Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 07, 2018

Report: Furbies, Bell-Bottoms Now More Relevant Than Palestinians (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Vienna, November 7 - A new assessment of emerging global trends has found that the Palestinian national cause now ranks as less pertinent and important than fads that faded years ago, in some cases decades ago, scientists report.

Researchers at the Academy of Sciences have determined that the once-universal Arab quest to destroy the Jewish State under the pretext of defending Palestinians from Jewish aggression issued their annual assessment of how important given issues are to international stability, both objectively and in popular conception. This year's numbers indicate a continuing shift, they wrote, of the Palestinians' standing in comparison to various ideas or objects whose time came and went long ago. According to their study, Palestinian relevance now ranks as less relevant than forgettable 1980's sitcoms, but on par with such notions as trousers that spread as they approach the hem and stuffed animal toys that resemble a magwai from Gremlins, but without the charm.

The researchers noted that the shift in Palestinian relevance continues a pattern that began in the 1970's but proceeded at a comparative snail's pace until the first decade of the twenty-first century, when larger swaths of humanity realized the Palestinian cause constituted more of a distraction than an actual core issue of concern to the Middle East and the world. Whereas in 1973 Palestinian ambitions and demands ranked alongside disco music in the top issues plaguing human civilization, in 2018 Palestinian ambitions and demands rank alongside disco music in the issues plaguing human civilization.

Lead researcher Dr. Pearl Clutching explained that the trend reflects a "correction" of a distorted picture that resulted from misplaced political and media focus. "Some of it can also be attributed to fatigue," she acknowledged, "but primarily, we keep finding that entire societies are simply waking up to the reality that no one really gives a damn about Palestinians as such, and all the attention they have received to date was simply a function of their being a convenient to bash Israel, to distract from other issues, or some combination of the two. Already in 2001, Rainbow Brite and Pet Rocks were viewed as more pertinent to world affairs."

"The gradual correction we're seeing will probably continue for some time," she predicted. "Progress hasn't been consistent, but with the trend of Palestinian relevance maintaining its general course, in the next five years we will probably see it surpassed in relevance by the short-lived Body Buddies breakfast cereal from General Mills and the film career of O. J. Simpson."

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11/07 Links Pt1: Both Republican and Democratic Jewish groups hail election results as a win; On ‘Pay for Slay’ the UN and Abbas are misleading the world

From Ian:

Here are the results in Tuesday’s races that matter most to Jews

Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections held Tuesday, with Jewish Congress members poised to take key leadership roles. Republicans looked to increase their majority in the Senate.

Five Jewish Democrats are set to chair key House committees, including three representatives from New York: Jerrold Nadler, the Judiciary Committee; Eliot Engel, Foreign Affairs; and Nita Lowey, Appropriations. Adam Schiff of California will head the Intelligence Committee and John Yarmuth of Kentucky will lead the Budget Committee.

Democrat Jared Polis will be the first Jewish and first gay governor of Colorado, and J.B. Pritzker, a Jewish Democrat, will be the next governor of Illinois. And two Jewish military veterans won upset Democratic victories in House races: Max Rose in New York and Elaine Luria in Virginia.

In the Senate, U.S. Rep. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat and a former synagogue president, defeated the incumbent Republican, Dean Heller.

Here are more results in races of significance to Jewish voters:

House of Representatives
In Michigan, Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American, handily won her race in District 13. Tlaib favors a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has opposed U.S. aid to Israel. She will also be one of the first Muslim women in Congress, along with Ilhan Omar, who won in Minnesota.

Both Republican and Democratic Jewish groups hail election results as a win

The Republican Jewish Coalition praised the Republicans for expanding their majority in the Senate, while the Jewish Democratic Council of America congratulated their party on regaining control of the House of Representatives.

The RJC’s executive director Matt Brooks regarded the Republican victories in Tuesday’s midterm elections as a sign of “the strong approval of the American people for the Republican policies that have substantially improved our economy, our national security, and our standing abroad.”

While Democratic control of the House will pump the brakes on President Donald Trump’s agenda and will shift the terrain in Washington, Republicans were relieved that a so-called “blue wave” of Democratic victories appeared to fall short, especially in at least three key Senate races — in Indiana, North Dakota and Texas.

“Historically, the party holding the White House loses seats in Congress during the midterm election,” said Brooks. “This year Republicans did well in a tough environment and increased their share in the Senate. And while we lost seats in the House, it should be noted that Democrats gained far fewer seats in the House this year compared to Republicans in recent history. Republicans gained 63 House seats in the 2010 midterms during President Obama’s first term and 52 in the 1994 midterms during President Clinton’s first term.”

Tablet: Voter Education: Eight candidates who have expressed blatantly anti-Semitic views, or who openly associate with anti-Semites
Results for the eight candidates:
John Fitzgerald R Cal 11th LOST
Arthur Jones R Illinois 3rd LOST
Danny K. Davis D Illinois 7th WON
Andre Carson D Indiana 7th WON
Steve King R Iowa’s 4th WON
Lena Epstein R Michigan 11th LOST
Ilhan Omar D Minnesota 5th WON
Leslie Cockburn D Virginia 5th LOST

Others of interest:
Rashida Tlaib D Michigan 13th WON
Ammar Campa-Najjar D California 50th LOST
Stacey Abrams D Georgia Gov LOST
Dana Rohrabacher R California 48th LOST
Kyrsten Sinema D Arizona Senate D UNDECIDED
Andrew Gillum D Florida Gov LOST
Keith Ellison D Michigan AG WON
Scott Wallace D Pennsylvania 1st LOST

An article in Egyptian news site DMC News mentions as an aside that "Arabs are bored and tired of the Palestinian cause."

The Palestinians can no longer count on the Arab world to wholeheartedly support them. They complain about the supposed pro-Israel bias of the US and even the UN. All they have left are biased human rights NGOs and the EU.

