSJP) unveiled their logo on Oct. 27 for their upcoming conference at UCLA: the UCLA Bruin playing with a Palestinian kite.

Simon Wiesenthal Center Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper told the Journal in a phone interview that the logo is “poking their finger at the eye of the UCLA administration and the UCLA community” by “co-opting the UCLA Bruin icon.”

“What does the Palestinian kite stand for today?” Cooper said. “It’s not going out with peace kites from Japan. It’s setting aloft arson terrorist kites to burn down crops and forests as they’ve done in southern Israel.”

Cooper added that Palestinian terrorists have been using explosives disguised as children’s toys in order to lure Israeli children into touching it and having it blow up in their faces.

“If this doesn’t wake up the UCLA administration to cancel the event at UCLA, then they’re going to have to deal with the consequences that the UCLA Bruin has now been hijacked by people who want to destroy Israel and are pro-terrorist,” Cooper said.

Anyone who thinks that SJP wasn't thinking about incendiary kites when designing this logo is fooling themselves. SJP wants Israel to be destroyed, as an op-ed in another University of California (Davis) says: "It is an ideological fantasy to really believe that progress is possible so long as the state of Israel exists. "

Don't be fooled by the doves. They are as incendiary as the kites.

UPDATE:

UCLA has sent a cease-and-desist letter to National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) over their logo for the upcoming NSJP conference on Nov. 16-18.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Much is made of the idea of asymmetric warfare, in which the side that is weaker in a traditional military sense manages to inflict harm on its enemy by the use of simple weapons and tactics involving small units, hit and run attacks, human waves, and often complete disregard for the traditional law of armed combat – human shields, attacks on civilians, and child soldiers may be employed. In addition, it may be accompanied by advanced cognitive and psychological warfare, including subversion of media, faking enemy atrocities, and propaganda techniques far more sophisticated than the methods of kinetic warfare at their disposal.

Although asymmetric warfare can be a way for culture with a low level of technology to defeat (or at least seriously wound) an enemy with better technology or a stronger army, sometimes even a relatively advanced country can use it to their advantage. So Iran, a country on the verge of reaching the pinnacle of military technology, nuclear weapons, effectively deploys its asymmetric proxy, Hezbollah, around the world, in order to support Iranian political goals by means of terrorism. And of course Hezbollah directly confronts Israel on behalf of Iran.

I divide Israel’s enemies into hard and soft enemies. The hard ones, like Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PLO, employ all forms of asymmetric warfare, especially including terrorism, but also such low-tech weapons as large numbers of inaccurate rockets, incendiary balloons and kites, attack tunnels, and so on. At the same time, they use friendly and/or easily duped media as part of a continuing cognitive, diplomatic, and legal battle against the Jewish state.

The soft enemies, primarily the European Union countries, support the hard ones while maintaining enough distance to deny responsibility for wars or terrorism; but they take part enthusiastically in the cognitive, diplomatic, and legal battles against Israel.

What is often ignored by those discussing the asymmetric warfare that characterizes the multi-front, alternately hot and cold, never-ending war against the Jewish state, is that not only are the meansof fighting asymmetric, so are the goals of the combatants.

Historically, the aims of warring combatants are diverse. They include such motivations as obtaining booty and slaves, conquering territory, getting access to natural resources or trade routes, building an empire and collecting tribute, religious or ideological conflict, and simple self-defense.

I don’t think that any reasonable person can deny that Israel’s motives are 100 percent self-defense. There is no enemy territory that Israel wants to conquer, no resources or booty she wants, and certainly no desire to create an empire. Her opponents are another story.

The motive of her Muslim enemies can be expressed in one word: jihad. In general all of them believe that they are obliged to fight to regain land lost by Islam, and in particular to one of the historic enemies of Mohammad, the Jews. In the case of Iran, there is also the long-term goal of creating an empire, a Shiite caliphate, and Israel – in addition to being that abomination, a sovereign Jewish state in the Muslim Middle East – is seen as an outpost of the West, an agent of the US, and an obstacle to the establishment of the caliphate.

