The only mention he found of the word "Jewish" in any of the many Jordanian sites that used to be part of the Judean kingdom was this reference to "Jewish oppression:"
A map (found in a hotel in Amman) of the ancient area replaces Judah and Israel with Palestine and doesn't mention that any part of Jordan was actually part of Jewish "Palestine", artificially using the Jordan River to delineate the two areas:
Sacks goes on:
At the renovated museum at Petra, one can find another depiction of Judea as a ruthless, imperialist state:
Aretas II first minted coins, during his reign Alexander Janneus was King of Judah and he was a ruthless ruler who sought to expand and strengthen the territories of Judah. Around 100 BC he took control of Gaza and though the people of Gaza asked for Aretas help it came too late.
Thus the Jewish kingdom of Judah is described not just as oppressive but also as led by a "ruthless" ruler. The echo of a beleaguered and besieged Gaza is hard to not to cross-reference against contemporary events. It would be surprising if the effect were entirely unintentional.
Describing the peaceful, wealthy and diplomatic regime of the proto-Arabic Nabatean trading peoples (who spoke a Semitic language and migrated from the Arabian peninsula over centuries) in contrast to the warlike, expansionist Herodians, the permanent exhibit at Petra goes on to recount:
King Herod the great invaded twice second time taking control of large parts of the country… Aretas IV whose daughter married Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. Herod Antipas later divorced Phasaelis in order to marry his brother’s wife Herodias, mother of the famed Salome, who danced for Herod and in return asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. The shamed Phasaelis fled back home to Petra, escorted by Nabatean guard. Aretas, IV angered by the snub, sent an army to invade Herod’s territory and captured large parts of it along the west bank of the Jordan river.
So it appears that duplicity and decadence can be added to the cycle of war, revenge and retribution between the Judeans and the proto-Arabs in the last century BCE. Added to this is a reference to the infamous tale of Salome and John the Baptist, which could plausibly be considered one of the foundational narratives of Christian and global anti-Semitism.
Jordan's peace treaty with Israel is now almost 25 years old.
Some "peace."
(h/t Yoel)
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This week’s New York Times Magazine features an essay by the veteran Israel-hater Nathan Thrall titled “How the Battle over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics.” Employing a variety of lies, half-truths, illogical deductions, and insinuations, it draws a contrast between wealthy Jewish donors to the Democratic party who are sympathetic to Israel and minority, primarily black, activists who are anti-Israel. Jonathan Tobin comments:
Thrall’s object is to justify [boycott-Israel] campaigns that anchor the debate about the subject in “Black-Palestinian solidarity” and the effort to view the war on Israel through the “racial-justice prism.” The result is an 11,000-word essay that seeks to . . . paint Zionism as inherently racist and efforts to destroy Israel as idealistic attempts to defend human rights, [while also seeking] to portray the pro-Israel movement’s effort to push back at anti-Semitic attacks as tainted by prejudice against African-Americans and fueled primarily by the heavy-handed efforts of Jewish donors to manipulate the Democratic party.
One of Thrall’s primary sources is the former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes. . . . The article . . . amplifies Rhodes’s specious claim that President Obama’s inability to persuade Israel’s supporters to back him on the [Israel-Palestinian] issue was due to racial prejudice. He claims that supporters of Israel assumed that Barack Obama was pro-Palestinian because he was black. Rhodes’s thesis, which Thrall endorses, is that this alleged fear of Obama was the result of the pro-Israel community’s understanding that the Jewish state really was “an oppressor.” According to Rhodes, Obama’s critics were “acknowledging, through [their] own fears, that Israel treats the Palestinians like black people had been treated in the United States.”
This argument has it backward. Jewish Democrats [went to enormous lengths] to maintain their faith that Obama had been sincere in his professions of support for Israel when he ran for president in 2008, in spite of evidence to the contrary, both then and later. Far from being prejudiced against him, most American Jews stuck loyally to Obama, despite his belief that more “daylight” was needed between Israel and the United States. They even supported his efforts to appease an Iranian regime that was bent on genocide.
The assumption that Palestinians and Israeli Arabs are treated the same way as the African-American victims of Jim Crow in the pre-civil-rights-era South is a big lie. . . . The standoff about the future of the West Bank exists because the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected offers of peace and statehood. They would have attained independence long ago had they been willing to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders might be drawn.
Former British prime minister Gordon Brown announced Monday he has joined the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) as an affiliate member, in a bid to combat rising anti-Semitism within the opposition party.
In a video released by the Hope not Hate organization, which works to challenge racism, the former Labour leader says the party has “let the Jewish community and itself down” over the past two years, in a reference to the anti-Semitism accusations that have dogged the party and its leadership.
