The New York Times, finally following up on the Tablet expose of the Women's March and antisemitism, notes:
Ms. Mallory and Ms. Perez say they categorically condemn anti-Semitism, and that when they asked Ms. Wruble to leave the group, it had nothing to do with her being Jewish. But they acknowledged that the role of Jewish women was discussed in that first meeting.
“Since that conversation, we’ve all learned a lot about how while white Jews, as white people, uphold white supremacy, ALL Jews are targeted by it,” Ms. Mallory said in a statement to The New York Times.
So all white Jews uphold white supremacy. We're all racists. Good to know.
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I’ve become a big fan of Jonathan Haidt, co-author of the
best-selling Coddling
of the American Mind and a social-science researcher committed to
bringing political balance and reasoned discourse back into academia and
everyday political life.
Haidt is a scholar who practices what he preaches, including
one of the key virtues of a truly free and independent thinker: the ability to
say “I’ve changed my mind,” especially about something he once believed
deeply.
In Haidt’s case, he revised his thinking about the role
intuition plays in human reasoning between his first best-selling book (The Happiness Hypothesis) and one I just
finished reading (The Righteous Mind).
Given that Happiness
Hypothesis put Haidt on the map as a public intellectual, I can only
imagine what it took to put into print an admission that that book contained a
thesis the author no longer buys. But
the ability to both change your mind and admit you have done so has strategic
as well as intellectual benefits.
For instance, when I first got into the fight against BDS, I
repeatedly argued against turning to authority figures (such as lawmakers,
courts or college administrators) to deal with demonization/delegitimization
campaigns targeting the Jewish state.
This stance was based on the fact that, back then, BDS was
largely taking place within civic organizations, such as colleges and
universities, churches, municipalities and food coops, with anti-Israel
activism driven by small groups of insurgents within individual institutions. Since the majority of members of these institutions
were either hostile or indifferent to the boycotters’ political agenda, the
best strategy was to help that majority organize and find its voice so it could
effectively beat back BDS (which they did again and again over the course of
more than a decade).
Yes, the Israel haters are relentless which meant they kept
coming back those organizations again and again to demand a revote, refusing to
take “no” for an answer. But such behavior
meant that, by the time a handful student governments or church votes started going
the BDSers way, the public had internalized how unrepresentative or corrupt such
votes were, which meant the boycotters either lost or – at worst – acquired
tainted victories no one took seriously.
Given how effective grassroots politics was at turning back
BDS, I saw turning to authorities as a less effective and riskier
short-circuiting of more effective, democratic processes. But as the fight moved from these small communities
to large and powerful institutions, such as the United Nations, I’ve had to
revise my thinking regarding the best course of action to take in response new
forms of the BDS threat.
As most readers know, the UN’s Orwellian Human Rights
Commission is preparing a blacklist of companies doing business in Israel, the
publication of which will put pressure on those companies to sever ties with
the Jewish state. Given that this
blacklist effort is driven by wealthy and powerful states that dominate the UN
and have subverted it to their will, local activists have no way to influence
what happens in the halls of that body.
Understanding this reality, the most effective
counter-measure to a UN blacklist is the anti-BDS legislation passed or on the
way to being passed in most US states and the federal government. If one ignores partisan hyperbole regarding
such legislation, these laws simply update rules that have been in place since
the 1970s that make it illegal for US companies to participate in the Arab
Boycott that goes back to the 1920s now that those same boycotters have
hijacked the United Nations to give this age-old form of partisan warfare a
veneer of global legitimacy.
Once anti-boycott laws are passed, companies (especially
those more concerned with the large Arab market vs. the small Israeli one)
considering participating in a UN-led boycott will have another factor to take
into account: the impact such a choice will have on their relationship with the
large US market. We’ve already seen what
happened to one corporation (AirBnB) that thought it would face no consequences
for joining the latest version of the Arab boycott. Given that companies are generally
conservative, turning to US state and national legislators to add a
counter-weight to the UN blacklist is not just a last resort, but our best choice.
In science, there is a principle which says you should try
to understand a problem in terms of the right level of scale. For example, while the weather can be studied
at the atomic level, there is more insight to be gained by studying the subject
at a macro vs micro scale.
Similarly, grassroots fights are still the way to go when
the battle is taking place at a local food store or student government. But when powerful forces are arrayed against
you, it is best to marshal equally powerful forces to counter them.
