Friday, February 01, 2019

02/01 Links Pt1: The Palestinians: Who Really Cares?; Melanie Phillips: Ireland’s obsessional hatred of Israel; Booker Flip Flops on BDS; Saudi columnist mocks boycott of Israel

From Ian:
The Palestinians: Who Really Cares?
Protests by the Palestinians in Lebanon are unlikely to draw any attention from the international community, including so-called pro-Palestinian groups that are active especially on university campuses in the US and Canada, among other places.

The real "pro-Palestinian" groups are those who are willing to raise their voices against the mistreatment of Palestinians at the hands of their Arab brothers. The real "pro-Palestinian" groups are those who are prepared to defend the rights of women and gays living under Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The real "pro-Palestinian" groups are those that are prepared to advocate for democracy and free speech for Palestinians living under the repressive regimes of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The real "pro-Palestinian" groups are those who are prepared to condemn Lebanon for its racist and discriminatory measures against Palestinians, living and dead.

Hiding at a university campus and spewing hatred against Israel does not make one "pro-Palestinian." Rather, it makes one just an Israel-hater. Will the "pro-Palestinian" groups listen to the urgent messages coming from the people in Lebanon they claim to represent?
David Singer: Trump Should Reaffirm Core Bush-Congress Commitments to Israel
The upcoming Israeli elections will give Israelis the chance to vote on the future direction Israel’s new government should take in resolving the future of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza (“disputed territories”) – the last remaining 5 per cent of the territory of the Mandate for Palestine where sovereignty still remains unallocated between Arabs and Jews.

The choices offered to Israeli voters should be explicitly spelt out by the political parties contesting the elections. The newly-elected government’s stated policy should be implemented. This basic premise of democracy has been undermined in America as Trump’s election commitment to build his promised border wall remains unfulfilled because of Congress’s opposition.

Trump should not similarly attempt to thwart the mandate of Israel’s next government.

Trump should shelve his long-overdue ultimate deal indefinitely – due to the changed circumstances that have demonstrably arisen since his well-intentioned thought bubble in November 2016.

Instead – Trump should:
  • Pledge his Government’s full support for Israel’s next duly elected Government
  • Reaffirm the core commitments made by President Bush to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Bush’s letter dated 14 April 2004 – endorsed overwhelmingly by the Congress by 502 votes to 12 (“Bush/Congress Commitments”).

Those core American commitments – made to procure Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza – included:
  • Opposing any peace plan other than the 2003 Bush Roadmap
  • Being strongly committed to Israel’s security and well-being as a Jewish state.
  • Not supporting any right of return by Palestinian refugees to Israel
  • Regarding as unrealistic a full and complete withdrawal from the disputed territories.

Congress could endorse this Trump initiative – reinforcing continuing bipartisan support for Israel.
Peace will remain elusive – but Trump will have saved himself from drowning in a cesspool that has swallowed previous American presidents who believed they had the answer to ending this unresolved 100 years old conflict.

Dr. Martin Sherman: Benny Morris, an unlikely proponent of Arab emigration?
As readers will recall, I have, for years, been urging the initiation of a largescale initiative for the incentivized emigration of the Arab population in Judea-Samaria and Gaza, as the only viable policy option that can facilitate (albeit not ensure) the continued survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people—as it is, demonstrably, the only policy option that allows Israel to adequately contend with the geographic and demographic imperatives required for such survival.

This week, I encountered strident—albeit somewhat doleful, and certainly unintended—support for my thesis from a rather unexpected source—the well-known historian, Benny Morris.

Morris: Coming full circle?

Once a member of the so-called New Historians, a radical, left-wing group of academics, who challenged the traditional Zionist view of the inception of Israel—particularly the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Arabs due to the fighting during the 1948 War of Independence—Morris has come to adopt a far more understanding view of the alternatives facing the then-nascent Jewish state—and its resultant actions.

Indeed, in many respects Morris has come “full circle”—at least in terms of prevailing public perceptions of his political positions. Once denounced as an anti-Zionist, considered too radical for employment in the Israeli academe, and who was imprisoned, rather than serve as an army reservist in the “occupied territories”, he now not only defends, but endorses, the coercive displacement of Arabs—indeed, even lamenting that it was not sufficiently implemented.

In this regard, he has chided Ben Gurion for being overly reticent: In a 2004 interview with Haaretz’s Ari Shavit, he declared provocatively: "If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job…my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all.”

Morris speculates: “If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion --the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."

  • Friday, February 01, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon

In case you were wondering what the Palestinian government does....

Here is a list of all the decrees/decisions made by the Palestinian cabinet over the past 14 months, autotranslated into English.

Every single one is a declaration of when holidays will be.


I guess that they don't publish the calendar of holidays in the beginning of the year because then they won't have anything else to do.