Jihad has historically been very destructive to the conquered non-Muslim populations. For one thing, there is the so-called win-win proposition that motivates Muslims to engage in jihad. They are told that if they defeat their enemies, they can take whatever they want from the civilian population, including valuables and women, who are raped and enslaved (most of the male population is killed). The behavior of Islamic State fighters has followed this pattern in the present day. Judging by the behavior of PLO, Hezbollah, and Hamas terrorists so far, there is no reason to believe they would not act similarly if they had the opportunity.

The asymmetry of goals in turn produces an asymmetry of means, with Israel tending to defensive strategies (e.g., Iron Dome and other antimissile systems, barriers, non-lethal crowd control means, bombing empty installations, and so on), while her Muslim enemies emphasize offensive operations – terrorism, invasion, rocket barrages, and so on.

Israel also employs defensive strategies because she is deterred from more aggressive ones by the coordinated international diplomatic and legal campaign waged by both her hard and soft enemies. As a result of the reliance on (imperfect) defensive measures, Israeli morale is damaged by the appearance that she is content to partly ward off the blows of the enemy without striking back. Her enemies, on the other hand, are encouraged by her apparent weakness.

My contention is that a primarily defensive posture – even if Israel’s objective is self-defense – is inadequate to deter asymmetric attacks. Her enemies respond by escalating the attacks of proxy forces, while keeping them below the level that will force Israel to change to an offensive posture. The result is an escalating war of attrition, of which the attacking forces have complete control. In the meantime, the morale of Israelis is damaged, that of the attackers boosted, and the attacking proxy forces, supplied by Iran, have time to stockpile weapons and improve fortifications, develop tactics, and generally prepare for the final war on multiple fronts.

At that stage, Israel’s enemies hope that her lack of strategic depth, combined with a large number of simultaneous attacks, will allow for a successful invasion of Israeli territory by numerous militia forces from the north, south and east. In such a case, Israel will have difficulty in deploying its powerful air force and artillery, leading to (they hope) a complete collapse or at least a cease-fire that will leave Israel critically wounded.

The way to overcome this threat is to force the confrontation to take a different form. One way to do this would be to take control of the developing war of attrition ourselves by taking the offensive, escalating disproportionate responses to asymmetric proxy provocations, with an objective of ending the fighting ability of the proxies. At the same time, visible preparations should be made to use our most powerful weapons directly against the source of the aggression, Iran. Then Iran could be put on notice not to interfere.

There is no doubt that stepped-up attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah, which will necessarily cause civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon, will be met with a massive propaganda, diplomatic, and legal attack orchestrated by our European soft enemies. This is where our American ally, which still has great leverage in Europe, could step in.

But we’d better act fast, before Iran goes nuclear – and while we still have a friend in the White House.

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11/01 Links Pt1: Omani FM: Israel Is Part of the Region; The Torah And Israelite Prophets Emerged In The ME; In Gaza, tire shortage hits motorists but not protesters

From Ian:

MEMRI: Articles In Palestinian Press Condemn President Trump And His Administration: Neo-Hitlerism Aspiring To Global Hegemony – According To Instructions Of Rothschild Family

In the wake of the crisis in relations between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, the PA press has published numerous articles condemning the Trump administration and President Trump personally. Inter alia, they called the administration "the most bullying U.S. administration in modern American history" whose racist, colonialist and "neo-Hitlerism" policy "heralds terrifying catastrophes for mankind." They also said that Trump was acting deliberately to bring down the global order and the UN institutions in order to force complete American hegemony on the world and bring it back to the law of the jungle. One columnist in a PA daily even accused the Trump administration of aspiring to change the world order according to instructions by the global government headed by the Rothschild family.

Some of the articles were addressed, in particularly harsh tones, against President Trump himself, calling him a "gang leader," a "highway robber," a "new cowboy," a bully who wants to turn America into the world's "sheriff," and more.

The following are excerpts from the articles.
Columnist In PA Daily: Trump Is Acting According To Guidelines Of The Rothschild Family World Government – To Dismantle And Reassemble The World

'Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, a columnist for the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, wrote that the Trump administration is acting to destroy the UN because it is unwilling to obey the international law and heed the positions of other countries, especially poor ones. He added that the capitalist U.S. administration follows "the guidelines of the global government headed by the Zionist Rothschild family," and aims to achieve global hegemony:

"The U.S. under Trump is pursuing a tycoon-like policy of dismantling and reassembling the world map, after it could no longer tolerate the UN system that it itself founded upon the ruins of the League of Nations… as though it no longer believes in the goals [the UN] is expected [to achieve]. [This is] because the other major international forces and the poor countries represented in the UN pulled the rug out from under its feet based on the norms of international law... which the gang [in the U.S. administration] refuses to accept and acts to change and eliminate.

