Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 04, 2019

03/04 Links Pt1: The UN's humanitarian propaganda war; Vatican to open archives on WWII-era pope accused of silence on Holocaust; 2 soldiers wounded in car ramming, 2 terrorists killed

From Ian:

Gerald M. Steinberg: The UN's humanitarian propaganda war

For decades, American taxpayers have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into United Nations "aid" agencies that went to promote Palestinian propaganda wars against Israel. The most notorious is UNRWA (the specialized Palestinian refugee framework created in 1949), which was finally cut off last year.

But the problem continues in other and in some ways even more virulent forms. For example, the "Occupied Palestinian Territory" branch of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA-oPt) is also neck-deep in political warfare and demonization.

Under the guise of providing aid, this agency sends out a constant flow of false accusations, including reports to the Security Council and "news items" promoted on its specialized ReliefWeb media platform. The officials also coordinate the agendas of dozens of NGOs that are active in these political attacks. The anti-Israel Norwegian Refugee Council and the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) are among their main partners in promoting radical goals.

But the façade that has protected OCHA-oPt and its partners is being slowly stripped away. Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N.'s "Humanitarian Coordinator," complained that "U.N. Watch and NGO Monitor (the organization I founded and lead) are out there to delegitimize humanitarian action in Palestine, including allegations of misconduct and misuse of funds." In January, his organization's bulletin warned against what they refer to as Israeli "de-legitimization, access restrictions, and administrative constraints," and warned about a nefarious "network of Israeli civil society groups … with the apparent support of the Israeli government." No details are provided – only shadowy allegations and hints of dark conspiracies. For the record, NGO Monitor neither requests nor receives any support from any government, unlike OCH-oPt's circle of friends.

JPost Editorial: Defeating terrorism

The UK officially designated the entire Hezbollah organization as a terrorist group last week, following a debate in parliament days after UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid announced his plan to have the government do so. Previously, it had recognized Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist organization, but not its political wing.

As a result, this past June – when Iran’s al-Quds Day against Israel coincided with the last Friday of Ramadan – may have been the last time someone will be able to see the despicable sight of thousands of demonstrators waving Hezbollah flags on the streets of London.

The vote in parliament has not yet taken place, but the UK government has taken a clear stand against terrorism and the kind of Iranian expansionism that Hezbollah represents, being Tehran’s proxy in Lebanon and in parts of Syria. Hezbollah regularly threatens Israel – not only in words, but also by stockpiling rockets and missiles, and building cross-border tunnels into the North, several of which were recently destroyed by the IDF.

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s administration said the decision was made “on the basis that it is no longer tenable to distinguish between the military and political wings of Hezbollah... [which] continues to amass weapons in direct contravention of UN Security Council Resolutions, putting the security of the region at risk.”

Javid said that: “Hezbollah is continuing in its attempts to destabilize the fragile situation in the Middle East,” and UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “We cannot... be complacent when it comes to terrorism. It is clear the distinction between Hezbollah’s military and political wings does not exist... Its destabilizing activities in the region are totally unacceptable and detrimental to the UK’s national security.”

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said soon after Javid’s announcement that her government may follow Britain’s lead – and they should be encouraged to do so.

But despite these strong arguments that Hezbollah is not only a threat to Israel, but a destabilizing force for the entire Middle East – with the potential to harm Western and British interests as well – Germany said this weekend that it is not convinced that it should ban the terrorist organization.

Mazel Tov! Daughter of hero Ari Fuld, who died saving others, gets married

Tamar Fuld, the daughter of Ari Fuld, who was murdered in a terrorist attack at the Gush Etzion Junction in September, tied the knot on Sunday night to Michaya Beasley.

The wedding was a bittersweet event, as the joy of the couple's union mingled with the deep sadness at Ari's absence. There wasn't a dry eye in the room when Tamar's mother walked her to the chuppa, according to one of the wedding guests.

MK Bezalel Smotrich, whose political aide is Ari's brother, Eitan Fuld, wrote on his Twitter account after the wedding: "I'm leaving the wedding of Tamar and Michaya. Tamar is the daughter of Ari Fuld, who was murdered less than a half a year ago while saving others from being harmed in a heroic pursuit after the terrorist who stabbed him. A hero of Israel in his life and his death. Ari is the brother of my amazing political partner, Eitan."

Ari Fuld, 45, left his home for a routine shopping trip and became a national legend for the way he shot a terrorist after he himself was mortally wounded near the Rami Levy supermarket in the Gush Etzion junction.

The father of four, Fuld was the grandson of a Holocaust survivor and had miraculously dodged a bullet while serving as an IDF soldier in Lebanon.

Less than 6 months ago, Ari Fuld was stabbed to death by a terrorist. In an heroic act, he prevented him from further attacking innocent civilians before succumbing. Today his daughter Tamar married her fiancé. Am Israel Chai!
pic.twitter.com/NPLsc0nUbq
— Dani Dayan (@AmbDaniDayan) March 4, 2019

Let's pretend the worst about "pinkwashing"

As we've discussed before, "pinkwashing" is the accusation that Israel treats gays so well purely in order to whitewash its many, many crimes against Palestinians. Therefore, the logic goes, Israel gets no credit for doing anything moral because even Israel's moral acts are ultimately immoral.

The haters who came up with this idiocy stretch the logic to everything else Israel does. If it looks evil, it is proof that Israel is evil; if it looks good and liberal and progressive, it is Israel hiding its evil.

When these definitions come up against reality, the haters look even more idiotic.

Jerusalem Post reports:

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s judiciary charged a female equality activist with violating its national security because she sought to “normalize same-sex relations” in a country that imposes capital punishment for homosexuality.

The Iranian Lesbian and Transgender network group 6rang wrote on its website in late February that Rezvaneh “Mohammadi’s charges include ‘collusion against national security by normalising same sex relations.’ This is the first time that an activist faces such an accusation in Iran. She may be sentenced up to five years imprisonment.”

