Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 05, 2019

How Yasir Arafat helped make the US the ally of Israel it is today (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Richard Nixon's antisemitism did not prevent him from coming to Israel's aid in 1973 and resupplying it with the weapons that enabled it to win the war.

But beyond that, Nixon may be responsible for the enduring US foreign policy that sees

o The value of a strong Israel
o Israel as solid US ally in Mideast
o Israel as important for Mideast stability

Richard Nixon. Source: National Archives. Public Domain

In a recent article on The Top Four Reasons Why Rep. Ilhan Omar Is Wrong About AIPAC, Israel and the Palestinians, CAMERA notes that historically, US support for Israel was actually minimal before 1970 -- despite the combined alleged influence of the Jewish vote, Jewish political contributions, and the activities of the pro-Israel lobby. After all, just 3 years earlier, in 1967, Israel's main source of weapons was not the US; it was the British and the French. Yet after 1970, US support for Israel began to grow rapidly.

The turning point was President Richard Nixon -- and Arafat.

As Alex Safian puts it in the article:

The US president in 1970 was Richard Nixon, a Republican who knew very well that overwhelmingly Democratic and left-leaning American Jews had already voted against him in large numbers and would do so again in 1972. What happened in 1970 that convinced Nixon, the arch practitioner of realpolitik, to press for increased support for Israel?

Safian quotes the late Harvard professor, Nadav Safran, who in his book "Israel: The Embattled Ally," notes that the turning point in US/Israel relations was not any kind of Jewish influence. That influence was consistent and yet had failed to improve US-Israel relations. Instead, the turning point was the crisis of Black September, when Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, with the assistance of invading Syrian tanks, attempted to overthrow and assassinate Jordan’s King Hussein, who was an ally of the US. If successful, they would have posed a threat to western oil supplies.

According to Safran, when the Syrian army captured Irbid, a city in northern Jordan which contained a junction of roads linking Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Israel -- King Hussein appealed for American and British help. The British refused and advised the US to do the same. Other European allies also advised against helping. Nixon had Kissinger work out a plan for a joint American-Israeli intervention. Kissinger and Israeli Ambassador Rabin put together a plan for a combined Israeli air strike and armored assault on the Syrian forces in conjunction with an American airborne descent on Amman airport. If necessary, Israeli armored columns would advance in a pincer movement from the Golan and the Jordan Valley and cut off the Syrian intervention forces and destroy them.

Because of the American and Israeli support, King Hussein was able to commit all his forces to fighting Arafat's forces. The Syrians, on the other hand, wary of that support, and of a flanking attack by columns of Israeli tank columns, withdrew -- saving Jordan, and making direct Israeli intervention unnecessary.

King Hussein. Source: US Government. Public Domain

According to Safran this affair had a profound impact on U.S/Israel relations:

The Jordanian episode had a far-reaching effect on the American attitude toward Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict… [T]he President … was deeply impressed by the determination shown by the Israelis at a time when America’s formal allies had quit on him. He also appreciated the speed, efficiency, discretion and trust with which the Israelis acted through their gifted ambassador, Yitzhak Rabin…

Apart from its effect on Nixon’s personal attitude towards Israel, the Jordanian episode drove home to the President and some of his advisers a crucial point which they previously saw only in the abstract. The crisis and its denouement demonstrated to them in a concrete and dramatic fashion the value for the United States of a strong Israel. At a time when the regional balance among the Arab states, between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as between Israel and the Arabs states was seen to be imperiled and when the entire American position in the Middle East appeared, as a result, to be jeopardy, the United States was able to retrieve the situation and turn it around only through the effective cooperation of a powerful Israel….

The American action in the Jordanian crisis was therefore seen by Nixon as the first successful attempt to call a halt to the Soviet drive and begin to reverse it by forcing the Soviets to back down in view of their friends, and the key role of Israel in that action was particularly appreciated. (emphasis in the original)

It wasn't AIPAC or Jewish influence that brought about this change in support for Israel. Instead, it was the threat, brought about by Arafat's PLO that led Nixon to appreciate the strategic importance of Israel.

Safian concludes:

There is no doubt that AIPAC plays a key role in shaping the debate in Congress and in the details of legislation, military aid packages, etc., but none of these details would matter were it not for the strategic realities of the US-Israel alliance.

In an article in the New York Post back in 2001, Israeli journalist Uri Dan wrote about the release of sensitive British government documents which provided the first public confirmation that an Arab country once requested an Israeli military attack on a fellow Arab nation:

British documents, sealed for 30 years, now reveal that Hussein sent “a series of messages” to the British Embassy in Amman “reflecting the extreme anxiety with which he now regarded the situation.”