And the latest HRW report about human rights abuses by the PA cannot make them feel more secure.

It is no wonder that Palestinians, who are perhaps the least self-aware people on Earth, believe that they are doing nothing wrong and there is no reason for them to change their positions in response to the entire world turning against them. Instead, they continue to threaten those who upset them, pretending that they still have leverage of the oil weapon of the 1970s.

PLO executive member Hanan Ashrawi met with a European delegation yesterday and seemed almost desperate as she repeated her normal talking points.

"We appeal to the European countries to play an urgent and decisive political role by taking concrete and serious measures according to a binding timetable to force Israel to abide by international law and stop its violations and crimes and to ensure the end of the military occupation and the urgent protection of the Palestinian people," she said. In addition she urged European countries to recognize the "state of Palestine."

Ashrawi also invoked the suffering in Gaza, which is not a smart move because even the Europeans are recognizing that the PA is the party primarily responsible for the problems in Gaza over the past couple of years.

As with the Arabs, the Europeans are not going to support a kleptocracy and dictatorship like Abbas' forever, when the Palestinians have been vocally proud of their refusal to budge from their positions since 1988.

The world sometimes throws the Palestinians a symbolic bone, like allowing them to become members of some international organization. These moves inevitably backfire and cause the Palestinian leadership to become even more intransigent and convinced that the world is still on their side.

The crash is coming. Maybe before Abbas dies, maybe afterwards when his successor is even worse. But the Palestinian leadership is simply too obtuse to see the writing on the wall.

(See also this Hebrew Mida article about how Israel and Bulgaria are closer than ever. h/t Yoel)

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Last month, Israeli diplomats fumed as the head of B'Tselem, Hagai El-Ad, went in front of the UN Security Council to demonize the State of Israel.

El-Ad described Gaza as an "open air prison" and hurled other accusations against Israel.

“You’re a wretched collaborator,” Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon responded, as well as “You are a citizen of the State of Israel who is serving our enemies. They are using you against us. IDF soldiers guard you, and you came here to defame them. Shame on you.”

Now, El-Ad and B'Tselem are whining that they took such risks for their Palestinian friends, and they didn't get anything in return.

B'Tselem spokesperson Karim Gibran bitterly criticized Palestinian media for not highlighting the Israeli anger at El-Ad. In a radio interview for an Arab station, Gibran asked, "Why is this an ignored subject? Shouldn't we get support from the Palestinian media when we are attacked so fiercely from the right?"

Gibran said he is ashamed of the topic being disregarded in Palestinian media. Bizarrely, Gibran said "I don't know what I will tell Hagai when he asks about it."

B'Tselem's complaints included no coverage from Palestine TV and no official statements from the PA on El-Ad's speech.

The complaints imply that B'Tselem knows that Palestinian media is controlled by the PA and is not truly free. But why should a human rights organization care about that?

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Here is a tweet from Israel's Minister of Transportation Yisrael Katz showing his reception in Oman with a traditional Arab sword dance.

כך התקבלתי כשר ישראלי בקבלת פנים חמה ופומבית ״במחול החרבות״ בעומאן, חזון אחרית הימים וביטוי לחיזוק מעמדה של ישראל באזור. מחר אציג את תוכנית ״מסילות לשלום״ בפני שרי האזור. pic.twitter.com/MdkoBTaEaC
— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) November 6, 2018

I don't get the impression that the dance is meant to be an insult or a threat.

Katz is expected to present a plan for a railway that would link the port in Haifa to existing railways in the Gulf.

The astounding thing about both this and the videos of Sports and Culture Minister Miri Regev also in Oman touring the Sheikh Zayed Mosque is that Israeli officials are being treated with more respect and less fear of public backlash in Oman than in the states that Israel has official peace agreements with, Egypt and Jordan.

It is widely expected that the next Arab country that Israeli PM Netanyahu will visit is Bahrain.

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11/06 Links Pt2: The Future of the Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre; On Bari Weiss, Franklin Foer and the Values that Sustain Our People; 4,000 college students from 60 nations sing as one in TLV

From Ian:

The Future of the Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre

In America, Jews have always been able to fight back against anti-Semitism freely. Never having received their emancipation as an “award” (which was the case in Europe), Jews have had no fears of losing it. Instead, from the beginning, they made full use of their freedom, especially freedom of speech. As early as 1784, a “Jew Broker,” probably the famed Revolutionary-era Jewish bond dealer, Haym Salomon, responded publicly and forcefully to the anti-Semitic charges of a prominent Quaker lawyer, not hesitating to remind him that his “own religious sectary” could also form ”very proper subjects of criticism and animadversion.” A few years later, Christian missionaries and their supporters faced Jewish polemics no less strident in tone. Where European Jews often prided themselves on their ”forbearance” in the face of attack, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the great Reform Jewish leader, once boasted that he was a “malicious, biting, pugnacious, challenging, and mocking monster of the pen.” In more recent times, Jewish defense organizations have taken on anyone who maligned Jews, including national heroes like Henry Ford and General George S. Patton, as well as presidents of the United States.

American anti-Semitism has always had to compete with other forms of animus. Racism, nativism, anti-Quakerism, Anglophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Catholicism, anti-Masonry, anti-Mormonism, anti-Orientalism, , anti-Teutonism—these and other waves of hatred have periodically swept over the American landscape, scarring and battering citizens. Americans have long been extraordinarily pluralistic in their hatreds. Precisely because the objects of hatred have been so varied, hatred has generally been diffused. No one outgroup experiences the full brunt of national odium. Furthermore, most Americans retain bitter memories of days past when they or their ancestors were themselves the objects of malevolence. The American strain of anti-Semitism is thus less potent than its European counterpart, and it faces a larger number of natural competitors. To reach epidemic proportions, it must first crowd out a vast number of contending hatreds.

