Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

The Good Prince and the Iran deal (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

It’s become a truism that the hatred and harassment of individual Jews and Jewish communities that once was prevalent in the lands of the diaspora before the rebirth of a Jewish state has since morphed into loathing and persecution of that state.

There are other parallels. Jewish communities in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East had a precarious existence, depending on the good will of the local prince or emir. If the ruler liked the Jews – or, probably more correctly – found them more useful than despicable, they could live their lives relatively undisturbed. If, on the other hand – well, you know the story.

Today the position of the Jewish state is also dependent on powerful people and entities far beyond Israel’s control. In particular, the State of Israel is strongly affected by the policies and actions of the US. In America, foreign policy, and especially practical actions and reactions to events in the international arena, are primarily in the hands of the president and his appointees. These days, the President of the United States is the “prince” whose attitude most affects whether Israel thrives or withers.

Israel could have tried harder to reduce her dependence on the US and her susceptibility to pressure from the American government. She should have. I would like to believe that the desirability of this is becoming evident to Israeli officials, but the pull of “free” military hardware is hard to ignore. And there is some truth in the idea that Israelis simply admire the US and value a close relationship with her.

In recent times, Khamenei has been playing Haman to the American president’s Ahasuerus. The Iranian playbook calls for Israel to be battered by simultaneous attacks from Hezbollah’s and Hamas’ rocket forces, and invaded by proxies from both the North and South. The regime is working on increasing the number, payloads, defensibility, and accuracy of the rockets in the hands of her proxies as well as in Iran herself. At the same time she is developing new proxies by establishing Iraqi Shiite militias in Syria, modeled on the Lebanese Hezbollah. All this is intended to be shielded under a nuclear umbrella, whose development is proceeding.

Taken by itself, it seems that war between Israel and Iran is guaranteed. But there is one other possibility – the only alternative that I can imagine, given the objectives of the Iranian regime. And that is that the regime can be toppled by internal opposition encouraged by economic pressure from the US.

It’s a longshot, because a regime that is demonstrably willing to shoot down anti-government protesters in the street, that is buttressed by paramilitary militias, and that terrorizes and murders opposition figures, is hard to overthrow. The regime is quite prepared to control the allocation of resources in such a way that the general population suffers bitterly as long it remains in power, so economic pressure needs to be tough and protracted.

The alternative is a very destructive war for both Israel and Iran. If it comes to this, then I would hope that Israel will strike preemptively and hard. But that’s another discussion.

So now we can see the immediate effect of the attitude by the American president, the good or bad “prince” that holds the destiny of the Jewish community – in this case the State of Israel – in his hands. Barack Obama, following a nakedly anti-Israel script originally laid down in the 2006 Iraq Study Report (written in part by his close advisor Ben Rhodes), facilitated the Iranian plan. His administration negotiated a deal with the Iranians that removed economic sanctions, shielded the Iranian nuclear project, and even provided pallets of cash which went to support Iranian terrorist initiatives in Lebanon and Syria. At the same time, he punished Israeli PM Netanyahu whenever possible, kept up the pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians that would weaken Israel’s ability to defend herself, and – along with officials like Secretary of State Kerry – directly contributed to the public demonization of the Jewish state.

President Trump, on the other hand, has been the Good Prince. He recognized Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, reduced subsidies to the Palestinians, and – it seems – will not try to force the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state as a dagger next to Israel’s heart. Most important, he has taken the US out of the Iran deal and re-imposed sanctions – the only possible road to a peaceful end to Iranian aggression.

I know I am not exaggerating when I say that President Trump is a controversial figure in the US. But he is not controversial in Israel, where almost everyone agrees that he has been the most pro-Israel president – in terms of actual actions, not just words – since Truman. And most Israelis would be happy to see him re-elected in 2020.

But that’s up to American voters to decide. And unfortunately, perhaps in part because Trump has been so pro-Israel, many of his opponents have moved in the opposite direction. Six of the most likely candidates to oppose Trump have said that if elected they would restore US participation in the nuclear deal – that is, they would remove the sanctions re-imposed by President Trump. The Democratic National Committee also passed a resolution calling for the US to return to the deal. The phony “pro-Israel” organization J Street has been lobbying candidates to speak out in favor of the deal and even more ominously, Obama’s shadowy National Security Action group, co-chaired by the ever-present Ben Rhodes, is pushing to restore the Obama Administration’s dangerous Iran policy.

This may be effective as anti-Trump or anti-Israel policy, but it is not in the American interest. The Iranian regime has threatened over and over to attack American assets or even to conduct terrorist attacks in the US herself. “Death to America” is not just a slogan, and the US is not referred to as “The Great Satan” out of desire for friendship. The policy of rapprochement pursued by the Obama Administration was pocketed and exploited by the regime, which did not waver from its objectives of total control of the Middle East and its resources, the establishment of a Shiite caliphate, and – its ultimate goal – replacing the US as the dominant world superpower.

If the Iran deal becomes an issue in the 2020 election, it will be bad for Israel, which does not want to be seen as “taking sides” in an American election. But Trump will likely cite Israel’s security as part of his reason for re-imposing sanctions, while his opponents will accuse “the Israel lobby” of undue influence on US policy. Anything that Israel does or says relating to Iran will be interpreted as improper intervention in the election.

And just like the unfortunate Jews in the Pale of Settlement and the Jewish neighborhoods of Alexandria or Baghdad, the Jewish state will find herself yet again unwillingly involved in and battered by the conflicts of princes.

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04/24 Links Pt2: The false distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism; German political party proposes bill to ban state support of BDS; 'LATimes' names Israeli restaurant best of 2019

From Ian:

The false distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism

It was once said that every Jewish holiday could be summed up with the same nine words: ‘They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat’. Now it only takes eight: ‘A Labour spokesperson apologised for any offence caused’. On Friday, the Labour party tweeted warm wishes to Jews celebrating Passover. At this stage, most Jews are glad to receive any communication from Corbyn supporters that doesn’t ask where the Rothschilds were on 9/11, but the well-meaning post contained a blunder: the accompanying graphic showed the Star of David, a cup of wine and… a loaf of bread.

Under halakha — Jewish religious law — bread is the ultimate forbidden food during Pesach. It is chametz (leavened) and Jews must abstain in memory of the slaves who fled Egyptian bondage so quickly their bread didn’t have time to rise. No doubt Labour moderates think the Israelites should have ‘stayed to fight’ until the yeast kicked in and Tom Watson triggered a leadership contest against Pharaoh. Whoever is in charge of tweeting Labour’s Yom Kippur message would be advised to delete any pictures of bacon rolls from their phone.

