Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, February 02, 2019

Latest evil Israeli deed: offering low prices and business opportunities to Palestinians

Al-Monitor has an article about how upset some Palestinians are at the new Atarot Mall, opened up by Rami Levy, meant to attract both Jews and Palestinian Arabs:

A new shopping center in the Atarot Industrial Zone, between Ramallah and Jerusalem, has Palestinians grappling with how to respond to it. Atarot Mall, built by the Israeli supermarket magnate Rami Levy on the western side of the separation wall, is promising high-quality goods at low prices and jobs for Jews, Muslims and Christians. Many, however, see the mall as a threat to Palestinian-owned shops in East Jerusalem and have called for Palestinian merchants and consumers to boycott it.

The shopping center, inaugurated Jan. 11, is part of a chain that also has branches in Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in Jerusalem. What differentiates the Atarot branch is its location on Route 60, the highway that separates the northern and southern parts of the West Bank and is used by Palestinians as well as Israeli settlers. Also of note is that Palestinian merchants from Jerusalem have purchased or rented space in the mall, which will have a reported 50 stores.

The shopping center embodies Levy’s policy of promoting economic coexistence and normalization between Jews and Arabs. He has pursued these policies through Rami Levy Hashikma Marketing, Israel's third largest supermarket chain, which hires Muslim, Christian, and Jewish workers and caters to both the Arab and Jewish communities.

In an article and video posted Nov. 20, 2017, to the website for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Levy said, “In Judea and Samaria we have four branches. … I think that coexistence needs to come from here. To show that it is possible to live together, to work together, and serve each other in a fair and moral way.”

Levy, who invested 200 million shekels ($54 million) in the new shopping center, which took two years to build, told COGAT that 65% of the merchants will be Jews and 35% Palestinians. “We treat everyone here equally,” he said. “Everyone wants to make this center a success.”

So of course...

Various Palestinian parties have called for boycotting the mall. In a Jan. 8 statement, Fatah asserted, “Buying and renting shops or shopping there is a betrayal of the homeland.”

We've seen this before. Rami Levy supermarkets have similarly been blasted by the Palestinian Authority - and Arabs shop there anyway, despite threats.

Rita Abu Ghosh, media coordinator of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, told Al-Monitor, “The BDS movement considers anyone taking part in the mall to be working with the occupation and must be boycotted.”

She said that BDS in cooperation with the National Labor Authority, a Jerusalem-based NGO comprised of political, national and religious figures, had succeeded in dissuading prominent merchants from Jerusalem not to open stores in the mall. One of them owns a large electronics company that was supposed to occupy an entire floor, and another owns a mobile phone business.

Abu Ghosh remarked that BDS also contacted several owners of small shops, such as those selling bread, shoes or clothes, but the majority refused to withdraw from the mall because of the potential benefits, such as expected high demand for their goods, or for fear of having to pay hefty fines should they withdraw from their lease agreement.

Once again, BDS and Palestinian "leaders" are acting to hurt Arab owned businesses and Arab consumers.

This shows once again who cares about coexistence and who doesn't.

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02/01 Links Pt2: Bret Stephens: The Persistence of Anti-Semitism; Amnesty’s Travel Boycott: Unpacking the Baggage; Poll Shows Little Support for Anti-Israel Boycott in the UK

From Ian:

Bret Stephens (NYTs): The Persistence of Anti-Semitism

Book Review: ANTISEMITISM Here and Now By Deborah E. Lipstadt
Another guise is anti-Zionism, which pretends that one can malign Israel as a uniquely diabolical and illegitimate state, guilty of Nazi-like atrocities, and still be acquitted of anti-Semitism. The leading Western voice for this view is the British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has repeatedly joined hands with virulent anti-Semites who share his pro-Palestinian, anticapitalist views — all the while insisting that he opposes racism. Lipstadt makes short work of that defense.
Image

“Is Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite?” she asks.

“My response would be that that’s the wrong question. The right questions to ask are: Has he facilitated and amplified expressions of anti-Semitism? Has he been consistently reluctant to acknowledge expressions of anti-Semitism unless they come from white supremacists and neo-Nazis? Will his actions facilitate the institutionalization of anti-Semitism among other progressives? Sadly, my answer to all of this is an unequivocal yes. Like Trump, Corbyn has emboldened and enabled anti-Semites, but from the other end of the political spectrum.”

This analysis — that the resurgence of anti-Semitism owes as much to its political enablers who aren’t openly bigoted as it does to its ideological practitioners who are — is the most valuable contribution the book makes to our discussion of modern-day Jew hatred. Still, Lipstadt misses something important by insisting that anti-Semitism “has never made sense and never will.”