Sticking with an old formula when new situations require new
tactics tends to lead to calcification and failure. This is why I have changed my mind about enrolling
authority figures in our fight, but only in situations where that option makes
the most strategic sense.
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Erdogan has managed to raise this principle to new heights. He complains about Israel, which is fighting jihad, while he also supports this jihad; he has erased the gap (although it is doubtful this gap even exists) between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism; he commits massacres against his own people, while accusing Israel of massacring the Palestinians.
Erdogan's anti-Semitic campaign continues with full force. Last year, Turkish TV aired an anti-Semitic series that included allegations of plots that were allegedly the brainchild the Jew Theodor Herzl, which were "inspired by real historical facts." This was not the first antisemitic series. In Turkey, it's routine.
One cannot easily dismmiss Erdogan, who in the past voiced opposition to Bashar Assad's continued rule in Syria, but soon joined the axis of evil that includes Iran and Hezbollah. There are those who argue that Turkey's economic interests will lead to restraint, but that's a mistake. History proves that leaders of Erdogan's ilk will pick ideological principles, especially those rooted in hatred, over national interests. Erdogan's Justice and Development Party is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose founder, Hassan al-Banna, penned an article on the importance of the "industry of death." That's the idea, those are the principles that Erdogan follows.
It is important to note that the president of Turkey is not the enemy of Israel, he is the enemy of the free world. Europe already detests him; countries such as the Netherlands and Germany refused entry to ministers from his party. But this did not stop Erdogan from becoming the contractor for the project to stop the flow of refugees, for which he gets billions. This helps in the short term, but in the long run, Europe is cultivating a monster who is becoming increasingly racist and anti-Semitic.
Monsters like this must be stopped when they are small and toothless. But Europe has forgotten everything and learned nothing. And the monster continues to grow.
President Trump's move to quickly withdraw U.S. military forces from Syria didn't cause the U.S. to lose in Syria. For all practical purposes, Syria was already lost. Much like his predecessor, Trump's decision is motivated by a calculation that the U.S. can't alter the military or political balance in Syria that has long favored Russia and Iran.
With a modest military footprint and little public support for a larger American role, the U.S. can't really compete with Russia or Iran on the ground. Trump said back in March that "We're knocking the hell out of ISIS. We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon."
Moscow and Tehran had long ago won the strategic fight for Syria. Russian military intervention in 2015 saved Assad. Russia and Iran have been more willing to devote resources toward keeping Assad afloat than the U.S. has been prepared to either remove him from power or stand behind the assorted elements in Syria who've tried and failed to overthrow him.
Americans should let go of the idea that we were ever trying very hard to win.
In contrast to the U.S., if and when Syria and its backers decide to conclusively take on the Islamic State, their approach is unlikely to employ much regard for humanitarian concerns or civilian lives.
Critics of the president's decision are right that the U.S. is once again going to throw its reliable Kurdish allies under the bus. But the Kurds could have foreseen this, both because of their previous experiences with the U.S. in Iraq and Trump's chronic unhappiness with the Syria deployment.
Maybe it’s time to remove Syria from its leadership position on the United Nations Decolonization Committee against “the subjugation of peoples.” https://t.co/pHVir200p8
Abdulaziz Alshatti is a Kuwaiti fencer who refused to compete against an Israeli (Grigori Beskin) at a major competition in Switzerland last month.
He didn't even pretend to be sick. The Kuwaiti National Assembly tweeted their thanks to him when it happened, and said that he refused to play "even though he is a better fencer than his opponent."
Alshatti is ranked 212, while his Israeli opponent is ranked 68.
The International Fencing Federation (FIE) did not do a thing to penalize him. He is still scheduled to compete in upcoming events.
Now, Alshatti is being honored by the Palestinian ambassador to Kuwait. He was presented with a commemorative gift as well as a souvenir and medal presented by the members of the Palestinian community in Kuwait to express their appreciation for his "heroic position."
The ceremony was held in front of the logo of the Kuwait Fencing Association and the International Fencing Federation.
Apparently, the FIE is fine with people politicizing its sport and its name.