Why is this facepalm different from other facepalms? It’s a relatively minor one compared to most of Labour’s behaviour towards Jews. Unfortunately for Labour, it comes after a ComRes poll showing 51 per cent of Britons believe Labour has a ‘serious’ anti-Semitism problem and 55 per cent say it makes Jeremy Corbyn ‘unfit’ to be prime minister. Unfortunately for Jews, the same pollster puts Labour 10 points clear of the Tories. The British people are on the brink of knowingly electing an anti-Semitic government and our radio phone-ins are chocked on the ethics of policemen skateboarding with anarchists.

Do the Jews have a future in the UK? The confluence of Corbynism, an alt-right that has moved from the tweets onto the streets, the forgotten threat of Islamist terrorism and a simmering hostility to kosher slaughter methods will make the coming years the most trying British Jews have faced since the war. For some gathered around seder tables over the weekend, the words ‘next year in Jerusalem’ will have prompted thoughts practical as well as spiritual. Moving to Israel involves many sacrifices but at least once there existential angst comes with an air force.

George Steiner, the Prophet of Progressive Anti-Semitism

In the 1970 T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures delivered at Yale, the literary critic George Steiner offered a compelling explanation for the persistence of anti-Semitism: The Jews suffered for millennia as retribution for introducing the “Ideal” into Western culture. With its idealism and ethical imperatives, the revelation at Sinai “tore up the human psyche by its ancient roots,” depriving its inheritors of not just the material God and the image, but also “natural consciousness,” and “instinctual polytheistic needs.” Jews, the original Puritans, rejected the satisfaction of both the body and the image, for the purity and ascetic life dictated by the divine Word. From this perspective, Judaism represents the earliest celebration of the absolute, the West’s punishing superego, demanding idealism and self-denial, which was later incarnated in primitive Christianity and Messianic socialism, also founded by Jews, Jesus, and Karl Marx, in whose visions the Ideal persists “with terrible tactless force.” By Steiner’s lights, Hitler’s “jibe” that the Jews “invented consciousness” explains the tenacity of Western hatred of the Jews.

Western hatred of the Jews thus begins with anxiety about Jewish claims to exceptionalism. There can only be one bearer of the ideal: The city on the Hill is not Jerusalem, but Rome, later London, and even later still, Boston. In this form of anti-Semitism, which Steiner both described and in some ways endorsed, Jews are loathed because they represent a reminder of their antecedent claim to the Ideal—a claim that causes such anxiety that it must be extirpated. Non-Jewish messianic movements reject the notion of Jewish exceptionalism, because they are the exceptional ones. The continued existence of the Jews, and the resurgence of Israel, are troubling reminders that that the Jews were first to be singled out as God’s “chosen people.”

Steiner’s writings on the State of Israel provide an early primer on the dynamics of the specific form of secular anti-Semitism that has captivated so many progressives in academia and among the rank and file of the British Labour Party, as well as, increasingly, among American progressives. For Steiner, nationalism is a “madness,” as is the “vulgar mystique of flag and anthem.” But it is Israel’s “barbed wire and watch-towers of national dogma” that represent a “rhetoric of self-deception as desperate as any contrived in the history of nationalism.” For Steiner, and in this, contemporary progressives follow him, Israel must bear all the sins of the nation-state. The Greek dramatist Aeschylus in his celebration of Athens—the Oresteia—avows that the city-state is founded on blood: For contemporary progressives, as for Steiner, only Israel, the nation-state ne plus ultra, has blood on its hands. (h/t Yerushalimey)

‘I have no patience for bullies.’ Nikki Haley says the United Nations targeted Israel

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley called her veto vote that paved the way for the United States Embassy in Israel to move to Jerusalem “one of my proudest moments.”

“What I saw at the Security Council reminded me of what it felt like to be bullied when I was a kid. I have no patience for bullies. They were kicking Israel just because — without facts,” she said during the session with Hillel Neuer, the executive director of United Nations Watch.

Haley spoke during an on-stage interview in Montreal at the Shaar Hashamayim synagogue April 10.

She told the 1,200-person audience she doesn’t think U.N. resolutions are effective.

“I don’t think they matter,” she said, speaking of one of the main tools the U.N. General Assembly or Security Council uses to give an opinion.

Member states are not actually required to abide by U.N. resolutions, according to the U.N.

When she vetoed a resolution that would have condemned the United States for moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Haley told the crowd, “I felt like I was fighting for the truth and for what was right. And I was mad. Every country has the sovereign right to put their embassy wherever they choose. The U.S. always chooses to have its embassy in the capital. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The rest of the world can’t hide what we know as fact. The president had great courage to do it.”

“The Arab countries have a lot of oil and a lot of money, and they started picking up all these other countries to vote with them. If you actually go into the quiet corners of the U.N., most countries don’t hate Israel, most envy Israel,” she said.

The IDF wished its Christian, Druze, and Jewish soldiers a happy holiday this week. Which is fine. Israel is, after all, a democracy, and we have soldiers of various religions serving side by side. But I did wonder why the graphic showing the Jewish symbol associated with Passover, a matzoh, was situated at the lowest point of the three symbols depicted. After all, the IDF is an army that represents the Jewish State.

Why is the matzoh situated at the lowest point of the graphic? Misplaced humility.
— (((Varda Epstein))) (@epavard) April 22, 2019

I’m sure no harm was meant. Quite the opposite. That holiday greeting was an exercise in democracy, showing Israel’s tolerance for people of different faiths. The point of juxtaposing the symbols in that manner was perhaps to show that Israel is humble—that we don’t need to see Judaism as superior to other religions. Only different.

Whether or not we agree with this idea, it is important for Jews to remember and absorb the lessons of Jewish history. In Ottoman times, it was prohibited for Jews to build homes higher than those of Muslims. Four important Jerusalem Old City synagogues, in fact, were built below street level as a result of this prohibition. Officials had to be bribed before the Hurva synagogue could be renovated during the early 1700s, because it was to be built higher than before.

The issue of height was not exclusive to the Turks, to buildings, or even to Jews. It was the practice wherever there was Islamic rule that those who were not Muslim be subject to humiliation. Often, humiliation was expressed through lowering the height of Infidels as compared to Muslims. This meant that, for instance, Jews and Christians could not ride horses.

It was regarded as a grave offense for a dhimmi to ride upon a noble animal, such as a camel or a horse. . . In 1697, a Frenchman visiting Cairo noticed that Christians could ride only donkeys and had to dismount when passing distinguished Muslims, “for a Christian must only appear before a Muslim in a humiliating position.” Till the beginning of the twentieth century, in Yemen and in the rural areas of Morocco, Libya, Iraq, and Persia, a Jew had to dismount from his donkey when passing a Muslim. An oversight authorized a Muslim to throw him to the ground. A Spaniard, Domingo Badia y Leblich, who traveled in North Africa and the Orient between 1803 and 1807, and who wrote under the name of Ali Bey, related that no Jew or Christian in Damascus was even allowed to ride a mule inside the town. In Yemen, the prohibition on riding horses remained in force till 1948, as well as a rule obliging the Jewish dhimmis to ride donkeys sidesaddle. (Bat Ye’or. The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996)

The lowering of the Infidel in Muslim lands was a pervasive practice enshrined by law. Humiliation, as a precept, was extended to walking as well as to speech. Eyes had to be lowered, doorways, too.