Not quite. However irrational, cynical or stupid anti-Semites may be, most Jews nonetheless can be said to stand for certain ideas and attitudes. A particular concept of morality. A reverence for law founded on the idea of truth. A penchant for asking nettlesome questions. Skepticism toward would-be saviors. A liberal passion for freedom.

Anti-Semites tend to have the opposite set of views, for reasons that may be repugnant but are perfectly rational. The fundamental truth about anti-Semitism isn’t that it’s necessarily crazy. It’s that it’s inevitably brutish.

The conclusion to be drawn is that the enemies of the Jews, whether in Tehran or Virginia, will always be the enemies of liberalism — which is why the fight against anti-Semitism must also be a fight for liberalism. Lipstadt gets this, of course, even if she arrives at the point by a different set of stairs. Fair enough. She has written a book that combines erudition, clarity, accessibility and passion at a moment when they could not be needed more.

Stephen Pollard: I truly thought that anti-Semitism was over… I was wrong

That is one reason why Holocaust Memorial Day is so important - because as the survivors pass on, we need to retain a collective memory of what happened on European soil so recently.

But there is a deeper issue. Were those older generations, in those countries, uniquely capable of such evil? As a Jew, I grew up almost entirely unaware of anti-Semitism. It was indeed just history to me. My grandmas told me stories of pogroms in Poland and Lithuania. One kept a suitcase packed and stored in a cupboard "because you never know when we might have to leave". I thought she was living in the past, that the Holocaust had somehow forced an end to anti-Semitism.

But I was wrong.

It was arrogance for me to assume that my generation, alone in history, was cured of that virus. Anti-Semitism is not called "the oldest hatred" for nothing. And slowly, I started to see it - and to experience it. A comment about being a "Jew boy", not really British; a snide remark that we Jews stuck together and really ran the country. But I didn't think too much about it. Half a dozen stupid remarks in 40 years is hardly a torrent.

That was then.

This, though, is now - when I have to block 2,000 people because otherwise my Twitter feed would be an even greater cesspit of anti-Semitism than it is. When people openly tell me that I should be in the gas chambers and that my children will not live to adulthood because Hitler's work will be finished; when I am told I am running a Jewish paedophile ring; when I am said to be a paid agent of Israel, a foreign agent in a foreign land.

Yes, it's just words. But the people who send such words are real. And my office has to have guards due to the threats.

Most of those who choose to attack me as a Jew on social media have one thing in common: they describe themselves as supporters of Jeremy Corbyn.

If Mr Corbyn had taken real action, had attacked them with vigour and with purpose, things might be different. But he has not. Ever. He has chosen not to. Is it any wonder I am scared of what may come, if he ever takes power?

Singling Out the Jewish State

There are 43 countries with official state religions, and another 40 that give one religion preferential treatment over other faiths. Of the former group, 27 countries enshrine Islam as their state faith, and 13 do the same for Christianity—including nine countries in Europe. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) does not seem to have a problem with any of them; one would be hard-pressed to recall a single word of criticism. But she does have a problem—a big one—with the world's only Jewish state—a tiny country, home to just under nine million people—recognizing itself as, well, the Jewish state. Why the double standard? Maybe it's not the obvious.

Omar's most recent public criticism of Israel came during an interview on Yahoo News' "Through Her Eyes" on Tuesday. After Omar lamented how the United States strongly supports Israel and has a policy that "makes" Jerusalem "superior" to the Palestinians, whatever that means, host Zainab Salbi pressed her to provide specifics. Omar pointed to Israel's Jewish nation-state law, which was passed last year and affirms that Israel is the "nation-state of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, religious, and historic right to self-determination."

"When I see Israel institute a law that recognizes it as a Jewish state and does not recognize the other religions that are living in it, and we still uphold it as a democracy in the Middle East, I almost chuckle," Omar said. "If we see that in any other society, we would criticize it. We would call it out. We do that to Iran. We do that to any other place that sort of upholds its religion."

Perhaps Omar can provide examples of her colleagues in Congress "calling out" Christian countries in Europe for affirming the prominence of Christianity or, more controversially, doing the same for Muslim countries in Africa and the Middle East—such as her native Somalia—that define Islam as their state religion. Has she ever questioned whether Denmark is still a democracy because its constitution recognizes the Lutheran church as the state religion? Has she ever called out Jordan for establishing Islam as the religion of the state? It's not even worth going into Omar's asinine attempt to compare Israel, a true democracy, to Iran, an Islamist theocracy that abuses minorities.

In her interview, Omar went on to say, in a wonderful show of irony, that she is "aggravated" by "those contradictions," apparently blind to her own double standard. She does not seem to understand, or knows but will not acknowledge, that Israel's nation-state law, which is similar to constitutional provisions in several European countries, neither creates individual privileges for any Israeli citizens nor infringes on the individual rights of any citizens. Moreover, Israel has never even officially proclaimed Judaism as the state religion. Palestinian Basic Law, meanwhile, states that "Islam is the official religion in Palestine" and that "the principles of Islamic Shari'a shall be the main source of legislation."