Anti-Semitism is more foreign to American ideals than to European ones. The central documents of the Republic assure Jews of liberty; its first president, in his famous letter to the Jews of Newport, conferred upon them his blessing. The fact that anti-Semitism can properly be branded “un-American,” although no protection in the formal sense—the nation has betrayed its ideals innumerable times including in our own day—still grants Jews a measure of protection. Elsewhere anti-Semites could always claim legitimacy stemming from times past when the Volk ruled and Jews knew their place. Americans could point to nothing even remotely similar to that in their own past.

America’s religious tradition—what has been called “the great tradition of the American churches”—is inhospitable to anti-Semitism. Religious freedom and diversity, church-state separation, denominationalism, and voluntarism, the key components of this tradition, militate against the kinds of us-them dichotomies (“Germans and Jews,” “Poles and Jews,” etc.) so common in Europe. In America, where religious pluralism rules supreme, there has never been a single national church from which Jews stand apart. People speak instead of American Protestants, American Catholics, American Jews, American Muslims, and American Buddhists—implying, at least as an ideal, that all faiths stand equal in the eyes of the law.

American politics resists anti-Semitism. In a two-party system where close elections are the rule, neither party can long afford to alienate any major bloc of voters—another reason why it is so critical that everyone take the time and trouble to actually vote. For the most part, the politics of hatred have been confined to nonvoters like African Americans, until they won the vote, or to nonvoting immigrants, or to noisy third parties like the anti-Catholic Know Nothings in the 19th century, or to single-issue fringe groups. America’s most successful politicians, now and in the past, have more commonly sought support from respectable elements across the political spectrum. Appeals to national unity, even in the era of Donald Trump, win more elections than appeals to narrow provincialism or to bigotry.

Of course, the fact that America has been “exceptional” in relation to Jews should not obscure the sad reality that there has always been anti-Semitism in America, as well as violence directed against other minority faiths. That history, as I read it, gives cause neither for undue celebration nor for undue alarm.

Alan Dershowitz on Trump, Israel, and Antisemitism

I recently spoke with Alan Dershowitz at the ZOA Gala at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan, where he was set to make a prominent speech.

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Hannah Grossman: Mr. Dershowitz, can you give us a little preview of what you will be talking about tonight?

Alan Dershowitz: I’m talking about how important it is to have dialogue among people who may not agree. Mort Klein and I don’t agree about a great many things. He’s way to the right of me, but we talk to each other. We dialogue with each other. And I’m here to promote dialogue between the right, the left, [and] the center — not only within the Jewish community, but the more general political community. It’s a tragedy that we now shout at each other, demonize each other, [and] yell slogans instead of having reasoned discourse. We can learn from each other, and I think we ought to.

HG: Where do you think that changed, between the right and left, where the divide became so extreme that it seems that it is impossible to have some dialogue or commonality?

AD: Well, I think there a lot of contributing factors. I think the movement of the left to the hard left in the Democratic Party. I think the movement of the right to the hard right within the Republican Party. I don’t think President Trump has helped with his choice of language, and I don’t think that some of the Democrats have helped with their choice of language. I crave the old days when my friends Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch could sit together, and when Senator McCain could sit and work together with Joe Biden. Those days seem long gone, and I want to do everything in my power to bring them back.

HG: Bret Stephens said today at a panel that Donald Trump’s rhetoric has an effect on the culture. Can you describe that; what you think that is?

AD: I think that’s right. Look, I think President Trump has a mixed record. I think he’s done some very good things. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem was a terrific thing. I think his tough negotiating stance toward Iran has been very good. I don’t approve of his policies toward immigration. I certainly don’t approve of separating families the way he did early on, but you know, I’ve never agreed with anything any president did 100 percent.

I disagreed with a great deal of what President Obama did and if Hillary Clinton had been elected, I’m sure I would’ve disagreed with a lot of what she would do. But you don’t demonize, and he’s still the president, and you respect the office of the president. I was appalled at the so-called leaders in Pittsburgh who refused to welcome the president. I think everybody should welcome the president when there’s a tragedy and allow him to serve in his role as a mourner or bereaver-in-chief.

Qanta Ahmed: The ECHR’s ruling on defaming Mohammed is bad news for Muslims

In a monumental irony, the ECHR’s agreement with an Austrian court that offensive comments about the Prophet Mohammed were ‘beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate’ has handed a big victory to both Islamists and Islamophobes – while infantilising believing Muslims everywhere.

The case concerns an unnamed Austrian woman who held a number of seminars during which she portrayed the Prophet as a paedophile. After she was convicted by an Austrian court of ‘disparaging religion’ (and fined nearly €500), she appealed to the ECHR claiming the punishment breached her right to free expression. The court disagreed.

As a practising Muslim, I find this notion – that the Prophet was a paedophile – to be as abhorrent and nasty as they come; not to mention completely false. Yet I could not disagree more with the ECHR’s ruling.

For a start, it implies there is somehow a balance to be struck between people’s freedom of expression and the right of Muslims not to be offended. I just don’t understand this: how can the views of another individual possibly affect my faith or beliefs? Her ignorance – or anyone else’s for that matter – does not equate to my persecution.

Pallywood in Middle East Monitor

From Middle East Monitor:

Israel settlers dump sewage on Palestinian school in Qalqiliya

Israeli settlers dumped their sewage on a Palestinian school in the northern occupied West Bank district of Qalqilia yesterday.

The Azzun Beit Amin School playground was flooded with sewage for the second time in two months as a result of the settlers’ actions.

Principal Alaa Marabeh said it would take more than ten days for the sewage water to dry and this has caused a foul smell to spread across the school building and risks damaging the students’ health.

The settlers live in the nearby illegal settlement of Sha’arei Tikva which is home to some 4,000 Jewish settlers.

They even have a picture of the flooded students!