In some legal opinions (fatwas), jurists required dhimmis to walk with lowered eyes when passing to the left—the impure side—of Muslims, who were encouraged to push them aside. In the presence of a Muslim, the dhimmi had to remain standing in a humble and respectful attitude, only speaking in a low voice when given permission. Jews and Christians were humiliated and maltreated in the streets of Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed till the middle of the nineteenth century. Travelers to the Maghreb and Yemen mention similar customs even later; in the early twentieth century Nahum Slousch observed at Bu Zein, in the Jabal Gharian (Libya), that it was customary for Arab children to throw stones at Jewish passersby.

In Persia and Yemen, at the beginning of the twentieth century, foreigners noticed the low doors that forced the dhimmis—as an additional humiliation—either to stoop or knock their heads when entering their own homes . . . At certain periods, the Jews of Bukhara . . . had to crouch in their shops so that only their heads and not their bodies were visible to their Muslim clients, a practice reminiscent of the obligation for Jews and Christians in fourteenth-century Damascus to keep the threshold of their shops below street level so that they would always appear in an inferior position before a Muslim. (Bat Ye’or, Ibid.)

In the book Miriam's Song: The Story of Miriam Peretz, Miriam Peretz tells how, as a little girl in Casablanca, she was running an errand for her mother, and as she came up to the counter, several Muslim children entered the store and the storekeeper waited on all of them before her. It was just the way things were in Muslim countries, even in the mid-twentieth century. Their money may have been as green as anyone else’s, but Jews were always secondary to Muslims in Muslim countries. It appears it was not, in fact, “all about the Benjamins, Baby.”

Jews and Christians had to be lower than Muslims, both figuratively and literally. Muslims were always first, higher, and ahead of anyone else: ahead of people with differing beliefs. And of course, the Jews were the lowest of the low and had to walk in the gutter to be lower than Muslims, identify themselves with different clothing, and wear bells and/or silly hats to announce their offensive presence to Muslims.

This history of humiliation is a part of who we Jews are today as a people. The historic practice of Muslims humiliating Jews is, in fact, one of the reasons it is so important we have our own state: a place where we can live life with basic human dignity, as people with the same rights as any other people in any other place.

But in Israel, the Jewish part is supposed to come first.

Hence, in Israel, we are not bombarded with television specials designed for children with a Christmas theme. Our holiday is Chanuka.

It is not that we are saying that Christmas doesn’t exist, or that Chanuka is better. It is that Israel is the Jewish State, where Jewish practice is primary.

Other people are welcome to live alongside us, rather than below us in humiliating fashion, but we must insist on the central Jewish character of the State of Israel, or we imperil what it means to us as Jews who for so long had to live subservient to other cultures, marked inferior due to our religious beliefs.

This being the case, where should the IDF graphic artist have rightfully placed that matzoh symbol? On top, showing that in the Jewish State, Judaism reigns supreme? At the same level, implying equality? Or at bottom, because after all, humility is also a trait of decency and tolerance.

It’s a toughie, all right. And I don’t envy that graphic artist’s dilemma: how to depict all the symbols so no one gets upset. As such, the artist chose to put the Jewish symbol at the bottom, thinking: the Jew won’t mind. It isn’t the locus of the symbol that matters, but the holiday itself.

There is no doubt the graphic artist serving the IDF meant to show Israel as a democracy, a place where all people have complete freedom of religion, and can live in equality and harmony.

What that holiday greeting suggested, however, is that our stateless wanderings of the past have affected our current collective psyche. We are used to being humbled, used to letting others go ahead of us, used to letting others climb on top. But now that we have our own state, things are supposed to be different.

Menachem Begin knew this, felt it when, in 1982, he said to then Senator Joe Biden, who had threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Israel, “I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

That is the spirit that is missing from that graphic. The spirit that rebels at the idea of being Jews with trembling knees. But it’s better that we find out now. It’s better that we know the nature of the work that lies ahead. That IDF holiday tweet tells us that our IDF soldiers (including those who serve as graphic artists) need to have a much better grounding in Jewish history. That is if they are to be the first line of defense for the Jewish character of the Jewish people in the Jewish State of Israel.

UPDATE: As reader Dovid Levine noted, I originally said the IDF holiday greeting mentions Jewish soldiers, last. I have updated to correct the error.

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Democrats Confused By Popular Sympathy For Non-Muslims (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Washington, April 24 - Waves of empathy and condolences for the hundreds of Sri Lanka church bombing victims and their families have left prominent figures in the Democratic Party bewildered, aides report, as those victims of violence do not belong to the Islamic faith.

Staff members of Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and other legislators and political leaders noted this week that in the aftermath of the attacks that left more than 360 dead and many more wounded, Democratic politicians continue to voice confusion at widespread outpourings of sympathy, goodwill, offers of assistance, and similar manifestations of care that those politicians had assumed only appropriate when Muslim suffering appears on the news.

"Some of them are really shaken up," observed an aide to Congresswoman Omar, speaking on condition of anonymity. "My boss, for example, spent much of last night on the phone with fellow Democrats discussing this phenomenon, which she described with words such as 'disturbing,' 'weird,' and frustrating.' There seems to be a general sense of the unfamiliar in party circles at the moment, because compared to when Muslim attacks on non-Muslims happen in the West, it's much harder in this case to fall back on the comfortable tropes of grievance, resistance, colonial baggage, or whatever. Those easy sound bites don't fit Sri Lanka. The whole thing feels very awkward."

"It's freaky," admitted presidential hopeful Kamala Harris. "We live under the assumption that the people who automatically get sympathy are Muslims, and then boom, so to speak, large numbers of people direct sympathy toward those who are not only non-Muslim, but victims of violence by Muslims. It's going to take some time to digest this."

Observers note that this is not the first time many on the political left have admitted confusion in the face of non-Muslim victims. "The Palestinian suicide bombing campaigns of the late 1990's and early 2000's prompted a good bit of perplexity on the left, as I recall," noted New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. "There was this groundswell of sympathy for Jewish Israelis, especially among Americans, and for those whose leftist leanings translated into reflexive sympathy only for Palestinians, that was a difficult and confounding time. Why would anyone feel sympathy, let alone empathy or solidarity, with non-Muslims, and with Jews, of all people? It was a real challenge."

