Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 25, 2019

Ireland closer to a bizarre law that could penalize Google or Facebook for having Jerusalem employees

From JTA:

The lower house of Ireland’s Parliament approved a bill on Thursday that would ban the import or sale of goods originating in all “occupied territories,” with lawmakers’ discussions centered on eastern Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the West Bank.

The Dail passed the measure by a vote of 78-45 with three abstentions. It is the second of a five-phase process, according to reports.

The measure introduced by the conservative Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party would make illegal “the import and sales of goods, services and natural resources originating in illegal settlements in occupied territories.” Sinn Fein, a left-wing party, supported the bill.

Fianna Fáil foreign affairs spokesman Niall Collins told the Irish Independent ahead of the vote that his party has become “increasingly concerned about the actions of Israel and its continued and blatant disregard for international law.” He said the bill would not harm trade in Israeli goods, just goods produced in the settlements.

Actually, the bill can and would affect lots more than "goods produced in the settlements."

The text of the proposed law says, in part,

Provision of a settlement service
8. (1) It shall be an offence for a person to provide or attempt to provide a settlement service.
(2) It shall be an offence for a person to assist another person to provide or attempt to provide a settlement service.

“settlement service” means a service provided in whole or in part within a relevant occupied territory by an illegal settler.

10. (1) A person who is guilty of an offence under section 6, 7, 8 or 9 is liable—
(a) on summary conviction to a class A fine or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or to both, and
(b) on conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €250,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years or to both.

If Apple or Google or Microsoft have employees who are allowed to telecommute from one of the many Jewish areas of Jerusalem that Ireland considers "occupied," then the high tech companies are assisting that person in providing a settlement service and could be fined and jailed.

As Eli Lake writes in Bloomberg, this would not only force the companies to choose between doing business in Ireland or Israel, but also could run foul of US laws:

This would place U.S. companies in a bind. If they follow Irish law, they would have to either fire the telecommuting employee or not allow the employee to work from home. If they did that, however, the companies would be participating in a boycott not sanctioned by the U.S. government. And that, as Kittrie observed last year, would in turn risk violating the anti-boycott sections of U.S. export regulations.

Beyond that, if an Irish citizen visits Israel and decides to visit this kosher coffee shop in the Old City, she could be fined up to €250,000 and go to prison for five years.

And don't be fooled by the language of the law that says it is against any occupation. As Trocaire - an NGO that supports this legislation - writes:

2. DOES THIS BILL ONLY AFFECT ISRAEL?
If enacted, the legislation would apply to territories where there is a clear international legal consensus on the status of the occupation. As it stands, only the occupied Palestinian territories have been confirmed as occupied by the International Court of Justice. However, this Bill allows for other territories to be included so long as there is consensus between the Minister for Foreign Affairs & Trade and both houses of the Oireachtas.

It just so happens that Irish oil firms Island Oil & Gas, Longreach and San Leon are stealing oil from Western Sahara territory occupied by Morocco, and the native Sahwaris aren't happy about it. But this bill doesn't cover that.

When an "anti-occupation" bill is written in such a way that it only targets the Jewish state while allowing corporations to profit from other occupied territories, you can safely say that it is antisemitic.

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The biggest BDSFail that you never heard about

In 2015, the BDS Movement was ecstatic over some economic news:

"BDS was a major factor behind the 46% drop in foreign direct investment in Israel in 2014, according to a UN report," the BDS webpage still says.

YNet reported, "The report contains one very glum statistic; in 2014 $6.4 billion were invested in Israel, whereas in 2013 $11.8 billion were invested - a decline of about 46%."

It turns out the UN report didn't blame BDS for the drop, but one of the Israeli economists who wrote the UN report said it might be because of a combination of BDS and the 2014 Gaza war -and admitted that her theory was only conjecture. But that guess was enough to excite the Israel-haters.

Mondoweiss was over the moon, quoting Bisan Mitri, Palestinian BDS National Committee secretariat member, who said, "Ten years after its launch, the BDS movement is being recognised by one of the authors of a UN report as starting to have major impacts on the Israeli economy. Israel’s shift to the far-right, its intentional crimes against Palestinians and the BDS movement and rapid changes in public opinion following Israel’s massacre of Palestinians in Gaza last summer mean that Israel is increasingly becoming a less attractive investment destination."

BDS was claiming this victory across the board, with no caveats. They knew that they were having a major effect on Israel's economy. They raised money based on this victory.

So how has direct foreign investment in Israel done since then?

It has more than tripled!

The 2018 report shows that Israel's FDI inflows has soared from $6 billion to nearly $19 billion in only three years!

Yes, the statistic that was giving Israel-haters virtual orgasms in 2015 as proof that Israel's fortunes are finally on a downturn is now seen, three years later, to have been an anomaly - and Israel has not only tripled its FDI inflows, but it was ranked #18 in the world in 2017 (up from #27 in 2016), far higher than even the UK!

Israel's 2017 increase of 59% is even more astonishing considering that the total FDI inflows to developed countries decreased by one third in 2017, from $1.1 trillion to $720 million.

In the end, the very nature of foreign investment is based on some very large deals, and it is going to vary a lot from year to year.

If BDS is going to take credit for Israel's dip in FDI in 2014, then it must take responsibility for Israel's huge FDI increase in 2017. Which means that if BDS was a corporation, its CEO should resign in disgrace for how poor it meets its stated goals.

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01/24 Links Pt2: Don’t Believe Ilhan Omar; Rachel Riley: Why I spoke out about Labour’s anti-Semitism shame; How Al Jazeera Dresses Up Its Anti-Semitism for an English-Speaking Audience

From Ian:

Don’t Believe Ilhan Omar

She “unknowingly” offended Jews by saying that Israel hypnotized the world not to see its evil? Nonsense. In the Greater Middle East, from which Omar’s family hails, conspiracy theory is the coin of the realm, and much self-inflicted grief is blamed on dark Jewish magic. It’s ludicrous to think that she didn’t know what she was saying. Omar composed her offending tweet during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza and was, in all probability, speaking foremost to an audience that truly believes in the evils of Jewish sorcery.