Volker Beck, a leading German expert and activist on LGBT rights, told the Jerusalem Post on Monday “This case is not about homosexuality, it is about freedom.” He said the charge of “collusion against national security by normalizing same sex relations’ as an accusation means that in Iran there is no freedom of expression, no freedom of science or press or religion. This is what the Iranian theocratic regime is standing for.”

Given the open attacks that Iran has against gays, and the open support for gays in Israel - no matter what the motivation - which should gay people be campaigning against?

The "Queers for Palestine" group apparently believes that, somehow, Israel's "pinkwashing" by treating gays well is worse than actual abuse of gays.

We see so much everyday hate for Israel that we forget how crazy it is. Even if you accept the worst possible spin about Israel from its enemies, Israel is still a better place to be from every liberal perspective - as a queer, as a woman, as a minority in religion, as an artist, as a journalist - than anywhere else in the Middle East.

The worst you can credibly say about Israel is still better than the best you can credibly say about all other countries in the region.

Yet all the publicity is about Israel's supposed abuses, with relatively little about the abuses of her Middle East neighbors.

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People like Saeb Erekat and Hanan Ashrawi love to tell their Western audiences that it is Jews, not Muslims, who are trying to turn this into a religious conflict.

Um, no.

On Sunday, the Association of Palestinian Scholars issued a fatwa - a Muslim religious legal ruling - entitled "The ruling of Islam concerning normalization with the Zionist enemy occupying the land of Palestine."

Not surprisingly, they come out against it.

The fatwa said that "normalization is one of the most dangerous initiatives, and a threat to the security of the nation and a corruption of its faith."

"Peace and normalization means the empowerment of Jews in the land of the Muslims, and over the necks of the Muslim people, [which is forbidden on] this or any Islamic land," the document continued.

"Reconciliation and normalization with the Zionist enemy means surrender to the infidels and their affairs, and the loss of religion and Islamic lands. "

It is notable that the scholars are referring to Jews here as "infidels" and not "dhimmis." The usual apologia that Muslims respect Jews as people of the book is absent in this document.

The fatwa notes that a long term truce is possible with infidels if it serves the larger Muslim interest, but treating them a regular people is always forbidden.

The fatwa "considers reconciliation and normalization with the Zionist enemy null and void and a crime...an explicit violation of the provisions of sharia. "

The document bitterly notes that "the current normalization represents injustice and aggression against the Palestinian people because it denies the right of the Palestinian people in its land and falsely recognizes the right of the Jews there."

The fatwa concluded with the duty to expel the Jews out of the land of Muslims.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Ilhan Omar is the Leftist Trump

The remarks that Ilhan Omar made over the past few days - and watching how her fans in social media are responding to them - shows that she is the Donald Trump of the Left.

She'll say something that is an obvious antisemitic dog whistle (starting with how Jews are "hypnotizing the world" and then going on to falsely claim how AIPAC, regarded as the "Jewish Lobby," spreads money around to keep Congress in its pocket, being "all about the Benjamins."

As with Trump, her followers and fans understand her statements exactly as the people being targeted do. They compliment her on her bravery in taking on these powerful interests. They disparage those who call her out on the dog whistles, claiming that she is only noting her displeasure at Netanyahu and Likud an the "occupation", even though neither of those were even implied in her statements.

And then she takes the ball and runs with it, claiming the same thing.

Being opposed to Netanyahu and the occupation is not the same as being anti-Semitic. I am grateful to the many Jewish allies who have spoken out and said the same.
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 3, 2019

Her attacks were on American Jews and American supporters of Israel, not Netanyahu.

See this exchange:

Our democracy is built on debate, Congresswoman! I should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country in order to serve my country in Congress or serve on committee. The people of the 5th elected me to serve their interest. I am sure we agree on that! https://t.co/gglAS4FVJW
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 3, 2019

Who is demanding that she give allegiance to Israel? No one. But her charge that her opponents do exactly that is yet another antisemitic dog whistle. Bret Stephens called her on it, and she responded with a Trumpian tweet, claiming that she didn't do what she so obviously did, complete with misspellings:

People do every single day, and no I haven’t attached pro-Isreal Americans. I have questioned our politics! You want to paint every word I say as such, and that’s more of your problem. https://t.co/KxhRlfYRfq
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 3, 2019

And this obvious lie:

I have not said anything about the loyalty of others, but spoke about the loyalty expected of me. There is the difference.
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 3, 2019

What exactly does "I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country" mean if not an attack on supporters of Israel that she is accusing of dual loyalty?

In one important way, Omar out-Trumps Trump. Omar uses her color and religion as both a shield and a club - claiming that she knows what discrimination is and therefore cannot be bigoted, and that those people who attack her obvious antisemitic statements are Islamophobic and racist.

It is the Trumpian skill of changing the subject taken to a new level.

As with Trump, the fires that she sets continue to burn in her wake. As with Trump, her fans run with the bigotry that were introduced into the discourse by a prominent politician, and topics that were rightly taboo because they are racist or antisemitic suddenly become subject to debate. As with Trump, she claims innocence that her statements could ever be interpreted in a bigoted way. As with Trump, the people who call her out on her bigotry are enemies to be targeted by her fans.

As with Trump, Omar is not stupid - she cannot claim to be ignorant of what her words mean.

As with Trump, Omar using her platform to mainstream hate is wrong and irresponsible, if not downright malicious.

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03/03 Links: Texas blacklists Airbnb over Israel boycott; Pinkwashing or Brainwashing the Israeli Eurovision?; Afghanistan donates $1 million to UNRWA

From Ian:

Texas blacklists Airbnb over West Bank settlement boycott

The state of Texas has blacklisted the global vacation rental company Airbnb over its boycott of West Bank settlements.