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An eyewitness writing in 1920 described the effect in Germany of the publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion:
In Berlin I attended several meetings which were entirely devoted to the Protocols. The speaker was usually a professor, a teacher, an editor, a lawyer or someone of that kind. The audience consisted of members of the educated class, civil servants, tradesmen, former officers, ladies, above all students …. Passions were whipped up to the boiling point. There, in front of one, in the flesh, was the cause of all ills – those who had made the war and brought about the defeat and engineered the revolution, those who had conjured up all our suffering …. I observed the students. A few hours earlier they had perhaps been exerting all their mental energy in a seminar under the guidance of a world-famous scholar. … Now young blood was boiling, eyes flashed, fists clenched, hoarse voices roared applause or vengeance. (W. K. Timmermann – Incitement in international criminal law)
Imagine the scene. Authority figures - often academics - riling up groups of people, often students, with lies that are meant to do only one thing: to incite the audience into hating Jews. And their methods worked - they seemed to gather "incontrovertible facts" that fed into the people's need to find a scapegoat, to find a symbol that they can channel all their hate into.
This happens, today, too.
What are BDS meetings all about, anyway? They are meant to incite the audience with lies (in this case, the Protocols are replaced with heavily edited videos and fabricated news stories) in order to get them to hate Israel, and Zionist Jews.
Like the German antisemites of the 1920s, today's Israel-bashers work hard to ensure that any information about their avowed enemies that is not wholly negative get censored, stopped, or drowned out with protests. The entire concept of accusations of "pinkwashing" and "artwashing" is meant to say that even when Israelis do something that aligns with modern liberal and moral values, it is really a nefarious plot to hide their unspeakable crimes. When Israeli Jews do something seemingly bad it is horrendous, when they do something good even that is bad. There is no room in their discourse for truth or honesty. And like then, there are enough idiots who are more than willing to fully adapt a simplistic theory of Jewish/Zionist evil to explain all the ills of the world (today including things like US police brutality, racism, colonialism, slavery, stealing organs, poisoning water, economic woes, and so forth.)
And, sometimes, the BDS meetings go full circle to attack Jews themselves, as this recent video of David Sheen blaming false and twisted interpretations of the Talmud and Jewish scholars for Israeli actions at a BDS meeting in Amsterdam:
This lecture is exactly what the witness from 1920 was talking about.
Sheen makes explicit what BDS and Israel-haters have made implicit: the purpose of these meetings is to rile people up and cause them to hate mainstream Jews who dare to support the existence of a Jewish state and sanctuary for Jews worldwide.
_______________________
In case you actually watch this antisemitic video, Sheen quotes Maimonides to make it appear that he teaches Jews to ethnically cleanse gentiles. But the quotes are taken out of context, of course; Maimonides says that gentiles who live in Israel and accept the basic moral (Noachide) laws are to be treated with respect:
"Similarly, it appears to me that in regard to respect and honor and also, in regard to charity, a resident alien is to be treated as a Jew for behold, we are commanded to sustain them as Deuteronomy 14:21 states: 'You may not eat any animal that has not been properly slaughtered... give it to the resident alien in your gates that he may eat it.' ...
However, our Sages commanded us to visit (all) gentiles (not just resident aliens) when ill, to bury their dead in addition to the Jewish dead, and support their poor in addition to the Jewish poor for the sake of peace. Behold, Psalms 145:9 states: 'God is good to all and His mercies extend over all His works' and Proverbs 3:17 states: 'The Torah's ways are pleasant ways and all its paths are peace.'
וכן יראה לי שנוהגין עם גרי תושב בדרך ארץ וגמילות חסדים כישראל. שהרי אנו מצווין להחיותן שנאמר לגר אשר בשעריך תתננה ואכלה. .... אפילו העכו"ם צוו חכמים לבקר חוליהם. ולקבור מתיהם עם מתי ישראל. ולפרנס ענייהם בכלל עניי ישראל. מפני דרכי שלום. הרי נאמר טוב ה' לכל ורחמיו על כל מעשיו. ונאמר דרכיה דרכי נועם וכל נתיבותיה שלום:
And Maimonides' words about how to treat Gentiles come from the Talmud, where they are mentioned (with some variations) no less than five times without any dispute: Tosefta Gittin 3:13-14, Jerusalem Talmud Gittin 5:9 47c, Jerusalem Talmud Demai 4:6 24a, Jerusalem Talmud Avodah Zara 1:3 39c and Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 61a. Similarly, Jew-haters like Sheen like to say that when the Talmud says "Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world" it is really referring only to Jewish lives, but the quote is given twice: once in context of Jews, and once in context of everyone including non-Jews (Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:1 22a). Sheen's claim that "neighbor" in Leviticus excludes females and the non-religious is too absurd to even discuss. It has no basis in reality, period. More on this topic can be seen in the paper Loving-Kindness towards Gentiles according to the Early Jewish Sages by Joan Poulin.