We’re talking here about people who embrace a strain of superstitious anti-Semitism that sees Jews as non-human agents of the Devil. In January 2015, for example, after Islamist terror attacks rocked Paris, a Daily Beast writer interviewed some French Algerians who blamed the attacks on “magical shape-shifting Jews that were master manipulators that could be everywhere at the same time.” We’re talking about the Iranian cleric and Tehran University professor who went on television and claimed: “The Jew is very practiced in sorcery. Indeed most sorcerers are Jews.”

This is the crowd that Ilhan Omar—an American congresswoman who now serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee—was speaking to. In their language.

The history of mystical anti-Semitism is long indeed. It predates Christendom and thrived, at times, long afterward. Martin Luther wrote that “a Jew is as full of idolatry and sorcery as nine cows have hair on their backs, that is: without number and without end.” Such notions were popular throughout Medieval Europe and survived in various forms into the modern age. The Third Reich was, in part, an occult operation. Official Nazi publications discussed phenomena such as the “Jewish evil eye.”

Omar’s talent for untruth is evident in the way she went about pretending not to be a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, which advocates actions aimed at delegitimizing the existence of the world’s only Jewish state. After she was safely elected, Omar freely confessed her support for the BDS movement—a tacit acknowledgment of its controversial nature.

Rachel Riley: Why I spoke out about Labour’s anti-Semitism shame

You need to know next to nothing to propagate Nazi or Soviet Jew-hating propaganda, reframed to fit today’s narrative, which spreads like wildfire and is dangerous. But you need to know nearly everything in order to combat it. The odds are stacked in the anti-Semite’s favour. Every Labour official who labels this a smear, every disciplinary decision that gives the perpetrator a free pass while its victims are abused or even disciplined themselves, is a disgrace. My level of engagement in this issue is directly proportional to the amount of anti-Semitism and hostility to Jews and their allies I’m witness to, which is why it’s currently consuming my life.

Since speaking out, I’ve attracted the attention of a Who’s Who of anti-Semites and apologists, who’ve publicly criticised me. Neo-Nazis, naturally, have also shown their interest. A local Labour Party secretary repeatedly libelled me to Channel 4, ignoring my requests for her to check her facts and stop. Labour supporters have taken it upon themselves to contact my employers, calling for me to be sacked, suggesting we should rename our show ‘8 out of 10 Cats does Paedophilia’ in my honour. I’ve seen thousands of untrue slights against my character, with those making them knowing they can do so to praise from their echo-chambers, in all likelihood with impunity – yet one misplaced word from me could be ruinous.

We need to re-stack those odds. No-one should have to risk their safety and jeopardise their career speaking out against anti-Semitism in Britain in 2019. This has been happening to others for the last three years. Campaigners – the large majority ex-Labour people, deeply hurt by what they are seeing – have been called every name under the sun. They’ve postponed careers, degrees, lost businesses through harassment and, in recent weeks, I’ve even seen three people baselessly libelled as paedophiles in a desperate attempt to discredit and silence them, and it’s all been allowed to happen in quiet.

It’s lonely speaking out about this. And we can’t win this fight alone, nor should we have to try. We’ve seen where anti-Semitism can lead from centuries of persecution. It never ends well. We need to remember our history and I am so grateful to groups like the Holocaust Educational Trust and speakers like Eva Clarke, who, by sharing their stories, help in the only way we know how to safeguard future generations from this ever being allowed to happen again.

This needs a bigger spotlight. This should be a national scandal. We need action rather than words. I call on all people, the media and politicians from every side to stand with us and Be Louder against anti-Semitism. Enough is enough.

Joe Rogan: NY Times Writer Details Anti-Semitism by Progressives

Know How to Answer, part 19: "Palestine is not viable without contiguity or Jerusalem"

Latest in the series...

Six years ago I gave a lecture at Yeshiva University on how to answer anti-Israel arguments. Since the lecture was over an hour and twenty minutes, I decided to break it up into 20 sections, one each to answer one popular anti-Israel argument.

Here is part 19.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Matti Friedman explains what should be obvious when he says that there is no Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

There isn’t an Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the way that many outsiders seem to think, and this perception gap is worth spelling out. It has nothing to do with being right-wing or left-wing in the American sense. To borrow a term from the world of photography, the problem is one of zoom. Simply put, outsiders are zoomed in, and people here in Israel are zoomed out. Understanding this will make events here easier to grasp.

Zoom out and you will see, Friedman explains, that only a minority of Israel’s enemies, historically and currently, are Palestinian Arabs. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and even Yemen joined with the Palestinians in an attempt to snuff out the newly-declared State of Israel in 1948. Today Iran and her Shiite proxies – Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iraqi militias entrenching themselves in Syria are Israel’s most formidable enemies, with Hamas, the Qatari-financed offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, playing a secondary role.

Compared to the Palestinians, Israel looks strong, Goliath to their David. But in the context of the overall Muslim Middle East, Israel, with its relatively small population and lack of strategic depth, is threatened.

And this, says Friedman, is why the peace processors don’t get it. Clinton, Bush, and Obama were all “Zoomed in” on Israel and the Palestinians, while not understanding the broader context. Although we haven’t heard Trump’s proposal yet, it will likely have the same defect.

Friedman is right, as far as he goes. He doesn’t mention the reason that five Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel in 1948, or the reason the “peace” agreements with Egypt and Jordan are cold, pragmatic deals that greatly benefit the autocratic regimes of those countries, while not moving a centimeter in the direction of the normalization of everyday relations between the nations that was supposed to follow. It certainly isn’t because these countries care about the welfare of Palestinians. The invaders of 1948 did not turn over the areas that they controlled to Palestinian Arabs, and indeed treated them quite cruelly. It was Israel, not Jordan, that created the autonomous Palestinian Authority, and it was Israel, not Egypt, that turned over control of Gaza to the Palestinians.

Of course there are the usual geopolitical explanations for the broader conflict, but they are not sufficient to explain its persistence or its virulence. While it’s clear that Iran is hostile toward Israel for geopolitical reasons – Israel is seen as an outpost of American power in the region that Iran wishes to dominate – there is also a special degree of hatred that is reserved for Israel above other Iranian opponents. Iran does not threaten to destroy Saudi Arabia, a closer and more immediate rival. Iranian demonstrators rarely if ever chant “death to Saudia.”