The clip was filmed at London’s Liverpool Street Station, where there is a statue to commemorate the nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children who were rescued in the Kindertransport during World War II. The children were taken out of Europe and fostered in Britain and as a result were often the only members of their families to survive the Holocaust.
In the video, Brown speaks passionately of “the promises we made following the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust to the Jewish community: that you will never walk alone and we will never walk by on the other side.”
He also notes that the party “should never have allowed legitimate criticism — that I share — of the current Israeli government to act as a cover for the demonization of the entire Jewish people.”
This is genuine solidarity. I’d heard rumours that Gordon Brown was releasing a video. No one asked him to stand up to antisemitism and to stand by @JewishLabour He just did. pic.twitter.com/wGUPj3dg7A
Harold Wilson may be less well-known internationally than Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair, but he dominated British politics for much of the 1960s and 1970s — and remains the only modern-day prime minister to win four general elections.
His return to office 45 years ago this month was as unexpected as his defeat had been four years previously when, having rewarded him with a landslide victory in 1966, the voters unceremoniously ejected his Labour government in June 1970.
But, in many regards, Wilson’s roller-coaster ride in the decade between 1964 and 1974, from victory to defeat and back again, was completely predictable.
Famously pragmatic — critics claimed unprincipled — the former prime minister’s name became for a time synonymous with the wheeler-dealing and political game-playing in which he undoubtedly reveled.
As one contemporary newspaper columnist suggested, Wilson’s image was “a dark serpentine crawling trimmer, shifty and shuffling, devious, untrustworthy, constant only in the pursuit of self-preservation and narrow party advantage.” For the historian Dominic Sandbrook, Wilson was “a brilliant opportunist.”
There was, however, a limit to Wilson’s alleged opportunism. As the left wing and veteran Zionist Labour MP, Ian Mikardo, once argued: “I don’t think Harold … [had] any doctrinal beliefs at all. Except for one, which I find utterly incomprehensible, which is his devotion to the cause of Israel.”
Wilson’s leadership arguably marked the high point of the relationship between Labour and British Jews, a bond which has today been strained by Jeremy Corbyn’s strident anti-Zionism and the allegations of anti-Semitism which continue to rock the party. It is a reminder not simply of happier times, but of the staunch support that the left once offered to Israel and the rather more ambivalent stance adopted by British conservatives.
I was going to caption the man "The Forward" but that was too obvious....
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In 1921, in The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger, Henry Morgenthau wrote an article about how Zionism was a big mistake.
Here is the beginning of the long article:
ZIONISM is the most stupendous fallacy in Jewish history. I assert that it is wrong in principle, and impossible of realization; that it is unsound in its economics, fantastical in its politics, and sterile in its spiritual ideals, Where it is not pathetically visionary, it is a cruel playing with the hopes of a people blindly seeking their way out of age-long miseries. These are bold and sweeping assertions, but in this article I shall undertake to make them good.
The very fervor of my feeling for the oppressed of every race and every land, especially for the Jews, those of my own blood and faith, to whom I am bound by every tender tie, impels me to fight with all the greater force against this scheme, which my intelligence tells me can only lead them deeper into the mire of the past, while it professes to be leading them to the heights.
Zionism is a surrender, not a solution. It is a retrogression into the blackest error, and not progress toward the light. I will go further, and say that it is a betrayal: it is an eastern European proposal, fathered in this country by American Jews, which, if it were to succeed, would cost the Jews of America most that they have gained of liberty, equality and fraternity.
I claim to speak with knowledge on this subject. I have had occasion to know the Jew intimately in all the lands where he dwells in numbers, and to study his problems on his own ground, with the intensity and sympathy which were required by my duty to help in each place to formulate the plans for his immediate assistance. I was born among the Jews of Germany, and by natural association with German Jews in New York, and by repeated visits to Germany, am familiar with their life and problems. As an American of fifty-five years’ residence, as a director of the Educational Alliance and of Mt. Sinai Hospital, as president of the Bronx House and the Free Synagogue for more than ten years, and as one who has traveled on speaking tours from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to New Orleans on behalf of the American Jewish Relief Committee, I am thoroughly familiar with the American Jews. As American Ambassador to Turkey I came into daily official contact with the Jews from all parts of the Near East, not $1111)’ the Jews of Turkey and of the Turkish Protectorate in Palestine itself, but also the Jews of Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, Rumania and Bulgaria, to say nothing of the accredited representatives of the Zionist Party in Constantinople. As the head of President Wilson's Commission, which was sent to investigate the alleged pogroms of the Jews of Poland. following the Armistice in 1919, I spent several months on the ground in Poland and Galicia, and talked with thousands of Jews in every walk of life in that greatest center of Jewish population in the world. They told me their troubles; the indignities and the perils they endured; the hatred of their neighbors because of their religion; the deliberate efforts that were being made to stifle their economic life; the political discriminations to which they were subjected; and the social barriers which did not permit them a full life as members of their Community.