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  • Friday, February 01, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon

Egypt's car dealers don't want to be "treated like Jews"

This year, Egyptians have been campaigning against jacked up car prices.

Car dealers are upset. The head of a car dealer association went on TV and defended the pricing, saying that the government added new fees to new car sales and the dealers' hands were tied.

Specifically, he said that  "The [anti-dealer] campaigners talk to dealers as if they were talking about Jews."

Even though Arabs are keen on saying that they aren't antisemitic, I don't think this was a compliment.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)
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Cairo Book Fair - that Israeli and US ambassadors visited - featured Mein Kampf, Protocols of Elders of Zion

I reported yesterday that the Israeli ambassador to Egypt visited the Cairo International Book Fair. Although when Egyptians found out about it after the fact they were upset, he praised the fair.

The US embassy had a pavilion there, too.

Over at Hall 1, Booth A38, is the Dar Al Kitab Al Arabi Publishing Company, which goes every year to the Book Fair.

Every year that company sells antisemitic books there.

Here is a large number of Mein Kampfs ("My Struggle"), with Hitler on the cover just in case you weren't sure what you were buying. (Mein Kampf was also featured in their front display.)



And here's The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in the upper left corner of the Bestsellers section:

Detail from an advertising poster for this edition of the Protocols:


This antisemitic publisher was not in some small, dark corner in the back. No, these books were the first things one sees when entering the hall (at least one entrance).

This happens every year, and the US keeps going back.

(h/t WC)

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Thursday, January 31, 2019

01/31 Links Pt2: Ben Shapiro: Hijacking Holocaust Remembrance Day; An amnesty for Paliwood; Excavating The WaPo’s Narrative on the Israel-Islamist Conflict

From Ian:
Ben Shapiro: Hijacking Holocaust Remembrance Day
The same holds true for Linda Sarsour, co-chair of the Women’s March. Sarsour is a supporter of the anti-Semitic boycott against Israel. In 2012, she tweeted, “nothing is creepier than Zionism,” and has publicly defended radical Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan. She has stated that support of Israel cannot coincide with feminism. Yet she, too, sent out a Holocaust Remembrance missive — this one curiously missing any mention of the Jews. “May the memories of those who perished inspire us to love and protect one another. May we never forget history so that we may never repeat it,” she tweeted. “May they rest in an eternal peace knowing that we will fight for each other no matter the consequences.”

Again, a message just vague enough with which to virtue-signal — all without ever having to acknowledge the real-life anti-Semitism in which Sarsour herself has engaged.

Her tweet is a convenient way of omitting the actual message of the Holocaust: first, that Jews must never again be dehumanized and murdered for political purposes; second, that anti-Semitism is not merely a subset of bigotry, but its own poisonous brand; and third, that mass murder is possible when purportedly civilized people forget the first two lessons. And yet, thanks to a deliberate campaign to obfuscate those first two lessons, enemies of the Jewish people can hijack Holocaust Remembrance Day to use as a political club.

One time, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was asked if the Holocaust could ever happen again. “Morgen in der fruh,” he answered. “Tomorrow morning.”

In a world in which Iran routinely threatens Israel’s Jews with annihilation, in which the Palestinian Authority and Hamas unite to teach their children about the eventual hope of a Judenrein Palestine, in which Jews across Europe live under the possibility of the knife, the Holocaust must be remembered. Obscuring it with platitudinous statements uttered by anti-Semites isn’t just disgusting, it’s dangerous.
Amnesty: Israel using antisemitism to whitewash its war crimes
Israeli ministers have accused Amnesty International of antisemitism to divert public attention away from the government’s “war crimes” against Palestinians in the West Bank, the group said on Wednesday.

It hit back at the right-wing reaction to its report on Israel’s tourism industry over the pre-1967 lines called “Destination: Occupation,” which it published on Tuesday.

The report called on the four major digital booking sites – Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia and TripAdvisor – to boycott hotels, rentals and tourism sites over the pre-1967 lines. This includes Jewish sites in Jerusalem’s Old City, with its Western Wall and the Temple Mount, which are the holiest sites in Judaism.

Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan tweeted Tuesday that Amnesty has become a leader in the antisemitic #BDS campaign and that its report was an “outrageous attempt to distort facts, deny Jewish heritage & delegitimize Israel.”

Emotions are particularly on the issue among Israeli politicians in light of the anticipated publication this winter of a blacklist of companies doing business with Israel over the pre-1967 lines, which the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is expected to publish later this month.

Emotions are particularly high on the issue among Israeli politicians, in light of the anticipated publication this winter of a blacklist of companies doing business with Israel over the pre-1967 lines, which the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is expected to publish later this month.