I believe that the ultimate source of this enmity is the principle – literally an “article of faith” in the Muslim Middle East – that a sovereign Jewish state in the region is an abomination to Allah, and it is their religious duty to destroy it. This religious/racial principle is sometimes expressed verbally by saying “Israel is a cancer” that must be excised from the Middle East, a sentiment expressed both by the Iranian regime and in Palestinian Authority media. This is Muslim rejectionism.

But I think even this analysis doesn’t go far enough. Resentment and hatred of Jews, deeply ensconced in Christian tradition, is found throughout post-Christian Europe. While in most of Europe the moral principles of Christianity have been transmuted into a kind of universalist humanism (much like Reform Judaism), the visceral hatred of the Jew that “killed their God” hasn’t disappeared; it’s just been turned toward the Jewish state, today the bearer of the guilt of Judas, with the suffering Palestinians taking on the role of the crucified Savior. Of course the irony in this is that the Muslims that are besieging Europe today are as almost as hostile to non-Muslim sovereignty there as they are against the Jewish variety in the Middle East (ordinary Europeans are beginning to understand this, although many of their leaders don’t seem to get it yet).

I suggest that to really understand the conflicts surrounding Israel since its coming into being, one needs to zoom out even further than Friedman does. One needs to take into account that not only Arabs and Muslims are viscerally opposed to the concept of Jewish sovereignty, many Europeans and even some circles in America are too. Although they might not go as far as to compare Israel to a malignant tumor, they are quite comfortable saying that the creation of Israel was a mistake. Friedman’s lens must be widened to include not just the greater Middle East, but much of the Western world.

And this enables us to understand why the “peace” proposals based on Israeli concessions to the Palestinians keep coming, despite the fact that they have repeatedly been shown incapable of ameliorating the real problem, Muslim rejectionism of Jewish sovereignty. Even those in the West who do not completely reject the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in a sovereign state, adhere to a milder form of rejectionism: they may accept the idea of a Jewish state, but they firmly believe that the conflict surrounding it is a result of its being an alien element that doesn’t belong in its neighborhood. Therefore the solutions they choose always involve Israel adapting herself to the region and not the opposite. And this always means Israel meeting the demands of her neighbors. Of course, those demands will never end until there is no more Israel.

I can’t leave Friedman’s article without noting one jarring paragraph, possibly written as it was at the request of his NY Times editor:

When I look at the West Bank as an Israeli, I see 2.5 million Palestinian civilians living under military rule, with all the misery that entails. I’m seeing the many grave errors our governments have made in handling the territory and its residents, the construction of civilian settlements chief among them.

Suddenly we are back to “settlements” and “military rule” (actually, this is incorrect, since around 95% of the Palestinians in Judea/Samaria live in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority). Friedman, who has shown himself capable of understanding the strategic imperatives of Israel’s military control of the land, is nevertheless still stuck in the Sisyphean mud of the “2-state solution” (just like my fictitious Uncle Max two Passovers ago). Is Friedman himself guilty of the mild rejectionism that demands that Israel should pay the price for her neighbors’ violent racism?

Despite this – the obligatory mea culpa of every Jewish liberal or centrist writer on the subject – we should take Friedman’s advice and zoom out to see the conflict in its true, worldwide and historicalcontext. And stay out of the mud.

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01/24 Links Pt1: PA spent at least 502 million shekels in payments to terrorists in 2018; Dershowitz: Time to tell the truth about the Palestinian issue; Can Zionists Advocate for Palestinian Rights?

From Ian:

PMW exclusive: PA spent at least 502 million shekels in payments to terrorist prisoners in 2018

As Israel is preparing to implement a new law that imposes financial sanctions on the PA for its "Pay for Slay" policy, PMW has looked at the PA's financial reports for 2018 which includes its payments to terrorist prisoners and released terrorist prisoners

While the PA does not provide details of how this money was allocated between the terrorist prisoners and the released terrorist prisoners, PMW calculations, based solely on open sources, show that:

At least 230 million shekels were paid in salaries to terrorist prisoners

At least 176 million shekels were paid in salaries to released terrorist prisoners

The remaining 96 million shekels covers additional salary payments and other benefits to the terrorist prisoners and released terrorist prisoners that PMW is unable to precisely quantify

According to its own budgetary update, in 2018 the Palestinian Authority spent no less than 502 million shekels on salaries and other payments to terrorist prisoners and released terrorist prisoners.

While the PA does not provide information how the 502 million shekels was allocated between the terrorist prisoners and the released terrorist prisoners, using open sources only, Palestinian Media Watch has calculated, subject to a number of limitations, these figures.

Using information obtained from the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), PMW has calculated that the Palestinian Authority paid at least 230 million shekels in salary payments to terrorist prisoners in 2018.

For example, based on the information provided by the IPS that appears in the 2 left hand columns in the chart below ("time served" and "number of prisoners") and the PA's own terrorist prisoner pay scale ("salary" column), PMW has calculated that in the month of January 2018 alone the PA paid almost 20 million shekels in salaries to the terrorist prisoners.

Can Zionists Advocate for Palestinian Rights?

A lieutenant colonel in the Israeli Navy Seals, Hendel grew up in the settlement of Elakana. “My father would give rides to Arabs who lived nearby and he made sure to tell me that while we may be in a conflict, individual Arabs are not our enemies.”

Hendel says he started Blue and White to work for human rights from a Zionist perspective. Today, there are nearly 40 volunteers in their programs.

Some of these are ex-combat soldiers who speak to 12th graders in the year before their enlistment. These soldiers speak of their experiences in the army with Palestinians and human rights groups. They talk about the importance of the IDF ethical code, of the need to be moral at all costs.

“We need to take back these values,” Hendel says. “This is why we take groups to the checkpoints. To see reality. It’s not Auschwitz—it’s a border where soldiers need to be patient with people crossing while making sure that they don’t let in terrorists.”

