Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 06, 2019

02/06 Links Pt2: European Anti-Semitism Goes Well Beyond “Criticism of Israel”; Dershowitz: Double Standard for Historical Revisionism; BDS for thee, but not for me

From Ian:

European Anti-Semitism Goes Well Beyond “Criticism of Israel”

While there is little doubt that hatred of Israel has become the dominant form of anti-Semitism in Europe, its more naked forms persist as well. Manfred Gerstenfeld writes:

Polls by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) show that the evil myth that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus is alive and well in Europe. It was found that 46 percent of Poles, 38 percent of Hungarians, 21 percent of Danes and Spaniards, and 19 percent of Norwegians and Belgians believe this. So do 18 percent of Austrians and British, 16 percent of the Dutch, 15 percent of Italians, and 14 percent of Germans. Once a belief is so deeply ingrained in a culture, it takes a very long time to flush it out. Rather than disappear, it will change its shape. . . .

From [another] study, it emerged that at least 150 million adult EU citizens agreed with the statement that Israel is conducting “a war of extermination against the Palestinians.” . . . In another new mutation of anti-Semitism, European Jews are now accused of being responsible for Israel’s actions. . . .

The way that ingrained anti-Semitism manifests itself varies not only from subculture to subculture but also from country to country. In January 2014, a mass rally in Paris took place. This “Day of Anger” was not related to any specific Jewish topic, and part of the protest was against French president François Hollande’s economic plans. However, various groups of participants started to shout anti-Semitic slogans. These included, “Jews, France doesn’t belong to you” and [the Holocaust denier] “Faurisson is right,” as well as “the Holocaust was a hoax.”

The same has happened recently in the “Yellow Vest” demonstrations. These are ostensibly a protest against the French president Emmanuel Macron’s decision to raise fuel prices—again, a topic that has nothing to do with Jews. Yet during some of the demonstrations, there have been signs describing Macron as a “whore of the Jews” and as their “puppet.”

Alan Dershowitz: Double Standard for Historical Revisionism

Ford's book, The International Jew, became a bestseller in many parts of the world and was cited at the Nuremberg trials as a work that turned many Germans and Austrians into anti-Semitic Nazi leaders and followers. Ford was the single most influential anti-Semite in the first quarter of the 20th century and beyond.

Yet, according to the New York Times, Ford's "name or likeness graces everything from the performing arts center to the manhole covers." Bill McGraw, a historian of Dearborn, has written that "Ford's attacks on Jews were distributed around the world before and after World War II and, alarmingly, they influence budding neo-Nazis today."

The New York Times continues: "But Mr. McGraw also included in his report an article on how Mr. Ford's descendants have consistently supported Jewish charities and cultural organizations..." These descendants should be praised for those contributions and not condemned for the sins of their ancestor. But the truth about Henry Ford must be told -- to the residents of Dearborn and to the world.

Many buildings are named after Henry Ford, who remains Dearborn's favorite son. It's difficult to go anywhere in Dearborn without encountering the Ford name. Even buildings carrying the generic name Ford are based on his deeply flawed legacy. There is too much honoring of Henry Ford and too little educating about the horrible influence he had on promoting anti-Semitism and Nazism.

I'm not one for destroying or removing statues or other historical works of art, but I strongly believe that these images must be accompanied by contemporary descriptions of the evil deeds committed by those portrayed in the art. Removing the Ford name from Dearborn's Ford Community & Performing Arts Center raises more difficult issues. There is no art, just honoring, in the selection of a name for a center. Henry Ford does not deserve to be honored. The question the good people of Dearborn should ask themselves is: What would you do if the center were named after Jefferson Davis? If the answer is that you would remove Davis's name, then you should remove Ford's. There cannot be differences between how anti-Black, anti-gay, anti-women and anti-Jewish practitioners of bigotry are treated. There must be a single standard for historical revisionism.

Melanie Phillips: Ireland bigotry, EU bares teeth on Brexit

Please join me in the video below for my latest chat about our crazy world with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired. We discuss the bill which is currently going through the Irish parliament to boycott Israeli goods or services produced in the disputed territories or eastern Jerusalem. You can read what I wrote about this piece of poisonous bigotry here.

We also discuss the latest in the Brexit crisis, in which the EU negotiators have decided to double down on their intransigence by refusing to re-open negotiations with the UK in the hope that the supposed chaos caused by leaving the EU with no deal will cause the British to come crawling back on their knees to accept the terms they have so far rejected. What this tells us is that the Eurocrats not only have the mindset of the mafia but really don’t understand democracy, political liberty or the British national character at all.

Go figure... dozens of conflict zones around the world and @PSCupdates and Corbyn only want a musical boycott of the Jewish state.

See their PSC campaign page: https://t.co/5OFdcFi3GQ #Antisemitism #News @COLRICHARDKEMP @CUFI_UK @mishtal @lucianaberger @margarethodge pic.twitter.com/pETVcF97yq
— Jewish Human Rights Watch (@jhrwatch) February 5, 2019

A balloon landed in Moshav Bitkha, near Ofakim, on Sunday night. This time, the colorful rubber orb carried no incendiary device—only a message in Arabic, which read:

"We, the people of Gaza, need medical treatment. Remove the blockade."

Well, “we, the people of Israel” would like to suggest that the blockade has nothing to do with your ability to obtain medical treatment for your people. Take all the European aid you receive and build hospitals. If you want to be a state, don't depend on your neighbors to provide you with basic necessities like medical care.

And don’t go crying to us about your poverty. You’ve launched thousands of rockets, mortars, and missiles into Israel. That costs money. Lots of money.

Take mortars, for instance. They cost $24,717, each. But when Israel hits back, there goes the mortar (and $24,717).