The report said that Hussein “not only appealed for the moral and diplomatic support of the United Kingdom and the United States, coupled with the threat of international action, but had also asked for an air strike by Israel against Syrian troops." [emphasis added]

According to the report, Prime Minister Edward Heath is quoted as doubting whether it was worth “prolonging, possibly only for a short time, [Hussein’s] increasingly precarious regime.”

Donald Neff, in an article "Nixon's Middle East Policy: From Balance to Bias," quotes from Rabin's memoirs where he tells about Kissinger's description of the president's appreciation:

The President will never forget Israel's role in preventing the deterioration in Jordan and in blocking the attempt to overturn the regime there. He said that the United States is fortunate in having an ally like Israel in the Middle East. These events will be taken into account in all future developments.

Neff goes on to describe how Israel benefited. While US aid to Israel totaled $93.6 million in 1970, by 1971 it jumped to $634.3 million and then reached $2.6 billion in 1974 after the war in 1973. He concludes: "The Nixon-Kissinger years set a dramatic new benchmark for aid to Israel. Levels continued to climb until 1985 when they settled at $3 billion, where they remain today (1990)."

None of this would have happened if Arafat had not tried to take over Jordan.

He single-handedly created a destabilizing situation that allowed Nixon to see the strategic asset Israel represented in the Middle East. Nixon was developing the Nixon Doctrine, allowing the US to rely on military and economic aid and on allies instead of committing US troops.

And Israel continues to serve as a key ally of the US to this day.

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The early US consuls in Jerusalem helped Jews a lot more than Arabs

Issa Amro describes himself as a "Palestinian activist based in Hebron, Palestine, Recognised Human Rights Defender by the UN and European Union."

He tweeted this on Monday:

The US consulate in Jerusalem was opened in 1844 to give services to the Palestinian people. after 175 years, Trump decided to emerge it to the US embassy in occupied Jerusalem. Last year he closed the Palestinian mission in the USA too, he is destroying the Palestinian cause.
— Issa Amro عيسى عمرو 🇵🇸 (@Issaamro) March 4, 2019

So I did a fact check. And everything he wrote was wrong, although in the end, in important ways, the US diplomats in Jerusalem helped create the Palestinian cause, but not until the 20th century.

All US Consulates in the Middle East in the 18th and 19th centuries were meant primarily to help the US increase trade with the region, and secondarily to help US travelers to the area. The main US consul in the first part of the 19th century was in Beirut, and all others reported to that one.

In 1844, based on the recommendation of a Congressman, US Secretary of State John Calhoun appointed a Judeophile named Warder Cresson as the first Consul of Jerusalem, a position Cresson desired. But he was considered a strange person by others who knew him - perhaps because of his love of Jews and his determination that their ingathering would help bring the Messiah in a few years - and the appointment was rescinded before Cresson took up the post, but after he divorced his wife and departed to the Holy Land.

Cresson went anyway under the illusion he was Consul, even helping out the Jews of the area by providing what appears to be bogus papers giving them US citizenship and therefore protection. Finally the Ottomans saw that he had no credentials and he was informed that he had no title in 1848. Cresson then converted to Judaism and went back to the US to settle his affairs, where his relaives tried to get him declared insane because of his conversion. Cresson ultimately won the case in what was seen as an important early case of religious freedom in America.

The first real Consul General, John Warren Gorham, was appointed in 1856 and opened the Consulate in 1857. He hated the post, bored out of his mind and taking up alcohol, to be quickly followed by a series of equally unhappy Consuls who wanted to find ways to increase US trade with Palestine and couldn't figure out how the US could profit at all from the backwards region.

From what I am reading, the Arab residents of Palestine were of little interest to these diplomats. A number of them, notably Victor Beauboucher and Richard Beardsley, did provide protection to the Jews of Jerusalem, although Beauboucher was involved in a case where a Jewish orphan girl who was being pressured to convert to Christianity was being protected by a rabbi and the diplomat forcibly arrested the rabbi with no permission.

Frank S. DeHass (1873-1877) protected hundreds of Russian Jews who were left without protection because of a war between Russia and Turkey. He and met with Moses Montefiore.

It appears that during and after World War I, the American diplomatic role changed. Protestant missionaries and educators who went to Palestine became friendly with the local Arabs and soon became the backbone of the next generation of diplomats to Jerusalem, moving their pro-Arab ideas into the State Department, a tilt that remained for the next hundred years. On the other side of the coin, they taught their Arab friends about nationalism in the American-style schools they founded, and in that sense were a large reason for the emergence of Arab nationalism and anti-colonialism in the region in the 20th century. There is a lot about this in Michael Oren's book, Power, Faith and Fantasy.

The diplomatic history of the US in the Middle East is fascinating, but Amro shows no knowledge of the topic - only a willingness to lie about it.