Lipaz Ella was one of those who visited the crossings with Blue and White. While working at UCLA as a Jewish Agency Israel fellow, students initiated a program called Fact Finders to learn about the conflict from both sides on the ground. “Checkpoints were one of the places they wanted to see. In UCLA during Apartheid Week, groups build checkpoints on campus. The students see these things on campus and want to see them for themselves in reality.” In planning the trip, the group arranged to visit the Rachel checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

“We were surprised to see Israeli volunteers helping Palestinians arrange permits for medical treatment and work. The students were told [in UCLA] that Israel erected checkpoints to prevent Palestinians from the right of movement. Even Jewish students who are better informed than others were surprised to see reality, the lines moving, the technology used for efficiency (biometric permits), etc. We spoke to Israeli officers and heard from Palestinians as they came through. The students saw with their own eyes the reality of the situation. They saw that it isn’t black and white.”

Caroline Glick: The Iranian Revolution and Establishment Prejudice

In 2007, the Bush administration accepted the National Intelligence Estimate that falsely claimed Iran had abandoned its nuclear program in 2003. And in 2014, the Obama administration based its nuclear diplomacy with Iran – diplomacy that paved Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal – on the false assertion that President Hassan Rouhani is a moderate.

Just as the Carter administration ignored Khomeini’s own writings and his ties to the PLO, and viewed concerns about both as Israeli propaganda, so in these subsequent encounters with the Iranian regime, U.S. officials dismissed or held suspect evidence that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons or otherwise undermining regional and global security as Israeli propaganda.

Facing this wall of cynical disbelief, last year Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt compelled to risk the lives of dozens of top Mossad operatives and send them to Tehran to take physical possession of Iran’s nuclear archive, and spirit it out of the country.

And even after Israel produced the Iranian documents which proved that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon, European officials and former Obama administration officials accused Israel of lying.

There are plenty of lessons to learn from the Iranian revolution that brought Iran and the world the now 40-year-old nightmare of the Islamic regime.

But as far as the West is concerned, the first lesson must be that you cannot understand the Middle East – or anything for that matter – if you judge events and people through the filter of irrational prejudice.

Bibi's elastic library

This week Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu released another of his excellent videos, this one describing how Israel is very supportive of the people of Iran, but not their regime.

I noticed that in this and similar videos Bibi has volumes of the Talmud and other Jewish texts behind him. (Usually there is an Israeli flag as well, but not when the primary audience is Iranian!)

I discovered that when Bibi is speaking in Hebrew to his Israeli audience, in videos that are not meant for the rest of the world, his library is quite a bit different - secular Hebrew texts and an encyclopedia (I believe Encyclopedia Hebraica) but not Jewish texts.

Does he think that religious Jewish texts would turn off his Israeli audience? Very possibly.

And he seems to believe that the subtle message to give to the world is that Israel is where the Jewish people have been centered for millennia. (Also, he probably realizes that his Jewish support in the Diaspora is disproportionately religious and he wants to maintain that support.)

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From AP:

A federal judge on Wednesday let stand an Arkansas law requiring state contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel, ruling that such a boycott is not protected by the First Amendment.

U.S. District Judge Brian Miller dismissed the lawsuit the Arkansas Times had filed challenging the 2017 law. The newspaper had asked the judge to block the law, which requires contractors with the state to reduce their fees by 20 percent if they don't sign the pledge.

The Times' lawsuit said the University of Arkansas Pulaski Technical College refused to contract for advertising with the newspaper unless the Arkansas Times signed the pledge. The paper isn't engaged in a boycott against Israel.

Miller wrote that refusing to purchase items isn't protected speech. He noted that the Times wouldn't be barred from other protected forms of speech, including writing or picketing against Israel policies.

"It may even call upon others to boycott Israel, write in support of such boycotts, and engage in picketing and pamphleteering to that effect. This does not mean, however, that its decision to refuse to deal, or to refrain from purchasing certain goods, is protected by the First Amendment," Miller wrote.

Arkansas' law is similar to restrictions enacted in other states that have been challenged. The measures are aimed at a movement protesting Israel's policies toward Palestinians. A federal judge in September blocked Arizona from enforcing a similar measure. A federal judge also blocked Kansas from enforcing its anti-boycott measure, but lawmakers rewrote the measure so that it no longer applied to individuals and nonprofits and only applied to state contracts worth $100,000 or more. Arkansas' law applies to contracts worth $1,000 or more.

The judge is correct. Boycotts aren't speech - they are actions, which are not protected by the First Amendment.

And they are discriminatory actions. If boycotting Israel is considered free speech, then so should boycotting African American businesses, or women-owned businesses.

The ACLU disagrees:

"We disagree with the district court's decision, which contradicts two recent federal court decisions and which would radically limit the First Amendment right to boycott," said Holly Dickson, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, which represented the Times.

Yet the argument that refusing to do business with a specific group is not considered a First Amendment issue was given by none other than the ACLU themselves, which wrote in another case:

We filed our brief to explain why the First Amendment does not give a commercial business license to offer services to the general public and then – in violation of a state’s public accommodation law – refuse to provide photography services to particular customers based on their race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability, or any other characteristic. Under Elane Photography’s proposal, customers could walk into the photography studio at Sears or JCPenny for a family portrait and be told they cannot have their picture taken because they are a Latino family, or a Jewish family, or a family with a child who has Down Syndrome. A photography studio could tell an interracial family that taking their portrait would create expression celebrating their interracial relationship and that it would violate the studio’s First Amendment rights to participate in that expression.

I see no First Amendment difference between a "boycott" by a business of gay customers, as the Elane Photography case was, and a refusal to do business with Israeli-linked people or companies. In neither case is the issue free speech, as the ACLU says explicitly.

Refusing to accommodate a gay couple on religious grounds may be a different story, because then there is a case of two differing sets of rights that contradict each other and those cases need to be decided by a judge to determine whose rights are more important under the law. But in this case, it is clear that boycotting itself is not considered free speech, even when the boycott is done through a medium of expression such as, as the ACLU letter notes, "countless other businesses that use words, pictures, or other forms of creative expression, including court reporting services, translation services, graphic-design agencies, architecture firms, sound technicians, print shops, and dance studios, almost any good or service involving computer code, makeup artists, hair stylists, florists, and countless other services."