"Fortunately," he recalled, "9-11 happened and eventually we were able to put that chapter behind us. Maybe something similar can happen now."

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04/24 Links Pt1: Singer: Trump Seems Set to Expose UN Fraud on Boundaries of Palestine; How Palestinian Leaders Encourage Terrorism; PM calls for new Golan Heights community to be named for Trump

From Ian:

David Singer: Trump Seems Set to Expose UN Fraud on Boundaries of Palestine

President Trump appears set to expose more than forty years of deceptive and misleading information disseminated by the United Nations (UN) in relation to the boundaries of former Palestine.

This welcome development comes with President Trump’s Special U.S Envoy Jason D. Greenblatt telling Sky News in Arabic on 19 April:
“there is no reason to use the term ‘two-state solution,” the reason being that, “every side sees it differently.”

The UN must take responsibility for creating such confusion by perpetuating intellectual and political fraud originating with its 1978 publication: "The Origins and Evolution of the Palestinian Problem" (referred to below as the Study).

Part 1 of the Study covering 1917-1947 was trashed by Israel’s Ambassador to the UN – Yehuda Blum – on 16 November:

“Even the most cursory reading of this document can leave no doubt that the means and machinery of the United Nations have been misused once again to disseminate highly selective and tendentious information under the guise, in this instance, of what purports to be a scholarly study.

The history of international conflicts, and particularly those with complex historical origins, can only be properly written by objective historians who enjoy complete academic freedom. The practice of writing and rewriting history according to the transient interests of a political body is, of course, characteristic of certain regimes. It is regrettable that the United Nations has now been drawn into that pattern.”

Blum then told the UN General Assembly on 30 November 1978:

“At the end of the first part of the publication, ostensibly dealing with the period of the Palestine Mandate, there appear a number of maps. The one map that is conspicuously absent is the official map of the Palestine Mandate which, until 1946, included Transjordan on the east bank of the Jordan River. This map was omitted because it does not fit into the PLO’s own scheme, as it would show too clearly that a Palestinian Arab state has already been in existence for 32 years on more than three quarters of the territory of mandated Palestine – that is, the state now called Jordan. That embarrassment is eliminated in this purportedly scholarly and impartial publication by the simple expedient of eliminating the map.”

The Military Perils of Ceding Israeli Control of the West Bank

In the years since the second intifada ended, no small number of retired high-ranking IDF officers and intelligence officials have argued that complete separation from the Palestinians is a strategic necessity for Israel. Gershon Hacohen, analyzing the geography, the changes in warfare—and Middle Eastern warfare in particular—since the 1990s, and recent history, argues that they are wrong:

The withdrawal of IDF forces from the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state in these territories will constitute an existential threat to Israel. The absence of an Israeli military presence in the West Bank, especially along the Jordan River, will enable the creation of a terrorist entity, à la the Gaza Strip, a stone’s throw from the Israeli hinterland. This withdrawal will box Israel into indefensible borders, especially in light of the major changes in the nature of war in recent decades that have made the astounding achievements of 1967 impossible to replicate, not to mention the stark international response [that would follow Israel’s] takeover of a sovereign state.

The deployment of international forces in the West Bank will not, [contrary to what some have argued], ensure the demilitarization of the prospective Palestinian state, let alone prevent the entry of Arab forces into its territory (with or without its consent) and/or its transformation into a springboard for terrorist attacks against Israel. . . .

Israel [now] maintains control of some 60 percent of the West Bank’s territory, . . . which is mostly empty of Palestinian population but includes all of the West Bank’s Jewish communities and IDF bases, as well as main highways, vital topographic areas, and open spaces descending eastward to the Jordan Valley. The retention of this territory constitutes the absolute minimum required for the preservation of defensible borders and meets two conditions necessary for Israel’s security: the Jordan Valley buffer zone, without which it will be impossible to prevent the rapid arming of Palestinian terrorist groups throughout the West Bank; and control of intersecting transportation arteries, which, together with control of strategic topographical sites, enables rapid deployment of IDF forces deep inside Palestinian areas.

Eugene Kontorovich (WSJ): Saving U.S. Soldiers from Runaway Prosecutors (click via Google)

The Trump foreign policy team scored a big victory in The Hague that will protect American soldiers from illegitimate and unaccountable foreign prosecutions. The International Criminal Court dropped a more than decade-long inquiry into alleged crimes by U.S. personnel in Afghanistan after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the U.S. would deny a visa to the court's prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda.

If the ICC were to indict U.S. servicemen, no American president would turn them over, but it would have a real effect on their lives. They would face peril in traveling to countries that have joined the ICC, including all of Western Europe. They would be international fugitives.

The court's officials are unaccountable to nationals of non-member states like the U.S. Yet they might sit in judgment of decisions made by U.S. personnel in life-or-death situations, and second-guess the judgments of professional prosecutors in democratic countries that have chosen not to join the court.

The court is currently considering whether to open an investigation into whether Israel is committing war crimes by allowing Jews to live in the West Bank. Thus the ICC would be investigating a non-member state at the behest of a non-state member, for a supposed crime that no one in the history of international criminal law has been charged with.

Swiss government spending millions on anti-Israel lawfare

The Swiss government has been directly funding legal activity targeting Israel over the past year. The funding, estimated at $2 million at least, was transferred by the Swiss Foreign Ministry through its diplomatic mission in Ramallah to a series of Israeli and Palestinian organizations one year ago.

The transfer of the funds took place shortly after the Swiss government ended its support for the Ramallah-based Human Rights and International Law Secretariat over its support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. Ultimately, though, the funds went toward financing similar projects.

Israel Hayom has seen the contracts, signed by both the Swiss diplomatic mission in Ramallah and six pro-Palestinian organizations in 2018. In addition, funding was allocated toward three Israeli organizations: Hamoked human rights organization, Physicians for Human Rights and Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

Among the activities financed in accordance with the contract: “building cases for the International Criminal Court” and “collecting testimonies, field inspections, holding interviews and [providing] legal assistance to victims of war crimes.”

It should be noted that according to the security doctrine formulated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the ICC is one of the greatest threats to Israel.

Bernie Sanders says he's pro-Israel because he has family there. Uh, so does Hamas terrorist Ismail Haniyeh. (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

When it comes to proving his pro-Israel bonafides, Bernie Sanders is scraping the bottom of the barrel.

His problem is that condemning Israel has now become a popular litmus test among progressive Democrats seeking to win the party nomination to run for president. And the candidates are getting more competitive as they try to outdo each other.

Just last week, Beto O'Rourke called Netanyahu a racist.

So now this week, Bernie Sanders has called Netanyahu a racist.