The next day Amnesty said that ministers, such as Erdan, are trying to “silence reports of Israel’s war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

To use the charge of antisemitism in the context of the report is “blatant incitement based on lies, deceptions and distortions that are easy to refute and are intended to divert the discussion from the subject at hand, which is, war crimes and human rights violations against Palestinians in the occupied territories,” Amnesty stated.
An amnesty for Paliwood
What grounds are there to believe this is the fakest of fake news?

Although not stated explicitly by Amnesty International we are supposed to believe the boy in the photograph is bravely putting his body at risk to stop a home demolition.

Check out the bulldozer driver in the enlarged image. Does he look like an IDF driver? IDF uniform is olive-green. This driver appears to be wearing a shirt with a distinct blue stripe. If he was demolishing a building in Palestinian territory wouldn’t he for his own safety be wearing his helmet?

Check out the bulldozer. It is clearly not an IDF bulldozer. It is completely unarmoured and painted bright yellow not grey or khaki.

So maybe it is a civilian bulldozer? Is the boy in danger or not?

With photography distance relationships can be quite deceptive. Long lenses compress distance. Either way it looks as if he is nowhere near the path of the bulldozer. He has been placed there by the photographer for a good angle. Or did you think it was his idea to find a chair and a flag?

  • Thursday, January 31, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon

Recent notable tweets

I've had a bunch of good tweets over the past day....feel free to retweet the ones you like!

First, about Amnesty:



























And other topics:








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Divorcing the Palestinians (Vic Rosenthal)


 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column


One of the favorite lines heard from Israel’s Left is that they want to “separate” from the Palestinians, or, lately, to “divorce” them. This may sound like a good idea, but it is a poor analogy. In the usual divorce, one of the former partners moves away. They don’t try to continue living in the same house.

The separation or divorce that they are talking about is the same old thing: they want Israel to withdraw from most or all of Judea and Samaria, and allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Whatever you call it, the consequences will be the same: the advancement to the next stage of Yasser Arafat’s “Phased Plan” for the destruction of Israel, and a return to what Abba Eban called “Auschwitz borders.”

The plan calls for the establishment of an “independent combatant national authority” that will control any territory “liberated” from the Zionists; then this authority will unify all the “Arab liberation movements” and ultimately coordinate attacks from a “union of confrontation countries” to complete the “liberation of all Palestinian territory.”

The phased plan, from 1974, sounds quaint today. There is no mention of Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran. Indeed, Iran – ruled by the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi – had good relations with Israel back then. It includes a gesture to Jordan, which still maintained claims on Judea and Samaria at that time. 

But the physical geography of our country and its strategic significance haven’t changed. There is still high ground overlooking our population centers from Judea and Samaria. There is still the Jordan valley, whose western slope guards our eastern border. The players have changed somewhat, and the military threats have become more sophisticated. Although the IDF has improved its capabilities, so have our enemies improved theirs. But the land is still the land. Hills are still hills; passes between them are still strategic.

The “international community,” whose will is expressed by the UN, is stuck in 1974, still wanting to reverse the outcome of the 1967 war. Maybe some of the practical reasons are different – a little less Arab oil blackmail and a little more desire to enter the Iranian market – but its hypocritical concern for the welfare of the Palestinian Arabs still hides its fundamental belief that a sovereign Jewish state should not exist.

It wasn’t always thus. Right after the First World War, the victorious Western powers for a short time were prepared to set aside a portion of the former Ottoman Empire that had already been developed by Zionist immigration, and which just happened to be the historic home of the Jewish people, for settlement by the exiled remnants of those people. This was seen as a win-win situation for everyone involved: the Zionists would get their homeland, the Europeans would (ultimately) get rid of their Jews, and the British – who would hold the Mandate for the sake of the Jews – would get a convenient place to stand to protect the flank of the Suez Canal, and maybe to build a railroad from the port of Haifa to the Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire, India.

Almost immediately, the British began reneging on their responsibilities toward the Jews, limiting Jewish immigration and encouraging local Arabs in their desire to see the whole Mandate become an Arab state. Maybe they thought an Arab state would be easier to control, or maybe they just liked the Arabs better than the Jews. Later, as the gates of Europe began closing for Jews trying to escape Hitler, their increasingly ferocious efforts to prevent Jewish immigration to Eretz Yisrael became one of the moral low points in the dark history of the period.

The 1948 War of independence and the 1967 Six Days war – a war of aggression intended to destroy the Jewish state – finally established Jewish control of the all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. The 1973 Yom Kippur war proved that even under the worst conditions, the newly expanded state was defensible.