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Sephardic/Mizrahi Jews prove how antisemitic and bigoted the "progressive" Jewish Voice for Peace, @WomensMarch are

Two different articles published in the past couple of days are very instructive in pointing out the racism of the supposedly "progressive" Left.

One was from a group of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish organizations, excoriating the Jewish Voice for Peace in its defense of being anti-Zionist.

JVP wrote:

Zionism is and was an Ashkenazi-led movement that othered, marginalized and discriminated against Jews from across the Middle East and North Africa that it termed Mizrahim (the ‘Eastern Ones’).

In a scathing response, the Sephardic groups showed how JVP was racist in its misrepresenting the Sephardic experience:

We are writing to express our denunciation with Jewish Voice for Peace’s (JVP) latest document, “Our Approach to Zionism”, which tokenizes, appropriates, revises and explicitly lies about Mizrahi and Sephardic history and experiences in order to promote a hostile, anti-Israel agenda. As Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, we reject JVP’s framing of the Mizrahi and Sephardic experience as a driving force of their anti-Zionism and we request that JVP remove all references to Mizrahi and Sephardic history in this document and in all other organizational literature. We ask them to stop in their failed attempts to represent Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, in any capacity.

.... Because it cannot accept the simple historical truth that most Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews are and continue to identify as Zionist, JVP instead propagates a portrayal of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews as pawns without any agency. We reject this revisionism, and call it out for the orientalism and racism that it is.

...Today, the majority of the Mizrahi and Sephardic community resides in Israel, and the vast majority of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, in Israel and in diaspora, are self-identified Zionists. In seeking to obscure that reality in service of its own narrow ideological ends, the JVP statement perpetuates a history of racist exclusion where Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews are spoken for and spoken over.

The document fails to recognize and address the rampant state-sanctioned anti-Semitism – frequently taken under the banner of anti-Zionism in the 20th century. Under the color of law, one million indigenous Jews from the Middle East and North Africa were persecuted, dispossessed and ultimately fled or were ethnically cleansed from countries their ancestors lived in millenia. Of those, 650,000 found refuge in Israel, the place where they regained freedom, rights and a sense of personal security. It fails to grapple with the terrible truth that the most tangible political accomplishment of anti-Zionism in the 20th century was not to establish a Palestinian state, but to engender the decimation of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish communities across the Middle East. As a (now-publicly) anti-Zionist organization whose spokespeople and leadership continue to be predominantly Western and Ashkenazi, JVP must reckon with the deeply-embedded anti-Mizrahi and Sephardic orientation inside the anti-Zionist movement.

...Simply put, in the fight for Mizrahi equality, JVP has not been and is not now an ally, and more often than not it is has explicitly aligned itself with those who have done us harm. We condemn its self-congratulatory and ahistorical attempt to position itself as a friend of the Mizrahi community even as it continues to talk over and erase actual, extant, and living Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish community organizations.

There is an equally scathing article from Sarah Levin, a Sephardic Jew, describing exactly what is wrong with the Women's March from the perspective of Jewish women whose families lived in Muslim countries.

Jewish women from Arab countries have a visceral understanding and concern of the inequities and oppression faced by women in the Middle East. Our mothers and grandmothers lived to tell stories of being oppressed, third-class citizens who fled or were chased out of the region as refugees because of anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist governments. They moved on only to have their experiences and resulting outlooks ignored.

... Controversies around “white Jews” versus women of color ignore important nuances of Jewish diversity by totally leaving out Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish women. This erasure further alienates Sephardic and Mizrahi women. It feels as though our inclusion in the national Women’s March will only be welcomed if we align with a narrative where Middle Eastern women stand in opposition to the views of “privileged, white Jews” and Zionism. I totally reject this. Sephardic and Mizrahi women’s intersectionality provides incredible opportunities for relationship-building in progressive spaces, but the vast majority of us continue to be on the margins, unable to feel we belong or are truly, unconditionally welcomed in movements like the Women’s March.

My refusal to participate in the Women’s March was fueled by progressive feminists in the United States, including Jews, who routinely ignore the very real and ongoing plight of Middle Eastern women, including Jewish women. This is personal for me as I reflect on my great-grandmother who fled anti-Semitism in Turkey, and as I sit and listen to my mother-in-law recall traumatic memories of escaping state-sanctioned anti-Semitic persecution in Iraq. I don’t want to join any women’s movement that doesn’t speak out loudly and boldly against the mass human-rights violations and brutal oppression of Muslim, LGBTQ and religious minority women in Arab countries as a result of war, extreme patriarchy and misogynistic religious interpretation.

The Women's March and JVP and the other "progressive" movements have chosen to align themselves with the misogynist Muslims, whom they consider to be people of color, and to ignore the non-European women who have been oppressed throughout centuries by those very same Muslims.

Given a choice of two groups of women who have the same skin tone, the "progressive" movement chooses to support the oppressors and to ignore the oppressed (except to use them cynically and against their will to score political points.) Their actions contradict everything they claim about intersectionality and women's rights and human rights.

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Donate Jewish prayer books to hospitals that need them!

Last month, after my mother in law passed away, Mrs. Elder and I decided to fundraise to purchase Jewish prayer books, Psalms and chumashim for hospitals where patients or their visitors might need them.

We called it Tzivia's TiSCH - her Hebrew name was Tzivia and TiSCH stands for Tehillim (Psalms), Siddurim (prayer books) and Chumashim (Pentateuchs).

All of the books are in English and Hebrew.

Since then we have purchased over $700 worth of Jewish books and we are happily distributing them to hospitals that have shown interest.

Word got out to hospital chaplains slowly, but as of today, we are being asked for more books than we have raised money for. And it looks like the interest is increasing.

We need to raise more money to provide the books that these hospitals need!

You can help this project.

You can dedicate a Tehillim, Siddur or Chumash in memory or honor of a loved one, and we can inscribe their name inside the books. Just donate the amounts listed below for each book you want to dedicate, donate through our GoFundMe page, and leave a comment with who you want to dedicate them to and which kind of books. Of course, we will accept regular donations as well!