Mortar rounds can get expensive, too. They cost anywhere from $5.52-$438, depending on type.

How about a Grad missile? They cost $1,000 a pop, if you’ll excuse the expression. (As an aside, the cost to intercept them with Iron Dome, is $100,000.)

And then, of course, there’s the Qassam rocket. The raw materials for one of these babies cost $800.

But it’s all actually much more expensive than it appears to wage a war of terror, according to this 2012 Jerusalem Post article by Akiva Hamilton:

And the losses continue once the Grad gets to Gaza, with the IDF regularly destroying rocket caches. Thus, 1,000 Grads, which cost Iran $1 million to purchase, may end up as 300 Grads which cost a further $2 million in “delivery charges.” This turns a $1,000 Grad rocket in Iran into a $10,000 Grad rocket in Gaza.

. . . The strategic implications are that the current rocket-based terror strategy of Hamas and Hezbollah has been rendered both ineffective and economically unsustainable. I estimate it is currently costing Hamas (and thus its patron Iran) around $5m. (500 rockets at $10,000 each) to murder a single Israeli. When Iron Dome reaches 95% interception rate these figures will double and at 97.5% they will double again.

In 2012, the interception rate for Iron Dome was over 90%. It may be higher now, but Israel may not be so eager to share the current interception rate, which may well be regarded as a military secret.

We haven’t even gotten to the cost of constructing all those terror tunnels. The IDF estimates that Hamas spent $30 to $90 million, pouring 600,000 tons of concrete, to build three dozen tunnels from Gaza into Israel. Some of those tunnels cost as much as $3 million to build.

But let’s move away from the costs of terror to talk about all that beautiful aid money. It’s starting to shrink, for sure, as the world wakes up to the corruption of UNRWA, and what it means to fund the Pay for Slay program, but the “West Bank” and Gaza received over $27b in international aid between 1993 and 2013. By now, well. Pshaw. We’re way past that.

And then there’s this UNRWA funding chart from 2016:

That’s an awful lot of money going down the toilet. The people are still poor. And they still need Israel’s hospitals instead of building their own.

By the way, wondering what it costs to build a really nice hospital? The University of Texas Southwestern Hospital, at over 1.3 million square feet and 532 beds, cost $800 million to build. Parkland Memorial, Dallas County's public hospital, at around 2 million square feet with 862 beds, cost $1.3 billion to build. That was in 2017.

University of Texas Southwestern Hospital

Yes. We are all well aware that Hamas keeps this money from the people. We are aware that Hamas offers you incentives to make war on civilian Israel, while starving your families and keeping them in subhuman conditions. But you voted for Hamas in democratic elections. And you are sleeping in the bed you made.

That’s not on us.

We gave you land. We gave you autonomy. We gave you money. We gave you greenhouses.

These are the high-tech greenhouses Israeli settlers built in Gaza, that provided employment for thousands of Palestinians and produced an array of fruits and vegetables in the midst of a barren desert. Rich westerners (including Bill Gates) bought and gave them to the Palestinian Authority when Israel withdrew from Gaza. (photo and caption credit: Tom Gross)

These are how the greenhouses looked a few weeks later, after Palestinians looted and burned them. (photo and caption credit: Tom Gross)

In October 2006, Israeli troops temporarily went back into Gaza in an attempt to stop continuing Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli towns and villages. The Israeli army found that the greenhouses were now being used to build arms-smuggling tunnels. (photo and caption credit: Tom Gross)

But instead of making something of yourselves: making good, and caring for your own, your hate drives you only toward your own self-destruction.

The money will continue to dry up, and as it does, you might take a minute to rethink this whole thing. Build a hospital or two, try to stand on your own two feet.

But we know you won’t. Because you really don’t care if your people live or die.

As long as you can continue to make war against the Jews.

(Thanks to Dov Epstein for assisting in the research for this piece.)

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IDF Causing Palestinian Heart Attacks As Pretext To Give Care, Boost Image (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

: Credit: Medical Corps

Gush Etzion Crossing, February 6 - Israeli soldiers instigate cardiac arrest in vulnerable Palestinians for purposes of treating them and looking good as a result, human rights groups allege in a new report.

Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontièrs, Human Rights Watch, Btselem, and several smaller organizations charge that the IDF not only sees the emergency medical treatment it provides to Palestinians as a public relations opportunity; they allege that it actively foments medical events with the aim of creating publicity for the treatment. The means by which the IDF remotely generates heart attacks, seizures, and other emergencies were not mentioned in the report.

A spokesman for Amnesty told reporters that activists from numerous human rights organizations had monitored interactions between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians, and discovered that in nearly all cases in which a Palestinian required medical attention that did not result from a violent encounter, IDF medics hurried to provide that care. "Obviously that could not be an altruistic act, since this is Israel we're talking about," explained Raul Panim. "But it occurs far too often to be coincidental, and we came to the conclusion that Israel must be engineering these events somehow to help counter the prevailing image of them as sadistic, inhuman, uniquely evil occupiers, an image we are proud to note we payed a large role in creating."

"Of course Amnesty couldn't have done this alone," he continued. "Not just because there are numerous locations where the interactions take place, but also because we've been allocating our limited manpower of late to getting TripAdvisor not to carry Jewish homes in the ancestral Jewish homeland. Because of human rights. Anyway, because we've been devoting most of our recent attention to other aspects of this uniquely evil occupation, Amnesty hasn't had the time to take on this monitoring project itself, and we're happy to collaborate with our partners on it."

The groups plan a follow-up research project to determine the means by which Israel causes the heart attacks and other medical events. "Figuring out that aspect of this conspiracy is beyond our capabilities," conceded Médecins Sans Frontièrs activist Faith Heeler. "Very few of us are involved in actual medical research. So we're going to have to partner with other organizations who are willing to manage that side of things. Fortunately, we've already lined up some enthusiastic partners such as Dr. David Duke, Dr. David Irving, and Dr. Josef Göbbels."