"What the U.S. administration is implementing is America's [preferred] choice: creating a vortex of global chaos or creative chaos, in accordance with the guidelines of the global government headed by the Zionist Rothschild family, and [also in accordance with] Trump's slogan of 'America First.' The [American] struggle in the various arenas thus [corresponds to] the tycoon [Trump's] decision to persecute the [other international] players in order to take back the reigns of decision-making and global policy..."[1]

PMW: Fatah supports Islamic edict prohibiting land sales to "enemies"

Abbas' Fatah Movement endorses the PA's fatwa, or religious edict, prohibiting the transfer or selling of land to Israelis/Jews and encourages Palestinians not to violate it.

Fatah has announced that selling land to Israelis/Jews constitutes "high treason against the religion, the homeland, and the people." Thereby the movement repeats the PA Mufti's ban on selling land documented by Palestinian Media Watch. Fatah, which is supposedly a secular movement, also used religious language, warning that violating this prohibition would even have implications after death, in "the world to come":

"The Fatah Movement emphasized that the sale of properties and lands to the occupation or their illegal transfer to dubious sources constitutes high treason against the religion, the homeland, and the people, and that 'whoever does this decrees upon himself shame and disgrace in this world and in the world to come.'"
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 14, 2018]

A Fatah official went even further, stating that "the occupation's contemptible agents" who sell or transfer land to Israelis/Jews are "bats of the night" and the opposite of those Palestinians "who are sacrificing their lives for Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque":

"Fatah Revolutionary Council member and [Fatah] Spokesman Osama Al-Qawasmi said: 'There are those who are sacrificing their lives for Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and in order to defend its status and its Arabness, and on the other hand there are bats of the night - the occupation's contemptible agents - who sell their conscience and their religion and betray Jerusalem for money, which will turn into a curse on their heads.'"
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 14, 2018]

Omani FM: Israel Is Part of the Region; The Torah And Israelite Prophets Emerged In The Middle East

Speaking at the International Institute for Strategic Studies' (IISS) 2018 Manama Dialogue, Omani Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah said: "Israel is one of the countries in the region… Maybe it is time that Israel had the same privileges and duties as other countries." Bin Abdullah said that the Torah and the Israelite prophets emerged in the Middle East and that there had even been Jews in Medina. He stated that improved relations between Israel and its neighbors can be accomplished and that such relations would bring stability to the Middle East while serving both Palestinian and Israeli interests. Earlier in the Manama Dialogue, Bin Abdullah had expressed his support for the "Deal of the Century." Bin Abdullah made these comments in the wake of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's October 26 visit to Oman. The video was uploaded to the Internet on October 27, 2018.

Gulf states ignore Palestinian demand to stop normalization with Israel

From Al Ahram:

This week the Palestinian Central Council (PCC) appealed to Arab states to suspend further normalisation with Israel pending the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“We are asking Arab states to send a message of resolve and tell Israeli officials that they cannot expect to make any more political and economic gains with Arab states when they are making the lives of Palestinians in the occupied territories a nightmare. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees our request will be considered,” said a Palestinian source who spoke on the phone from Ramallah on Monday.

What a change from a few years ago when every Palestinian demand at every Arab conference would be highlighted and accepted without question.

The Palestinian fear that the Gulf doesn't really care about them is well-founded. I've documented for years that the rich Arab Gulf states would pay lip service to the Palestinian cause but not live up to their promises of monetary or other support.

Now, they are more explicit about it:

On the same day a Cairo-based Arab diplomat confirmed to Al-Ahram Weekly that the PCC’s request was unlikely to be given a serious hearing.

“When the [PCC] requests the suspension of further normalisation with Israel it is basically talking about Gulf countries, not about Egypt or Jordan which have peace treaties with Israel. But the Gulf countries take the position that if the Palestinian Authority continues to refuse US proposals for a possible deal that could eventually resolve the Palestinian problem, then the Palestinian leadership is in no position to ask Gulf states to refrain from any steps that might be in their political or economic interests,” said the source.