Bernie Sanders. Public Domain

Funny how concerned both of them are about combating racism and prejudice when both Sanders and O'Rourke have no problem speaking at the National Action Network of Al Sharpton, whose history of inciting hatred is well known. More recently, in 2012, during the outrage over the death of Trayvon Martin, Sharpton falsely claimed that George Zimmerman used “racial language” in speaking with police, and during his prime-time program on MSNBC Sharpton claimed that Zimmerman,whose mother is Peruvian, was “white” -- implying there was a racial bias in the killing.

This is the man both Sanders and O'Rourke are courting.

On that score, not to be left out, in January a number of Democratic presidential candidates were courting Sharpton as well:

o Joe Biden
o  Elizabeth Warren
o  Kirsten Gillibrand
o  Kamala Harris

And now, in April, the Democratic candidates are at it again:

o  Beto O'Rourke
o  Andrew Yang
o  Julian Castro
o  John Delaney
o  Pete Buttigieg
o  Kamala Harris
o  Elizabeth Warren
o  Bernie Sanders
o  Kirsten Gillibrand
o  Amy Klobuchar
o  Cory Booker
o  John Hickenlooper

For his part, Bernie doesn't even stop at Netanyahu; he has been calling Trump a racist too -- and worse:

It gives me no pleasure to tell you that we have a president today who is a racist, who is a sexist, who is a homophobe, who is a xenophobe, and who is a religious bigot. I wish I did not have to say that. But that is the damn truth.

And yet, at the same time Sanders defends Ilhan Omar, claiming

We must not, however, equate anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of the right-wing, Netanyahu government in Israel. [emphasis added]

What is not clear is how Sanders considers Omar's 'Benjamins' comment and implication of dual loyalty by supporters of Israel to be 'legitimate criticism' of Israel.

Similarly, it is not clear how Sanders walks the fine line of accusing Netanyahu of being a racist when he was re-elected in free democratic elections in Israel for a 5th term.

But if Sanders is so willing to throw Israel under the bus, condemning its newly re-elected Prime Minister and defending attacks on the Jewish state itself, what is it that makes Bernie Sanders pro-Israel?

Apparently, the only way we know that Sanders is pro-Israel is that he says so:

As a young man I spent a number of months in Israel, [and] worked on a kibbutz for while. I have family in Israel. I am not anti-Israel. But the fact of the matter is that Netanyahu is a right-wing politician who I think is treating the Palestinian people extremely unfairly. [emphasis added]

If Sanders really has to resort to this to prove he is pro Israel, he must realize how shaky his pro-Israel bonafides actually are.

Compare with Hamas terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh, who has 3 sisters who live in Israel as full citizens. For that matter, Haniyeh's grand-daughter, brother-in-law, and mother-in-law have all been treated in Israeli hospitals.

Ismail Haniyeh. Youtube Screencap

Does that make Haniyeh as pro-Israel as Bernie Sanders?

But why does Sanders resort to such irrelevant points to begin with?

Well, how else would anyone know that Sanders is pro-Israel? After all, outside of political campaigns, does he ever just come out and talk about Israel just for the sake of talking about Israel? On the contrary, it appears that Sanders has never appeared at AIPAC, has never appeared at a pro-Israel rally and also has not traveled to the Middle East in decades.

This is not about Sanders criticizing Israel in general. Criticizing the Israeli government is practically a national pastime in Israel, and contrary to the oft-heard excuse that cries of antisemitism are just excuses to stifle criticism of Israel, no one considers criticism of Israel to be antisemitic, as long as it does not demonize, delegitimize, or rely on double standards.

The bottom line is that the arguments Bernie Sanders uses to prove he is pro-Israel are just plain silly.

And the people he chooses as friends and allies make his judgement on matters of racism suspect.

We'll leave it to others to judge whether Bernie's arguments for his other political positions are equally simplistic.

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Jewish and Palestinian national identities (response to @HenMazzig)

Hen Mazzig, one of the best pro-Israel voices out there, tweeted:

We can’t ignore Palestinian national identity and desire for a state of their own. If we are serious about solving the conflict, we must address this issue. Ask yourself before commenting: Do you support the right of self-determination for all people? Or only for Israelis?

I believe that the framework for the question is flawed.

There is no comparison between the quality, history and purposes of Jewish and Palestinian peoplehood, and any answer to this question must include those facts.

Jewish peoplehood was forged thousands of years ago. It remained strong throughout history, through the destruction of the Jewish nation, through persecution and pogroms, Crusades and the Holocaust. It is based on shared history, shared customs and shared laws, even as the Jewish people themselves were scattered across the globe.

Modern Zionism notwithstanding, Jewish nationalism is just as old. Every day Jews pray to return to Zion, and throughout the millennia, many of them have.

Palestinian peoplehood was created in the 1950s by the members of the Arab League. Their decision to not allow Arab refugees from Palestine to become citizens and to leave them stateless and miserable is what created the Palestinian people.

These Arab leaders weren't shy about describing why they made that decision: to keep the refugees as a thorn in Israel's side. Their misery was a strategy to destroy Israel over the long term. Every Arab has the right to become a citizen of any Arab country - unless they are Palestinian. The UN and the West eventually capitulated to this truly evil plan and allowed Palestinian Arabs to be treated as stateless refugees until they "return" - to destroy Israel.

Palestinian nationalism is not organic. It is not a yearning for a state. If it was, they would have one by now. The entire purpose of Palestinian nationalism is ta response to, and a weapon to destroy, Jewish nationalism.

Jewish nationalism is indifferent to Palestinian nationalism. Palestinian nationalism wouldn't exist without Jewish nationalism. The people known as Palestinians today would happily be Jordanians or Egyptians or Syrians depending on which countries would have taken over Palestine had Israel lost the war in 1948.

I agree that Palestinians are a people now - because of the misery they have been forced to go through as stateless and second class residents of the Arab world. But being a people is not a binary option of yes or no. The quality of Palestinian peoplehood and nationalism is far, far inferior to that of Jewish nationalism, and they cannot be treated even remotely equally, or else we are rewarding the cynicism and malevolent impulses that created that people to begin with.

In short, Palestinian nationalism can and must never be allowed to compromise Jewish nationalism in the slightest. Otherwise we are rewarding those who have been using the Palestinians as pawns for 70 years.

In real terms, this means that the Jewish claim on Hebron or Bethlehem and even Jericho and Shechem (Nablus) is morally and historically far superior to that of the recently created Palestinian people. (To be honest, any Jewish claim on parts of Jordan would also be morally and historically superior to that of Jordanians, although there is little international law support for that claim and there is no real desire to act on it.)

Israel has to be practical. It doesn't want a large hostile population under its control. For better or for worse, Areas A and B have been given up by Israel during the Oslo process and it is not realistic to reclaim those areas.