“We welcome this decision very much and we hope that it will be emulated by other states and other countries in the world,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said on Saturday night.

On Friday, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Glenn Hegar, publicly updated the list of businesses on the state’s “List of Companies that Boycott Israel” to include Airbnb.

Texas’s move followed a decision by Florida in January to place Airbnb on its list of scrutinized companies.

Airbnb has a 90-day period to prove that it has not boycotted Israel before any action is taken against it. Under the Texas regulation that governs the list, should the Israel boycott continue, “the state governmental entity shall sell, redeem, divest, or withdraw all publicly traded securities of the company, except securities.”

HonestReporting: Pinkwashing or Brainwashing the Israeli Eurovision?

Anything good Israel does is just an insidious way to distract the world from the “occupation” of Palestine.

Planting trees to make the desert bloom? That’s what critics call greenwashing the occupation. Israeli humanitarian to disaster zones abroad is bluewashing. Israeli ties with indigenous North American peoples is redwashing while ties with African-Americans is blackwashing.

When it comes to Israel, trees, a helping hand and friendship — things the world needs more of — are purely perfidious plots against the Palestinians. Period.

Which brings us to one more example of Palestinian activists wrecking the color wheel. The Independent gave an op-ed soapbox to Haneen Maikey and Hilary Aked to take Israel to task for “pinkwashing” — which is exploiting the Jewish state’s LGBTQ+ rights to distract everyone from “its systematic denial of Palestinian rights.” Aked’s a third-rate academic writing a book on the Israeli lobby for a company that publishes anything disgusting about Israel.

They myopically argue:

It could not be clearer that nothing is apolitical where Israel is concerned. That’s why the idea that holding Eurovision in Israel is “just a bit of fun”, is so misguided.

Translation: Israel’s acceptance of gays means absolutely nothing as long as the Mideast conflict — which is not a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender (LGBT+) issue — remains unresolved.

Palestinians have a reputation for homophobia in the West Bank and in Gaza, but rather than have an honest conversation about it, Maikey and Aked blame Israel.

Iceland band planning anti-Israel protest gets Eurovision nod

Iceland on Saturday made its pick to represent the country at the upcoming Eurovision song contest, choosing a band that has threatened an onstage protest against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and has issued a challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a bout of Scandinavian combat known as trouser wrestling.

Hatari themes its performances on bondage, domination, and sadomasochism, known as BDSM — not to be confused with BDS, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

The group won the local selection contest with its song “Hatrid Mun Sigra,” Icelandic for “Hatred will prevail” and will now go on to compete in the semifinals scheduled for May 16, in Israel.

In a February interview with Iceland’s biweekly Stundin newspaper, band members spoke of their strong identity with the Palestinian cause, saying they felt it was their duty to use the Eurovision contest as a platform to broadcast their views.

Under the terms of the contest, participants are prohibited from making political statements at the event.

Hatari criticized its home country for not boycotting the contest because it is being hosted by Israel, a country it said violates human rights.

Cartoon of the day: Chez Hamas

Continuing my re-captioning of single-panel cartoons....

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Maher Abu Sabha, head of the Land Authority in the Gaza Strip, announced that Hamas will not tolerate illegal homes built on public lands.

He said that the phenomenon of Gazans building illegally on public lands is not proper.

Abu Sabha noted that in 2018, Hamas removed buildings on about 260 dunums. He listed out how Hamas moved people from illegal buildings , about 4000 people so far in 560 houses.

This sounds a lot like what Israel is doing to Bedouin who are building illegal structures and communities, haphazardly, all over the Negev. Israel is trying to move them to towns that have infratructure and proper planning.

And human rights groups are insisting that when Israel does this - something that every government on the planet would do - it is encroaching on Arab rights to build wherever they want, willy-nilly.

Just another data point among thousands of how Israel is assumed to be evil, no matter what.

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Quite a few years ago, in 2007, I discussed why Zionism is not colonialism, as has been argued ad nauseum by academic critics of Israel. Essentially, colonialism relies on a "metropole," a mother country, which extends its mores onto a weaker, indigenous society. But Zionism does not have a metropole - it never relied on Britain (the most obvious candidate) or Russia or anywhere else as its mother country.

In more recent times, perhaps as a rebuttal to that argument, came the academic field of "settler colonialsm," meant to incorporate places like the United States and Australia as places where the indigenous populations are replaced with an invasive settler society that, over time, develops a distinctive identity and sovereignty. Israel is considered a prime example of settler colonialism - the academic journal "Settler Colonial Studies" has had a number of issues dedicated solely to the idea of Israel as a settler colonial entity.

Perhaps the father of the entire field of settler colonialism is Lorenzo Veracini, and he wrote a paper in "Interventions : International Journal of Postcolonial Studies" that defended the idea of Israel as a paradigm of settler colonialism.

He brings two counterarguments and answers them. The first is nonsensical:

To contextualize this outline, I will begin with two oft-repeated statements.They are routinely used to deny that Zionism can be interpreted as an instance of colonialism, let alone settler colonialism. The first one asserts Zionism cannot be considered settler colonialism because such a rubric obscures its inherent specificity. I remain unconvinced. It is like saying that Newton was wrong to think in abstract terms and that his theory of gravitation was inappropriate because it neglected the specific characteristics of a particular apple. More to the point: abstracting does not rule out specific observation. On the contrary, it is necessarily premised on it. At the same time, appraising Zionism and settler colonialism in the same interpretive frame does not amount to saying that Zionism is just like other settler colonialisms, or an imitation of previous iterations of this mode of domination. This approach is primarily about Zionism’s relationship with the indigenous collective it encounters and how this relationship reproduces the relationships other settler-colonial projects establish with other indigenous collectives. It is a statement of political geometry, not an exercise in morality. Indeed, it is not even about a similarity between colonization movements but about a relational similarity. It is not about comparing apples but about comparing their falling. It may be a great apple, but the fact remains that apple fell in Palestine If I were a Palestinian, I would develop a keen interest in the physics of apples, but even if I were personally committed to the project of settling in Palestine I would still be interest in ‘appledynamics.