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02/06 Links Pt1: Senate Passes Anti-BDS Measure by 77-23; Marco Rubio: The Truth About B.D.S. and the Lies About My Bill; WH Official: No Need for Equivalency between Israelis and Palestinians

From Ian:

Marco Rubio (NYTs): The Truth About B.D.S. and the Lies About My Bill

A bipartisan supermajority in the Senate passed the Combating BDS Act on Tuesday. Yet a few of my colleagues recently echoed false claims made by anti-Israel activists and others that the bill violates Americans' First Amendment rights.

That line of argument is not only wrong but also provides cover for supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, who embrace an international campaign of discriminatory economic warfare against Israel, a fellow democracy and America's strongest ally in the Middle East.

In a high-profile case in 2014, the BDS movement drove the Israeli company SodaStream from the West Bank. Five hundred Palestinian employees were left jobless by the move.

The Combating BDS Act does not prohibit Americans' right to engage in boycotts. It focuses on business entities - not individuals - and, consistent with the Supreme Court, it focuses on conduct, not speech. It does not restrict citizens or associations of citizens from engaging in political speech, including against Israel.

Rather, the bill merely clarifies that entities - such as corporations or companies - have no fundamental right to government contracts and government investment.

"Anti-discrimination restrictions on government contractors are commonplace and a normal requirement for government funding," Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at George Mason University, notes.

Senate Passes Anti-BDS Measure by 77-23

The U.S. Senate approved in a 77-23 vote a bill that codifies $38 billion in defense assistance to Israel and which provides legal cover to states that target the boycott Israel movement.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., had stirred controversy because a number of Democratic senators said that while they oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, they were also concerned that state laws aimed at BDS impinged on speech freedoms.

Among the Democratic dissenters were declared presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California. Non-declared but likely presidential contenders who voted included Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sherrod Brown of Ohio who voted against; and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota who voted for. The sole Republican voting against was Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Rubio, writing Wednesday in The New York Times, defended the bill against charges that it would violate free speech. Democrats supporting the anti-BDS component included Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

The bill now goes to the U.S. House of Representatives where the Democratic majority will break it up into its components, and its leadership is likely to bury the anti-BDS section while advancing the other components.

In addition to the money for Israel and the proposed anti-BDS laws, the bill intensifies sanctions on Syria’s Assad government and reinforces ties with Jordan.

David Singer: Hamas and PFLP Embroil USA and EU in Plans to Destroy Israel

A look at just one organisation – Al-Haq – headquartered in Ramallah and operating in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), the Netherlands, France, and Northern Europe – indicates the modus operandi that similarly exist in the others.

Al-Haq (established in 1979):

Has Governmental Sponsors: European Union, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Ireland

Received Grants from Governmental Sources, 2014-2018: Over $3 million

Published with a group of French NGOs a report in March 2017 entitled “The Dangerous Liaisons of French Banks with the Israeli Colonization”.

Leads the legal effort to delegitimize Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague

Shawan Jabarin, General Director of Al-Haq since 2006, served as a senior PFLP official in the past and at least until recently maintained close ties with PFLP operatives in Judea and Samaria. Jabarin was tried and convicted for his military activity in the PFLP and has served multiple prison sentences.
Jabarin was described in a 2007 Israeli Supreme Court case by the presiding judge as:
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Some of his time is spent in conducting a human rights organization, and some as an operative in an organization which has no qualms regarding murder and attempted murder, which have no relation whatsoever to rights. Quite the opposite, they reject the most basic right of all, without which there are no other rights, that is, the right to life.”

Three other PFLP members arrested by Israel are also identified as working or having worked for Al-Haq: Ziyad Hmeidan, Zahi Jaradat and Majed Abbadi.

European and American funding of these organisations should be banned, their offices in the USA and EU closed – and those identified as Hamas and PFLP members deported.

Terrorists in suits denigrating and delegitimising Israel in slick racist and ongoing deceptive public relations campaigns of lies and half-truths – can be just as dangerous as terrorists armed to the teeth.

The EU and America must stop being played for suckers by these Jew-hating organisations.

Back in 2013, the Israel Foreign Ministry launched a Twitter account, @IsraelintheGCC, to speak directly with the Arabs of states in the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.

It fizzled out in 2014 with very few posts, all of which were in English.

Now it has been relaunched, in Arabic. Ofir Gendelman, the spokesperson to Arab media for Israel, announced on his Twitter "To our dear Gulf followers, follow this account, which is intended for you to broaden the dialogue between us and you."

One of the first posts shows a video of Israeli innovations narrated by an Arabic speaker.

إبتكارات إسرائيلية تجعل حياتنا أفضل

هل تعلم أن إسرائيليين اخترعوا جهازًا يحول الهواء إلى ماء وتكنولوجيا تمكن السيارات من القيادة بشكل ذاتي؟ فيما يلي معلومات عن ابتكارات إسرائيلية قد تجعل حياتنا أفضل. pic.twitter.com/gsLdCw2Ezu
— إسرائيل في الخليج (@IsraelintheGCC) February 5, 2019

Most of the responses are typical of the Arab responses to any Israeli initiative in Arabic - cursing Israel. But as you scroll down there are a significant number of Arabs who are fans of Israel, who support peace and who see positive possibilities in normalizing relations with Israel.

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Palestinians were leaders in "stochastic terrorism" before the term was invented

The current Wired magazine has a "Jargon Watch" article about a hot phrase, "Stochastic Terrorism:"

In 2011, after the shooting of US representative Gabby Giffords, a Daily Kos blog warned of a new threat the writer called stochastic terrorism: the use of mass media to incite attacks by random nut jobs—acts that are “statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.”