The Arab nations were soundly defeated, but unfortunately the conflict became a proxy for the Cold War between the West and the USSR. Under the tutelage of the Soviet KGB, the Arabs developed a multi-faceted approach including terrorism, Soviet-supported diplomacy, and a sophisticated propaganda effort using revolutionary third-world rhetoric. After the Yom Kippur War, the Saudi-controlled oil weapon was deployed, and as a result the formerly apolitical (but very powerful) international corporate community quietly joined the vociferous Left in its embrace of the “Palestinian cause” (i.e., the replacement of Israel with an Arab state).

Still, after its 1982 defeat in Lebanon, Arafat’s PLO – the ideological heir of the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who collaborated with Hitler – should have faded into obscurity. But then Israel, under the guidance of the same Left that today claims to want a divorce from the Palestinians, fired a nuclear cannon into its own foot – the Oslo Accords.

Suddenly, the Phased Plan came back to life, with the creation – by Israel – of the very “Palestinian National Authority” called for in Arafat’s original plan!

Today Soviet Communism is gone, replaced by the more pragmatic and flexible (but still dangerous) Putinism, the Saudis are moderating their attacks on Israel in the hope that Israel will deal with Iran for them, and the Arab nations are in no condition to wage war. The center of anti-Zionism has moved to Tehran, from where it operates an octopus of terrorist proxies to fight the Jewish state.

But despite all the changes, what should have been settled in 1967 is still questioned today. 

The international community is still pressuring us to reverse the results of the 1967 war. And thanks to the deluded, gulled, pressured, or traitorous architects of Oslo – take your pick – we are on our way to doing that. The vicious PLO is back, ruling the Palestinian Authority. The first phase of Arafat’s plan to finally liquidate the Jewish state is complete.

There are spiritual and historical reasons that Judea and Samaria should be in Jewish hands. But whether or not they are important to you, there are also brute facts of geography: without control of the high ground of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, the state cannot be defended. We must not go back to Auschwitz borders.

I think a divorce from the Palestinians is a good idea. But I have a different property settlement in mind: we keep the house and they move out.

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01/31 Links Pt1: Palestinian Support for Two-State Solution Seen Declining; PMW: Palestinian pride – Murderers are cool!; Where Are America’s Jewish Leaders?

From Ian:
Palestinian Support for Two-State Solution Seen Declining
Among the Palestinians in recent years there has been growing interest in the idea of a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is in part linked to the growing connection between Palestinians in the West Bank and the Arab sector in Israel.

It is also related to the collective sense that the Palestinian national movement is currently at an all-time low, with growing alienation between the public and the Palestinian leaderships in the West Bank and Gaza, the lack of public belief in their ability to achieve the goal of independence, and the sidelining of the Palestinian issue from the focus of the regional and international agenda.

Consequently, there is a growing argument in the Palestinian discourse that all other strategies for realizing national objectives have been tried and failed.

Moreover, the growing support for the idea of one state is fed by internal trends. Above all, there is the collective desire to retain a relatively stable standard of living in the West Bank, together with a widespread trend toward de-ideologization and depoliticization, reflecting exhaustion after many years of violent conflict driven by revolutionary fighting slogans, which ultimately failed to achieve any Palestinian national objectives.

The lessons from the severe decline that engulfed Arab societies in the region following the Arab Spring revolutions has led to increased fear of sharing this fate.

In addition, most of the younger Palestinian generation are concerned with personal fulfillment and development, and harbor suspicion and even alienation toward the sources of authority around them, including the Palestinian leadership.

Benjamin Netanyahu and the “Strongmen”: Another Myth in the Making
In the past few months, numerous articles have appeared in the Western press about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s diplomatic outreach to “strongmen” and proponents of “illiberal nationalism.” Some have even accused him of abetting some of these leaders’ alleged anti-Semitism. Lahav Harkov explains how this narrative migrated from left-leaning Israeli publications to the diaspora press and from there to mainstream publications like the New York Times, and notes that it has been used to justify not just criticism of Netanyahu but forthright anti-Zionism. As she observes, such analyses recognize no distinctions among very different sorts of leaders, and pay little attention to diplomatic realities:

There are two elements at play in the claims of a nefarious new direction in Israel’s foreign policy: one is a pearl-clutching disgust at Netanyahu’s supposed embrace of illiberal regimes; the other concerns relations with leaders whose policies specifically impact Jews and . . . distort the memory of the Holocaust. . . . The new talk of Netanyahu and strongmen . . . conflates these two categories, [lumping] the necessary compromises of conducting international relations . . . with troubling assaults on the legacy of the Holocaust [by such figures as Hungary’s Viktor Orban].

Moreover, many analysts who lament Israel’s cozying up to strongmen ignore research showing that East European Jews feel safer from anti-Semitism than do those in the West, which may be because they perceive the greatest threat to their lives coming from Islamist violence rather than the populist right. . . . In general, it appears that East European Jews may not view their situation in the dire terms used by some of their self-appointed advocates in Israel and the West. . . .