Veracini fails to specify what exactly is the specific nature of Zionism that might distinguish it from "other" settler colonialisms, claiming that it doesn't really matter because it is in the end a discussion of the relationship between Zionists and the "indigenous collective." But that characterization is itself biased, because Zionism considers Jews to be the indigenous population, that has been displaced throughout the millennia from their land, especially from the destruction of the Temple through the Muslim conquest, which is the time that Jews became a minority.

Yet there are no papers on the settler colonialism of the Arabs of the 8th and 9th centuries CE.

His next argument claims to dispense with the one mentioned above, about the absence of any metropole:

The second statement I’d like to address is about the ostensible absence of a directly colonizing metropole. Colonialism must be performed for the benefit of a colonizing centre, it is argued. If it is missing this direction, and Zionism is, as it relies on the institutions of a diaspora rather than those of a colonizing centre (even though it is crucially relying on the support of colonial/imperial and neocolonial powers – the British during the Mandate era and the United States afterwards), then it is not colonialism. Others have countered this assertion by pointing to Zionism’s ability to rely on a ‘diffusely integrated’ or ‘diffuse transnational’ metropole (Wolfe 2016, 228, 247), but for the purposes of this essay I’d like to note that settler colonialism is crucially distinguished from colonialism as a mode of domination precisely because of the settlers’ collective ability to subtract themselves from the supervisory control of an overbearing metropolis while following an autonomous course. Triumphant settlers are always emancipated from a colonizing metropole; they famously declare their independence. The absence of a colonizing national metropole, or the presence of a transnational one, is a shared trait of settler-colonial phenomena, including Zionism, not a distinguishing feature. These defenders of Zionism are actually arguing that Zionism is not a colonial movement because it is … a settler-colonial one. They may be onto something, but do they want to be onto this something?

The answer to this is that the very nature of Zionism is not to be a colonizing movement but to be a national liberation movement - for Jews.

By casting Jews as the colonialists - whether traditional or settler-colonialist - the very basis of Zionism and Jewish nationalism is discarded a priori. Given that Jews have remained connected to the land, both emotionally and physically as many have returned throughout the last thousand years, the belittling of the Jewish desire to return to Zion is at the most charitable a huge blind spot, and at worst antisemitic.

A number of other arguments against Zionism being settler-colonialist have been posited. Wikipedia lists a few. Perhaps the most cogent is this one:

S. Ilan Troen, in 'De-Judaizing the Homeland: Academic Politics in Rewriting the History of Palestine', argues that Zionism was the repatriation of a long displaced indigenous population to their historic homeland, and that "Zionists did not see themselves as foreigners or conquerors, for centuries in the Diaspora they had been strangers". Troen further argues that there are several differences between European colonialism and the Zionist movement, including that "there is no New Vilna, New Bialystock, New Warsaw, New England, New York,...and so on" in Israel. He writes that "mandates were intended to nurture the formation of new states until independence and this instrument was to be applied to Jews, even as it was for the Arab peoples of Syria and Iraq. In this view, Jews were a people not only entitled to a state but that polity was naturally located in a part of the world in which they had originated, had been resident since the ancient world, and still constituted a vital presence in many areas of the region, including Palestine" and that "perhaps the most manifest or visible evidence—for those who would be willing to acknowledge—were found in the revival of Hebrew into a living language; the marking the landscape with a Jewish identity; and the development of an indigenous culture with roots in the ancient past." He concludes that "casting Zionists as colonizers serves to present them as occupiers in a land to which, by definition, they do not belong."

Exactly. And beyond his excellent argument about there being no "New Bialystock" in Israel - the communities that were built by Jews were, by and large, given the very names that they had in Biblical times, names that in many cases had been replaced by Arabic equivalents - of the Arab colonizers.

Veracini has one point. The Jews who returned to Israel did often look at themselves as being superior to the Arab population in Palestine, and in that narrow sense there may be something to be learned from cases of settler-colonialism in the US or Canada.

One answer is that early Zionists always envisioned a society where the undeniable Jewish superiority in technology, politics, and industry would positively affect the local Arabs, a rising tide that would lift all people. One would be hard-pressed to find any early Zionist writings that encouraged ethnic cleansing of Arabs of the type done in the US to native Americans. Jewish boys aren't playing an Arab-Israeli version of "Cowboys and Indians." The biggest exodus of Arabs came about from a war that was meant to wipe out the Jews. In 1948 there was never the intent to drive most of the Arabs out - although in a minority of cases that indeed happened - most left because of panic and the lies that the Arabs would win so they can return.

At any rate, positioning Israel as a settler colonialist state indeed is a moral position - one that claims that Jews somehow don't belong in their ancestral lands. And that is a bigoted position to take, no matter what the intention.

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03/02 Links: Shapiro: Stop Treating Ilhan Omar Like A Child. Her Anti-Semitism Isn't 'Sad.' It's Consistent, Vicious, And Vile; Ahed Tamimi Incites Against MK Yehuda Glick, Saying It’s ‘Permissible to Kill’ Him

From Ian:

Matti Friedman (NYT$): Israel’s Secret Founding Father

The members of the Arab Section were one part of what later became the Mossad. When Cohen died in 2002, having spent much of his life under an assumed identity, he was described by a military historian as one of Israel’s most successful agents: “We never heard of him because he was never caught.” Saman, the mastermind, eventually ran Eli Cohen, Israel’s most famous spy, who penetrated the Syrian regime as the businessman Kamal Amin Thabet before he was exposed and hanged in 1965. But the point I’d like to make here is not about what they did, but instead about who they were and what it says about the country they helped create.