Within those areas, for the most part, Palestinians do have self determination, today. (Or they would if their leaders would set up an election.) This is not because they deserve it as a people. It is because Israel ceded its rights to those areas in the interests of peace.

Except for some isolated cases like Hebron and Bethlehem, those rights are not impeding very much on Jewish rights of self determination (although they do impede on other Jewish rights such as the right to worship at and visit holy spots.)

At the same time, Palestinians must have the right to become full citizens of the Arab nations that they were born in if they so choose. This basic human right is all but ignored nowadays. If the West wants to solve the Palestinian issue, that is a vital component of the solution. The silence from so-called "human rights" organizations on this issue tell you all you need to know about how little they truly care about Palestinians.

All peoples deserve the right to self determination, but that right does not extend to damage the rights of others whose peoplehood is far more deserving of that right. A balance must be found between the two, but when the rights are far from equal, it is immoral to claim that they are.

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Ever since 1949. Lebanon has refused to negotiate with Israel to determine the exact maritime border between the two nations. As a result, there is a wedge of nearly 1000 square kilometers that is in dispute in the Mediterranean (marked above), and where it is difficult for either nation to drill exploratory wells to search for natural gas or oil, which is plentiful in the area.

Israel has lots of gas fields it has discovered and it is not drilling in the disputed area.

Now, Lebanon is interested in resolving the dispute, as Lebanon's Daily Star reports:

Speaker Nabih Berri said Tuesday that Lebanon would agree to mark its maritime borders with Israel and Exclusive Economic Zone by the same mechanism used to demarcate the Blue Line, under the supervision of the United Nations.

The U.N.-demarcated Blue Line currently separates Lebanon and Israel’s lands with over 200 points, but at least 13 points are disputed by the Lebanese government.

Berri’s remarks came during a meeting with UNIFIL head Stefano del Col, where the pair discussed the situation in south Lebanon, Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty, the Blue Line and the maritime border.

Del Col said the mechanism used to draw the Blue Line could also be used to resolve the maritime border issue and enhance stability, according to a statement from Berri’s office.

What changed?

Lebanon was very aware of the potential of gas drilling in the area for at least a decade, so it doesn't appear to be economic reasons.

Could it be that the softening of the Gulf Arab states towards Israel, and Trump's embrace of Israel's side in the Golan and elsewhere, is injecting some realpolitik into Lebanese thinking?

This is especially interesting since Hezbollah slavishly does whatever Iran wants, and Iran wouldn't agree to any cooperation with Israel in any way. Either Iran changed its mind for some reason or the Lebanese government is ignoring Hezbollah's demands in this area.

The Middle East is changing in fundamental ways. It is too bad that the EU and Democratic Party in the US still think that we are in the 1990s, pushing for a solution that has never worked, while ignoring these very real changes.

(h/t Yoel)

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04/23 Links Pt2: Elan Carr Calls Out BDS: ‘Hatred of the Jewish State Is Hatred of the Jewish People’; Wiesenthal Center: ‘Grotesque’ for Omar, NYT to Say Jesus Was Palestinian; Sanders: Israel Is Run by ‘Racist’ Government Under Netanyahu

From Ian:

Elan Carr Calls Out BDS: ‘Hatred of the Jewish State Is Hatred of the Jewish People’

Elan Carr, the recently appointed State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, criticized the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement during an April 16 press conference for promulgating “hatred of the Jewish people.”

Carr was asked by a reporter if he viewed the BDS movement as anti-Semitic rather than just criticism of the Israeli government.

“If there is an organized movement to economically strangle the state of Israel, that is anti-Semitic, and the administration’s gone on the record as being opposed unequivocally to the BDS movement,” Carr said. “And the idea that somehow there can be movements organized to deny Israel its legitimacy and not to allow Israel to participate in economic commerce in the world, sure that is [anti-Semitic].”

“Hatred of the Jewish state is hatred of the Jewish people, and that’s something that’s very clear and that is our policy,” Carr added.

The new US envoy for combatting antisemitism Elan Carr speaks out and calls out BDS for #antisemitism: pic.twitter.com/2aQRJqHljZ
— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) April 15, 2019

In the Journal’s February 8 issue cover story, Carr made similar comments to the Journal regarding the BDS movement.

“The idea that Israel should be singled out for disparate treatment and should be subjected to boycotts and to demonization is anti-Semitism,” Carr said. “An obsessive hatred of the Jewish state is nothing more than an obsessive hate for the Jewish people.”

You cannot fight antisemitism without attributing Israel’s success under a Benjamin Netanyahu

In 2016 a report was released, the first of its kind demonstrating that anti zionist activities including the boycott divestments sanction movement (BDS) and anti-Israel student groups faculty who alongside an academic board is at the heart of the rise of campus anti-Semitism.(AMCHA)

Understanding the report fully and how the scope of antisemitism on US campuses this report initiated and investigated over a year assessed levels of campus antisemitism by measuring the students attitudes and reports and anti-Semitic activity by focusing on incidences compiled from eyewitness reports and media accounts.

Different types of activity were equated to the rise of antisemitism this included anti-Semitic expression, tropes included imagery and incidents, the targeting of students behaviour including physical harm and physical assault, harassment, destruction of property and the boycott divestment sanction activity which endorsed the anti-Israel boycott-rhetoric and imagery intended to demonise and delegitimise Israel and the expression which is consistent with that of the United States government definition of anti-Semitism at the time.

So let’s look at what the basic idea of Zionism is. Zionism is simple. It is a movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.

Simple clarification of terminology for being pro Israel should be easy to understand, that in order for a homeland of Israel to exist, a successful environment for Jewish people to return to and to live in, we have to understand that the undermining of the present and returning elected Israeli Government,The Likud party with PM Benjamin Netanyahu at its helm, signifies two things

A strong and economically successful country, and the people of Israel freely making a democratic elected choice of Government.

However, an example of those that seem to be on the “fighting antisemitism” bandwagon, particulary groups that are on the political left, who for example expose Jeremy Corbyns antisemitism are constantly berating and criticising Netanyahu even admitting They know nothing about Israeli politics .

We know too well that there is no separation – anti Zionism is antisemitism

An Open Letter on Israeli ‘Pinkwashing’ and True Discrimination Against the Arab Gay Community

The signatories of this letter seek to address an open letter sent to Eurovision’s Irish entrant, Sarah McTernan. The letter, signed by individuals such as David Norris and Ailbhe Smith, asks Ms. McTernan not to aid in Israel’s “pinkwashing” tactics.

The Ireland Israel Alliance is saddened by the bullying that Sarah McTernan continues to receive — this time by “human rights campaigners who have long been involved in LGBTQIA activism in Ireland” — since her announcement as Ireland’s Eurovision entrant. This year’s event will be held in Israel in May.