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Egyptians remain livid at Fatima Naoot, who wrote an op-ed to weeks ago in Al Masry Al Youm that accurately blamed Egypt for forcing out virtually its entire Jewish population, many of whom were patriotic and contributed to Egyptian culture and politics.
Since my last post about the crazed Egyptian reaction to her article, the Egyptian parliament attacked Naoot, accusing her of "distorting Egypt", of promoting false claims that serve the enemies of the nation, and of working to serve the international organizations that are paying her, which are planning to "distort the history of Egypt."
The most strident parliamentary criticism of her came from members of the Human Rights Committee. Yes, Egypt's human rights parliamentarians want to erase the history of Egypt trampling on the human rights of Jews.
Al Ghoul
One member of the Human Rights Committee, Mohammed al-Ghoul, went so far as to attack the mental health of Naoot, saying "I doubt that she has any psychological balance. A healthy person would not write such articles."
That is not the only attack on Naoot.
Besides the articles that continue to be written that claim that her facts are lies, a journalist has formally filed a complaint.
Abdu Zaki Ali Mousa, a member of the Syndicate of Journalists, filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor against Naoot, accusing her of:
- Angering Egyptians who hate Israel because it "devours whole countries, kills children" and humiliates the Arabs;
- Distorting Egypt's image and inciting against it;
- Harming Egypt economically by exposing it to paying substantial financial compensation to those Jews who claimed to have been forcibly displaced.
- "Flirtation with a foreign country that all Egyptians see as an enemy;"
- Hurting the feelings of the descendants of the "martyrs of the armed forces who were killed by the occupying forces in several wars."
Back in 2013 a major documentary film called The Jews of Egypt that documented the expulsion of Egyptian Jews in the 1950s and 60s was originally stopped from being shown by Egypt's censors for similar reasons, but in the end they backed down when the story became international news. As far as I can tell, the film was received fairly well by Egyptians who watched it, and they understood that it was accurate.
The hate towards Naoot seems to be not only what she wrote, but also because in the past she has written about Copts and other topics that ruffled feathers. It could be that her being a woman is also a lightning rod for her.
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A secular Shiite member of the Iraqi Parliament, Faiq Al Sheikh Ali, has expressed regret over how the Jews were chased out of that country in the 1950s..
He posted on social media last week, hailing the historic role of Iraqi Jews in society, sharply criticizing the abuses they faced before being expelled from Iraq.
"They were old pacifists who loved Iraq and its people; merchants, writers, artists, people of high taste," Sheikh Ali said in a statement Twitter
"They were accused, cheated, attacked, bribed, their possessions confiscated, their homes seized and thy were expelled from their home country," he said.
Jews had been in Iraq from the time of Nebuchadnezzar until the 1950s.
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This is a young mother and writer under considerable heat for being too sympathetic to the Palestinian-Arabs in their efforts to snuff-out Jewish self-determination and self-defense on our historical homeland.
She has also been heavily accused of getting popular pro-Jewish / pro-Israel native American Métis writer and activist, Ryan Bellerose, fired from his position as an advocacy coordinator for B’nai Brith Canada. He was apparently too confrontational toward her on social media and too hostile toward the enemies of the Jewish people.
The reason that I, nonetheless, like "STS" -- it is not everyone, by the way, that earns an acronym -- is because she stands at the crossroads between pro-Israel advocacy and pro-Palestinian advocacy and that makes her interesting "grist for the mill." This is particularly true given the fact of the fluid nature of contemporary social media in which everyone has a potential voice.
This does not mean that I agree with her overly-broad sympathies for the Palestinian-Arab enemies of the Jewish people. And it certainly does not mean that I take her side over that of Ryan Bellerose. It simply means that I recognize that she walks a tight line between those who wish to slaughter the Jewish people of Israel and the Israeli Jews who refuse to compromise on the matter.
It takes considerable guts to take that position while smiling for the camera.
The Fundamental Criticisms of Tuttle-Singer
Tuttle-Singer has become sufficiently controversial within the pro-Jewish / pro-Israel community that the malice towards her has spawned a mocking Facebook page called Sour Turtle Stinger.It describes itself as a "Place for sharing dank memes, stories and roasting of certain rare creature." The notion of "rare creature," in this case, suggests prima donna, but I cannot fairly speak to what was in the writer's head.