Were they the “ones who become like Arabs”? Or was that identity real?

This is an important question beyond the particular case of these spies. The divide between Jews from Christian countries (known as Ashkenazim) and from Muslim countries (generally called Mizrahim) has always been the key fault line in Israeli society, with the former clearly on top. But in recent years it has become more acceptable to admit or even celebrate the Middle Eastern component of Israel’s Jewish identity. The Hebrew pop style known as Mizrahi, long scorned, now rules the airwaves. The dominance of the political right in recent years comes far less from the settler movement, as foreign observers tend to think, than from the collective memory of Israelis who remember how vulnerable they were as a minority among Muslims and grasp what this part of the world does to the weak. In the country’s official view of itself, it might still seem as if the Jews of the Islamic world, by coming to Israel after the founding of the state, joined the story of the Jews of Europe. But in 2019 it’s quite clear that what happened was closer to the opposite.

As the young Jamil Cohen found when he was recruited in the 1940s, the world of military intelligence is, ironically, one corner of Israeli society where Arab identity has always been respected. The Israeli scholar Yehouda Shenhav opens his 2006 book “The Arab Jews” with an anecdote about his father, who came to Israel from Iraq and found his way into the secret services. Looking at a photograph of his young father on a beach with friends from those early days, the author is forced to consider his father’s tenuous position in Israeli society and his utility as a spy: His appearance, Mr. Shenhav wrote, “confronted me with my complex location within what is often represented as an ancient, insurmountable conflict between Arabs (who are not Jews) and Jews (who are not Arabs).”

To an Israeli viewer, that ethnic blurriness runs clearly beneath the surface of “Fauda,” the popular Netflix thriller. In the second season it’s embodied in the character of Amos Kabilio, who confuses us when he first appears on screen — he’s speaking Arabic and it’s not clear which side he’s from, until we realize that he’s the father of Doron, the Israeli agent who’s the main character. Amos is a Jew from Iraq, and when he speaks to his son, the Israeli spy, it’s partly in his mother tongue, Arabic. We’re meant to grasp that when Doron “becomes like an Arab” as part of his mission, it’s not entirely artificial.

“Espionage,” John le Carré once observed, “is the secret theater of our society.” Countries also have cover stories and hidden selves. The identity of Israel’s spies teaches us who Israel has to spy on, of course. But it also has much to say about what Israel is — and how that country differs from the country we know from stories. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Ben Shapiro: Stop Treating Ilhan Omar Like A Child. Her Anti-Semitism Isn't 'Sad.' It's Consistent, Vicious, And Vile.

This is simply the soft bigotry of low expectations – or, more insidiously, an attempt to soft-pedal anti-Semitism in order to preserve the intersectional hierarchy. Omar is, you see, a Muslim woman from Somalia, and that means that she ranks higher than Americans Jews do on the victimhood scale – and thus she must be treated with kid gloves when she targets said American Jews. Omar will still be cheered, despite her open and unapologetic Jew-hatred, by the same media members who place her alongside Nancy Pelosi on the cover of Rolling Stone. And Nancy Pelosi will continue to cover for her, all the while claiming to be an advocate of anti-bigotry.

Now, imagine, for just a moment, that Omar were instead a white Congressman from Iowa who said something bigoted. Would the media react with “sadness” and advice? Or would the media correctly react with outrage?

You don’t have to theorize. When Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said, according to The New York Times, that he didn’t understand how the language “white nationalist” became “offensive,” he wasn’t accorded any of the hemming and hawing surrounding Omar. There was no weepy talk about learning curves and ignorance of “tropes.” There was appropriate and universal condemnation.

Not so with Omar, who will continue to get away with her anti-Semitism, as Democratic Party leaders and their allies in the media simply shake their head and tut-tut softly while elevating her to a position of public leadership. We don’t have to speculate. They’re already doing so.

The Line Between Criticism of Israel and Anti-Semitism

Criticism becomes bigotry when it involves demonizing and delegitimizing Israel. Accusing Israel of genocide—or of running an apartheid state, as Omar did on Wednesday—is a shameful lie that cannot be labeled legitimate criticism. The same goes for describing Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, as a human rights abuser on the level of China and North Korea. Those who support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel employ such rhetoric as part of their campaign of economic warfare against the Jewish state. Such efforts seek to destroy the Jewish state through international pressure, undermining Israel to the point that it effectively ceases to survive as we have come to recognize it. Think about the implications for Israeli Jews, who live in a region in which most governments have shown indifference to if not support for slaughtering Jews. Moreover, now that the Jewish people have Israel and are not prepared to surrender it after 2,000 years of exile and persecution, the only way to replace Israel with Palestine, or a bi-national state, or whatever else Omar and her allies envision, is by forcibly taking it. That would mean killing many Jews. Those who do not realize this reality cannot plead ignorance and absolve themselves.

Imagine if someone demonized and sought to de-legitimize another country—say, Ireland—with the same obsessive hatred that Omar shows Israel. Would they not be bigoted against the Irish? Of course they would.

But no one targets Ireland, or any other country, like so many target Israel. And here we get to the bigger point. Anti-Semitism, to paraphrase the eminent historian Bernard Lewis, has two special features that make it a distinct form of bigotry: Jews are assigned restrictive, disadvantageous double standards, and more importantly, a cosmic, satanic evil is attributed to them unlike anything else in this world. What do these criteria look like today? Treating Israel differently than all other countries and accusing it of being a nefarious puppet master controlling world events—maybe even hypnotizing the world.

Separating anti-Semitism from criticism of Israeli policy is not that hard. As with pornography, "I know it when I see it."