Only one problem.

The photo is of Gaza and it is from 2013.

The sewage comes from Gaza, not Israel.

But when one needs a photo to back up the lies of Israel drowning Palestinians in sewage, one needs to be creative as to the sources of the photos.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

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Sick "scholarly" paper of the day says that Israel must be destroyed - and academics must do their part

This academic journal article, in Settler Colonial Studies, was just published last week.

Here's the abstract in academic gobbledygook:

Seeing Israel through Palestine: knowledge production as anti-colonial praxis
Yara Hawari, Sharri Plonski & Elian Weizman
Published online: 31 Oct 2018
ABSTRACT
Knowledge production in, for and by settler colonial states hinges on both productive and repressive practices that work together to render their history and present ‘normal’ by controlling how, where, to and through whom they tell their story. This makes the production and dissemination of knowledge an important battleground for anti-colonial struggles. The State of Israel, in its ongoing search for patrons and partners, is focused on how to produce and appropriate ‘knowledge’, and the arenas in which it is developed and shared. In so doing, it works to reshape critique of its political, social and economic relations and redefine the moral parameters that inform its legitimacy and entrench its irrefutability. Inspired by existing literature on and examples of anti-colonial struggles, this paper challenges the modalities through which Israel produces and normalises the colonial narrative. By critiquing existing representations of the Israeli state – and the spaces and structures in which these take hold – our article contributes to the range of scholarship working to radically recalibrate knowledge of ‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’. As part of this work, the article purposefully centres indigenous anti-colonial frameworks that reconnect intellectual analysis of settler colonial relations, with political engagements in the praxis of liberation and decolonisation.

The paper takes it as a given that Israel must be destroyed ("liberation and decolonisation") and wants to ensure that no one looks at it as anything other than an evil, artificial colonialist entry.

The paper starts off with a quote from Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN that it regards as the perfect example of how Israel is trying to fool the world into thinking that it is a liberal, normal state:

Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a world steeped in tyranny and terror where gays are hanged from cranes in Tehran, political prisoners are executed in Gaza, young girls are abducted en masse in Nigeria, and hundreds of thousands are butchered in Syria, Libya and Iraq, yet nearly half – nearly half of the UN Human Rights Council’s resolutions focusing on a single country have been directed against Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East; Israel, where issues are openly debated in a boisterous parliament, where human rights are protected – by independent courts, and where women, gays and minorities live in a genuinely free society.

The paper doesn't even attempt to refute Netanyahu's words. In the circles that these academics travel, facts aren't important. It is so axiomatic that Israel is inherently, uniquely evil that Netanyahu's words do not evoke the desire to argue with it as much as the desire to show that they prove that Israel is so bad that its prime minister is forced to divert the world's attention from its evil.

As with "pinkwashing" - the absurd concept that is roundly rejected everywhere outside the anti-Israel and academic worlds - anything that Israel does that is consistent with liberal values is really immoral, they just have to figure out how.

The article is also concerned that the field of "Israel Studies" helps to make Israel sound like a normal state. The authors are very concerned that academia itself cannot be objective in describing how evil Israel's colonialism is:

Given our discussion above of counter-hegemony – and the fact that hegemony is a field of struggle – can we then consider all spaces as potential sites for contestation? What tools do we have to turn the study of Israel into a platform for transforming settler colonial relations, when we are working from within one of the key centres of colonial hegemony, the academic arena? Again, this involves challenging how we work, whose voices are centred, and the connection we make between scholarship and praxis, between understanding settler colonialism and resisting it.

The point of these academics isn't to understand Israel - but to resist it.

The strategy of fomenting Indigenous studies as a starting point for studying the Israeli state and society (as part of critical Palestine Studies), is also a political endeavour.

Throughout this article, we have been working towards a re-reading of Israeli state and society as part of critical Palestine studies; an epistemological starting point that would make visible and disrupt the hegemony increasingly held by Israel Studies in its reproduction of Israel as a ‘normal – if complex – modern state’, as posited in the quote that introduced this article. We have drawn on Indigenous studies and anti-colonial scholarship to make the point that the only way to do this, is to ensure that when we investigate the Israeli state and society, it is with the goal of its transformation. This is informed by a political commitment, requiring not simply that Israel is understood, but that scholars are in solidarity with its decolonisation.

If you are a scholar of Israel and not actively working to dismantle it, then you have no legitimacy in today's academic environment.

This paper freely admits that when the topic is Israel, academia is part of the "resistance" - meaning exactly what Hamas means when they use the term. There isn't even the pretext of objectivity or scholarship where Israel is concerned.

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11/06 Links Pt1: Official Palestinian Authority paper: "Settlers" kill Palestinians for pleasure; Shin Bet Chief: We foiled 480 major terror attacks this year;

From Ian:

PMW: "Settlers" kill Palestinians for pleasure - hate speech in official PA daily

The Palestinian Authority regularly demonizes Jews, Israelis, and those who they call "settlers" and accuse them of believing in precisely the hate ideologies the PA itself espouses to its own people.

While accusing Israelis of participating in a religious war, it is Mahmoud Abbas' advisor who has called Israel "Satan's project" and presented the war with Israel as a religious war to destroy Israel and Jews. The PA Mufti, who is appointed by Abbas, has said extermination of Jews is a religious obligation and Islamic destiny.

In Israel, the isolated cases of Israeli terror against Palestinians are punished and condemned. It is the Palestinian Authority under direct instructions of Mahmoud Abbas that rewards murderers of Israelis with high salaries and calls terrorist murderers "stars in the sky of the Palestinian people."

In this op-ed in the official PA daily, the writer projects the PA's own hate ideologies onto what he refers to as Israeli "settlers." They are demonized as inhuman murderers who kill Palestinians for their own pleasure and at the orders of the Israeli government.