It is, [furthermore], no defense of human-rights violators to say that Israel must sometimes hold its nose and keep up ties with [them]. As the Knesset member Avi Dichter—a Likudnik and former Shin Bet chief who could never be accused of being a bleeding heart—said before [the Philippines’ President Rodrigo] Duterte visited: “We may have to take a pill against nausea to receive him.”

But there are some too pure for such distasteful compromises. The leader of [the hard-left] Meretz party, Tamar Zandberg, wrote a letter to Netanyahu telling him not to strengthen relations with Brazil, one of the largest economies in the world, because it elected a president from the far right, months before Jair Bolsonaro even began his term. Yet Zandberg has also been photographed visiting the grave of Yasir Arafat, not a leader known for his exemplary human-rights record. And neither she, nor anyone else on the left, has called on Israel to cut ties with the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas, who wrote his dissertation denying the Holocaust, and whose regime jails people for criticizing him online or, God forbid, selling land to Jews.

  • Thursday, January 31, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon

Frankfurt mayor says @Amnesty is spreading antisemitism. He's right. (They are also advocating a crime against humanity.)

From the Facebook page of Frankfurt mayor Uwe Becker:



The full text is:

Amnesty International is promoting ethnic cleansing

With their recent campaign Amnesty International is walking in the footprints of the antisemitic BDS movement.
By setting pressure on Online-Booking platforms, that offer overnight stays in settlement regions and in East Jerusalem, Amnesty International is copying the methods and instruments of the antisemitic BDS movement, that proclaims the same aim with an even more militant approach.

The shocking aspect of this present AI campaign is formulated in the conclusion and the recommendations of the AI report.

Amnesty International says:
„Israel must immediately cease all settlement activity, dismantle all settlements and move its civilians from occupied territory into Israel proper. Third states must ensure by all legal means that Israel does so.”

Proposing, that Israel must "move its civilians from occupied territory into Israel proper" is nothing more and nothing less than promoting ethnic cleansing.

To my mind, this is a shocking scandal, that AI demands to push Jews out of all settlement areas and East Jerusalem and other parts of Israel.

AI has crossed a red line and is spreading antisemitism.

Becker is touching on one of the supreme ironies of organizations like Amnesty and the UN.

They invoke the Fourth Geneva Conventions Article 49 paragraph 6, which says "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies," and pretend that this applies to Israel, even though the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria moved there quite voluntarily and were not deported or transferred. The entire intent of the entire Article 49 as a whole is to prohibit transferring people against their will.

Paragraph 1 says, "Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive."

The Jews of Judea and Samaria are protected persons under Geneva. If you consider the territories occupied, as the UN and Amnesty does, then the circumstances of how the Jews got there are absolutely irrelevant. In fact, I would guess that more than half the inhabitants now were born there.

The idea that a state should forcibly transfer a half million people against their will, for any reason, is anathema to the Geneva Conventions and international law. Even if you don't say that the territories are occupied, international law says that "The long-standing definition of 'deportation' as a crime against humanity included the crime of forced population transfer within a state's borders."

And, yes, this is antisemitism. I have never seen Amnesty or any other organization even mention the thousands of Israeli Arabs who have moved across the Green Line (in Beit Hanina, Beit Safafa, Mount Scopus or French Hill, for example) as "settlers." Only Jews get that designation, and only Jews are demanded by "human rights organizations" to be forcibly moved.

This is literal antisemitism, being pushed by Amnesty International.
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  • Thursday, January 31, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon

Egyptians upset that Israel's ambassador visited the Cairo Book Fair



Egyptian media has lots of stories about how Israel's ambassador to Egypt, David Govrin, visited the Cairo International Book Fair this week along with an aide.

Egyptians on Facebook expressed their displeasure, some saying that had they known they would have beaten them.

People started to get angry at the head of the book fair for allowing this to happen.

In response, the head of the General Authority for Books, Haytham Al-Haj Ali, made a brief statement asserting that the visit was informal and that the embassy did not inform the management of the exhibition and that they did not hear about the visit until after it was completed.

Govrin visited the exhibition as a normal visitor, buying a ticket and waiting in line like every other visitor - and therefore no one could stop him.

The Cultural Committee of the Egyptian Journalists' Syndicate condemned the "childish behavior of the ambassador and his attempt to suggest a state of cultural normalization," which they said will not dissuade the Egyptian people from confirming their rejection of all forms of normalization with Israel.

One news site was very upset that the ambassador's aide was wearing a yarmulke. He wasn't, but apparently the lighting of this photo made it appear that he was.



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  • Thursday, January 31, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon

Hamas and Iran turn to Bitcoin to raise funds



From Bloomberg:

What’s an organization designated as a terrorist group in the U.S. and Europe supposed to do when it comes to raising funds? Think cryptocurrency.

A spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, the cash-strapped militant Palestinian group that rules the Gaza Strip, urged supporters to donate in Bitcoin to get around international restrictions on funding the organization.

“The Zionist enemy fights the Palestinian resistance by trying to cut aid to the resistance by all means, but lovers of resistance around the world fight these Zionist attempts and seek all possible means to aid the resistance,” Abu Obeida wrote Tuesday on his Instagram account. He promised to supply more details later of how supporters could contribute by Bitcoin.

From NYT:
Iran’s economy has been hobbled by banking sanctions that effectively stop foreign companies from doing business in the country. But transactions in Bitcoin, difficult to trace, could allow Iranians to make international payments while bypassing the American restrictions on banks.

In the past, the threat of United States sanctions has been enough to squelch most business with Iran, but the anonymous payments made in Bitcoin could change that. While Washington could still monitor and intimidate major companies, countless small and midsize companies could exploit Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to conduct business under American radar.

I am a skeptic of cryptocurrency as they are set up now, mostly because their value is 100% dependent on people's psychology. If rogue nations and terrorist groups start to depend on Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, I can see how organizations and governments can and will start to manipulate the value of the currencies the way they do with pump-and-dump stocks - with the result being that no one will trust the actual value of this virtual money.

But short term this is a definite threat.

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Wednesday, January 30, 2019

01/30 Links Pt2: MLK's Legacy Is about Moral Clarity, Not Easy Analogies; Why Muslims Should Remember the Holocaust; Crimes without punishment in Argentina

From Ian:
MLK's Legacy Is about Moral Clarity, Not Easy Analogies
Recently, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the civil rights movement, which King led, and the struggle for Palestinian statehood, have been analogized and morally linked in ways that might have surprised King himself. These tortured analogies reject everything King represented. After all, he preached peaceful and "passive nonviolent resistance," a strategy that most Palestinian leaders have never embraced. Too many Palestinian leaders are dedicated to eradicating Israel, not living beside it.

Despite widespread slanders of ethnic cleansing, there is no genocide against the Palestinians. Their people, in fact, have doubled in population since 1967. Nor are Israel's practices, as Michelle Alexander assesses in the New York Times, "reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the United States," surely not when Arabs serve on the Israeli Supreme Court and can live, work and eat anywhere they choose, vote freely in elections and are represented in parliament.

The only nation in the Middle East where civil rights exist for racial minorities, homosexuals and women is Israel. It is to Israel where Ethiopian Jews were airlifted from Sudan, and where an Israeli-born Ethiopian woman was in 2013 crowned Miss Israel. It's also in Israel where a forest is named for Martin Luther King.

Maligning Martin Luther King as an Enemy of Israel
If she wants to invoke Dr. King’s name, maybe she should consider what he would say about the dictatorship created by Mahmoud Abbas, who is now serving the 11th year of his four-year term. What would he say about the Palestinian Authority’s silencing of its critics by jailing, torturing, and sometimes killing them? What would he say about the “honor killings” of women who have violated someone’s ideas of moral behavior? And what about their persecution of homosexuals, or the denial of women’s rights, freedom of speech, and the persecution of Christians by Hamas and Palestinian groups in the West Bank?

I am fed up with the hypocrisy of people who claim to be concerned about the human rights of Palestinians but are silent when it comes to their mistreatment by their fellow Palestinians or, in the case of places such as Lebanon and Syria, by their fellow Arabs. Why doesn’t Alexander have anything to say about the slaughter of Palestinians by Bashar al-Assad? Does she believe King would look the other way as she does? I think not.

Paragraph after paragraph of her article is filled with vitriol. She says that Israel will not discuss Palestinian refugees; that’s a lie. Since 1948, Israelis have offered to allow tens of thousands to return — but no Israeli from any political party would accept the idea that Palestinians have a “right” to return, thus destroying Israel as a Jewish state.

Alexander also trots out the tired canard of comparing Israel to South Africa. This specious argument has been rebutted ad nauseum, but it is as odious and malignant as Holocaust denial.

Finally, Alexander says that “the days when critiques of Zionism and the actions of the State of Israel can be written off as anti-Semitism are coming to an end.” King saw things differently. When a student attacked Zionism during an event in 1968, King responded: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.”
British cultural figures call on BBC to urge relocating Eurovision from Israel
Dozens of British cultural figures have signed a letter calling on the UK’s national broadcaster, the BBC, to push for relocating the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest from Israel to another country.

The letter, which was printed in the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday, cited Israel’s human rights record in the West Bank as the reason.

“Eurovision may be light entertainment, but it is not exempt from human rights considerations – and we cannot ignore Israel’s systematic violation of Palestinian human rights,” read the letter, which was sent ahead of the UK choosing its entry for the international song contest.