The price to donate each book is:

$54 - Tehillim
$72 - Siddur
$90 - Chumash

Thanks so much and tizku l'mitzvot!

Help spread the word!

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01/23 Links Pt2: Tuvia Grossman and the Covington Catholic School Fiasco; Guardian’s hatred towards Israel reaches new low; Many Progressives Care About ‘Palestine’ — Not Palestinians

From Ian:

Tuvia Grossman and the Covington Catholic School Fiasco

With the release of the new videos, some in the media are now calling for restraint and introspection when it comes to interpreting events, even videos, that one sees on social media.

Why do I mention this story? What does it have to do with our niche, which is Jews and Israel?

Because of Tuvia Grossman.

Back in the year 2000, AP took a photo which the NY Times and other papers ran. The Times claimed the photo showed an Israeli policeman and a beaten up Palestinian teen on the Temple Mount.

Except that that this never happened (also, “Palestinian” never happened either, but that’s a different issue).

The beaten boy in the photo was a Jewish-American student named Tuvia Grossman. An Arab lynch mob pulled Tuvia and his two friends out of a taxi in Wadi al-Joz, in eastern Jerusalem, and brutally beat them up. They also stabbed Tuvia in the leg. Tuvia lost 3 pints of blood from the attack and was hospitalized.

The photo actually shows Israeli policeman Gidon Tzefadi running over to save Tuvia from the Arab lynch mob. (The event launched HonestReporting, dedicated to expose these distortions by the media regarding Israel and Jews.)

So when people in the news media today are calling on others to not automatically believe everything they see on social media, especially with no context around it, I keep thinking that this same media have had 19 years, since Tuvia was attacked and the event was so badly misrepresented in the mainstream media, to embrace that lesson, especially when it comes to news about Israel and the IDF…

Alas, as we all know well, they still haven’t learned a thing.

Omar Defends Black Hebrew Israelites, a Hate Group, in Falsehood-Laden Tweet About Covington Teens

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) sent out a tweet filled with falsehoods Tuesday about the viral confrontation between Catholic high school teenagers and a Native American man last week, which also included a de facto defense of a racist hate group.

Linking to a tweet by President Donald Trump criticizing "fake news" for their initial misleading reports on the Covington Catholic teenagers, Omar wrote, "The boys were protesting a woman's right to choose & yelled ‘it’s not rape if you enjoy it.' They were taunting 5 Black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants. [Nick] Sandmann’s family hired a right wing PR firm to write his non-apology."

She also linked to a story decrying "white journalists" who were trying to correct the record. She deleted the tweet Wednesday morning, after the Washington Free Beacon asked her office to comment. While mainstream outlets had ignored her tweet as of Wednesday morning, other conservative outlets had picked up on it.

Omar claimed the Covington Catholic teenagers, initially vilified for taunting Native American elder Nathan Phillips before more videos and reporting painted a different picture, "were taunting 5 black men," when it was actually the other way around.

PreOccupiedTerritory: Chastened By Covington Failure, CNN To Reserve Bad Hot Takes For Israel (satire)

Three days after botching its coverage of a silent teenager confronted by a yelling, drum-beating provocateur, a major news organization has decided to cut back on its knee-jerk assumptions regarding causes it opposes, and from now on will restrict its automatic, context-free demonizing to Israeli actions.

Cable News Network, among several other major outlets such as the Washington Post, provided uncritical amplification to allegations that a white adolescent attending a demonstration in the capital had heaped verbal abuse on a Native American veteran of the armed forces, a story that accompanied partial video evidence and accusations of xenophobia, racism, and white supremacy. However, the uncut video and other recorded accounts exonerated the teen and revealed that the boy and his group behaved politely and quietly in the face of provocation by the native activist and others in the vicinity. CNN spent more than a day insisting on the accuracy of its version of the episode, but backtracked Monday and Tuesday in the face of overwhelming evidence it had botched the story. As a result, network executives announced Wednesday, the news team will bring greater discernment and prudence to its reporting, except when it comes to Israel, where immediate, uncritical acceptance of anti-Israel allegations will remain the default mode.

“We made a mistake,” conceded CNN personality Jake Tapper. “Instead of issuing immediate corrections to our account of the incident with Mr. Philips and the Covington High School teen, we continued to double down on the anti-conservative narrative even as indications mounted that our hot take was too hot to be true. Our team is now examining ways in which we can improve our coverage of emerging stories that stir controversy, at least here. As far as our coverage of Israel and the Israeli military is concerned, we’re still going to take Palestinian allegations of war crimes or atrocities at face value and maybe ask questions later, but probably not.”

Alan Dershowitz has a piece over at the Gatestone Institute website on the Women’s March and antisemitism, “Termites, Bigots, and GOATs: Rationalizing Complicity with Antisemitism.” There isn’t a thing wrong with this piece. Dershowitz is absolutely right about everything he says here. Take this, for instance:

“Marching with these supporters of an anti-Semite is the equivalent of marching under the banner of David Duke, who inspires white supremacists with the same sort of bigotry with which Farrakhan preaches Black supremacy. Hitler inspired pride in Aryans, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Stalin spread the wealth. But would the women who marched with Farrakhan's admirers have marched with these bigots?”

And this:

“Recall that Hitler was not elected by anti-Semites or because of his anti-Semitism. He was elected as the result of his economic and other policies by people who gave him a pass for his anti-Semitism because they approved of his other policies.

“People who support Farrakhan because of the alleged good he does for the Black community and despite his overt anti-Semitism are complicit in bigotry, and those who march under the banner of such bigots are only one degree removed from such complicity.”

No rational person could disagree with these words. But those of us who remember Dershowitz’s support for Obama in both 2008 and 2012, could perhaps be forgiven for looking askance at the source and thinking, “Pot, meet kettle.”

Now it’s true that Dershowitz disavowed Obama after a 2005 photograph surfaced of the smiling former president being all chummy with Farrakhan. Dershowitz's actual words were, "If I had known that the President had posed smilingly with [Louis Farrakhan] when he was a senator, I would not have campaigned for Barack Obama."