Under the headline "The settlers are sacrificing the Palestinians' blood as a sacrifice to Netanyahu," regular columnist for the official PA daily, Muwaffaq Matar, who is also a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and hosts a TV program on Fatah-run Awdah TV, portrayed Israelis living beyond the Green Line as "mass murderers obsessed with bloodshed" who are "directed" and controlled by the Israeli army and government:

"Criminals, mass murderers, obsessed with bloodshed, wild unbridled foreigners, but also directed - these are the settlers, the colonialists, the pawns of the racist regime in Tel Aviv.
[They are] criminals who are being activated by a remote control with dual controls - one in the hands of the heads of the occupation army, and the second in the hands of the heads of the coalition of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's government. Both of them are trying to inflict a heavy toll on the Palestinian citizens by means of groups of people devoid of the elements of human nature, who have no connection to the civilized societies other than [their] human form..." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 14, 2018]

Petra Marquardt-Bigman: Don’t Be Fooled: The Left Only Cares About Palestinians If It Can Blame Israel

Anyone with even a passing interest in news from the Middle East will know that all over the region, undemocratic and repressive regimes use their security forces to suppress dissent. The Palestinian authorities in Gaza and the West Bank are no exception, as a recently released Human Rights Watch report documents.

Considering that the report is “the result of a two-year investigation,” it is remarkably meager. According to the summary, HRW exposes the “machineries of repression to crush dissent” by showing that Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza “routinely arrest people whose peaceful speech displeases them and torture those in their custody.”
Why Israel Is Right To Expel Human Rights Watch’s Omar Shakir

While this might give the impression that the report focuses exclusively on the abuse of people arrested for “peaceful speech,” there are also chapters that deal with cases of people accused of criminal charges in Gaza and the West Bank.

But what the report leaves out is perhaps more noteworthy than what it covers. A glimpse of what’s missing is provided on page 51, where one sentence suffices to deal with the most egregious abuses:

“Hamas authorities have also carried out 25 executions since they took control in Gaza in June 2017 [sic! Hamas took control in June 2007], including 6 in 2017, following trials that lacked appropriate due process protections and courts in Gaza have sentenced 117 people to death, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.”

In other words, a report that is touted as “the result of a two-year investigation” relies on another human rights organization to provide a one-sentence summary of executions carried out by Hamas. Presumably, two years were too short for the hard-working people at HRW to check their own records, which indicate that Hamas carried out considerably more than “25 executions” since taking power in 2007.

But the appalling sloppiness displayed by HRW when it comes to keeping track of the murderous record of the Islamist terror group that rules Gaza is a telling sign of how little Palestinian human rights matter to HRW when Israel can’t be blamed.

Dore Gold: The Bedouin Encampment of Khan al-Ahmar Violates the Oslo Accords

Khan al-Ahmar is a cluster of Bedouin structures located in the Judean Desert to the east of Jerusalem. This past year this subject has been heating up. It is located on public land and is situated on the main route connecting Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley. Twenty-eight Bedouin families live there. It is too small to really be called a village, so some label it as a hamlet or even other terms. The structures in Khan al-Ahmar were not erected with any sort of building permit, as required by Israel's Civil Administration in the West Bank.

Accordingly, demolition orders were issued in 2009. Though the residents turned to the Israeli Supreme Court, in its ruling the Court stated: "there is no dispute that the entire complex was put up in violation of the zoning laws." In the past the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Jewish families living in illegally constructed dwellings needed to be removed, as was the case in Migron (2012), Amona (2017), and Netiv Ha-Avot (2018).

Some Western commentators have fundamentally misunderstood Israel's decision to dismantle Khan al-Ahmar. A New York Times analysis insisted that Israel sought "to make room for the expansion of Jewish settlements." Of course, anyone familiar with the topography of the West Bank, with the map of the West Bank, knows that the Judean Desert is full of empty territory, so that the argument that the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar was required for settlement expansion really rings hollow.

If your child came home from college and said she was challenged by a classmate who claimed that Palestine is Arab land stolen by the Jews, could you provide her with a response?

That is the question Douglas Feith asks in the article he recently wrote for Tablet Magazine. Based on a speech he gave to the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, Feith offers a helping hand to his fellow Jews - who really should not be having such a tough time arguing for the Jewish right to Israel:

The campaign to delegitimate Israel has been scoring successes. The efforts to counter that campaign have often proven inept. That too I find astonishing.

In the arena of argumentation, the Jews are practiced, having continuously honed their debating skills since Abraham questioned God about Sodom. They should be formidable in explaining why Israel is not colonialist and refuting other calumnies. Yet they’re often beaten into retreat by anti-Zionist polemicists. There’s no excuse for it.

He then goes on to outline a response.

What he writes is not new, but still bears repeating --

o During the 400 years leading to World War I, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire -- was owned by the Turks, not by the Arabs living in Palestine.
o  There was never a country called Palestine.
o  Palestine was never ruled by its own Arab inhabitants.
o  Therefore, it is not accurate to say that Palestine was a country, or that it was Arab land.
o  And neither the Jews nor the British stole it from the Arabs.
o  The original Zionists who came to live in then-Palestine did not come as colonists, nor with the backing of an imperialist or colonialist power. Jews bought the land on which they settled.

Rabbi Moses Porush (c.) and Arab Landowner holding deed for a large tract of land
that Rabbi Moses Porush and Rabbi Joseph Levi Hagiz purchased from the Arab.
Credit: Wikipedia. Public Domain

Feith does give context to the situation during WWI that is generally overlooked.

The British invasion of Palestine in World War I was precipitated by the Ottoman Turks, who joined Germany and attacked the Allied forces. When the British war cabinet approved the Balfour Declaration on October 31, 1917, -- it was already more than 3 years into World War I.

And the war was not going well for the Allies.