The term is in Dictionary.com and other reference works online.

As is often the case with all forms of terrorism, like suicide bombing and airplane hijackings, Palestinians are the innovators of this type of terrorism.

During the Oslo process in the 1990s, Israel insisted on a committee to monitor Palestinian media for incitement to terror, for precisely this reason - people could perform attacks or join terror groups based on what they read in their media.

The "lone wolf" attacks against Israeli Jews have ramped up in recent years, notably the "knife intifada" that started in 2015 with a wave of "random" stabbings and car rammings that were done by individuals. But the wave started shortly after Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech where he said, “Al-Aqsa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won’t allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem.”

This was a call to violence where Abbas could claim that he was not directly inciting. But the effects could be predicted. And sure enough, the attacks came.

Similarly, a wave of violence in 2017 after Israel installed metal detectors around the Temple Mount in response to another terror attack was prompted by media coverage of the defensive measures.

Israel has been working hard to try to predict the unpredictable, by monitoring social media posts that often can indicate that a person is preparing an attack. The entire reason that they have to do this is because Palestinians are the world leaders in stochastic terrorism.

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Arabs upset: New President of El Salvador, of Palestinian descent, is a fan of Israel

The National reports:

Cast aside from El Salvador’s ruling party, a businessman, former mayor and figure of Palestinian descent surged to a decisive victory by carving an uncustomary path to the top.

Nayib Bukele, a 37-year-old who was dubbed the “millennial mayor” of San Salvador, won around 54 per cent in the election to secure the presidency of this small Central American nation, representing the right-wing party known as Grand Alliance for National Unity. That was after being expelled from the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front party and then prevented from forming his own party.

His victory was not only notable in that he became the first ruler to end a two-party system that had presided over the country since the end of its civil war in 1992, but he became its second-ever leader of Palestinian descent after Tony Sacca, who led from 2004 to 2009.

Around 100,000 Salvadorans with Palestinian ancestry live in the country out of a population of 6.5 million, ranking it as the second highest population of Palestinian descendants in Central America behind Honduras.

The former mayor traces his Palestinians roots to the early 20th century, when many left the cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem to find a new home in El Salvador. Some left for a better life while others were escaping from conscription under Ottoman rule at the time.

Palestinian joy at this victory has been short-lived. Because a year ago. Bukele, as mayor, visited Israel.

He was honored by Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat. (He also met with the mayor of Tel Aviv.)

He laid a wreath at Yad Vashem:

And he visited the Kotel:

An analyst in El Salvador praised Bukele at the time, saying that while the government and leading parties at the time were visiting Venezuela and Cuba, Bukele wanted to visit Israel where the Jews made the desert bloom, where Israelis can teach El Salvador how to farm more efficiently and a much better partner for the future.

Palestinians were upset at Bukele's visit at the time, and they are not celebrating his election now. Al Araby is typical in saying that by this visit "denies the suffering of his ancestors." Video of his visit to Israel is being shared on social network sites.

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02/05 Links Pt2: Why has HRW become an anti-Israel activist group?; Why Democrats embrace antisemitism and anti-Israel bias; How the BDS movement is poisoning academic discourse

From Ian:

Could Jewish and Zionist Leaders Have Done More to Rescue the Jews of Poland?

In the view of Philip Roth’s narrator in The Plot Against America—a fictional account of how fascism might have come to the United States in 1940—history as schoolchildren study it is the story “turned wrong way around”: a tale told after the fact, with “everything . . . chronicled on the page as inevitable.” By contrast, the narrator asserts, history experienced in real time is a story of the “relentless unforeseen.”

Historians have a term—“hindsight history”—for accounts that ignore the daunting uncertainties and moral dilemmas presented by history as it actually unfolds. That is precisely what Jehuda Reinharz and Yaacov Shavit set themselves against in their important and provocative book The Road to September 1939: Polish Jews, Zionists, and the Yishuv on the Eve of World War II (2018). Bringing us right up to the edge of the destruction of European and particularly of Polish Jewry, they seek to recover the story of the “relentless unforeseen.” As they put it in the book’s preface:

We do not intend to describe the events by reading history backward. We have tried not to read the story from its endpoint, but rather to tell it as much as possible in the “present.” Before August 1939, as well as during that month, no one really knew what was in store. It is only a retrospective reading that determines that the events moved inexorably toward an unequaled calamity and that it was impossible to halt their course.

The authors are themselves distinguished historians. Reinharz has to his credit a magisterial two-volume biography of the great Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, a major figure in the events narrated here, and Shavit is a longtime scholar of another major figure of the time, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, and of Jabotinsky’s Poland-centered Revisionist Zionist movement. With an important exception to be discussed below, the two authors succeed admirably at their task. Theirs is an extraordinary account of a horrific time, told mostly through the letters, diaries, and recorded thoughts of those who lived through it.

Moreover, in telling this tale of uncertainty, the authors shed light on a key question that has troubled—and still troubles—countless minds: could Jewish and Zionist leaders have done more than they did to rescue the Jews of Poland?

Why has Human Rights Watch become an anti-Israel activist group?

Jabarin denies his PFLP connections while he continues to assail Israel through his NGO, which has called for a European boycott on Jewish goods from the West Bank and a French financial boycott of Israel. Jabarin submitted several reports to the International Criminal Court as part of an anti-Israel lawfare campaign, and he was instrumental in the recent push in Ireland to criminalize business transactions with Jewish businesses in the West Bank.

Jabarin is not al-Haq’s only contribution to HRW. A former legal researcher with al-Haq, Anan AbuShanab, is currently HRW’s West Bank researcher. There is also Charles Shamas, a co-founder of al-Haq, who has been an HRW adviser since at least 2002. Shamas also founded the MATTIN Group, which lobbied Europe to exclude Israeli products from free trade agreements.