The fact of the matter is that black lawmakers colluded with the media to keep the photo out of the public eye during both campaigns and for all the years Obama was in office. Dershowitz didn’t know about the photo. None of us did. So is it perhaps unfair to blame Dershowitz for calling the kettle, um, “black?”

He couldn’t have known that Obama was bosom buds with the raving lunatic and infamous antisemite that is Farrakhan.

Or could he?

After Photo Emerges with Farrakhan, Obama Claims He’s ‘a Liberal Jew’ in Speech at Synagogue https://t.co/4q8vJKCy2M pic.twitter.com/dJVvqNRslr
— Chuck Woolery (@chuckwoolery) January 28, 2018

Written the same year that photo came out, “How Could We Have Known: The Jews Who Voted For Obama,” details Obama’s associations with a long list of known antisemites. At the top of the list is the man who officiated at the marriage of Barack and Michelle Obama, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

“We knew [Obama would] be bad for the Jews because he associated with people like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright who was outspoken in his support for both the Jew-hating Louis Farrakhan and Hamas. During an appearance at Michigan State University on February 7, 2008, Wright explained the creation of the State of Israel as ‘a political decision made in 1948 to solve a European problem of European Jews by putting them in somebody else’s country.’”

It’s certainly possible that Dershowitz, who termed President Obama a “true friend of Israel,” didn’t know that Obama was in thick with Farrakhan. But everyone knew about Obama’s friendship with the Reverend Wright. The idea that Dershowitz didn’t know about Wright’s association with Farrakhan just doesn’t pass the smell test.

Now for sure, Obama disavowed Reverend Wright’s views, in particular the Reverend's admiration for Farrakhan, early on, in 2008:

"I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church. But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the U.S. wartime efforts with terrorism – then there are no excuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced, and that’s what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.

"It is antithetical to my campaign. It is antithetical to what I’m about. It is not what I think America stands for.”

But that disavowal falls short. Obama never actually disavows Reverend Wright. He only disavows his views and not the man.

By the same token, during her infamous appearance on The View, when pressed by Meghan McCain, Mallory refused to denounce Farrakhan, the man. From the Fox News coverage:

“What I will say to you is, I don’t agree with many of Minister Farrakhan’s statements,” Mallory said.

McCain asked, “Do you condemn them?”

“To be very clear, it’s not my language. It’s not the way that I speak,” Mallory said.

To be fair Obama used stronger language than Mallory, absolutely denouncing the content of Wright’s words, even if he was unable to bring himself to repudiate Farrakhan, the man. But both Obama and Mallory refused to say, “I condemn Wright. I condemn Farrakhan.”

As Jews, we have no way to look kindly on this, and no reason to do so, either.

Of course, it is indeed possible that Dershowitz repents his two-time support for Obama. Maybe he regrets that he, like so many other liberal Jews, looked the other way on Obama’s associations with Wright. Perhaps he's sorry, that like the rest of Obama’s Jewish base, he, Alan Dershowitz, truly believed Obama’s denunciation of Wright’s views as a repudiation of the man himself.

But that belief was only possible because he wanted to believe in Barack Obama, like the other Jews wanted to believe in Barack Obama. They looked the other way, and gave Obama a pass on his associations with known antisemites.

They gave Obama a pass just as Hitler’s supporters, in Dershowitz’s own words, “gave him a pass for his anti-Semitism because they approved of his other policies,” The difference is that Dershowitz not only gave Obama a pass, but like so many other liberal Jews, did so twice over. To Israel's detriment (and the world's).

Dershowitz’s two-time vote for Obama seems no different, from this perspective, than supporting Mussolini because he “made the trains run on time,” or Stalin because “he spread the wealth.” Dershowitz’s support for Obama, in this light, also seems no different than Tamika Mallory, the Women’s March leader, giving Farrakhan a pass, and calling him “the GOAT.”

One would hope that Dershowitz’s Gatestone piece is really just a vehicle to express his shame at having twice supported and campaigned for a man who associated with known antisemites.

A man who was the worst president the Jews and Israel have ever known.

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Labor OK With Extending Sovereignty Over Area C If New Citizens There Vote Labor (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Tel Aviv, January 23 - One of Israel's founding political parties now faces electoral decline as the country's electorate drifts rightward, but believes it can counter or stave off stagnation by compromising on what has become a tenet of its ideology in the last three decades: the party may accede to right-wing rivals over the annexation of territories now under military administration under the condition that any Arabs living there be required to vote for them.

Labor and its antecedents ruled uninterrupted from the first parliamentary elections in 1949 until 1977, but the failure of its flagship initiative, the Oslo Accords, to end Palestinian terrorism, doomed the center-left party to decline ever since. Separation from the bulk of the Palestinian population beyond the 1949 Armistice Line continues to represent an important element of Labor's platform, while behind closed doors, party operatives concede that their vision of a negotiated final status agreement remains a pipe dream as long as the Palestinian leadership incites to violence and refuses to conduct good-faith negotiations, a fact that renders the party's vision unappealing to a polity weary of rosy promises amid bloody reality.

That shrinking popularity has now led Labor stalwarts to consider backing a proposal by several nationalist lawmakers: the Oslo Accords established Palestinian self-rule over 90% of the Palestinian population in places designated A and B, but a significant number remain under Israeli military rule, in places designated Area C. The proposal calls for establishing Israeli sovereignty over Area C to make it part of Israel proper, with Palestinians there permitted to apply for citizenship. Labor would seek to forestall electoral decline by stipulating any such arrangement would guarantee that those new citizens vote Labor.

A Labor official speaking on condition of anonymity because the party has not publicly changed its stance touted the benefits of such a deal for the Palestinians fortunate enough to thus gain Israeli citizenship. "Palestinian autonomy was supposed to include democratic elections," he observed, "but there hasn't been a legislative election in the Palestinian Authority in more than ten years, while Abu Mazen just started the fifteenth year of his four-ear presidency. Granting those tens of thousands of new citizens the right to vote for us would constitute a significant upgrade in their access to democracy."