The primary reason that they tend to despise Tuttle-Singer is out of a sense that she gives far too much credence to the "Palestinian Narrative" and not nearly so much credence to the Jewish experience in that part of the world under thirteen centuries of Arab-Muslim imperial rule. She also generally gives equal moral justification to Palestinian-Arab hostility toward Jews as to Jewish measures of self-defense. Her writings suggest a moral equivalency between Jewish defenders and Arab aggressors. I would not put her on the same low level of, say, Gideon Levy or Amira Hass of Ha'aretz
However, she does not emphasize that the Jewish people in her part of the world live under siege, despite the fact that she lives in Jerusalem with her own children. She acknowledges it but is more concerned with Jewish wrong-doing than the never-ending Arab assault on the Jewish people.
I covered a bit of this in my previous piece wherein I suggested to Tuttle-Singer:
History as a field of knowledge resides at the crux of the Humanities and the Social Sciences and is, thus by necessity, interpretive.
This is why there is always a significant element of subjectivity within even the most scrupulously professional historical narratives. Nonetheless, for a narrative to be a historical narrative it must be grounded in something that closely resembles the truth of the past.
We do not simply get to make up our own “narratives” as the Palestinian-Arab leadership has done, and then insist that ahistorical nonsense be taken seriously.
Nonetheless, Tuttle-Singer seems to be among those political writers who believe that the "Palestinian Narrative" of Never-Ending Victimhood needs to be given equal consideration to actual Jewish history in consideration of the conflict.
She also believes that the Jews of the Middle East are "Occupying," with "the Big O," the very land of Jewish heritage and tends to be sympathetic toward Arab-Muslim push-back against Jewish self-determination and self-defense. She thus often harps on what she sees as Jewish opression toward others, while generally giving the Arabs a pass. Much of this was previously discussed in a thoughtful January 7, 2018, piece by Paula Stern entitled, The Truth According to Sarah Tuttle-Singer.
But, again, I like Sarah Tuttle-Singer. I have a great deal of sympathy for any public figure who must face malice and hatred in the cause of dearly held beliefs.
Speaking for myself, I can only aspire to earn such hatred.
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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas pledged on Saturday to implement a court ruling and dissolve the largely inactive Palestinian parliament, triggering warnings of chaos from the Islamist group.
Abbas' announcement is the latest in a series of bitter splits and rivalries between his Fatah party and Hamas, which began in 2007 when Hamas routed Fatah's forces and took over the Gaza Strip, keeping Abbas' rule limited to Palestinian-controlled parts of the West Bank.
Since then, the Palestinian Legislative Council, where Hamas holds a majority after a 2006 landslide victory against Fatah, has been largely disabled. If Abbas follows through, breaking up the legislature would be largely symbolic, maintaining the already entrenched political divide between Gaza and the West Bank.
"We resorted to the Constitutional Court and the court decided to dissolve the PLC and called for parliamentary elections in six months and we have to execute this [decision] immediately," Abbas told a Palestine Liberation Organization meeting in Ramallah.
He accused Hamas of blocking Egyptian efforts to restore Palestinian unity, a charge Hamas vehemently denies. Abbas says the dissolution of the parliament aims to pressure Hamas into accepting proposals for national reconciliation.
Originally from Brooklyn, New York, author David Rubin has lived in Israel for approximately 27 years, and is the former mayor of Shiloh, Israel, which is located in Samaria (the West Bank).
In 2001, about a year after his stint as mayor came to an end, Rubin and his three-year-old son were attacked by Palestinian terrorists while driving back from Jerusalem. The terrorists opened fire on Rubin’s vehicle from the side of the road using AK-47s.
"I was shot in the leg, while my son was shot in the head. We both miraculously survived the attack. The bullet that hit my son’s head and neck missed his brain stem by just one millimeter," Rubin says.
After "years of operations" and "post-trauma therapies," Rubin decided to start a non-profit called the Shiloh Israel Children's Fund. The organization’s purpose is to help "heal the trauma of terror-victim children and to restore some of the lost innocence of childhood."
Rubin began writing about his experiences after being encouraged to do so. His most recent book, "Trump and the Jews," hit shelves on October 1.
Rubin is an advocate for the president’s proposed wall along the southern border of the United States, comparing it to the wall between Israel and Egypt, which has allegedly kept illegal immigration at a low in Israel.
When Nikki Haley was appointed in November 2016 by US President-elect Donald Trump to serve as America’s ambassador to the United Nations, I wrote that there was reason to hope she would live up to the legacies of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and John Bolton as “shining beacons in the Midtown Manhattan snake pit.”