HRW has since joined several other controversial BDS campaigns. This includes the malicious 2015 effort to lobby the U.N. to blacklist Israel as an abuser of children in armed conflict. In 2016, the group unsuccessfully petitioned the world soccer federation FIFA to block matches in Israeli settlements.

In January 2016, HRW published “ Occupation, Inc.,” a report claiming Israeli businesses in the West Bank contribute to Palestinian human rights violations. The U.N. Human Rights Council, the group former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley blasted as a “cesspool of political bias,” soon called for a blacklist of companies operating in Israeli settlements, in line with HRW’s vision. HRW brass cheered the move and even recommended three companies to blacklist for good measure.

In October 2016, HRW hired BDS advocate Omar Shakir as its new Israel-Palestine director. In 2017 and 2018, HRW began pressuring banks to cease operations in Israeli settlements. It was also around this time that HRW began lobbying Airbnb and Booking.com to delist Jewish properties in the West Bank. When Airbnb relented in November, Arvind Ganesan, business and human Rights director at HRW, crowed, “Airbnb has taken a stand against discrimination, displacement, and land theft.”

While HRW may do serious work on other issues, it is now an activist group aligned with a vitriolic movement. The connection to al-Haq may explain some of this. But it’s unclear why HRW’s leadership, beginning with Executive Director Kenneth Roth, allowed an otherwise mainstream group to become a ringleader for BDS.

Did WCC Activists Attend A Birthday Party Promoted by Palestinian Extremist Organization?

This is why it is so troubling that WCC and EAPPI officials have not responded to queries posted on Twitter regarding the party. The question is a pretty simple one: Did EAPPI activists attend a propagandistic birthday party promoted by Palestinian Human Rights Defenders, an anti-normalization organization that seeks to drive Jews from their homes in Hebron?

If the answer is no, great!

If the answer is yes, well, then the WCC owes Israel and its citizens an apology for allowing its peace activists to affiliate with people who promote hatred and hostility toward Jews in the Holy Land in clear contradiction of the organization’s stated opposition to antisemitism and violence.

This would not be the first time EAPPI activists have associated with promoters of hatred in the West Bank. They made regular visits to Hasan Breijieh, coordinator for the Committee Against the Wall and spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in the 1990s.

Watch this video here to see Breijieh being accompanied by two EAPPI activists as he harasses Jews outside their homes — on shabbat no less — in the West Bank. He's also written a poem that looks forward to the murder of Jews living in the West Bank.

Neo-Nazis do like one thing about Jewish media domination (ElderToons)

I've noted before that neo-Nazi websites love to quote left-wing Jewish publications and people like Max Blumenthal to prove their points that Jews are all evil.

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Arab News has a typical anti-Israel screed by Chris Doyle, director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding.

He writes, "Israel was a child of the UN, born out of a General Assembly resolution. Yet, as many children often are, it has remained distinctly ungrateful. "

No, the UN resolution that partitioned Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state is not what created Israel.

UN General Assembly Resolutions have no legal weight unless all parties agree to them, in which case it is their agreement that gives it legal status. When the Arabs rejected the resolution, it lost any legal force it may have potentially had.

The UN didn't create modern Israel. Zionist Jews did, by building the institutions of a state while resisting the attempts of the Arab world to eradicate them.

I see even Zionists make this argument as well.

Israel wasn't created by a piece of paper. It was created by sweat and blood of Jews who have dreamt and prayed for returning to Zion for two thousand years. They built the state, they declared the state, they defended the state - and the world accepted the state despite the opposition of the Arab world.

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02/05 Links Pt1: BDS Terrorists; Abbas accuses U.S. of no longer being qualified to act as peace broker; PA vows to continue payments to prisoners, families of ‘martyrs’

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: BDS Terrorists

A Strategic Affairs Ministry report released this week with the catchy title “Terrorists in Suits,” reveals more than 100 different connections linking terrorists groups to organizations that promote anti-Israel boycotts, including “the employment of 30 current and ‘retired’ terror operatives.”

Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said: “Terrorist groups and the anti-Israel boycott campaign have united in their goal of wiping Israel off the map. Terrorist groups view boycotts as a complementary tactic to terror attacks.”

We’re not talking about Roger Waters and his ilk: This is not just the ugly face of an artist who has decided to make it his life’s work to present a false image of Israel as an apartheid-era South Africa and call for the boycott of events, such as the Eurovision Song Contest scheduled to be held in Tel Aviv in May.

The report reveals a deeper, darker phenomenon: It shows how Hamas and the PFLP (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) have ties to at least 13 anti-Israel NGOs, and have managed to place more than 30 of their members in senior positions inside these groups. This includes 20 members who have previously sat in jail, some for murder. The report “shows how boycott organizations and terrorist-designated organizations raise finances together and share the same personnel – and showcases that, contrary to popular belief, these officials have not abandoned their support for terrorism, but instead continue to maintain organizational, financial and active ties with terrorist groups.”

The BDS organizations were shown to have received millions of euros in funding from European countries and philanthropic foundations, in addition to funds raised through crowdfunding, banks and other means.

One of the most notorious names in the report is Leila Khaled, who became the poster girl of the PFLP in the 1970s for her involvement in the hijacking of two airliners. According to the report, in 2011 she was found to have taken coordinated actions for a terrorist cell planning to attack sites in Jerusalem, and has not renounced “armed struggle.”

Khaled remains active in the PFLP, a designated terrorist organization, but has been invited to address the Irish National Teachers’ Organization and to appear at an arts festival in Barcelona, for example. The Johannesburg City Council in South Africa last year even proposed that a street be named after her.