"This falls neatly in line with our democratic tradition in Labor," the official added. "We've been saying for years and years that only our political camp cares about democracy, and no system can truly consider itself democratic unless we're in power."

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01/23 Links Pt1: The Deal of the Century Has No Buyers in the Arab World; Im Tirtzu – 6 Facts You Need to Know About Israel’s Legal Rights; EU gives €5 million to NGOs that back Israel boycotts

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: The 'Political Detainees' No One Talks About

Palestinians say that Shaheen and Fattash are among dozens of "political detainees" who are being held in Palestinian Authority (PA) prisons and detention centers in various parts of the West Bank. According to some human rights organizations, the Palestinians held in PA prisons are often subjected to various forms of torture.

In a letter to Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, a number of Palestinian human rights organizations recently demanded that the international agency speak out against the politically motivated arrests by the PA in the West Bank. It is highly unlikely, however, that the human rights organizations will receive any reply from the UN, whose various agencies continue to be obsessed only with Israel.

The UN does not seem to care about human rights violations committed by the PA against its own people. These are the type of stories that evidently do not interest either the UN or the international media because they lack an anti-Israel angle. The only "abuses" they see are those that can be blamed on Israel.

What is happening in the PA-controlled territories and prisons in the West Bank is a tiny taste of what life for the Palestinians would be like under a totalitarian regime that does not tolerate any form of criticism. In both the PA-controlled territories and Gaza, Palestinians must resort to the desperate measure of closing their mouths to food because they cannot open their mouths to demand decent treatment.

David Singer: “State of Palestine” set to confront Trump at United Nations

The bizarre Handover ceremony of Egypt’s Chairmanship of the Group of 77 to the “State of Palestine”for 2019 will enable this non-existent and non-member State of the United Nations to play a leading role in the 74 years old farce – “TheQuestion of Palestine and the United Nations” (PUN).

“The State of Palestine” does not meet the criteria for statehood required under the 1933 Montevideo Convention.

The Group of 77 (“the Bloc”) contains 133 of the 193 member states of the United Nations – ensuring the automatic passage of all United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions they propose.

UNGA ResolutionA/RES/73/5 – adopted on 16 October 2018 – put this illusory “State of Palestine” centre stage for PUN’s 2019 New York season – recognising it as the Bloc’s public face in all matters brought before UNGA and at meetings of representatives of other major groups.

146 countries voted for this Resolution whilst only three – Israel, the U.S. and Australia – voted against, 15 countries abstained and the remaining 29 states did not vote.

US Deputy UN Ambassador Jonathan Cohen called out the hypocrisy of the vote:
"We cannot support efforts by the Palestinians to enhance their status outside of directnegotiations. The United States does not recognize that there is a Palestinian

state.... Only U.N. member states should be entitled to speak and act on behalf of major groups of states at the United Nations."

Australia’s UN Ambassador Gillian Bird asserted:
"Australia's decision to vote no on this resolution reflects our long-standing position that Palestinian attempts to seek recognition as a state in international fora are deeply unhelpful to efforts towards a two-state solution."

The Deal of the Century Has No Buyers in the Arab World

For Jordan, the main problem is finding the solution to the refugee issue at its expense. Jordan would have to come to terms with the fact that millions of Palestinians would finally get full citizenship and participate in domestic politics – and what might be worse – would have to settle within Jordan’s territory refugees from Lebanon to help Lebanon restore its ethnic balance. While the issue remains open, an option may remain for them to return to “Palestine,” whether inside the West Bank or inside Israel itself.

Meanwhile, the Bedouin sector, which is the mainstay of the Jordanian army and administration, refuses to surrender any power to Palestinians and is currently relatively calm.

Jordan is not prepared for such an agreement, not even for the hefty funds that would be offered as part of the deal. It is concerned that if it refuses, Saudi Arabia will pressure it with regard to Jordan’s traditional tie to Jerusalem, but there are no signs that Saudi Arabia is interested in Jerusalem. However, from Jordan’s point of view, happy is the person who is always worried.

Egypt has two reservations: It does not want to take responsibility for Gaza, and it seeks to limit its connections with Hamas to security issues in Sinai only. However, its main reservation is the issue of the Arab version of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

From GDN Online:

PARLIAMENT descended into chaos yesterday over a ban on all films featuring an Israeli cast, crew or funded with Israeli money.

A majority of the MPs said amendments to the 2002 Publications Law to also ban any publication or video game that has Israeli affiliation or features Israeli content should come out of a patriotic stance towards the Palestinian cause.

However, MPs Yousif Zainal and Zainab Abdulamir pointed out that publications had nothing to do with the conflict with Israel.

“We should differentiate between a movie and a cause; if we accept this amendment then we will have to close down all our cinemas and risk losing our status as a pioneer in the GCC,” said Ms Abdulamir, who is also parliament’s youth and sport committee chairwoman.

Mr Zainal, who is parliament’s eldest member, said the amendment would prove difficult to implement since most films today are international productions.

Parliament and Shura Council Affairs Minister Ghanim Al Buainain said there were several technical difficulties in imposing a ban.

“There are multi-national companies producing movies and some are based in countries than Israel and we can’t ban them, even if they have Israeli affiliations.

In June last year, the parliament had approved the amendments after forcing the government to draft them.

MPs have been pushing for the amendments since 2016 following repeated moves to ban movies starring Israeli actresses.

An Israeli Products Boycott Office previously existed in Bahrain to ensure that no Israeli products entered the country, as part of an economic boycott in solidarity with Palestine.

However, it was closed to ensure Bahrain complied with the terms of a Free Trade Agreement with the US, which came into effect in 2006.

The Shura Council will now take a second vote and should they insist on their decision, the amendment will be shelved.

Last September, it was reported that the King of Bahrain had denounced the Arab boycott of Israel. In general, it has been assumed that Bahrain may be the next Arab country to establish relations with Israel.

Arab parliaments often adhere to a stricter anti-Israel line than monarchs (this happens a lot in Jordan.) This way they can show their official support for Palestinians without worrying about actual economic effects, and the kings often overrule the laws anyway.

It is notable that Bahrain media is sympathetic to the MPs who are against the law banning Israeli films.

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