Although Haley, the governor of South Carolina at the time, was not well-known beyond the confines of her state, her personal and political history appeared to indicate that she possessed what I called the “kind of clarity on controversial issues that is required in an arena filled with people whose key purpose is to cloud the distinction between good and evil.”
Four months later, when Haley emerged from her first encounter with the UN Security Council and blasted its anti-Israel bias, I was even more optimistic that she had what it took “to navigate the Orwellian universe in which the U.N. operates, where Western values are on a lower hierarchical rung than Third World culture, and where a mockery is made of the concept of human rights.”
From that moment on, Haley continued to exceed expectations. She not only served as a proud and fierce defender of American interests in the world, but did so in her own dignified and powerful voice. Indeed, she made the office her own. It is an accomplishment whose significance cannot be overstated.
Tawfiq Okasha is a well known Egyptian host and hes said many absurd things over the years. But he's still on TV, so his words are still listened to by millions of Egyptians.
In his latest rant, Okasha claims that the Jews of France stole the Rosetta Stone to hide the advanced scientific secrets of Egypt and keep them for themselves. He claimed that only French Jews have access to the stone and can decipher it.
In fact the Rosetta Stone is one of the most studied pieces of archaeology in history and it has been in England for over two hundred years.
Okasha said during his program "Egypt Today" that the secrets of deciphering the Rosetta Stone are not yet known because it is in France now, saying that the Jewish French scholars know very well that the stone contains many secrets. These secrets, when deciphered, would reveal the scientific achievements of ancient Egyptians, but the Jews are keeping that ancient knowledge to themselves.
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The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement about supposed Israeli "Judaizing" of the city of Jerusalem.
One of the accusations is that Israeli actions in Jerusalem "give the impression to any visitor that it is a Jewish biblical city featuring continuous [Jewish] presence and Jewish heritage."
Well, yeah. Because it is. For some 3000 years. Except for some very brief time periods where Jews were specifically expelled because of their cultural and religious ties to Jerusalem, as they were ethnically cleansed from the Old City for a mere 19 years in 1948.
This statement reveals more than it intends. Because rather than Jews trying to Judaize Jerusalem - a city that has been the Jewish capital and center of Jewish existence since King David - the Palestinians are trying to separate Jews and Judaism from Jerusalem.
For exactly the same reason that antisemites of previous generations tried to do the same.
Despite how they speak to credulous Western reporters and diplomats, Palestinians don't accept that Jerusalem is sacred to three faiths. They are actively, today, trying to pretend that Jewish ties to Jerusalem are a modern myth and that only Muslims and (reluctantly) Christians have ties to the city.
Israel celebrates the ties of all three faiths to the city while accurately noting that Jerusalem is only central to one. It is the Palestinians who are trying to not only ethnically cleanse Jerusalem of Jews, but trying to cut any cultural, emotional, religious and historic ties that Jews have to the city.
This isn't being "pro-Palestinian." This is being actively antisemitic.
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Israel's Channel 20 has the story of Daniel Dabash, who grew up in the Arab village of Sur Baher as Nidal Dabash. His mother was Jewish but died in 2002; he grew up knowing she was Jewish but not that he would be considered Jewish as well.
His stepmother hated him and he discovered that he was halachically Jewish, so he asked for more information and help on Facebook and got it.
They are misreporting the story as if Daniel converted just to marry the girl, and therefore this is being painted as another Israeli plot to "normalize" with its Arab neighbors.
The Dabash family is disowning him, saying that they have nothing to do with this person who had a Jewish mother.
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So far from advancing stability and peace, renewing a peace process — even one based on more realistic assessments of the situation on the ground and what the parties can reasonably achieve — will weaken and destabilize Israel and increase the chance of war.
Obviously, none of this advances U.S. interests either regionally or globally.
Given this state of affairs, perhaps the apparent breakdown of the Trump administration’s efforts to coddle the Saudis into playing a significant role in negotiations between Israel and the PLO is a blessing in disguise. It gives the administration the opportunity to reconsider its efforts to reach a deal in the first place.
The steps that the Trump administration has already taken to end its predecessors’ unhealthy unconditional support for the mordant peace process – ending the ritualistic condemnations of every new Israeli home built beyond the 1949 armistice lines; ending U.S. subsidization of Palestinian terror financing through aid to the PA; ending U.S. support for UNRWA, the UN “refugee” agency that has played a central role in ensuring there will never be a resolution of the Palestinian conflict against Israel; and moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem – have all played a key role in stabilizing the region. They have also made it easier for the Arab states to work cooperatively with Israel.