Sohrab Ahmari: A Papal Visit to the United Arab Emirates Bodes Well for the Region, and for Israel

On Sunday, Pope Francis became the first pontiff to visit the Arabian Peninsula when he arrived in Abu Dhabi for an interfaith conference sponsored by the United Arab Emirates’ Muslim Council of Elders. Sohrab Ahmari puts the visit in context:
The invitation to the [pope] solidifies the UAE’s status as the most responsible power in the Persian Gulf region. And it gives testament to the Emirati leadership’s determination to transcend the bloody, cruel fanaticism that has disfigured the House of Islam and brought ruin to Christians and other minorities unfortunate enough to dwell inside it. . . .

A reform vision defines the UAE’s geopolitical posture as well. Threatened by the expansionist Tehran regime, Abu Dhabi (along with Riyadh) has forged a strategic partnership with Jerusalem that is the region’s worst-kept secret. But in the UAE’s case, the ties go beyond “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Since 2010, three Israeli cabinet ministers have visited the UAE to discuss infrastructure, energy, and sports. As Zaki Nusseibeh, a minister of state and adviser to the late Sheikh Zayed, [the Emirates’ founder], told me: “There is no enmity between us and the state of Israel.”

Opinion polling suggests that the UAE leadership’s enlightened attitudes have begun to filter down to the populace. A YouGov survey conducted ahead of the pope’s visit found that Emiratis are much less likely to be concerned if a close relative marries a Christian than their neighbors in Saudi Arabia and Egypt would be. And while only about a third of Egyptians and Saudis expressed fears about Islamic extremism, more than half of Emiratis did. . . .

[T]rue, the country isn’t any sort of liberal democracy. Virtually all UAE Muslims, for example, hear the same sermon at Friday prayers—one drafted by a government-approved committee charged with countering radicalism. That goes against every liberal instinct in the West’s bones, but if it means fewer Islamic State atrocities here or in our homelands, I’ll take
it. The common good isn’t always and everywhere served by our form of government.

Dem Reps Signal Support for U.S. Recognition of Israeli Sovereignty Over Golan Heights

Two Democratic lawmakers from New York signaled on Monday that they might support the United States officially recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

"The only thing the Golan has ever been used for by the Syrians is to bombard Israel," Rep. Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) told Jewish Insider. "They can’t have that again. It’s unsafe."

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.) said she would support U.S. recognition of Israel's sovereignty over the region if Democratic leadership is on board.

"If our leadership supports it, I don’t see what the problem is," Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.) said. "So I will be supporting it, but only if it goes through the [House Foreign Affairs Committee] and is supported by the committee."

Israel has maintained control over the contested region for 51 years after taking control in 1967 during the Six Day War. Israel defended itself during the conflict from attacks brought by Syria and other Arab nations in the region. In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights. Since then, the U.S. has refused to recognize the region as sovereign territory of Jewish state.

Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) introduced a resolution in December of last year that would have the Senate recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed the matter with John Bolton, the U.S. national security advisor, when the two met last month.

Democratic support for the measure appears to be growing. Rep. Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said last month that he supports the measure.

On March 18th, the UN Human Rights Council will launch an unprecedented assault on Israel, with 7 reports accusing the Jewish state of war crimes.

There'll be 0 on China, Turkey, Cuba & other of the world's worst regimes.

Join me on March 18 in Geneva to say: Enough is enough. pic.twitter.com/O5f6a36VCK
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) February 4, 2019

Is 'Democratic Majority for Israel' Intended To Clean Up J Street's Mess? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Get the popcorn: J Street is getting some competition.

The Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) is a new group, presenting itself as "the pro-Israel voice of Democrats."

How new is DMFI?

So new, that when I did a search by name to find their website -- it showed up at the bottom of the first page of hits -- and that was a paid advertised link.

Here is their introductory video:

According to the Democratic Majority for Israel website, their mission is to:

o Maintain and Strengthen Support for Israel Among Grassroots Progressives and Democratic Leaders
o Advance Policies to Ensure a Peaceful and Secure Israel
o Defend Israel’s Legitimacy
o Promote a Two-State Solution and Arab-Israeli Peace through Diplomacy and Partnership
o Encourage American Global Leadership
o Promote Progressive Values
o Educate and Support Democratic Leaders

The group even supports the 2 state solution, which leaves the question: what does DMFI aim to do that J Street has not been doing?

Mark Mellman, CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel, and Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street recently addressed this question with the JTA.

Mellman stated that “a central thrust for us is making sure the Democratic Party remains pro-Israel” at a time when Israel is facing increasing attacks by some within the Democratic party.

Mark Mellman, President and CEO, Democratic Majority for Israel. Screen capture from YouTube video

In his response, Jeremy Ben-Ami did not claim to be defending Israel form these attacks. Instead, he charged that the DMFI website lacked substance and asked, "would they have supported the Iran deal, do they support two states, would they support Democrats who want to reinstate funding for UNRWA."

But the group does support the 2 state solution, and as far as the Iran deal goes, Mellman responded that the deal was "old news".

It's hard not to think that to some extent, the apparent need for The Democratic Majority for Israel is an indictment of the failure of J Street.

Gregg Roman, Director of Middle East Forum, wrote in a piece for The Hill already in 2017 about J Street's Dead End:

For eight years J Street supported Obama's destructive policies toward Israel like the unilateral settlement freeze, nuclear détente with Iran, and his allowance for international condemnation of Israeli communities in the West Bank.

Roman goes so far as to say that considering the influence they had during the Obama years, J Street shares some of the responsibility for the failure to get peace talks off the ground during those 8 years.

Last year, David M. Weinberg , vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, went a step further - asking the question: Is J Street Still Pro-Israel?