“The BBC is bound by its charter to ‘champion freedom of expression,'” the letter continued. “It should act on its principles and press for Eurovision to be relocated to a country where crimes against that freedom are not being committed.

“The European Broadcasting Union chose Tel Aviv as the venue over occupied Jerusalem – but this does nothing to protect Palestinians from land theft, evictions, shootings, beatings and more by Israel’s security forces,” it said.

Among those who signed the letter were British musicians Peter Gabriel and Roger Waters; actors Julie Christie, Miriam Margolyes and Maxine Peake; directors Ken Loach and Mike Leigh; and writers Caryl Churchill and A.L. Kennedy.
The Guardian: Platform of choice for anti-Israel activism
A letter by 50 British cultural figures calling for the BBC to press Eurovision not to hold their 2019 song contest in Israel was dutifully published in the Guardian on Jan. 29th. The letter, replete all the predictable canards by a who’s who of anti-Zionist activists (aka, the ‘I hate Israel’ rubber stamp brigade), is also promoted in a separate Guardian article published the same day by the paper’s Music Editor.

We’ve shown that the Guardian has consistently published such pro-BDS letters by British ‘artists’ over the years – missives which amplify and grant credibility to what are extremely marginal – not to mention almost always unsuccessful – anti-Israel campaigns.

As far as the content of the letter, there’s not much new, save the bizarre suggestion that all of Jerusalem (not just the formerly Jordanian controlled “eastern” section) is “occupied”, and the completely baseless smear that West Bank Palestinians live under “apartheid”.

In its modern guise, the ‘apartheid’ charge took flight in the early 2000s after the UN sponsored anti-Israel hate-fest in Durban, but it is, at root, the product of Soviet and PLO propaganda dating back to the early 1960s – that is, before Israel ‘occupied’ even one square centimeter of West Bank land. The late antisemitism scholar Robert Wistrich wrote (A Lethal Obsession, 2010), that “the constant visual and verbal comparison in the Soviet media between Israel and South Africa was [driven] by Moscow’s campaign to win influence in black Africa” – a propaganda campaign wedded to their broader efforts to cast Zionism as an inherently racist ideology.

Antisemitism and Rachel Riley's Jewish Soul (Judean Rose)

Rachel Riley is a British game show host. With her blond hair and Irish surname, no one would have ever suspected she was a Jew. That is until Corbyn’s star rose, and the antisemites began crawling out of the woodwork to troll and attack her. The hate triggered something in Riley and she felt she had to speak out—to speak up for her people, for Israel. Even though her Jewish identity had never been strong. Even though she’s never been political.

She spoke about this on a recent Channel 4 talk show (and wrote about it here):

Host: So what is your own Jewish identity?

Rachel Riley: Well, you know. Probably line 1 or line 2 of my Wikipedia entry. I mean, I'm not spoken about being Jewish. My surname is Riley. You know, you wouldn't know I'm, I don't look like a typical Jew or anything like that but I've always said, I've always been open.

You know my mom's Jewish and my dad's Man[chester] United and that's my identity. I'm an atheist, but I'm proud of my heritage.

You know, when we have the family around my mom would do a lovely bagel spread with all the Ashkenazi. . . the foods. I called my granddad my “Zayde.” We would go to shul once a year for Yom Kippur, for prayers for the dead. Not religious Jews just, just, just cultural.

Yeah, not even cultural particularly but I kind of like, I guess part of my Jewish identity’s is I've known about the Holocaust forever. It's been, always been on my radar and, and knowing that it doesn't matter about your religion, it doesn't matter what you believe, it doesn't matter what you do, having one Jewish grandparent, I felt like people felt entitled to be able to murder you and that has been part of my Jewish identity for a long time, and I thought like many others did that something like the Holocaust meant that antisemitism wouldn't exist anymore because you can see where it leads. You can see how bad it is . . .
  
Rachel Riley, it seems, had only been Jewish on the margins. She knew about the Holocaust, but that was about all she knew. She didn’t think she had to know anything else, because to her, the Holocaust was self-evident. That seminal event should have been the thing that obliterated antisemitism forever. “You can see how bad it is . . .”

But the thing is, Jeremy Corbyn and so many other British people don’t see how bad it is. They only pretend to see the Holocaust as a bad thing. And then they pretend some more, pretending that their hatred for Israel is not, in fact, antisemitism.  

Rachel Riley couldn’t leave their hatred unremarked. But she also realized that she couldn’t confront the antisemites. She was in no position to do so. Because she’d never cared about these things before. As a result, Rachel Riley was ignorant of her own Jewish history. She was ignorant about the events that led to the creation of the State of Israel, and the Jewish right to self-determination, to Jewish indigenous territory.

And so Rachel Riley was forced to educate herself.