Far more likely, he added, is that the “next few weeks and months” will see a much greater public acknowledgment of Israeli relations with Arab Gulf countries “and Arab countries in general” and that “Israeli officials are likely to visit Manama soon”.

Speaking during a press briefing on Saturday on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogues, Bahrani Foreign Minister Khaled bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa suggested that normalisation with Israel is progressing in parallel with diplomacy to resolve the Palestinian problem.

Meanwhile, Cairo-based regional diplomats say that they would not be surprised if Bahrain proves to be the next stop. In the words of one, “Israel and Bahrain have much in common when it comes to Iran.”

An article that has been published in many Arab newspapers today bemoans the fact that Israelis are attending an economic conference in Qatar this week, an event that that has apparently been unreported in English-language media so far. Representatives of the Peres Center, Ben Gurion University, Tel Aviv University, The Israel Project and even a former Foreign Ministry official are in attendance.

Notice that people who claim to be "pro-peace" are not celebrating these now almost daily examples of Israel making diplomatic, economic and cultural inroads into former bitter enemies.

Because the Israeli and US governments support actual, on the ground peace between Israel and her neighbors, then the "pro-peace" crowd who hate Trump and Netanyahu above all must be against it.

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The New York Times has a good article about antisemitic hate crimes in New York City.

Contrary to what are surely the prevailing assumptions, anti-Semitic incidents have constituted half of all hate crimes in New York this year, according to the Police Department. To put that figure in context, there have been four times as many crimes motivated by bias against Jews — 142 in all — as there have against blacks. Hate crimes against Jews have outnumbered hate crimes targeted at transgender people by a factor of 20.

This is a startling statistic. FBI hate crime statistics shows that anti-Jewish hate crimes easily outnumber all other anti-religion hate crimes nationwide, and they have since they started keeping records, but usually anti-black crimes are far more prevalent nationwide. New York is the only city where Jews are the top victims of all hate crimes.

The actual numbers are even more stunning. In 2017, there were 151 complaints about antisemitic hate crimes, as opposed to 34 anti-black crimes and 40 anti-gay crimes.

Then the article reveals something that is almost incomprehensible to anyone who relies on the headlines to determine what the biggest threat to Jews in America are:

During the past 22 months, not one person caught or identified as the aggressor in an anti-Semitic hate crime has been associated with a far right-wing group, Mark Molinari, commanding officer of the police department’s Hate Crimes Task Force, told me.

22 months is how long Donald Trump has been in office.

We should not minimize right-wing antisemitism. But too much of the news coverage in the wake of Pittsburgh has minimized all other forms of antisemitism. Muslims attacking Jews and blacks attacking hasidim are "accepted" as just part of the scenery, barely worth reporting. The article dryly mentions:

When a Hasidic man or woman is attacked by anyone in New York City, mainstream progressive advocacy groups do not typically send out emails calling for concern and fellowship and candlelight vigils in Union Square, as they often do when individuals are harmed in New York because of their race or ethnicity or how they identify in terms of gender or sexual orientation.

Sympathies are distributed unevenly. Few are extended toward religious fundamentalists, of any kind, who reach the radar of the urbane, “Pod Save America” class only when stories appear confirming existing impressions of backwardness — the hordes of children delivered into the world whom families refuse to vaccinate and keep semiliterate.

The Anti-Defamation League maintains its own statistics and last year it reported that nine of the 12 physical assaults against Jews categorized as hate crimes in New York State were committed in Brooklyn and involved victims who were easily marked as members of traditionally Orthodox communities. Outside that world they were hardly noticed at all.

Jewish lives matter - but seemingly only when they are attacked by evil skinhead neo-Nazi villains. When the Jew is attacked by a person of color or a Muslim or a "pro-Palestinian activist," then the sympathy by the "progressive" crowd disappears, seemingly because the attacker has established themselves as the bigger victim in the grand scheme of things. The motivation of a black antisemite against "rich Jewish landlords" or of a Muslim against "Zionist usurpers" makes those crimes somehow less interesting to report and the victims less sympathetic. The 1991 Crown Heights pogrom, where mobs of people of color attacked Jews and yet the media reported it as if both sides were fighting, still rankles.