I speak as a Jew. I speak with fullest sympathy for the Jew everywhere. ...
This is the earliest formulation I can find of "As-a Jew" to assert that a Jewish state is a bad thing.
Morgenthau was more involved in Judaism than most "as-a-Jews" but his hubris at pretending to know what is best for all Jews is starkly contrasted with the millions of Jews who were slaughtered only twenty years later, partially because Jews like him gave Great Britain the confidence that Jews wouldn't cause a stink when it capitulated to Arab demands not to allow Jews to immigrate to Palestine to save themselves from the Holocaust.
This "expert" first describes why it is literally impossible for Israel to ever prosper economically (in the full British Mandate area), and why Zionism is impossible politically. But then he gives his real reason to oppose Zionism - his certainty that the modern world is a tolerant, accepting place for Jews who can integrate peacefully:
I have often used a figure of speech—it was brought to my mind by a meeting with rugmakcrs in Turkey—as follows: The Jew has been content, in most lands and down the ages, to be the fringe of the carpet, the loose end over which every foot has stumbled, where every heel has left its injuring impression on the disconnected individual strands. What the Jew should do is. to become a part of the pattern of the carpet itself: weave himself into the very warp and woof of the main fabric of humanity; and gain the strength which comes from a co-ordinated and orderly relation to the other strands of human society. His peculiar beauties (his peculiar talents), which in the fringe are soiled and hidden. take on new value when they become part of the main carpet; and they find their glory in lending to the pattern a unique splendor and a special lustre.
While he decried Zionism as being utopian and unrealistic, his ideas that Jews would integrate to end antisemitism were even more utopian and unrealistic, as history has shown.
I don't know whether Morgenthau changed his mind after witnessing the Holocaust and the success of the Zionist enterprise, as he died in 1946.
His son was Treasury Secretary for FDR and ended up becoming a strong supporter of Zionism.
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A 2017 United Nations-funded school textbook for Arab students offers a revisionist history of Israel as part of its goal to incite violence against Israelis.
“Since the Zionist movement established in 1856 its first settlement, known as ‘Montefioriyyah’ [Mishkenot Sha’ananim, built by Sir Moses Montefiore before the emergence of modern Zionism], south-west of the Jerusalem city wall, the series of division [actions] in Palestine has not stopped,” according to social studies book for ninth-graders funded by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which was established by the UN General Assembly in 1949 to assist Arabs who became refugees during Israel’s War of Independence the previous year.
“It [i.e., the Zionist movement] established settlements that included training centers and arms depots. After the ‘Catastrophe’ [Nakba in Arabic] of 1948 it ruled over more than 78 % of Palestine’s territory,” continues the text. “More than 850 thousand Palestinians were made to emigrate and they and their families lived in refugee camps in Palestine and in the Diaspora. Nothing of it [Palestine] was left, except the Gaza Strip and the West Bank that were occupied [later] in 1967.”
An appeals court in Berlin has ordered the deportation of the convicted Palestinian terrorist, Rasmea Odeh. The Higher Regional Court was responding to an appeal filed by Odeh’s lawyer, challenging the earlier deportation order issued by Berlin State’s Home Affairs Department, or Innensenat, ordering her to leave the country.
That deportation was promptly carried out. Odeh is out of Germany.
Odeh, feted by anti-Israel activists across the world, is the mastermind of the 1969 Jerusalem supermarket bombing that killed two Hebrew University students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner. She was convicted of the bombing and served a 10-year sentence, only to be released in a prisoner exchange for a captured Israeli soldier in Lebanon. She later moved to the U.S. where she applied for citizenship, concealing her terrorist past.
German authorities ordered the deportation, claiming Odeh had not disclosed her public engagements while applying for a visa at the German embassy in Jordan, where she currently resides. Odeh’s lawyers denied their client hid the real purpose of her visit. On Friday, the appeals courts accepted the version presented by the German embassy and reinstated the prior deportation order.
On Monday, the newspaper Berliner Morgenpost confirmed Odeh’s departure from Germany. “The ex-terrorist Rasmea Odeh has left Berlin. The Jordanian national voluntarily left the country, [Berlin’s] Department of Internal affairs declared,” the newspaper reported. “The police oversaw her departure from Germany.”
Odeh, member of the terror outfit Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), has a history of making false claims on visa applications. In 2017, a Michigan court stripped Odeh of her U.S. citizenship for lying on her visa and naturalization forms. She was allowed to leave the country without a prison term as part of a plea bargain.