So we are left with a question: why single out Israel?

Cynthia McKinney still spouting her hate for Israel - and complains no one is listening

Former member of Congress and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has been spouting insane anti-Israel (and antisemitic) stuff on her Facebook account:

There's 9/11 Truther stuff, she says John McCain was a "ZioCon" traitor....

Is anyone listening?

This whining post about Nikki Haley indicates....no.

"I have lots of truth to say and can't get a $5 gig. What's up with that?"

Even she knows she's faded into irrelevance.

(h/t Tomer)

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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."

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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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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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?

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:

As today's @Amnesty report shows yet again, Jews are the only people in the world who are considered war criminals for living in the same land as their forefathers.

And those "criminal" Jews have the audacity to be proud of it - building businesses and leading tours!
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

I would argue that Amnesty and other NGOs are the ones violating international law, since they only attack Jews and not Israeli Arabs who also live across the Green Line.

The UN Declaration on the Elimination of All ... Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief says: pic.twitter.com/xrSLiPQC0N
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

According to @Amnesty, when Jews visit their holiest sites like the Western Wall, they are complicit in war crimes.https://t.co/npXPwyX0Yw pic.twitter.com/PI68enDG0S
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

Also, @TripAdvisor, if you bother to actually read their report, @Amnesty implies that they want you to censor any good reviews of Jewish historic sites.

There are no war crimes here, but there is insane and pathological antisemitism.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

Since @Amnesty cannot directly claim that Jewish tour guides in Israel say anything inaccurate, they instead quote a random Palestinian who says "Tourists coming here are brainwashed, they are lied to!"

Their hate is pathological.https://t.co/npXPwyX0Yw
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

And @Amnesty's pathological hate doesn't end there. They claim that Israel created settlements near Biblical sites in order to promote the idea that there is a connection between Jews and the Holy Land.

They all but call Jewish history a myth.https://t.co/npXPwyX0Yw
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

Finally, @Amnesty says Israeli tour guides in the City of David ignore the "Palestinian" history in Silwan.

Arabs in Silwan used to extort money from Jews to NOT deface Jewish graves in the Mt of Olives. and to visit the Kotel.

That's the history.https://t.co/npXPwyX0Yw
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

Not a joke: @Amnesty is trying to minimize the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel because their hatred of Israel is more important to them than Jewish rights to visit our ancestral homeland.

Don't cave to Amnesty's hate, TripAdvisor.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

Just a reminder: @Amnesty, today, maintains a website about the 2014 Gaza war that looks comprehensive but that has hundreds of lies about members of terror groups that they call "civilian." Proof of their lies has been shown and they refuse to correct.

Amnesty lies.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

Since @Amnesty doesn't want Jews to protect and promote Biblical and Jewish historic site, that means they trust Arabs to do it.

Of course, Arabs ethnically cleansed Jews from Hebron and the Old City of Jerusalem.

That's the status quo Amnesty wants.https://t.co/npXPwyX0Yw
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

Hey @Amnesty, I plan to go to Israel this year and I will spend money in areas you consider occupied, including the Old City of Jerusalem.

Are you going to bring me up on charges to the International Court of Justice?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

Hey @Amnesty, what do you think of this adorable kid going down a slide?

Before you answer, this video was taken in Hebron and the child is Jewish.

Do you feel:

1. Disgusted
2. Angry
3. Sickened
4. Enraged pic.twitter.com/uWxUAmPd54
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

.@Amnesty International tweeted or retweeted 13 times yesterday against @TripAdvisor for NOT discriminating against Jews in Judea/Samaria.

It didn't tweet about anything else happening in the world.

Antisemitism is the top priority at Amnesty.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 31, 2019

And other topics:

Very soon the teenager who attempted to stab Israelis will be added to the lists of "Palestinian children murdered by the IDF"
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 30, 2019

The only reason the US hosts the #SuperBowl and the #Oscars is to divert attention from its crimes in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere. All such events must be boycotted.

Sound stupid?

Well, that's the exact logic behind the push to boycott #Eurovision2019 in Tel Aviv.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 31, 2019

#IsraelDerangementSyndrome pic.twitter.com/63TBytuXfM
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 31, 2019

The three rules of Israel haters:

1. Israel is evil.

2. If Israel does something we would normally support, it is because it is trying to hide how evil it is.

3. If someone proves that we are wrong: Call them Zionists, call their argument “hasbara” and ignore the argument. pic.twitter.com/POjFqMDvR9
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 31, 2019

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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.

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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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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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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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.