Actually, no one forced her to do that. She really didn’t have to do that. Rachel Riley could have left things alone, stayed out of the fray.

And the truth is, she didn’t even want to do it, confront the antisemites, or talk about Israel at all:

It’s difficult because I don't want to talk Israel. I mean a lot of this is, it's just blazing antisemitism, but you get drawn into these conversations and again. I'm having to have so much knowledge that I didn't have before to combat it . . .


Something pulled at Rachel Riley during these confrontations and insults. Something triggered her inner Jew. Not in a religious way, but in a national way. This was her people. This simple truth tugged at her soul and made her do the right thing, made her examine and search:

I've searched so much because so many people are telling you that, you know, you're wrong and you're right, you know you're evil or whatever and you're like, am I missing something? So I've had to do so much research and, and, and to find out whether this has come from and really examined myself to see: am I blinkered?

No. You’re not blinkered, Rachel Riley. Israel is the good guy in this movie. And antisemitism is bad. Left unchecked, antisemitism escalates from words and ugly graffiti to violence and death.

Sometimes it’s one Jew speaking on his phone, minding his own business. At other times, it’s 11 in a synagogue in Squirrel Hill, or 6 million in Eastern Europe. But no matter the immediate or long term results, it all springs from the same well of xenophobia, immorality, jealousy, and hate.

Which leads to a conundrum: in a perfect world, there would be no antisemitism. It leads to the shedding of Jewish blood, nothing more. But watching Rachel Riley’s epiphany, one wonders what it means. Did that, too, come out of hate?

Probably not.

It is said that every Jewish soul contains a spark. It can burn so low as to be almost extinguished, or be fanned into bright hot flames of religious and national feeling.

That Jewish spark had been in Rachel Riley’s soul all along, lying dormant, waiting to be fanned alive, or perhaps never to be so. But it was there.

It would be easier to see some cause and effect relationship in this story. It would be nice to think that hate can lead to something positive: a stronger identification with one’s people. It’s certainly possible these haters are God’s unintended instruments to bring His people closer to Him.

We like to find meaning in the worst of things. It helps us make sense of evil.

But the truth is, Rachel Riley’s Jewish spark had always been there right in her soul, had always been waiting for some air to feed the flame. Like Dorothy, Rachel Riley had always had the power to return home to her people. Once she figured it out, she embraced the truth.

And triumphed over hate.

It’s a win for our side.

Rejoice.
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  • Wednesday, January 30, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon

Dem Congresswoman Rejects Donor Over Social Media Posts Lacking Antisemitism (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory. 


Check out their Facebook page.


Rashida TlaibYpsilanti, MI, January 30 - A first-term congresswoman has pledged to return a campaign contribution from a party stalwart following an investigation into the giver's Facebook and Twitter posts revealed a suspicious lack of animus toward Jews, a spokeswoman for the lawmaker announced Wednesday.

Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) press officer Adele Fitler told reporters that the legislator will repay every dollar of a $50,000 contribution from businessman Bryce Norton, after reports emerged that Mr. Norton had never participated in online discussions involving antisemitic rhetoric, denial of Jewish peoplehood, Holocaust inversion, anti-Jewish tropes, or accusations that Congress and the federal government answer to Israel and not US voters.

"Ms. Tlaib will not tolerate this aberration," declared Fitler. "Associating with such a misguided figure can only hurt what our representative is trying to accomplish in Washington. Therefore, she will pay back this contribution down to the last penny. Never let it be said that Congresswoman Tlaib's hands are soiled with such dirty money."

Norton, who runs a furniture manufacturing enterprise, has made similar donations to other Democratic candidates; a call to his corporate headquarters went unanswered. Several searches on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other popular social media platforms failed to turn up evidence of an account in his name, though several other people by that name do maintain such accounts. None of the other Bryce Nortons on social media displayed overt antisemitism, either, a fact that one former campaign worker observed could indicate a Jewish conspiracy to harm Ms. Tlaib's reputation.

"I think the right-thinking comments, likes, and shares were there, but were deleted," suggested the staffer, who requested anonymity for protection against the operatives behind the conspiracy. "I mean, every normal person is willing to talk about how evil and deserving of punishment the Jews are, collectively. So what probably happened is this guy did in fact say all the right things, but then the Jews erased them, and are likely blackmailing him to keep the truth from coming out."

"We need to send a consistent message about what kind of rhetoric, what kind of outlook we're going to endorse," explained Fitler. "It is unacceptable that Mr. Norton, however much we could benefit from his gift, would take such a stark, intolerable departure from what the Congresswoman has worked so hard to build. Remaining beholden in any way to someone who might exploit that influence to compromise the clear moral stand we are pursuing is something she is not prepared to tolerate. It's certainly a significant sum of money, but it's not like we're Jews, who only care about money."

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