It was one of those rare occasions when the exaggerated belief in Jewish power and influence actually worked to the benefit of the Jews. The British saw an opportunity to gain support in Russia and the US.

As for Palestine itself,

colonialism didn’t bring Britain to Palestine. Britain didn’t seize Palestine from an unoffending native population. It conquered the land not from the Arabs, but from Turkey, which (as noted) had joined Britain’s enemies in the war. The Arabs in Palestine fought for Turkey against Britain. The land was enemy territory. [emphasis added]

The British view of Palestine, and of the Arabs living there, was taken in the context of the area as a whole. Palestine was just a small part of a huge region the British forces conquered from the Turks -- and even though most Arabs had fought for the Turks, the Allies were ready to set the Arabs on the path to independence and national self-determination. However, the small piece of land that was the "Holy Land" had a unique status, of special interest to Christians and Jews around the world.

And the Arabs already living in Palestine?

The idea that a small segment of the Arab people – the Palestinian Arabs – would someday live in a Jewish-majority country was not thought of as a unique problem. There were similar issues in Europe. After World War I, new nations were created or revived: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Hungary, for example. Inevitably, some people would have to live as a minority in neighboring states. Seven hundred thousand Hungarians would become a minority in Czechoslovakia, almost 400,000 in Yugoslavia and 1.4 million in Romania. Where they were a minority, they would have individual rights, but not collective rights. That is, ethnic Hungarians would not have national rights of self-determination in Romania, but only in Hungary.

The principle applicable to European minorities applied also to the Arabs of Palestine. In any given country, only one people can be the majority, so only one can enjoy national self-determination there. The Arab people would eventually rule themselves in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Arabia. They were going to end up in control of virtually all the land they claimed for themselves. They naturally wanted to be the majority everywhere. But then, the Jews could be the majority nowhere. The victorious Allies did not consider that just.

The British were actually taken by surprise by the accusation that they were being unjust to the Arabs, especially considering the actual history of Palestine, what the British had sacrificed for the liberation of the Middle East from Ottoman control and the fact that the Arabs fought on the side of the enemy.

Feith quotes from a speech Balfour gave in 1922 on the issue:

“Of all the charges made against this country,” he said, that “seems to me the strangest.” It was, he recalled, “through the expenditure largely of British blood, by the exercise of British skill and valour, by the conduct of British generals, by troops brought from all parts of the British Empire . . . that the freeing of the Arab race from Turkish rule has been effected.” He went on, “That we . . . who have just established a King in Mesopotamia, who had before that established an Arab King in the Hejaz, and who have done more than has been done for centuries past to put the Arab race in the position to which they have attained—that we should be charged with being their enemies, with having taken a mean advantage of the course of international negotiations, seems to me not only most unjust to the policy of this country, but almost fantastic in its extravagance.”

Arthur Balfour. Source: Wikipedia. Public Domain

This is all part of the Zionist history that Feith believes Jews need to know in order to respond to the claim that the British stole Palestine and just gave it away to the Jews.

The problem, of course, is that the "other side" is not arguing from facts, nor are they appealing to logic. Just look around. On social media, people do not make logical arguments and they have no interest in history -- facts just make their eyes glaze over. Meanwhile, on college campuses, Jews are not being engaged in debate, they are being harassed by groups who want to eliminate debate and the free speech of their victims while isolating them.

Yes, we do need to know about our history and our birthright.
But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that Israel is the subject of a debate.

Israel is the target of an attack.
And we are still on the defensive.

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Diplomatic sources are telling a major Brazilian newspaper that Egypt canceled a planned visit by Brazil's foreign minister in retaliation for the president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, saying he intended to move the Brazilian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

The visit was to start on Wednesday, and the last minute cancellation was given a different excuse by Egypt. A number of Brazilian business leaders were already in Cairo ahead of the visit.

This move by Egypt is worrying Brazilian cattle farmers. Brazil is a major exporter of animal products that can be eaten by religious Muslims, and there is worry that their Arab customers will go to competitors in Turkey and elsewhere.

There have been no threats to Brazilian business interests; the threat is mostly a warning by the Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce. But the Arab League did send a note to the Bazilian government protesting the idea of an embassy move.

Usually, Arab nations do not follow through with economic threats, but they are good at scaring others with the threats themselves that many do not want to take a chance. This will be an interesting test for Bolsonaro.

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From the Sofia Globe:

Bulgarian Border Police officers at the country’s Kapitan Andreevo checkpoint have detained three Iranian men who attempted to enter the country using false Israeli passports, the Interior Ministry said on November 2.

The three men, aged 21, 28 and 32, arrived at the checkpoint, at Bulgaria’s border with Turkey, on October 31.

They presented Israeli passports, which on examination were found to have been falsified, the ministry said.

In custody at the Svilengrad office of the Bulgarian Border Police, it was established that the three men were Iranians, the statement said.

The men had been transferred to the special facility for temporary detention of foreigners in Lyubimets. Fast-track proceedings against them had been initiated, the Interior Ministry said.

This is not the first time this has happened. Nor the second or third.

In 2016, three Iranian nationals were caught in Italy with forged Israeli passports. They were deported to Turkey.

Also in 2016, two Iranians were arrested in India after attempting to board a flight using fake Israeli passports. The two, a married couple, intended to use the fake passports to immigrate to the United States.

And in 2014, two Iranians were arrested at an airport in Nairobi, Kenya, after attempting to enter the country using fake Israeli passports. They were sentenced under anti-terrorism laws to two years in prison, meaning they have been released by now.

The Iranians in this case are not necessarily spies. Iranian citizens like to buy forged passports in order to travel - not all Iranians can get passports to begin with, and even those who can are limited as to where they can travel. Israeli passports are considered valuable because they are so well accepted in Europe and elsewhere, and apparently easier to forge than many others.

Seven Iranians were arrested in Vancouver with forged Israeli passports in 2013 but they were planning to emigrate. But Iranians have been caught with other country's passports as well.