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Muslim activist and faux feminist Linda Sarsour posted this on Facebook:

This is why we wanted Congresswoman Barbara Lee to be the Speaker of the House and “progressives” were like nah, Pelosi is a leader and omg you should see how she claps. What a clap!

Nancy is a typical white feminist upholding the patriarchy doing the dirty work of powerful white men. God forbid the men are upset - no worries, Nancy to the rescue to stroke their egos.

For years, when members of Congress have spewed blatant anti-Muslim racism, islamophobia, propaganda against Muslims and even held racist hearings with our tax payer dollars, Democratic leadership were never swift to condemn said members or put out resolutions condemning islamophobia and/or standing in solidarity with Muslims on the record in Congress.

Democrats are playing in to the hands of the right. Dividing our base and reinforcing their narrative and giving them an easier path towards 2020.

I reject this. I will speak out. I won’t be silent. I am not following this. They don’t speak for me as a Democrat. No more double standards.

You want a resolution? Condemn all forms of bigotry. All forms of bigotry are unacceptable. We won’t let them pin us up against each other. We stand with Representative Ilhan Omar. Our top priority is the safety of our sister and her family.

Sarsour is saying that Nancy Pelosi is "upholding the patriarchy" and "doing the work of white men." Apparently, fighting antisemitism is something only racist white men do.

And doesn't Sarsour, who wears a hijab and defends Islam at every opportunity, doing the bidding of Muslim men who say that she cannot remove it without being in danger of being raped by sex-crazed men who cannot control themselves at the sight of her hair?

If Sarsour is so concerned about the patriarchy, why does she defend a misogynist religion?

Moreover, when House Resolution 569 was introduced in December 2016 "Condemning violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States," I can find no record of Sarsour speaking out against it because it didn't include other forms of bigotry besides that against Muslims. But a resolution against antisemitism is considered, and she is so upset that it is only on a single kind of hate!

According to the "woke" Sarsour, only antisemitism must be universalized (and therefore minimized.)

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The @NYTimes picks up and runs with @IlhanMN's antisemitic ball

Now that Ilhan Omar has made the topic of the Jewish Lobby's supposed stranglehold on US politicians kosher to speak about again, the New York Times has to write an article meant to confirm the thoughts of the worst antisemites about Jews.

I don't know, let's see: AIPAC put everything it had to stop the Iran nuclear deal - and lost. Does that sound like it is all powerful to you?

While the article mentions that as an aside, the tone of the article answers the question as a resounding "yes." It features a single AIPAC activist among many thousands, and says (without directly quoting him) that he wants to "punish" Ilhan Omar for her antisemitic statements.

Shouldn't every moral person condemn antisemitism? Why does the NYT want to make it look like the powerful Jews are working to "punish" those who are critical of the Jews for being too powerful?

Even worse, the same activist is pictured - not knocking on the doors of members of Congress, but praying with a talit and tefillin.

Because the dog-whistle of AIPAC being the Jewish lobby was apparently too subtle for the New York Times editors. They had to show him do something really, really Jewy, just to get the message across that yes, the Jews are the ones who are controlling the US government.

The Times uses another worn journalistic trope of using a question to imply something is true, but the question form gives it plausible deniability:

Has Aipac — founded more than 50 years ago to “strengthen, protect and promote the U.S.-Israel relationship” — become too powerful? And with that power, has Aipac warped the policy debate over Israel so drastically that dissenting voices are not even allowed to be heard?

The question is too ridiculous to be taken seriously. No one is muzzling J-Street, or IfNotNow, or Jewish Voices for Peace, or the months of "Israel Apartheid Week" on campuses, or the BDS movement. No one.

But the Newspaper of Record is using the question format to say, yes, those tefillin-wearing Jews are indeed stopping all conversation of criticism of Israel.

By doing that, the New York Times is implicitly agreeing with Omar that there really is no antisemitism coming from the Left, only criticism of Israel that is supposedly being silenced by people saying that her statements are antisemitic. Even though they are and no one - no one at all - is trying to silence legitimate criticism of Israel.

Every paragraph is dripping with implicit insinuations of AIPAC doing something underhanded, even though nothing adds up to anything beyond what any other lobby does. For example:

Aipac does not lobby on behalf of Israel; it is sensitive about being characterized as an agent of a foreign power, as Ms. Omar suggested it was during her talk in Washington last week. But it almost always sides with the Israeli government, no matter who is in charge.

Perhaps because Israel is a democracy and the choice of its voters should be respected if you want to support the Israel-American relationship? The significant Jewish lobby of J-StreetPAC specifically lobbies against virtually all Israeli government policies, which would - in a normal reading of the situation - mean that AIPAC respects democracy and J-Street does not. This paragraph implies that American should oppose Israel's government policies, democracy be damned.