Rather than push a “peace deal” that will fail to bring peace while harming Israel and America’s Arab allies, if the Trump administration were to publicly acknowledge that there can be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians so long as the Palestinian people remain committed to Israel’s destruction, and that the U.S. is abandoning efforts to reach a deal in light of this reality, it would stabilize the situation still more by diminishing the chance of a major Palestinian campaign against Israel.
Were the Trump administration similarly to give Israel a green light to secure its long-term strategic interests by applying its laws to the areas of Judea and Samaria that it requires to defend itself against invasion from the east and from Palestinian attacks within Judea and Samaria, the move would similarly diminish the chance of war in the medium and long term.
According to the FBI, the case is still open and “being actively investigated” with its Scottish partners. The FBI believes there are more co-conspirators involved in the plot. 30 years ago this week, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 sent a shock wave around the world. #FBIWFO & our Scottish partners are still actively seeking justice for the victims & their families. https://t.co/omZPMf7kRv #PanAm103 #Lockerbie pic.twitter.com/RFkOICLT2z
— FBI Washington Field (@FBIWFO) December 17, 2018
Some U.S. investigators also reportedly believe that Iran was involved in the attack, possibly as revenge for a July 1988 incident in which a U.S. warship accidentally downed an Iran Air plane.
Claims that Teheran ordered the destruction of Pan Am 103 (and not Gaddafi’s Libya) have re-surfaced in an article published yesterday in the Daily Mail. In it the daughter of a now deceased Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist insists that she has proof that a PFLP terrorist cell, under the direction of mastermind Ahmed Jibril and in the “pay of the Iranian regime”, perpetrated the bombing.
Scottish MSP Christine Graham says that these new allegations increase the fear that Megrahi may have been “the fall guy” and wrongfully convicted, with Libya “taking the rap” for various reasons. Jim Swire, also quoted in the article, agrees.
Obviously, the new claims underscore the need to keep this investigation open and to push hard for further indictments and convictions.
According to this week’s FBI report on the bombing: Then as now, the goal is to hold everyone involved responsible for the crime and to bring justice to the families of the victims…the FBI does not forget. The American people—and our adversaries—need to know that we don’t give up”.
Lockerbie 30 years on: the atrocity was committed by Palestinian terrorists but it is their 'privilege' not to be blamed
Today is the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing. The fact that a Palestinian group (funded by Iran to do it) got away without blame is just another example of their privilege.
This is something I have reported on many times before including here recently. The fact is, it was politically inconvenient for the British and American governments at the time to go after the Palestinians and Iranians (and as - far as European governments are concerned - the same applies even more so today).
Fortunately, although many relevant articles about it are censored by Google, the true story is finally being told - there are even articles in today's Mirror and Express with the real story.
The Arab world likes to celebrate Judaism and Christianity - when there are few to no Jews and Christians left.
During Chanukah, Egypt held a very public Chanukah celebration even as the Jewish community has dwindled to less than 10.
Christians have been fleeing the PA since Oslo, but the PA puts on a big show of lighting the Christmas tree in Bethlehem every year, accompanied by speeches about how evil Israel is.
The number of Christians in Gaza has plummeted from about 3000 ten years ago to less than 750 today.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
As a senior Palestinian official, Abbas Zaki, said in 2011: “If they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land and the Chosen People?... They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status... If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse.”
When in 1967 Israel liberated those parts of Jerusalem that had been illegally occupied by Jordan, it did no more than complete the task of ridding the land of the illegal Arab colonialist regime, which had helped try to destroy Israel at its rebirth in 1948.
The current Arab administration of the Temple Mount has turned that ostensibly holy Muslim site into a theater of genocidal war, using it to incite the mass murder of Jews and even using it for that purpose as a weapons depository.
Those who entertain the very possibility of Israel giving up that part of Jerusalem to people with such a murderous and antisemitic record are helping perpetuate, however unwittingly, the war of extermination against Israel in which Jerusalem is used as a hostage.
For Diaspora community leadership bodies, this means there’s a direct clash between trying to keep everyone on board and properly defending Israel and the Jewish people.
In the US, AIPAC has experienced similar difficulties. The fallacy is to think that this clash can be defused by playing to the lowest common denominator over Israel. It cannot. Those who cede any ground at all to the fundamental lies and injustice to which Israel is subjected make themselves unavoidably complicit in those lies and injustice.