In order to avoid sanctions, over a hundred Iranian businessmen bought passports from Comoros, legally, until Comoros canceled them. Iranian law does not allow citizens to have foreign passports but they are allowing - or encouraging - businessmen to acquire a second passport to continue to do business worldwide.

Iranian businessmen have been linked to acquiring other countries' forged or stolen passports. Iran is apparently facilitating them getting Iraqi passports.

The worry about espionage is always there, of course. Especially among the "businessmen" that Iran is actively helping acquire false passports.

Israel has been involved in diplomatic incidents over the Mossad using fake or stolen passports from the UK and New Zealand. For some reason, this methodical use of fake passports by Iran has not yet been considered a big deal - even though Iran directly funds terror groups.

(h/t Yoel)

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11/05 Links Pt2: The NYTimes understands anti-Semites; NBC News Airs Jewish Mourner’s Prayer to Memorialize Pittsburgh Victims; Farrakhan Leads ‘Death to America’ Chant on Solidarity Trip to Iran

From Ian:

Stronger than Hate: Honoring the Pittsburgh Victims.

There have been many small and meaningful gestures in the wake of the horrific violence at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

The Pittsburgh Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger is wearing custom cleats today to honor the synagogue shooting victims.

Cecil and David Rosenthal, victims of the shooting were brothers of Michele Rosenthal, who worked in the Steelers' community relations department and assisted in Roethlisberger's foundation.

The Pittsburgh Penguins have added a Star of David, and the words "Stronger than Hate" to their Jerseys

Limited editions of this patch are available for sale, with proceeds going to the families of the victims.

Throughout the country, Jewish Day schools and synagogues have reported tender messages of solidarity, comfort and compassion from their neighbors.

After the attack, the worse ever on US soil, parents from San Raphael's Venetia Valley Elementary School meet their neighbors at Marin Brandeis with a sign "You are not Alone".

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: The NYTimes understands anti-Semites

And still, the New York Times never ceases to amaze me. Frighten me too, because so many thought leaders continue to swear by the Gray Lady.

Just yesterday, they presented two full pages of faces, mid-term candidates all; they are visually categorized in terms of gender, race, and sexual preference, but not in terms of issues. Identity Balkanization at its finest. A new kind of Tribalism.

Also that same day, the Times covered the perpetrator who tried to torch six Jewish schools and who wrote “Die, Jew Rats,” “Hitler,” “End It Now” and “Jew Better Be Ready,” and who also scrawled a swastika on the walls of the Union Temple of Brooklyn.

Dare we feel anger or fear, the headline steers us towards compassion. It reads: “Man Accused of Anti-Semitic Vandalism Faces New Setback in a Life Full of Them.”

In other words, the perpetrator is a victim, a victim of the foster care system and of a bipolar disorder. He is also a man who self-identified as “queer.”

Despite having been eventually fostered by a Jewish couple, given a scholarship to Brandeis, chosen as an intern by former City Council Speaker, Christine Quinn, who met him at a gay pride rally for Obama, and with whom he worked for a decade—despite all this, Polite still struggled with marijuana use and, like so many similarly afflicted others, did not always take his psychiatric medication.

Delicately, reverentially, the article does not put into words the fact that the perpetrator, James Polite, is also an African-American. We only know this from his photo and from the police surveillance image which was published in the New York Post.

NY Times Frets Anti-Semitic Vandal ‘Faces New Setback’ After Arson, Hate Crime Charges

After a man broke into a Jewish temple in Brooklyn and left vandalism reading "Die Jew Rats" and "Jew Better Be Ready" and set fire to five other Jewish institutions, the New York Times knew who the real victim was: "Man Accused of Anti-Semitic Vandalism Faces New Setback in a Life Full of Them."

Yes, that was the real headline in Sunday's print edition of the Times. Gosh, don't your heart bleed for him?

James Polite was arrested late Friday after being caught on camera leaving the synagogue where he left the anti-Semitic messages, including "Hitler" and "End It Now." He was caught at the scene of nearby Yeshiva Beth Hillel, where he had set fire to the coatroom. It didn't take long for people to realize he was the same James Polite who once received a sympathetic profile from no less than the Times itself, detailing how he had overcome struggles with mental illness and drugs with the help of prominent Democratic politicians.

"In 2008, at a gay pride rally for Mr. Obama, Mr. Polite met Christine C. Quinn, then the City Council speaker…" the paper wrote at the time. "He interned with Ms. Quinn, a Manhattan Democrat, for several years, working on initiatives to combat hate crime, sexual assault and domestic violence. He also took part in her re-election campaign in 2009 and returned to help with her unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2013."

A year later, the Times is still quoting the lamentations of those who knew him. "This is a young man I have worked with for over a decade," Quinn told them. "With all the setbacks, you hoped this would be a good turn. But the opposite happened."

CNN reports that police have arrested James Polite for allegedly vandalizing a synagogue in NYC.

CNN failed to report that Polite:

-Was a Democratic activist
-Volunteered on Obama's presidential campaign
-Was a former City Hall intern who worked on combating hate crimes pic.twitter.com/otEGASg1bY
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 3, 2018

Over the last week, I noticed that horror over the recent Pittsburgh synagogue massacre did not lead to the kind of partisan finger-pointing which usually accompanies outrages of this type.

Certainly there was a fair share of finger-pointing at the current administration, coupled with counter-accusations that those who wanted to use the tragedy of Pittsburgh to further their own political agendas were dishonoring the dead. But such Internet-fueled rages were fewer than one might have expected, given how quickly other mass killings turned into clashes over guns vs. mental illness I described last time.

This may be because the communities most affected, including the Pittsburgh and wider Jewish communities, urged those who needed to “do something” to reflect on their faith (in the case of Jews) and commitment to one another when responding to the outpouring of support from non-Jews around the world.