We believe that in publicly targeting Sarah, and in attempting to pressure her into not participating, the signatories have devalued the battle fought by the gay community, and others in Israel, for recognition of their rights, not to mention the progress made so far and the battles which remain to be fought.

Instead of celebrating Tel Aviv’s annual Pride parade — and acknowledging that it and the annual Pride parade held in Jerusalem are the only annual Pride events in the entirety of the Middle East — the signatories felt compelled to enter an alternative reality and condemn the Tel Aviv parade and the Israeli government’s support of it as “pinkwashing.” Instead of celebrating the courage of those who fought against prejudice and violence to ensure an annual Pride event in Jerusalem, the signatories chose to ignore that too.

Iran sets up a shell company to sell its oil under the radar of US sanctions

Iran's MehrNews is pushing selling Iranian oil, under the name of another company, saying that buyers can make a nice profit and not be noticed by US sanctions authorities.

In this report, advantages of purchasing Iranian oil from IRENEX are compared with those of conducting direct negotiations with Iranian oil ministry.

1. Purchasers’ info not disclosed

At IRENEX the purchasers’ data remain confidential and they are not even introduced to the brokers’ and brokerage networks. Each purchaser is provided with a code and does the sales under it.

2. Lower prices

The prices of the offered crude oil and gas condensates at IRENEX are lower than Brent and the international market. For example, at the fifth round of oil offering at IRENEX, crude oil was offered 14 percent lower than the time international Brent prices i.e. purchasing each 35,000 barrels of crude oil from IRENEX would bring a purchaser a profit of $500,000.

3. Payments in rial

The payment mechanism at IRENEX is rial-based which lets the foreign investors to remain safe from the sanction. At IRENEX, foreign investors have the chance to purchase oil and cooperate with Iranian private sector i.e. the Iranian private sector, who is capable of exchanging foreign currencies to rial easily, buys oil at IRENEX and delivers it to foreign investors. The Iranian side returns the earned money to Central Bank of Iran (CBI) afterwards.

4. Exports destinations unlimited

Oil buyers can export the purchased cargoes to any country across the globe, except to the Zionist regime.

5. Small cargoes

Oil and gas condensate are offered in 35,000-barrels cargoes at IRENEX, which are small ones and allow the private companies to take part in purchases. Presented cargoes by the oil ministry are larger and no company can participate in that market. At IRENEX, the buyers can receive their cargoes both through maritime routes from Kharg Island or via Iran’s land borders.

6. Participation in IRENEX easy

Iran’s oil ministry merely sells oil to known and identified purchasers or companies with good reputation and background, while at IRENEX, the only required document to enter the market is a reliable guarantee.

IRENEX can be a golden opportunity for both Iranian and foreign investors with spot or long-term agreements.

The sanctions are clearly making Iran nervous enough to set up a shell company to sell oil. The question is whether the US can find companies that try to skirt the sanctions by going through Irenex.

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Andrew Ross, a professor and director of NYU's American Studies Program, came up with a novel and utterly bizarre reason why Arabs should control Israel.

Writing in The Nation, he notes that Arab labor had, and has, been often used to build buildings in Israel and in the territories. He essentially calls this tantamount to slavery.

There is nothing optional about this kind of employment. Technically, it may not be forced labor, but when the few alternatives offer little more than a starvation wage, it is certainly not free labor.

The idea that the general wages in the territories are "starvation wages" is not borne out by any facts, of course. It is a simple assertion meant to evoke feelings of hate for Israeli Jews. I have yet to find a single case of a Palestinian starving to death, not in Gaza and certainly not in the West Bank, although the accusations of Israel starving them are made so often that, like any Big Lie, they are accepted as truth.

If Palestinian wages are "starvation wages," then it is a miracle that Jordanians aren't dropping like flies of starvation, because they get paid on the average only 78% of what those starving Palestinians make.

Ross is part of the tradition of lying propaganda meant to evoke hatred for Israeli Jews.

Moreover, Israeli wages are close to triple Palestinian wages. If Israelis were trying to squeeze all the value they can from the Arabs, why would they pay such a large disparity in wages - they can get the same workforce for half the cost!

Logic (and economics) is clearly not Ross' strong suit. Like so many other articles about Israel in The Nation, the only important information is that Israelis are evil and there are some facts that can be cherry picked to pretend to prove the point. (He states flatly that Israel expelled 750,000 Arabs in 1948, a complete lie.)

As so many academics do, Ross wants to break new ground in finding reasons for readers to hate Israel. So he makes up an entirely new theory and pretends it is one that the bad guys (Israelis and Americans) have been using forever:

How does that long record of labor contributions feed into the debate about a single, democratic state on the lands of historic Palestine? Should those who build countries acquire rights within them? This proposition lies at the heart of the labor theory of property that drove settler colonialism (both in the United States and Israel): If you “improve” the land through your labor, you could rightfully claim it....If and when “final status” negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians are revived (admittedly, a big “if”), all the claims for past injuries and wrongs will still be on the table; restitution for 70 years of lost property, compensation for moral suffering, the right to return, and so on. These debts must be repaid. But the creation of a new kind of unitary state with full citizenship for all will require transitional as well as reparative justice. The political equity earned from the long inventory of Palestinians’ compulsory labor ought to be part of that reckoning.

According to this academic fraud, people who were and are paid to do work - and who generally moved their families to be closer to where they can make higher wages, as so many did before 1935 - are actually exploited and deserve to be compensated today as if they were slaves.

It's like saying that Seattle residents are enslaved by Microsoft because they can generally expect to be paid 70% more by the software giant than they can at other jobs in Seattle on average ($118K/year vs. $69K/year.)

As with all anti-Israel arguments, it doesn't stand even the slightest scrutiny. But this 'academic" is not interested in the truth. He doesn't welcome people who point out that his logic and facts are wrong, leading to incorrect conclusions.

No, Andrew Ross is just another propagandist, but he hides his hate behind academic gobbledygook, hoping that no one calls him on it.

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04/23 Links Pt1: Greenblatt: Care About Gaza? Blame Hamas; Who denied the Palestinians an independent state? Not Israel; Bipartisan bill urges Congress to publish annual report on PA incitement

From Ian:

Jason Greenblatt: Care About Gaza? Blame Hamas

Hamas has left Gaza in shambles. Life there is difficult, sad and abnormal. Only buildings with generators actually maintain steady power. The lack of power affects everything from preserving fresh food to treating sewage. If a person in Gaza falls ill, he is likely to find trained medical professionals unable to help because of the lack of equipment and medicines. The people there — even the talented and educated — can’t find jobs. The store shelves are empty. The shoreline, which in many other places in the Mediterranean would be filled with beach resorts, is covered in the raw sewage and debris from successive wars. The cost of conflict is seen in all aspects of life in Gaza.