Foreign influence in the United States is a major problem, but it might surprise you to find out just who some of the biggest players are. You would certainly think of Russia given the massive coverage of their attempts to influence the 2016 US election. But one name you probably haven’t heard is Qatar, a small country in the Middle East which wields an outsized influence through a large and well-funded operation.
The characterization of Russia as a puppet master in US politics is, of course, utterly ludicrous to anyone familiar enough with the poorly funded, amateurish, and ham-fisted operations of Russia and her allies to influence US opinion in the 2016 cycle. This is not to say that foreign influence can’t be effective or that foreign nations and their lobbyists are not corrupting the policy-making process – they clearly are. A compelling case regarding this malicious influence is made in a new documentary called Blood Money, previewed at last month’s CPAC conference and set for release this week.
To illustrate the phenomenon of Washington, as a “playground for foreign interests,” the documentary tells the story of the Qatar lobby, and how they have effectively changed the conversation with regard to Middle East policy in establishment circles during the current administration. Under the Obama administration, the US threw its weight behind the Arab Spring movement on the theory that our support for democratization would lead to both greater stability and more pro-American outcomes. It was a bad bet. The overthrow of authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya simply empowered radical forces like the Muslim Brotherhood, at once undermining stability in the region and leading to an increase in support for terror activities worldwide.
Abbas Hamideh, the Cleveland-based founder of Al-Awda - Right of Return, is prominent in anti-Israel circles. He is one of the main organizers of the anti-AIPAC rallies every year. I have a post from YMikarov detailing his antisemitism. The ADL also has a page with tons of examples of his hate.
Lately on Twitter Hamideh has been trying to discredit the idea that Jews have anything to do with the Land of Israel.
So I decided to look at his family history.
Surprise! Any connection his family had with Palestine came after Zionists started to make the land of Israel attractive to neighboring Arabs.
It was not a very distinguished tribe. As this 1873 travelogue notes, they were subservient to pretty much every other tribe and they fought among themselves.
The transition from the highlands to the mountains is very sudden. Climate and vegetation at once are changed. At first, at the bottoms of the valleys, are many patches of flat ground, covered with the richest herbage. In one of these opens we found a camp of Hamideh, into whose district we had now entered. The first sign of our proximity was a large herd of she-asses and their colts, animals not in favour with the more warlike Beni Sakk'r. The camp consisted of 14 families.
Here Zadam halted, and had a long conversation with their sheikh. The manner of both, the nonchalance of the one, the cringing deference of the other, was an amusing illustration of the great man talking with the small one. Zadam, by his contract, was bound to conduct us through the whole of the Beni Hamideh territory, and did not wish to have the expense of their sheikh accompanying us. But the poor man, who certainly had few opportunities of backsheish, urged upon him, "Why should you prevent my going with the Franghi, and getting a little present, when you get a large one?" Our sheikh consented at last, observing to the inferior magnate, that at least there was plenty to eat at our camp; and telling us that the Hamideh came at his own choice, and could not demand a gift.
Our new follower devoted himself henceforward most assiduously to me, as a profitable milch cow, doing the civil most oppressively, and kissing my hand on every possible occasion. Honest and inoffensive we found the Hamideh, one and all, but cringing and mean—in fact, with all the characterises of those who have been accustomed to be treated as an inferior race.
So far from being independent, as is generally supposed, and has been stated by some writers, there is not a single sept of the Beni Hamideh (or Hamaidi, as some of them prefer to call themselves) which is not the vassal of some greater tribe. All those north of the Arnon, are the "teba'a" (feudal subjects) of the Beni Sakk'r, while those south of it, have the worse misfortune of having two masters; being for the most part vassals of Iverak, and at the same time compelled to purchase the goodwill of their neighbours, the Beni Sakk'r, to whose marauding parties they would otherwise be continually exposed. This position has given them a servile tone and bearing, which is all the more noticeable, in contrast with the haughty bearing of the lordly Beni Sakk'r.
Again, there is no unity in the politics of the Hamideh. A number of petty sheikhs, each leading a few families, and loth to acknowledge any superior in their own tribe, are enabled, by the configuration of the country, to hold their several valleys in tolerable security. It is no easy matter to lift cattle across from one wady to another when once they have entered the mountain descents. But it is very easy for the lords of the highlands to sally down any ravine they please, and overrun the valleys. \ This position of the Hamideh partly explains the Idifficulties of most explorers of Moab. They have invariably gone to the wrong tribe; and, learning that the Hamideh possess the sites of the principal ruins, have entrusted themselves to the first petty sheikh of the tribe to whom they could get access. These chieftains were each powerless beyond their own domains; and endless squabbles over paltry backsheish, and final disappointment, have been the result.
...Their own tradition is, that they were driven from the uplands by the Belka Arabs, who in turn have been squeezed out by the Beni Sakk'r.