To put it simply, incidents of people attacking Jews aren't as juicy when the attackers aren't neo-Nazis.

The real, everyday antisemitism that far outstrips all other hate crimes doesn't interest New York City liberals. There is no outrage among them when videos surface every couple of months of religious Jews being mercilessly attacked in their own neighborhoods.

If these so-called "progressives" would be honest with themselves, they don't want to sympathize with those Jewish victims because deep down they think, to some extent, that those Jews deserve it - that those Jews are the oppressors, not the oppressed, in the Oppression Olympics. If the attacker is black or Muslim, suddenly there is visceral sympathy for the attacker, no matter what the facts.

Deadly attacks and major terror threats against the American Jewish community over the past three decades have been pretty much divided between far-right and Muslim attackers. The progressive crowd is usually not directly involved in gunfire or bombings. But that doesn't mean that the Left is any less antisemitic than anyone else. Their selective outrage over Jews being attacked based on who the attacker is shows that their supposedly principled stand against antisemitism is really an excuse to show their outrage over their ideological enemies - the Jewish victims are reduced to being props for the real agenda of hating Trump.

The bias is the same as the bias of those who attack Jews to begin with.

If one is going to justifiably blame Donald Trump for creating an environment where extremist rightists feel more comfortable attacking Jews, then one must also blame the liberal media and the "progressive" crowd for consistently downplaying the far more numerous antisemitic attacks when the attackers are black or Muslim or "anti-Zionist." They are just as guilty for creating an environment where Jews can be attacked with impunity.

Pittsburgh should have brought people together to understand the reality of antisemitism in America today. There are strains of antisemitism in every group - right and left, black and white, Muslim and Christian. Instead, the slaughtered Jews of Pittsburgh have been turned into another prop in a pissing contest between groups who are all guilty to some extent of enabling Jew-hatred.

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Work accident! Hamas terrorist blows himself up

Another Hamas "martyr" who should be a role model for all Hamas members:

Dawud Rizk Eid Junaid, 37, blew himself up in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday morning in an "accidental explosion."

Hamas' obituaries are always careful to mention which mosque he was a member of. In this case, the "Abu al-Khair" mosque in Jabalya.

Junaid was apparently a senior tunnel-digger.

He was killed in a site that was targeted by Israeli bombs over the weekend in response to Gaza rockets.

Hamas' statement looked forward to the day when all Zionists "are expelled from our land, Allah-willing."

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10/31 Links Pt2: Special Editorial: #WeAreAllJews; Sohrab Ahmari: Why This Catholic Loves the Jews; Roger Waters and the Great Green Chevron Scam; Ben & Jerry’s on Partnering With Group Tied to Farrakhan

From Ian:

Sohrab Ahmari: Why This Catholic Loves the Jews

For starters, it was mainly Jewish writers who dispelled the dangerous Marxist illusions of my youth and ushered me to political maturity. Were it not for Leon Kass, Arthur Koestler, Irving Kristol, and Leo Strauss, to name but a few of them, I probably would have continued to wallow in the lethal “idealism” of the very hard left. In Natan Sharansky’s gulag memoir, Fear No Evil, I discovered the link between faith in the God of the Bible and freedom, both political freedom and the more important kind: spiritual freedom. The words that sustained Sharansky through his ordeal belonged to Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav: “The entire world is a narrow bridge, and the important point is not to be afraid.”

Reading those lines while picturing Sharansky in his punishment cell sent shivers of understanding down my spine. A part of me knew that Nachman was right, even though I would have insisted that I was an unbeliever at the time. And that intuition raised an uncomfortable thought: I could only cross the bridge fearlessly and avoid the abyss below if there was Someone at the other end waiting for me—a metaphysical direction and endpoint, a loving Almighty who thunders: “Be not afraid.”

I picked up that interior confidence—that no force on earth could shake me if I feared Almighty God, that no regime could compel me to abide evil if I hewed to God’s ways—from Jewish writers, some of whom weren’t even traditional believers. Initially, I was reluctant to articulate this newfound confidence in the first person, lest my mostly secular friends sneer at me. But eventually, I professed faith in the one God.