J Street has become something else altogether: an organization that spends almost all its time and money besmirching Israel, smearing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other leading American Jewish organizations, boosting US-Iran relations, and backing political candidates for whom promoting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement is a badge of honor.

Even granting that J Street endorses Democratic candidates for Congress, as DMFI will do, the question remains: which Democrats has J Street been supporting?

J Street has supported allegedly "pro-Israel" Democrats such as Representative Mark Pocan, who in 2017 anonymously reserved official Capitol Hill space for an anti-Israel forum put together by organizations that support boycotts and Representative Hank Johnson, who referred to Israelis living in Judea and Samaria as 'termites.'

J Street has endorsed Keith Ellison, despite his ties to Farrakhan - and has defended Ellison, claiming that criticism of Ellison was actually "a concerted and transparent smear campaign driven by those whose true objections may be to the Congressman’s religion, strong support for the two-state solution or concern for Palestinian rights."

This past year, J Street endorsed Rashida Tlaib, who

o supported Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh
o supported Islamic Relief, which has links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
o retweeted a post from Linda Sarsour supporting Ahed Tamimi, who was jailed for incitement and assaulting an IDF soldier -- and upon release voiced support for suicide bombing.
Later, J Street withdraw their endorsement -- but only because Tlaib reneged on her support of J Street's precious 2 state solution.

This problem with J Street goes back to its origins.

According to a video they put out in 2018, J Street's beginnings go back to Howard Dean's presidential campaign in 2004, when Ben-Ami defended Dean, who advocated a balanced role for the US that supported both Israel and the Palestinian Arabs:

The video itself uses articles dating back to the last few months of 2003.

But an article written by Ron Kampeas for JTA in 2006 paints a different picture, noting the involvement of Soros in the early meetings that year that led to the start of J Street.

A meeting in September included, in addition to Morton Halperin, a director of Soros’ Open Society Institute and Ben-Ami, members of Israel Policy Forum, Americans For Peace Now and Brit Tzedek. Those 3 groups are credited with the lobbying efforts at the time that derailed the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, legislation that would have cut off US aid to the Palestinian Authority unless it renounced terrorism and recognized Israel.

One can already see the source of J Street's current agenda.

The article noted that a second meeting was scheduled for the following month, but the goals were not clear:

Some participants speak of wrapping together a number of the existing groups at some future date; others speak of a support structure that would back the groups as they continue to operate separately.

But there are hints of other groups secretly supporting The Democratic Majority for Israel as well.

J Street claims that it opposes the new group because they see DMFI as an ally of AIPAC and the pro-Israel mainstream, and The Forward quotes an unnamed source that goes one step further, claiming that AIPAC is behind DMFI:

For years, even before this last election, AIPAC has been discussing credibility problems with progressives at the highest level,” a pro-Israel Democrat familiar with AIPAC’s works, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely, told the Forward. “And they have been exploring the possibility of creating a Democratic group that would push AIPAC policy and fight the pro-Israel fight within the Democratic Party. That’s something they’ve been discussing for years.

Out of DMFI's 15 board members, 11 of them have either worked or volunteered for AIPAC, or have donated to it or spoken at its events. Also, the company that made DMFI’s announcement video has a long working relationship with AIPAC, and designed their Policy Conference app.

Whether there is any truth to a direct connection between the 2 groups or not, there seem to be forces at work that may be trying to create an anti-J Street, just as J Street was conceived as an anti-AIPAC.

2019 will not be a boring year.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Palestinian attackers hailed as "heroes" by Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah

On Monday night, IDF troops shot and killed a 19 year old who hurled an explosive device at them from a motorcycle.

Last week, a teenaged girl tried to stab soldiers and was shot and killed.

Both of these teens are being hailed as heroes by the party led by the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who tells people he is against violence.

Here's a Fatah poster for the 19 year old:

Although Fatah's Facebook page doesn't mention his attack, the poster calls him "the heroic martyr Abdallah Abu Taleb" - and they don't use the word "hero" for people killed unless they were attackers.

Here's a cartoon about the girl on Fatah's Facebook page:

Perhaps she is going to Paradise to have sex with the male terrorists, who Palestinian children are taught are rewarded with 72 virgins.

Anyone who claims that Abbas doesn't encourage violence never spends time reading the material put out daily by his own people.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Amnesty's obsession with Jews continues

Ever since Amnesty International released its truly antisemitic report last week on how TripAdvisor dares to list Jewish-owned properties in Judea and Samaria, it is been pushing this report incessantly on Twitter.

19 out of 30 tweets since then, spread over nearly a week, have been about that topic, and all the other human rights topics of the world have been put on the back burner.

Here is a chart showing the topic of Amnesty's tweets since January 30:

What do you call it when someone is obsessed with the idea that Jews, and only Jews, living in their historic homeland, do not have the same rights as every other human being on the planet?

It sure isn't "human rights."

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

02/04 Links Pt2: How Anti-BDS Laws Went Viral; Why BDS can't topple Eurovision; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed for call with Corbyn; Imam of Peace visits Auschwitz

From Ian:

How Anti-BDS Laws Went Viral

Two of the most influential people in the country when it comes to American policies toward Israel are a Mormon state representative in South Carolina who used to be an Eagle Scout and a Jewish law professor in Virginia who used to study pirates. You likely haven’t heard of Alan Clemmons or Eugene Kontorovich, but around three-quarters of Americans live in states with laws written or inspired by them — laws that aim to protect Israel from the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Versions of their bill, which bans state entities from investing or contracting in companies that participate in BDS, have been passed by 25 other states since Clemmons shepherded it into law in his state in 2015.