The family, which now falsely styles itself as a tribe of warriors, does have one notable and ignoble place in history. The Mesha Stele, one of the most important archaeological finds of all time, was found in their territory, as a single large inscribed stone. When the tribe got wind that it might be worth money, they dug it out of the ground, set a fire under it, and then threw cold water on it to shatter it so they could send pieces to family members. I'm not sure if this was out of spite or avarice, most of the pieces were purchased or recovered by scholars. Many of the fragments have never been recovered.
Now, I don't have specific information of when parts of the Hamideh clan moved across the Jordan, but it isn't too hard to guess that they, like so many other Arabs, were attracted to the Jewish capital and booming economy that Zionism brought to Palestine. And, let's face it, their lives in Transjordan were lousy - they were treated with no respect and instead of building themselves into something they relied on sucking up to the more successful clans. So sometime between 1880 and 1930, some of the Hamidehs came to Palestine and magically became "Palestinian."
In reality, they aren't.
Notice that while Hamideh's clan did live in Eastern Palestine, in what is now called Jordan, they are not claiming any of their ancestral lands from Jordan. They only want the land the Jews control, which is consistent with all Palestinian Arab demands since 1964.
When I called Hamideh on his real family history, he responded with this farcical tweet where he now claims to be descended from - Moses!
The guy can't stop lying. (HE followed with a tweet denying any Jewish connection to Jerusalem, and I pointed out one Arabic name for Jerusalem - Bayt al-Maqdis - is based on the Hebrew word for Holy Temple.)
The Israel haters, of course, aren't put off by little things like lies.
Interestingly, while Hamideh used to be friends with Linda Sarsour and there are photos of the two together, they had some sort of falling out - possibly Sarsour realized that associating with an open Hezbollah supporter was not good for her career.
But a member of Congress has no such scruples but to pose with a terror-supporting fake Palestinian from a two-bit Jordanian family.
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"We are facing very difficult days," he told the summit.
"We will have to take decisive steps, and we are confident that you will be with us in our struggle a true support."
This is not likely. Arab support for Palestinians has been going down over the years as frustration over the Hamas/Fatah split and their refusal to be flexible on peace terms with Israel.
"We are coming to very difficult days, after Israel - the occupying power - destroyed all the agreements and renounced all the commitments from Oslo until today. It continues its policy and procedures to destroy the two-state solution, and has made us lose hope for peace with it. We can no longer tolerate this situation or live with it in order to safeguard the interests of our people, " Abbas said.
Abu Mazen bragged about not accepting anything from Israel unless it continued to pay the full amount, including funds that are paid to terrorists out of the PA budget.
"Israel cut off a large part of our money, which it collects and takes a commission from, under the pretext of paying salaries to the families of the prisoners and the wounded, which is a breach of the agreements. This made us insist on the receipt of our money in full undiminished. We will not abandon our people, especially those who sacrificed themselves," he said.
Of course his dignity at not accepting Israeli tax revenues does not extend to the indignity of begging Arabs for more and more money so he can continue to pay both terrorists and regular salaries.
"In light of this emergency crisis, we call on you to activate the resolutions of the previous summits by activating the financial safety nets and fulfilling the financial obligations of the brotherly countries to support the budget of the State of Palestine. This situation is very difficult and dangerous, please do not abandon us in it," Abbas begged.
He also insulted Hamas and blamed it for the split.
He attacked the US for its moves of closing the PLO offices, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, for shutting off aid to UNRWA and for recognizing Israel's control over the Golan Heights.
He predicted that the US "will tell Israel to take part of the Palestinian territories and give the rest of it autonomy, and make the Gaza Strip a formal state for Hamas to run."
Abbas demanded that Arab states cut off relations with any state that recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital. "We urge you, my fellow leaders, to be wary of Israel's attempts to push some countries of the world to transfer their embassies to Jerusalem. This requires our countries to stand in their way and declare those countries that are in this direction to violate international law and expose that their political and economic interests with Arab countries are at risk."
Finally, he said, "We are confident that Israel's attempts to normalize its relations with the Arab and Islamic countries will not succeed before the Arab peace initiative is implemented from beginning to end and not vice versa, and normalization only with the end of the occupation of the Palestinian and Arab territories."
When he says he is "confident" that means he is frightened.
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The fishermen's captain, Nizar Ayyash, said: "The Egyptian boats surrounded a fishing boat in the sea off of Rafah, and arrested on board four fishermen."
No human rights groups have commented. Nor will they.
This week, Israel increased the area of fishing off the Gaza coast to as much as 15 nautical miles in some areas, including near the Egyptian border.
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It was an unexpected sight: A photo of Leila Khaled, the world’s first female airline hijacker, cradling an AK 47, featured in an adulating tweet from a young Socialist leader in the United States celebrating the 49th anniversary of Khaled’s hijacking of TWA flight 840.