In today's world, where hatred and persecution based on race and religion are supposed to be no longer tolerated, anti-Semitism is based primarily on the Jewish people's nation-state. Anti-Zionism, or opposition to Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state, is the chief medium through which anti-Semites push their agenda. Those who may not have a personal animus toward Jews at large—like Omar (one certainly hopes)—but who support the BDS movement and other efforts to destroy the Zionist project—again, like Omar—are complicit in anti-Semitism. As nefarious and troubling as her comments peddling anti-Semitic canards are, her efforts to isolate, hurt, and ultimately destroy the world's only Jewish state pose a much greater threat. Those who want to fight anti-Semitism need to fight the policies toward Israel that Omar and like-minded progressives support. In other words, those who support such policies, those warriors for social justice, are part of the problem.

Netanyahu’s Downfall?

One of Netanyahu’s most bellicose and loyal supporters, Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev, responded to the bombshell by helping a woman advance her claim that Gantz exposed himself to her while they were both teenagers. Jacobs’s trauma was triggered only recently when she learned that Gantz had a shot at becoming the next PM. Apparently, Gantz’s promotion to Chief of the IDF years ago did nothing to ruffle her sensitivities.

Israeli politics is a notoriously murky cesspool, but this episode seems a little dirtier, uglier, more pungent. It involves hundreds of individuals, more than a handful of ruined lives and careers, and a lot of collateral damage.

Most worrisome is how it further sullies public office and the very noble and important work that so many fine people do in these positions. We tend to remember the scandal, tumbles from grace, corruption. We forget quiet competence.

Should Netanyahu be indicted and found guilty of one or more charges, it will also mark the downfall of a man of towering intellect, ability and, I believe, boundless devotion to the well-being of the state of Israel—a man who lost his way.

Cartoon of the day

Continuing my re-captioning of single-panel cartoons....

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03/01 Links Pt2: Progressive Replacement Theology; Phillips: Why Labour’s antisemitism is a crisis for the world; Europe's Ubiquitous Anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Progressive Replacement Theology

Instead, a new faith emerged: progressivism. A time traveler, unaware of the developments of the last eight decades, might’ve been forgiven for listening to a modern-day progressive speak and mistaking her for a fundamentalist Christian: Jesus’ observation that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven sounds like something Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a moment of inspiration, might say to an adoring interviewer on CNN. With its emphasis on social justice, criminal justice reform, elevating the poor, and rejecting the rapacious policies of the greedy and the affluent, progressivism sounds a lot like Christianity. Except that it has chosen to reject Christianity and all other forms of faith as silly superstitions, to abolish history by proposing that it has but one throughline—progress!—and to set up instead a religion that fails to see itself as one and, as such, is condemned to repeat Christianity’s worst transgressions.

Beginning, sadly, with the Jews. In Ilhan Omar’s suggestion that none in Congress before her had been refugees, in Salazar and Ocasio-Cortez’s sudden and questionable claim of Jewish heritage, even in the rush of many on the far left to argue that Jews of color are the real Jews and that the rest of us are somehow complicit in Klan-like prejudice—in all these we see the old wheels of replacement theology turning. Judaism may have given us much understanding of justice, but if progressivism is to claim its modern-day mantle, Judaism has to be argued away, which begins by anointing the progressives the real new Jews.

If you doubt that any of this is true, try for a moment to think rationally about the way most progressives talk about Israel. Let us, for the sake of argument, assume for a moment that those who assiduously claim that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not interchangeable are correct. Let us accept that one may have a host of pressing critiques of Jerusalem and its policies. What, we may now ask, are those all about? To hear many American progressives tell it, Israel is worthy of special attention because of the inordinate amount of American foreign aid it receives. If that were the case, we could safely assume that as Israel receives about twice as much aid as, say, Egypt, we might expect our media to write one story about Egypt’s transgressions for every two they write about Israel. The ratio, sadly, is very different. It’s skewed, too, if you compare the uproar about Israel to the attention paid to other areas of conflict and human rights violations around the world: Everywhere you look, the world’s only Jewish state is singled out for calumny. The reason is simple: Israel provides progressivism’s zealots with a convenient opportunity to mask their theological decrees as rational, reasonable, and worldly politics. By focusing all of your attention, energy, and rage on the Jews, you may declare yourself, just as Origen and Hippolytus had centuries ago, to be the rightful heir to an enlightened tradition abandoned by those who were once God’s chosen people but who are no longer.

You’d hope that the tenured hordes that make up so much of progressivism’s vanguard would know all this, but religious extremism, as Jewish history has tragically proved again and again, is blinding. We can only hope that one day soon a progressive Augustine may arise and temper the hate of his new secular faith. Until then, we Jews should do what we’ve done so gallantly for millennia and protect ourselves against the spurious claims of fanatics with dangerous ideas. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Melanie Phillips: Why Labour’s antisemitism is a crisis for the world

Mahmoud Abbas – viewed by the Western Left as a statesman-in-waiting – has a doctorate in Holocaust denial, explicitly venerates the Palestinian Nazi-ally Haj Amin al-Husseini who undertook to slaughter every Jew in the Middle East in the event of Hitler’s victory, and uses his media outlets to transmit medieval and Nazi-style demonization of the Jews.

His followers claim the Jews were behind 9/11, that Israel is out to destroy the Islamic world, and that the Jews control the world’s media, finance and US foreign policy.

So why should Labour Party members who support the Palestinians with their agenda of Holocaust denial, attacks on Judaism and unhinged conspiracy theories about Jewish power, now be so shocked that Labour Party members are themselves coming out with Holocaust denial, attacks on Judaism and unhinged conspiracy theories about Jewish power?

Antisemitism, which is always with us, is kept down only by unequivocal social disapproval. Support for Palestinianism, however, has served to legitimize it. This has not just encouraged its brazen expression on the Left. It has also created a climate which has emboldened neo-Nazis and their ilk to crawl out from under their stone.