Pro-Israel groups – most notably the Israel Allies Foundation, which brought Kontorovich and Clemmons together - have spread them nationwide, ensuring their passage with strong bipartisan majorities despite the complaints of civil liberties advocates and pro-Palestinian groups. Advocates have tried to keep the laws consistent across states, but have managed to adapt when necessary. Now they’re using the same viral techniques to create statewide legislation to officially define anti-Semitism in a way that includes anti-Zionism.

The anti-BDS bills have spread so far and so fast that the sponsor of the one in Missouri – who said he knows Clemmons well – told the Forward he had no idea that the South Carolinian sponsored the original law.

“The way I see it, BDS efforts are an attempt to harm America’s staunchest ally, and at worst, attempt to destroy the state of Israel,” said Bob Onder, the Republican state senator in Missouri who sponsored the bill.

Clemmons and the IAF did not respond to requests for comment. Kontorovich said he did not have time to respond before the Forward’s deadline.

It’s not just about statehouses anymore. The U.S. Senate has involved itself in protecting these bills. Senators voted this week to advance a bill that would give legal cover to states that pass the anti-BDS laws.

The law’s origin story, as The Jerusalem Post explored, goes something like this: While on a junket to Israel in 2014, Clemmons met with a factory owner who exports automotive filters to South Carolina but said the BDS movement was already hindering sales in Europe. On that same trip, Clemmons met Kontorovich, who had previously focused on international law, and shared his concerns.

The pair worked together with the IAF, a small not-for-profit whose primary mission used to be arranging meetings between Christian legislators and parliamentarians in the U.S. and Europe with their Israeli counterparts. Kontorovich crafted the law’s structure, Clemmons introduced it as a bill, and the Israel Allies Foundation secured the support of other Jewish and pro-Israel organizations to further lobby and advise its nationwide network of legislators about how to best pursue a version of their own.

And to think Syd Barrett is considered the most insane member of Pink Floyd. https://t.co/HFpcMwRPk9
— Cam Edwards (@CamEdwards) February 4, 2019

Why’s Germany’s Best Known Jewish Journalist Giving Speeches to Its Holocaust-Downplaying, Far-Right Party?

The evolution for Broder from young left-wing radical to his current position entertaining neo-Nazis in the Bundestag has been a strange one. In a 2013 profile in Tablet, David Mikics called him “Germany’s Most Annoying Jew,” and compared Broder to the deceased gadfly Christopher Hitchens—another writer with a penchant for provocation and whiplash-inducing swerves in his public positions. In 1986, Broder published a book, The Eternal Anti-Semite, that took aim at all kind of anti-Semites, from conventional right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis to the far left in all its esoteric varieties. At the heart of the book, there is an argument, as Mikics wrote, that “there’s a link between the obsessive thinking about the Holocaust in Germany and what he sees as an increasing German tendency to condemn Israel.”

Yet the members of the AfD for whom Broder offered his recent friendly address exhibit a different disturbing tendency regarding the Holocaust. Rather than obsessing over it as a vehicle for condemning Israel they suggest that it wasn’t really so bad and thus not worth the fuss, let alone an historical obsession. Notoriously, AfD chapter leader Björn Höcke has called the German Holocaust Memorial a “memorial of shame.”

The younger Broder could be bold and insightful. He was correct in 1976 when he condemned the anti-Semites of the German left for joining forces with Palestinian anti-Semites in Entebbe. He was also correct in documenting the spread of anti-Americanism and pro-Islamism across vast parts of the German mainstream immediately after 9/11.

Indeed, there was a time when Broder demonstrated a degree of intellectual consistency in his condemnations of anti-Semitism; attacks on targets of both the left and the right. In 2007, he mocked Jewish journalist Michel Friedman, former deputy president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, for the foolhardy idea of interviewing Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi Horst Mahler. The incident prompted Broder to write in the leading weekly political magazine Der Spiegel, that some Jews have “no dignity” at all in their willingness to speak to Jew haters. He argued, as well, against the pro-Iranian ultra-Orthodox Vienna “Chief Rabbi” Moshe Arye Friedman who went to Tehran’s infamous Holocaust denial conference.

But a staunch opposition to Islamism and the “Red-Green Axis” of the left and political Islam, along with his fervent support for Israel made him hostile toward the values of political correctness and German immigration policies and increasingly sympathetic to the far right.

After a long drift into far-right circles, Broder’s final break with reality seems to have occurred in 2014, a few years earlier than the rise of Trumpism in the U.S., with the right-wing nationalist Pegida movement, “Patriots against the Islamization of the Occident.”

Israel’s Beresheet is first private spacecraft to shoot for the moon

“Moon of Israel” is an epic 1924 film from the golden era of silent movies, and helped launch the directing career of Michael Curtiz, of “Casablanca” fame. Sequels seldom live up to the original.

But if Israel’s plans to put a robotic lander on the moon in February 2019 can be considered a sequel, this new “Moon of Israel” mission, led by the nonprofit company SpaceIL, will be a blockbuster in its own right.

Lunar landings date back to the 1960s. The United States landed 12 people on six separate occasions as part of the Apollo program, along with robotic spacecraft such as Surveyor, which served as a precursor to human missions. The Soviet Union preformed robotic Luna missions and landed Lunokhod automated rovers in the 1970s. Most recently China landed the Chang’e 4 robotic probe on the back side of the moon.

These missions are all amazing technical accomplishments, and marvels of human know-how, sponsored and built by large government space agencies.

The moon’s next visitor is different. SpaceIL’s Beresheet – Hebrew for “In the Beginning” — will become the first privately funded mission to launch from Earth and land on the moon, and the first spacecraft to propel itself over the lunar surface after landing by “hopping” on its rocket engine to a second landing spot. The mission marks yet another milestone, not only in the history and technical arc of space exploration, but also in how humankind goes about space exploration.