Was it possible that an ambitious American political organizer was lionizing a terrorist who blew up a (then-empty) American plane?
The leader in question, Olivia Katbi-Smith, is co-head of the Portland, Oregon, chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America — the reformatted, millennial version of a once distinguished group whose Socialist roots extend back to Eugene V. Debs, five-time presidential candidate and one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
The membership of DSA has grown fourfold since Bernie Sanders’s presidential run in 2016. Likewise, its average age decreased from 68 to 33 between 2013 and now. After Sanders’s loss in the primary to Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump’s subsequent presidential win, on a national level the DSA’s new, young members marshaled their efforts to help elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Rashida Tlaib (MI), and Ilhan Omar (MN) to Congress on a progressive platform that promoted Medicare for all, quality housing, and free college tuition.
Since the election, the group has tipped further left and Katbi-Smith is part of a movement that is challenging traditional Democratic governance. But for supporters of Israel, there is a troubling side to her agenda: She helped lead the DSA to adopt a pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) plank in the group’s charter during its national convention on August 5, 2017, at the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago. When 90 percent of the 697 delegates voted in favor of the BDS resolution, Katbi-Smith was jubilant. She and the other attendees waved a Palestinian flag and chanted, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.”
The political writer Paul Berman recently wrote in Tablet that, “Lately, DSA has had the misfortune to get taken over by a flash mob of fresh-faced hipsters just out of college. And the hipsters have naturally turned the august organization into a zoo of political fantasies of every preposterous and grisly sort, unto the people who … do not go very far to disguise the fact that they are chanting ‘Death to the Jews.’”
The father of an Israeli terror victim is calling on Twitter to shut down the account of one of his daughter’s killers.
Arnold Roth — whose 15-year-old daughter Malki was murdered in the August 2001 Jerusalem Sbarro bombing — is seeking action against Palestinian terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, who drove the suicide attacker to the restaurant and now resides in Jordan after being freed from an Israeli prison in the 2011 Shalit deal.
Two of the 15 people killed in the bombing — including Roth’s daughter — held US citizenship, and Tamimi has been put on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list.
Roth tweeted on Sunday, “The fugitive @FBIMostWanted terrorist who says she carried out the #SbarroPizzeria massacre, who is wanted in the US on terror charges, who has a busy Twitter account, who lives free in Jordan… still has an active Twitter account. Why?”
He added, “Yes, I’ve already asked @Twitter’s guardians of decency to shut #Tamimi’s account down. Their response so far: ‘You can learn more about reporting abusive behavior here. If we take further action, we’ll let you know.’”
“Are there other fugitive jihadists with @Twitter accounts?” Roth concluded.
American Jewry is at a crossroads. The vast majority of American Jews will continue to cling to their familiar ancestral belief system; it’s all they know. To change now would be to deny everything their family members and they, themselves, have lived for. But before they bury their heads in the sand once again, they should at least hear these simple truths:
When our enemies came for us during the Holocaust, they did not ask if we were Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or secular Jews. Neither were they interested in any past service we rendered for the state. WE WERE JEWS. That was all that mattered; and if history repeats itself, when our enemies come for us once again in the future; they will not ask if we are Israelis or Zionists. They will not care if we marched in Selma, Alabama; protested against apartheid in South Africa; supported equal rights for women; advocated for the LBGTQ community and campaigned for Hillary or Bernie. It will only matter that WE ARE JEWS.
Today’s anti-Semitism, unleashed by the left and Islamists is so visceral, virulent, vile, vicious, and vitriolic that it can no longer be justified under the guise of anti-Zionism. In form, content, and message, it is EXACTLY what was seen and heard during the heyday of the Third Reich. It is what made the Holocaust possible. What begins with a parade float in Belgium inevitably ends in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka. This is the fate our enemies want for us. This is why Tehran’s Ayatollah Khameini rejoices that more Jews are moving to Israel – for one grand target.
Meanwhile, most of the Jews will continue entrusting their safety to their religious and political leadership. They will continue to vote for, support, and finance the party and the ideology that will ultimately lead them to their own destruction and that of the state of Israel. Vladimir Jabotinsky recognized that, “The Jew learns not by way of reason, but from catastrophe. He won't buy an umbrella merely because he sees clouds in the sky. He waits until he is drenched and catches pneumonia."
History may yet prove that when it comes to the Jews, Jabotinsky was an optimist.
Continuing on my series of re-captioning old cartoons....
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One of the reasons why fights over the Middle East (whether
they involve BDS or some other propaganda effort) tend to immediately be cast
in terms of Left vs. Right is because the majority of attacks on the Jewish
state these days come wrapped in Left-leaning vocabulary.