The newspaper even quotes known AIPAC hater MJ Rosenberg, who says that Omar is entirely correct in how she characterizes the organization.

In short, Omar has legitimized the false charge that the Jewish lobby owns Washington, and the New York Times pretty much agrees, somehow without fear of that Jewish lobby that is supposed to shut down all dissent.

Omar has managed to mainstream antisemitism, and to use the New York Times' methods of using a question to make a statement:

Has the New York Times legitimized Omar's antisemitic claims that the Jews control Congress, that they have hypnotized the world, that they prioritize Israel over America, and that any criticism of Israel is considered antisemitic by those Jews?

Whether the newspaper meant to or not, the answer is clearly yes. This was irresponsible journalism done in an irresponsible way, without context and - with that photo- providing fuel to Jew-haters.

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03/04 Links Pt2: Fatah: Jews deserved the Holocaust because of “who they are”; Amnesty complains about the situation it helped create; Virginia Democrats Elect Their First Islamist Anti-Semite

From Ian:

PMW: Holocaust explained by Fatah: Jews deserved to be killed because of “who they are”

On Facebook, Fatah posted the three photos above from World War II together with a story it presented as authentic. According to the version posted by Fatah, Jews willingly and eagerly agreed to bury Russian civilians alive in order to save their own lives. Seeing this, a Nazi soldier proclaimed to the Russians:
"I just wanted you to know who the Jews are and why we are killing them!"
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Feb. 27, 2019]

Fatah presented the story as an authentic quote from the purported memoirs of a Russian civilian:
"One of the Russian prisoners in World War II wrote in his memoirs: 'In 1941 the Germans made us dig deep pits in the ground. When we finished doing what they wanted, they brought a group of Jews, threw them into the pits, and ordered us to bury them. We refused to carry out this atrocious act. So the Germans ordered to throw us in instead of the Jews, and ordered them to bury us. The Jews began to pour dirt on us without hesitation. The dirt almost covered us, but the Germans stopped them and took us out. We were surprised when the German commander shouted at us: "I just wanted you to know who the Jews are and why we are killing them!"'"
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Feb. 27, 2019]

Fatah chose to post the text without comment. It did not condemn this story for portraying Jews as evil, selfish, and ungrateful. Nor did it distance itself from the Nazi commander’s justification of the murder of Jews in the Holocaust based on the antisemitic libel that Jews are defined by these character traits.

New York Times Op-Ed Writer Faults Paper’s Israel News Coverage

How bad is New York Times coverage of Israel?

So bad that not even one of the newspaper’s contributing opinion writers appears to believe it.

For the second time this year, New York Times “contributing opinion writer” Matti Friedman has used the Times‘ own op-ed pages to not-so-subtly throw shade on the Times news coverage of Israel. “Contributing opinion writer” is a lofty title the Times uses for people who aren’t quite weekly columnists but are nonetheless frequent and formally affiliated op-ed writers for the paper.

The last time Friedman made this move was back in January, when he wrote a column basically endorsing a criticism I had made of a big investigative project by the Times that accused Israel of “possibly a war crime.”

Friedman made essentially the same move in Sunday’s Times, with a column criticizing the idea that the West Bank settlers are to blame for all of Israel’s problems. That theory had been advanced by New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief David Halbfinger, whose byline was also atop the “possibly a war crime” investigation.

The war against antisemitism must be conducted on social media

The recent surge of antisemitism is frightening. The World Zionist Organization [WZO] recently compiled data that reveals a sharp increase in the amount and level of hatred directed towards the Jewish people.

In the United States there was a 57% increase of antisemitic incidents in 2018. Berlin police reported that violent cases of antisemitism have tripled. In France, a 69% increase of antisemitic incidents was recorded.

Over half of the Jews in France - 58% - said they are afraid of becoming the target of abuse due to their identity. Nearly half the Jews in Germany - 47% - reported similar concerns and in Belgium the numbers - at 41% - are only a bit lower.

One cause of the increasing number of antisemitic incidents is the increasing role that social media play in our lives. The social networks have become weapons which fuel antisemitism around the world.

In the past, antisemitism was based on religious and Christian dogma, especially the influence of the Catholic Church. Modern-day studies suggest that antisemitism is motivated by other causes, foremost of which is the prominent roles that Jews enjoy throughout the world, and what is seen as their dominant influence and wealth. In the past, the Jews in Europe were viewed as inferior and were mostly restricted from prominent roles in public arenas.

Another reason for modern-day antisemitism is the festering hatred on the European continent for foreigners due to the hordes of refugees and immigrants in recent years. It’s interesting to note that these refugees and immigrants are currently the most dangerous and central threat to Jewish communities in Europe.

Cartoon of the Day: Patriarchy

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

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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.