There are of course other reasons behind the epidemic of antisemitism: cultures that are fragmenting or dying, a Western world that has lost confidence in modernity and reason, and a Europe that cannot bear the guilt of the Holocaust.

Ultimately, though, the scapegoating of the Jews signals a fundamental loss of moral compass. That this is now taking place across the world should terrify not just Jews but everyone.

NYTs: To Argue for the Abolition of the Jewish Homeland Flirts with Anti-Semitism

There's nothing anti-Semitic about sympathy for the Palestinian cause or support of Palestinian statehood. But where anti-Zionism crosses into anti-Semitism should be obvious: dehumanizing or demonizing Jews and propagating the myth of their sinister omnipotence; accusing Jews of double loyalties as a means to suggest their national belonging is of lesser worth; denying the Jewish people's right to self-determination; blaming through conflation all Jews for the policies of the Israeli government; pursuing the systematic "Nazification" of Israel; turning Zionism into a synonym of racism.

The denial of the millennial Jewish link to the Holy Land and the dismissal of the legal basis for the modern Jewish state in UN Resolution 181 of 1947 (Arab armies went to war against its Palestinian-Jewish territorial compromise and lost) as a means to argue for the abolition of the Jewish homeland and portray it as an immoral, colonial exercise in theft often flirts with anti-Semitism. It is at its most egregious when it issues from Europeans who seem to have forgotten where the Holocaust was perpetrated. Once in the gas chambers was enough for the Jews.

The fundamental link between European anti-Semitism and the decision of Jews to embrace Zionism in the conviction that only a Jewish homeland could keep them safe is something contemporary European theorists of a demonic Israel prefer to forget.

03/01 Links Pt1: Believing in our right to the Land of Israel doesn’t make anyone a fascist; Glick: Israel’s Deep State Takes Aim at Netanyahu; UNHRC Derided as ‘Dangerous Joke’ After Issuing Anti-Israel Report on Gaza Border Violence

From Ian:

Believing in our right to the Land of Israel doesn’t make anyone a fascist

Words delivered at the memorial service for Ariel and Lily Sharon, February 15, 2019.

Many straight lines can pass through two points. We all agree on the future point, the goal we want to reach: a good life in Israel for the Jewish people and for those who tied their fate to ours. What we don’t agree on is the way to arrive at that point. And that’s fine. Some people want to get there from the Right, others believe the best way is to come from the Left, the far Right, or the far Left. They’re all legitimate directions, all straight lines. So we argue, we vote, and we move forward together.

Rows upon rows of headstones stand over the graves of soldiers in the military cemeteries. Not one of them indicates whether the soldier lying silently in the ground below was right- or left-wing, religious or secular, lived in the city or the country. Every option is represented there.

We are surrounded by millions who hate us and want to see us dead, and they couldn’t care less about our political opinions. To them, we’re all the same. And if, heaven forbid, they should succeed, we will all share the same fate.

The problem the extremists on both sides suffer from can be summed up in no more than a few words. Those on the Left, who consider themselves liberal, are indeed liberal – as long as you agree with them. Those on my side sometimes feel they have first-hand knowledge of God’s will, so that anyone who disputes them is automatically an enemy of God.

Believing in our right to the Land of Israel doesn’t make anyone a fascist, and being willing to make do with less of that land doesn’t make anyone a traitor. They are all patriots who love the country, each in their own way.

Who owns West Bank property once owned by Jews?

The question of Jewish property and assets turned over to Arabs in the West Bank after the 1948 Jordanian occupation is a thorny one. The Israeli government has decided to leave this particular can of worms unopened. In this paper, Russell A Shalev concludes that Israel should not fear the repercussions of restituting former Jewish property to its rightful owners. (With thanks: Colin)

A view of Hebron
This paper explored the status of the former Jewish properties in Judea and Samaria that were seized by Jordan in 1948. The Israeli Supreme Court in Valero ruled that the transfer of the property to Jordanian custodianship eliminated any ties between the previous Jewish owner s and the property. Contrary to the Supreme Court's ruling in2011, this paper concluded that Israel legally can, and should, return the property to its former owners,without regards to a comprehensive peace agreement settling all claims between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states.This conclusion relies on the following justifications:

•Recognizing confiscated Jewish assets as Jordanian state property would be a violation of the principle of ex injuria jus non oritur, unjust acts cannot create law. The Jordanian seizure was illegal,was the result of Jordanian aggression and unrecognized annexation of the territory, and thus should be seen as invalid.
Jordan cannot enjoy rights to property gained through its illegal invasion in 1948.

The Status of Former Jewish Assets in Judea and Samaria are sui generis, ie.a unique historical and legal phenomenon, and they do not depend on a parallel comprehensive solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.The Palestinians have repeatedly rejected an internationally-accepted solution for the refugee crisis–resettlement in host countries. Instead, they have insisted on the"right of return." The repatriation of thousands of Palestinian Arabs would cause massive disruption and chaos in Israel, upending public order and seriously threatening societal cohesion. By contrast, the return of a small amount of Jewish property owners in Judea and Samaria could hardly be considered a threat to public order, especially considering that Israelis are able to purchase land and build homes over the Green Line.
Read paper in full

Dore Gold Says Countries Should Help Israel Fight "Fake History"

Countries should help Israel fight "fake history" that seeks to disconnect a Jewish - and by extension Christian - connection to Jerusalem, Dore Gold, who heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington on Thursday. Israel "needs your help to defeat the diplomatic assaults Jerusalem faces today. We need your help to fight the fake history. We need your help to fight for truth."

Gold - a former Israeli ambassador to the UN and director-general of the Foreign Ministry - quoted Yasser Arafat telling former president Bill Clinton that there was never a Temple in Jerusalem, to which Clinton responded, "not only the Jews, but I too, believe that under the surface there are remains of Solomon's temple."