When I did, I professed faith in the Christian God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who, I believe, entered human history a little more than 2,000 years ago and made of himself the bridge across that terrifying abyss that Rabbi Nachman had written about. I concluded that the bridge is cruciform, in other words. And that, of course, is where Jews and Christians part theological ways. But in so concluding, my mind never gave in to the classical anti-Semitism that historically disfigured relations between Christians and Jews.

Rather, my attitude was one of gratitude. Gratitude for the Jewish genius of the Hebrew Bible. Gratitude for the Jewish landscape of human salvation and the Jewish men and women that peopled it, not least Jesus of Nazareth and his blessed mother. Gratitude for Jews as Christianity’s elder brothers and sisters, who nurtured faith in the true God like a “well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles,” as the Vatican II declaration Nostra Aetate has it. Gratitude for the depths of Jewish ethics, for the resounding Jewish “No” to pagan abominations and emperor-worship, a “No” that echoes to this day.

Thanks to Judaism, the Jewish tradition, and Jewish intellectuals, I’m a Christian believer and not a modern pagan. How could I then not love the Jewish people?

Kevin D. Williamson: Green Floyd: Roger Waters and the Great Green Chevron Scam

The slow unraveling of the case against Chevron has been eye-opening, not least for the glimpse it offers into the way money moves through the progressive activist world.

The background: Chevron was accused of inflicting horrible suffering on the people of Ecuador through mismanagement of drilling operations there, contaminating the groundwater and exposing thousands of people, mostly in nearby indigenous communities, to a stew of toxic sludge. The most obvious problem with the case was that Chevron had never drilled for oil in Ecuador; it acquired Texaco, which had done so years before, in partnership with the Ecuadoran state oil company. At the conclusion of its operations, Texaco received a formal certification from the government of Ecuador that it had cleaned up after itself (at a cost of about $40 million) and that it was released from further liability for the operations, which were continued by the state oil company. Like many state oil companies, Ecuador’s had at times been something less than scrupulous in its observance of environmental standards. Its operations are likely the source of the pollution in Ecuador.

But American lawyer Steven Donziger, an old basketball buddy of Barack Obama’s, managed to obtain a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron in an Ecuadoran court. Chevron complained that this judgment was the product of corruption, that Donziger et al. had falsified evidence, paid off allegedly neutral experts, bribed judges, and more. Chevron took those complaints to court in the United States and was successful.

Chevron wants the court to find Donziger in contempt because he “willfully and repeatedly has violated the RICO injunction, monetizing and profiting from the fraudulent Ecuadorian judgment by selling, assigning, pledging, transferring, and encumbering interests therein.” The court is considering its claims.

Roger Waters, the rock musician, has denounced Chevron for its “greed,” complaining that it is “disquietingly apparent that the rich and powerful are still much attached to the feathering of their own nests at any cost to others.” Well. Documents submitted to the court show “George R. Waters” taking two equity positions in the case, one for 0.076 percent and one for 0.025 percent, through “Fenwick,” presumably the firm of Mark Fenwick, Rogers’s manager and an heir to the Fenwick department-store chain in the United Kingdom. That would come to roughly $9.6 million of a $9.5 billion judgment. You could feather a lot of nests with that. (I was unable to contact Waters or Fenwick for comment. Rock stars are really hard to get on the phone.) If taking in a few million dollars via an investment in extortion and bribery is not greed, then what is?

Pens to Wear 'Stronger Than Hate' Patches Tonight Against the Islanders

Pittsburgh Penguins players will wear special "Stronger Than Hate" patches on their jerseys for tonight's game against the New York Islanders at PPG Paints Arena (7 p.m.).

The patches - and the accompanying jersey auction - are part of the organization's effort to support victims and families of Saturday's tragic shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill.

Each player will sign his jersey after the game, and the jerseys will be available for auction at treeoflife.givesmart.com.

All proceeds from the jersey auction and the Penguins other fundraising efforts, including tonight's 50/50 Raffle, will benefit the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and a fund established by the City of Pittsburgh Department of Safety to benefit police officers wounded during the attack.

The jersey auction will start at 11 a.m. today and continue until November 13 at 12 p.m.

The Penguins will also conduct a collection of monetary donations at all three entrance gates at tonight's game. Fans may donate online at treeoflife.givesmart.com.

The Penguins Foundation also is donating $50,000 to the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and to the officers' fund.