The power of such a response was brought home to me when I attended services at my synagogue on Friday night, the first ones held since Pittsburgh. At that event, the clergy addressed the overflow crowd of Jews and non-Jews with a message of hope, rather than despair or anger.

Helping those who were directly impacted by the crime was obviously first priority, and anyone with a connection to Tree of Life through family, friends or personal history, were asked to stand so that the community could show their love and support. But the rest of the service was dedicated to life, and not just life going on after a tragedy, but to the life-affirming, celebratory moment Jews are privileged to experience once a week in the form of Shabbat.

No doubt there were members of the audience able to find fault in some of the things that were said that evening. Even I couldn’t help but think about Elder’s warning against taking the murderer at his word that he targeted Tree of Life due to their embrace of refugee issues when our rabbi highlighted the killer’s excuse for why he did what he really wanted to do, which was to kill lots of Jews. Upon reflection, however, it seemed more than uncharitable to characterize this story of solidarity as anything other an attempt to illustrate the open heart of a Jewish community which has decided to use its resources to help others now that our own refugee issues are largely behind us.

More importantly, the embrace of life-affirming principles, represented by the #ShowUpForShabbat effort embraced by millions across the globe, got me thinking about not just Jewish tragedy, but Jewish strength and longevity that has allowed us to survive for Millenia while other peoples vanished into history.

A natural – and understandable – tendency, after all, is to sink into despair when confronted with murderous anti-Semitism coming to America, especially in the context of the skyrocketing of attacks on Jews worldwide, accompanying (and excused by) the war against the Jewish state. But despair can easily turn to fatalist expectations of doom. But there is a cure. For Shabbat in general, and the most recent Shabbat in particular, demonstrates Jewish faith in week-by-week renewal that has kept us around fifty-two weeks a year for countless centuries.

Another natural response to the attack would have been boundless rage. But, as we have seen in societies that have devoted themselves to stoking and exacerbating such rage (especially societies who blame the Jews for their own failings and crimes), anger untempered by hope can lead to not just despair but to trillions in wasted dollars and, far more importantly, millions of wasted lives.

So, as tempting as it might be to turn our enemies’ tactics against them, especially when they ruthlessly and relentlessly assault the most important Jewish project of modernity, we must avoid anything that might turn us into those enemies. One need only look at Gaza to see where that can lead. Similarly, one need only look at Jerusalem – ancient and modern – to see what we can accomplish when we play to our strengths, and act like the people we are.

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Today's insane anti-Israel academic paper:

Pinkwashed:
GAY RIGHTS, COLONIAL CARTOGRAPHIES AND RACIAL CATEGORIES IN THE PORNOGRAPHIC FILM MEN OF ISRAEL
Brett Remkus Britt
Journal
International Feminist Journal of Politics
Volume 17, 2015 - Issue 3

Claims regarding “gay rights” have acquired a prominent role in debates over Israel's occupation of Palestine. This often takes the form of “pinkwashing,” a term denoting the use of gay rights discourse to justify the imposition of colonial rule. This article analyzes the pornographic film Men of Israel to explore how pinkwashing reflects colonialism's depoliticizing and exclusionary logics. Men of Israel shows how pinkwashing is far more than a justificatory practice. It also legitimates, reproduces and appropriates colonial narratives to justify an alliance between supporters of gay rights and the “pro-gay” Israeli state. It simultaneously excludes a racial category of people called “Palestinians,” which includes gay Palestinians, from the rights accorded to gay men in Israel. In an era of “gay rights as human rights,” such deployments of “gay rights” highlight the necessity of directing critical scrutiny to the alliances and exclusions implicated by a particular articulation of rights.

Yes, a "scholarly" examination of a gay Israeli porn film, the criticism of which honestly sounds like parody:

The film’s attempt to depoliticize Israel’s territorial claims is perhaps even more important. Men of Israel reflects an important turn within contemporary colonial practices, where gay male bodies serve as markers of colonial boundaries. However, the colonial power relations implicated by the film are well disguised because, in common with other pornographic films, it elides the social and political aspects of the subjects it depicts, presenting them as “images of people without social context or relations” (Bhattacharyya 2008, 136).

You get that? The porn film "elides the social and political aspects of the subjects it depicts." The target audience for the film must be very upset over that omission.

Such a portrayal requires exclusion of images that might provoke questions regarding the cost of sustaining this geography. We are not shown impoverished Palestinian towns or the remnants of bombed out Palestinian homes in the wake of Israeli air raids. The film does not show bulldozed buildings and Israeli settlements built in their place or the poverty within the occupied territories, elements upon which the vibrant urban landscape of the film is constructed. Indeed, the evasion of a Palestinian presence is a key component of the film’s agenda.

According to this brilliant reviewer - who must have watched the film dozens of times in order to describe it accurately for the readers of the journal - the film isn't meant to turn on gay guys like 100% of other gay porn films. It is designed specifically to avoid showing things that sham academic who obsessively watched it would like to have seen.

Any vision of Israel that is not wholly concerned with evil Israelis running roughshod over the human rights of an enslaved Palestinian people is clearly illegitimate, according to the brilliant academics who spend scores of hours watching gay porn for their "research." (This is not the only paper that Britt has written on the subject of gay porn and its supposed political implications. He also wrote “Reading Gay Pornography as Transnational Colonial Project.”)

Amazingly, this is not the only academic paper obsessed with Men in Israel. This other paper argues that gay porn with Arab actors is meant to build bridges between the West and the East while Israeli porn tries to build walls between the two.

Really.

And a third academic paper from a third author, Nada Elia, also features an extended discussion of this film.

That is at least three academic papers, published in three separate academic journals, written by three separate academics, all obsessed over a minor Israeli gay porn film.

UPDATE: A fourth paper on the same film!

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