"What is clear today, more than ever, is that the only force that will protect Jerusalem for all the great faiths is the modern State of Israel, which has not forgotten how its enemies sought to forcibly cut its connection with the Holy City in the past."

Cartoon of the Day

Since I'm going to Israel next week, I'm going to spread my newly captioned New Yorker cartoons to one a day.

Some have been tweeted, some haven't.

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J-Street styles itself as "pro-Israel, pro-peace."

The first part is obviously not true, since J-Street's political positions are consistently on the side of the Palestinian positions and against that of the elected Israeli government, and even most Israelis who identify as centrist or left wing.

But what about the second part? Is J-Street pro-peace?

The answer can be seen in what is - and what is not - on its website.

The most remarkable achievement under Netanyahu's leadership has been Israel's improving relationships with nations around the world, including Muslim-majority countries in Africa and the Arab world.

Yet when Netanyahu met with Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin Said in Oman, a stunning event, J-Street was silent.

When Netanyahu met directly with Arab leaders and top ministers in Warsaw this month, J-Street was silent.

When pressure forced the UAE to allow Israeli athletes to participate in events there, and an Israeli minister sang Hatikva when Israel won a gold medal and publicly toured the nation, J-Street was silent.

When Israel openly works with Qatar to bring aid in to Gaza, J-Street is silent.

While Israel improves relationships with Sudan, Chad, Bahrain and many other nations, J-Street is silent.

Shouldn't a "pro-peace" organization be jubilant at each one of these stories?

The irony increases when you see that J-Street does say positive things about regional peace initiatives - but only in context of the Saudi driven Arab peace initiative, in a section of its site written during the Obama administration:

Even more broadly, the Arab Peace Initiative still provides a potential game-changing template for conflict resolution yielding dividends not just for Israel, but for the region as a whole in trade, commerce, security and more. Given the perception of the weakness of the political leadership on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides and the fact that so many of the issues (security, Jerusalem, refugees) that are on the table actually have regional dimensions, reconceiving the effort to resolve the conflict in a broader regional context seems to us an important new approach to consider.

Accordingly J Street highlights for policymakers the benefits of adopting a regional approach to resolving the conflict and works with partners in Israel and in the Arab world to explore the possibilities of building on the Arab Peace Initiative.

What happened to J-Street's support of adopting a "regional approach" to peace?

Ah, that was only when it seemed impossible to have regional peace without the Palestinian issue being solved first, which was the conventional wisdom for decades.

Netanyahu, and Trump, have shown that there is another avenue to regional peace. They have shown that it was the Palestinians that are the roadblock to regional peace, not the prerequisite. The Arab world knows that Palestinians could have had a state when it was offered to them in 2000, 2001, 2008 and they rejected it. The Arab world knows this and it is finally dispensing with the conventional wisdom of first a Palestinian state and only then regional peace.

J-Street hates this idea. They built their entire organization on the failed approach of Israel giving more and more concessions to those who want to destroy it in the name of "peace."

J-Street also hates Trump. They hate Netanyahu. Their fundraising emails are based on that hate, getting funds from likeminded haters.

And the idea that under Netanyahu and Trump, Israel is friendlier with the Arab and Muslim worlds than it ever was under Obama just disgusts them.

If J-Street was "pro-peace," it would have shown cautious support for the Trump peace initiative when it was announced. It didn't. On the contrary, they have been trying to sabotage the Trump peace initiative before anyone knew what it was going to be.

J-Street ignores the many positive moves towards peace that occurred in recent years - even while they defend the rights of Israel boycotters.

The conclusion: J-Street is not pro-peace.

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The Untouchable Ilhan Omar (ElderToons)

Jewish Insider reports that Ilhan Omar, Minnesota representative in Congress, said some more outrageous antisemitic stuff.

First, the usual "Jews are attacking my antisemitic statements because I'm a Muslim and I'm only criticizing Israel:"

Rep. Omar elaborated that when she hears her Jewish constituents offer criticisms of Palestinians, she doesn’t automatically equate them as Islamophobic but is “fearful” that people are painting her as anti-Semitic because she is a Muslim. Omar continued, “What I’m fearful of — because Rashida and I are Muslim — that a lot of our Jewish colleagues, a lot of our constituents, a lot of our allies, go to thinking that everything we say about Israel to be anti-Semitic because we are Muslim,” she explained.

No, she is being "painted" as antisemitic because she intimates Jewish control over Congress and Jews hypnotizing the world.

But then comes the real hypocrisy:

“To me, it’s something that becomes designed to end the debate because you get in this space of – yes, I know what intolerance looks like and I’m sensitive when someone says, ‘The words you used Ilhan, are resemblance of intolerance.’ And I am cautious of that and I feel pained by that. But it’s almost as if, every single time we say something regardless of what it is we say…we get to be labeled something. And that ends the discussion. Because we end up defending that and nobody ever gets to have the broader debate of what is happening with Palestine.”

“So for me, I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” Rep. Omar exclaimed, seeming to suggest, as Tlaib had in a tweet of her own, dual loyalty among a particular group of Americans. Loud rounds of applause and shouts of affirmation punctuated the event’s heavy focus on Israel.

If she was only criticizing Israel then no one would say anything about antisemitism.

But look what she does here: first she implies that Jews who criticize her are Islamophobic and then she says another blatantly antisemitic statement, that Jews have allegiance to Israel above the United States - and she can proudly say that to her leftist fans because she already inoculated herself by suggesting that her critics are Islamophobic!

It isn't the false accusations of antisemitism that are shutting down debate about Israel. It is false accusations of Islamophobia, and racism, and misogyny, that is shutting down Democratic debate about her consistent habit of using antisemitic tropes!

In other words:

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