So Diaspora communities need to choose. Do they try to keep everyone on board, including those Jews who are indifferent or hostile to Israel; or do they unequivocally stand up for the Jewish people as a people?
Many of them instinctively feel that to identify as a people within the Diaspora is a contradiction in terms and dangerous to boot. British Jews have always been the most craven in this regard.
American Jews are going down the same road, although for different reasons. Now Australian Jews, previously among the most staunch and outspoken supporters of Israel, have wobbled.
Shame.
National Review contacted more than 20 of the most prominent organizations among the listed sponsors, asking whether they’re sponsoring the Women’s March again in January and asking for comment on the anti-Semitism allegations levied in the Tablet report.
The vast majority of those 2017 sponsors never replied — including pro-abortion groups such as Emily’s List, NARAL, the National Organization for Women, and the National Abortion Federation; unions such as the ACLU, AFL-CIO, the SEIU, and the health-care union 1199SEIU; and progressive outfits such as the NAACP, GLAAD, MoveOn.org, and the Human Rights Campaign.
Planned Parenthood, which is listed as the Women’s March’s “exclusive premiere sponsor,” also ignored National Review’s request for comment, but Erica Sackin, the group’s senior communications director, offered the following comment to Refinery29 when asked about the Tablet report:
The Women’s March has become a symbol of our collective resistance to these damaging and discriminatory policies and Planned Parenthood is proud to once again, join our progressive partners for the #WomensWave mobilization to protect and advance the progress we’ve made as a movement dedicated to equity and justice for all people. . . . We must also unequivocally reaffirm, as the Women’s March leadership has, that there is no place for anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, or any kind of bigotry in our communities, our progressive movement, and our country. We will continue to work with the Women’s March to hold ourselves and each other accountable to the Unity Principles that are the basis of our partnership.
A spokesperson for the American Federation of Teachers directed National Review to Facebook, where the group’s president had posted a picture of herself posing with Mallory and Sarsour, along with the caption: “While we don’t agree on everything, [Sarsour] and [Mallory] are warriors for justice and I am honored to know them and work with them & call them friends..[sic] glad to have this meeting today w/ them & @Skleinbaum debunking myths.”
Ariel Gold, national co-director of Code Pink, a progressive anti-war group, told National Review via email that the group has partnered with the Women’s March every year since 2016 and is “excited” to be doing so again in January. “We are big supporters of Linda Sarsour and are are [sic] appalled by the way she has been attacked,” Gold added. “Far from being anti-semitic, Linda is on the frontlines of fighting anti-semitism. This is an underhanded attempt to divide the movement that Linda helps lead for freedom and dignity and protection for all.”
A spokesperson for the Center for American Progress, meanwhile, wrote to National Review, “We weren’t involved in the planning of the March, but we support the millions of women who came out and exercised their first amendment rights and made their voices heard. And to be crystal clear — anti-Semitism has no place in this or any other movement.”
The failure of prominent left-wing sponsors to condemn the Women’s March leadership for their entanglements with noted anti-Semites — and their alleged expression of anti-Semitic views themselves — is a clear example of how toxic the far Left is becoming, and of just how much progressive allies are willing to overlook for the sake of advancing their intersectional movement.
I was in Milan two days after Cherif Chekatt shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and started shooting at people enjoying the Christmas market in the city of Strasbourg. And so Milan’s Christmas market, like every other in similar cities, was on high alert. Which furthers yet another new tradition at Europe’s Christmas markets, which is the presence of army vehicles and police and military standing around with heavy duty weapons at the ready.
It all brought to mind a point that Mark Steyn has made a number of times in recent years, which is the phenomenon one might call the ‘bollard-isation’ of public life. Earlier this year in Norway I noticed that even Oslo has a strange set of massive steel devices on both sides of the street on the popular thoroughfare of cafes, restaurants and hotels that leads up to the country’s Parliament. They began to sprout one day and after a dose of negative public comment the local authorities decided to plant flowers on the devices, making them probably the world’s most ungainly flower-pots. What could have made these huge flower-carrying vessels so necessary? Who is to say.
But as Steyn has also pointed out in his observations about ‘bollard-isation’, there is a strange paradox at work here. Whichever European city you go to these days (Britain included) all of its public buildings and major infrastructure are positively surrounded by bollards and steel barriers. Yet at the same time the governments of these countries have never taken a more lax attitude to the place where bollards or similar security might be more usefully deployed. That is along what we used to call ‘a border’.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Monday, December 24, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