This is not to say that card-carrying right wingers like Pat
Buchannan or outright fascists like David Duke don't also hurl thunderbolts at
the Jews and their state on a regular basis.
But even they tend to use terminology that has long become familiar to
both Israel's defenders and defamers.
For instance, with a few exceptions you will no longer even
hear Israel's most ardent foes talk about throwing the Jews into the sea or
readying for a massacre that would rival the Mongols (language Israel's hostile
neighbors used repeatedly during the first two decades of the state's
existence). Instead, complaints (which
range from reasonable-sounding to hysterical) draw upon the language of human
rights and international law to make the case that Israel is the world's
greatest violator of both.
In fact, individuals and groups who use this terminology to
make their case against the Jewish state do not simply see themselves as
Progressives but insist that their issue defines who does and who does not
deserve this label.
This is why those traveling under the BDS banner routinely
accuse liberals who do not follow their lead of being PEPs ("Progressives
for Everything but Palestine"), encapsulating in a single inelegant phrase
the assumption that support for anything other than Palestinian demands
(whatever they happen to be this week) represents an abandonment of liberal
principles.
The key to understanding this phenomenon is seeing how
ineffective it is trying to use this same accusation in reverse. For instance, I don't think I've met a single
Israel supporter who, at one time or another, has not expressed the notion that
Progressives who claim to champion the rights of women and gays (for example)
can possibly favor the Arabs (who crush the rights of both) as opposed to
Israel (which probably has the best record with regard to gender and sexual
equality in the world).
Activists with this mindset (which I once had and still
possess to some degree) are perpetually shocked to find out how ineffective
such "reverse-PEP" arguments are when directed against Israel's most
ardent foes. Gay rights are the perfect
example of an issue that should demonstrate both the yawning chasm between
Israel's approach to human rights vs. its opponents, and the hypocrisy of
anyone claiming to champion liberal values who fights to expand the territory
in which the murder of gays is politically and religiously sanctioned.
But try to bring this contradiction to the attention of self-styled,
pro-Palestinian, "progressive" groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and
you will soon find yourself being accused (and accused and accused and accused)
of "Pinkwashing," a fake phenomenon invented by JVP types to avoid
this issue entirely by casting it as part of an evil plot by Israel's friends
to "change the subject" from whatever it is the Israel-dislikers
insist is the only thing we're allowed to talk about.
The reason behind this strategy of avoidance (as well as the
shrillness that accompanies it) is that Israel's foes (who have no answer
regarding the glaring contradictions of their claimed ideology) assume that if
they simply ignore their opponents and shriek their own accusations ever
louder, eventually others will tire of trying to get a response out of them,
leaving the field open for debate to continue on the Israel-haters own terms.
The behaviors we see from Israel's loudest accusers
(dividing the Left into "true Progressives" who toe the BDS party
line and fake ones who do not, ignoring all facts and arguments that they
cannot respond to, and never relenting from perpetual attack mode) all have
precedent in the argument which framed the Left during the last century as much
as hostility to Israel defines it for this one: the role of the Soviet Union
(and support thereof) as the touchstone for commitment to revolutionary change.
It is to this subject that I shall turn to next.
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Critics of the U.S. decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights misread the legal significance of the preamble to UN Security Council Resolution 242, from November 1967, which contains a reference to the principle of the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.”
Legal scholars have drawn a distinction between the seizure of territory in wars of aggression, which is illegal, and the seizure of territory by a state exercising its lawful right of self-defense.
Writing in the American Journal of International Law in 1970, Stephen Schwebel, who became the legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State and then President of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, wrote about the legal significance of this difference. He also cited the great British scholar Elihu Lauterpacht, who argued that “territorial change cannot properly take place as a result of the unlawful use of force.”
What about cases of the lawful use of force? In the aftermath of the Second World War, significant territorial changes were implemented in Europe. For example, Germany lost considerable land to Poland and to the Soviet Union. It was clear that the UN Charter recognized the right of states to use force in self-defense, which is the case of Israel’s entry into the Golan Heights.
In 1967, when the Soviet Union undertook to obtain condemnation of Israel in the UN Security Council as the aggressor in the Six-Day War, it failed, losing the vote by 11 to 4. The Soviets then went to the General Assembly and failed yet again. It was clear for the member states of both UN bodies that Israel had acted in self-defense.
It is also not true that the Golan decision represents a major shift in U.S. policy. In 1975, President Gerald Ford wrote to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that the U.S. “will give great weight to Israel’s position that any peace agreement be predicated on Israel’s remaining on the Golan Heights.”
Arab leaders said on Sunday they would seek a UN Security Council resolution against the US decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and promised to support Palestinians in their bid for statehood.
Arab leaders, long divided by regional rivalries, also ended their annual summit in Tunisia calling for cooperation with non-Arab Iran based on non-interference in each others’ affairs.
Arab leaders who have been grappling with a bitter Gulf Arab dispute, splits over Iran’s regional influence, the war in Yemen and unrest in Algeria and Sudan sought common ground after Washington recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan.
But the abrupt departure from the summit shortly after it began by Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who is locked in a row with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, suggested rivalries were not easily buried. No reason was given for his departure.
“We, the leaders of the Arab countries gathered in Tunisia … express our rejection and condemnation of the United States decision to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan,” Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said.
German exports to Iran dropped 9% last year, Benjamin Weinthal reported in Sunday’s Jerusalem Post.
Large German banks like Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank stopped doing business with Iran. German engineering companies have stopped exporting engineering equipment to Tehran. Well-known companies like Volkswagen, BMW, Siemens and Daimler are withdrawing from Iran’s volatile market.
The reason? US sanctions on Iran – and the unyielding efforts of America’s Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell.
In fact, in the German state of Lower Saxony, Weinthal reported, trade with Iran rose in the first half of 2018, but then dropped drastically in the second half of the year, due to US sanctions on Iran and Grenell’s arrival in May.
Grenell has made sure that the American position is amply clear. On his first day on the job, he tweeted: “US sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.”
Palestine Today has a heartwarming story (for Palestinians) about a mother who brought her daughter to Palestinian Land Day protests, exposing the toddler to danger.
When she was born, her mom named her after Reem Saleh Riyashi, a terrorist who killed 4 Israelis at the Erez crossing in 2004.
Riyashi left behind two small children of her own and a Hamas commander husband. She apparently decided to blow herself up because she was having an affair with another Hamas commander, and the news about the affair was starting to get out. Her lover convinced her to blow herself up and become a heroine rather than be exposed to the shame of being an adulteress.
Here's the role model for today's Palestinians:
When little Reem grows up her mother wants her to blow up.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
At least three Israelis will be speaking at the Global Entrepreneurship Conference in Bahrain later this month, upsetting Arabs who are against normalization with Israel and putting them further on the defensive.
There are reports that Israeli Economy Minister Eli Cohen was added to the list of participants on the first day of the conference.
The Bahrain parliament issued a statement denouncing the conference for allowing Israelis, saying "The House of Representatives has condemned the hosting of Israeli speakers at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress and the support of the Palestinian cause will continue to be our priority," the House of Representatives said in a statement posted on its official Facebook page.
Kuwait announced Sunday its withdrawal from the conference because of the participation of the Israeli delegation.
The cases of Arab "normalization" with Israel are accelerating and the frustration from the old school Israel haters is increasing.
It is fun to watch.
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Here is the full statement jointly signed by Pope Francis and King Mohammed VI in Morocco on Saturday:
On the occasion of the visit of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Kingdom of Morocco, His Holiness and His Majesty King Mohammed VI, recognizing the unique and sacred character of Jerusalem / Al-Quds Acharif, and deeply concerned for its spiritual significance and its special vocation as a city of peace, join in making the following appeal:
“We consider it important to preserve the Holy City of Jerusalem / Al-Quds Acharif as the common patrimony of humanity and especially the followers of the three monotheistic religions, as a place of encounter and as a symbol of peaceful coexistence, where mutual respect and dialogue can be cultivated.
To this end, the specific multi-religious character, the spiritual dimension and the particular cultural identity of Jerusalem / Al-Quds Acharif must be protected and promoted.
It is our hope, therefore, that in the Holy City, full freedom of access to the followers of the three monotheistic religions and their right to worship will be guaranteed, so that in Jerusalem / Al-Quds Acharif they may raise their prayers to God, the Creator of all, for a future of peace and fraternity on the earth”.
Rabat, 30 March 2019
While it is presumptuous for Muslim and Christian leaders to sign a declaration on Jerusalem without including any Jews, this statement includes an assertion that every member of the three major monotheistic faiths should have full access to their holy spaces in order to worship there.
Which means that Jews have the full right not just to visit but even to pray at the Temple Mount, the holiest spot in Judaism.
King Mohammed's part of the statement is even more interesting because he chairs a committee created by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on Jerusalem.
The mere visits of Jews to the Temple Mount cause daily uproars in Arab and Muslim media, let alone the very rare expressions of prayer by Jews there (which I was privileged to witness and participate in last month.)
The only people trying to limit freedom of access and worship to all holy sites in Jerusalem are the Muslims. (And, ironically, the Israeli government which officially does not allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount to maintain an antisemitic "status quo.")
Does King Mohammed realize what he just signed? Does the rest of the Muslim world?
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
This Week’s Sanity Report from Israel Dec. 22, 2024
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Wednesday, April 03, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
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