If you ask why such hardships exist in Gaza, the answer will almost always be the same: the Israelis.

Really? The Arabs in Israel generally live normal lives and, in many cases, thrive. In fact, Arab citizens of Israel live freely compared with Arabs in many other countries in the region. The Palestinians in the West Bank are largely progressing in stable cities and communities. Educated workers are finding jobs (though there is much room for improvement — something the Trump administration has tried to help Palestinians with, only to be blocked by the Palestinian Authority). Trade both with Israel and abroad is providing employment and possibilities. Infrastructure has progressively improved. Power is available 24 hours every day in most communities.

Why are others moving forward while Gaza sinks further into despair and disrepair? Because Hamas, the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip, has made choices. Hamas professes violence and the destruction of Israel as a method of gaining a better life for Palestinians. This “defense” of Palestinians has led to the problems experienced today: a decimated economy, hundreds killed in violence each year and one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. Hamas is to blame for Gaza’s situation.

The countries of the world have attempted to help the people of Gaza repeatedly since 2007, when Hamas violently seized power there from the government led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Donors have offered to build the infrastructure and the economy, but are set back years every time Hamas and other terrorist organizations fire rockets into Israel. Hamas has instigated three wars with Israel since 2007, each time leaving its infrastructure in greater disarray.

Jonathan S. Tobin: Who denied the Palestinians an independent state? Not Israel

According to The New York Times, the re-election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has left Palestinian families seeing “no light at the end of the tunnel.”

A feature published on the front page of the paper, Monday, focused on the despair felt by Palestinian families over the current stalemate in the peace process. They know that the Palestinian Authority that rules over their cities, towns and villages is horribly corrupt and unable to reach a peace deal with Israel. And they understand that Israelis have no more faith in the prospects of peace than they do.

The piece shows that some Palestinians are rethinking the ideology that has fueled a century-long war on Zionism. But they fail to mention a basic fact that defines the current situation: The Palestinian leadership has repeatedly rejected compromises that would have given them the statehood they claim to want. It’s interesting that nowhere in the 1,000-word article does The New York Times make note of this fact.

This omission speaks volumes not only about the ignorance and obtuse nature of the criticism of Israel that emanates from the paper, but also about the chattering classes and foreign-policy establishment that take their cues on the Middle East from its pages.

Arabs living in the West Bank have good reason to distrust their current leaders. In a few moments of rare clarity on the situation that are mentioned only in passing, some of the piece’s sources admit that life was better for them before the Oslo peace process that created the Palestinian Authority.

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Persecution of Palestinians No One Mentions

In Lebanon, Palestinians have long been facing discriminatory and "Apartheid laws" that deny them basic rights, including access to dozens of skilled professions, health-care and education services. According to some reports, thousands of Palestinians have been fleeing Lebanon in recent years as a result of the dire economic conditions and government regulations that deny them basic rights.

In 2015, a Saudi court sentenced Palestinian artist and poet Ashraf Fayadh to death by beheading for "apostasy." Later, however, the court overturned the death sentence and replaced it with an eight-year prison term and 800 lashes. The "evidence" against Fayadh was based on poems included in his book Instructions Within, as well as social media posts and conversations he had in a coffee shop in Saudi Arabia.

Palestinian leaders do not seem to care about the suffering of their people at the hands of Arabs. Yet, these same leaders are quick to condemn Israel on almost every occasion and available platform. Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are so busy fighting each other (and Israel) that they seem to have forgotten about the Palestinians in Arab countries, being killed, wounded and arrested every day.

Egyptian government official says democracy and freedom is a Jewish plot

Egypt's National Council for Women is a governmental organization to deal with women's issues.

One of its 28 members is Rania Yehia, who is also a violinist and a professor at the Egyptian Academy of Arts.

She wrote an article in Albawabah News which says that "Democracy in our case makes our country weak" and that political freedom is a "Jewish tool to take control over the people as mentioned in the first Protocol of the Elders of Zion."

Political freedom, she writes, is a means to control the people and disassemble them from within, and weaken the government and the state and create chaos, so that the Jews can control everyone.

At least Yehia is not controlled by the Jews. She just thinks about how to counter their plots night and day.

(h/t WC)

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Jewish "progressives" like @jvplive espouse kindergarten-level Jewish ethics

TruthOut interviews Temple University Professor Emerita of English, American Studies and Women’s Studies Carolyn L. Karcher, who has just edited a book about Jews who used to be Zionists and then decided that they were to moral to allow Jews the right to self-determination.

The book is called "Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism: Stories of Personal Transformation."

Since Judaism is a topic I take seriously, I was curious as to how these people - mostly members of Jewish Voice for Peace - look at Judaism.

The answer is given by the author in the interview:

What is entailed in reclaiming Judaism from Zionism exactly? Could you tell me what it means to “reclaim Judaism from Zionism” as it pertains to this book, in particular?

As I see it, ethical precepts lie at the heart of Judaism: pursue justice, love the stranger, love your neighbor and repair the world. Obviously, all of these ethical precepts are violated by Zionist policy toward Palestinians. And so, what happens when Judaism is married to (or hijacked by) Zionism is that the protection of the Jewish people, the physical survival of the Jewish people, takes precedence over the religion’s ethical teachings.

This professor defines Judaism as a series of cherry-picked brief ethical statements, the last of which is not even in the Torah: "pursue justice, love the stranger, love your neighbor and repair the world."

This is pre-school level ethics. These "progressives" idea of Judaism does not go beyond what a five year old could understand.

I'm reminded of a joke:

On a transatlantic flight, a rabbi sat next to an astrophysicist. The scientist said that he felt that there was no reason to study the Torah in depth, because it can be summed up with the idea of "Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you." Everything else beyond that was a waste of time.

The rabbi replied that he didn't see the purpose of studying astrophysics in depth either, because it could all be summed up with "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are."

To boil down Judaism to a series of ideas no more sophisticated than a nursery rhyme is offensive to any serious Jew. Tens of thousands of Jewish scholars have pored over the source materials and commentaries on Judaism - its laws, ethics, philosophy - for millennia. Ethical questions have been debated and argued over, with arguments that span generations. And these arguments are anchored in Jewish texts and history that in many ways gave the Western world the ethical framework that we are so familiar with.

That is not the only offensive thing Karcher says in that brief section. When she says that "the survival of the Jewish people takes precedence over the religion’s ethical teachings" she is saying that the survival of the Jewish people is not an ethical idea to begin with!

Karcher and her JVP buddies look at real Judaism as an impediment to their puerile versions of "morality." After all, Abraham and Moses and David fought wars; God punished entire nations - but that version of Judaism holds no moral weight to these moral lightweights.

For her, and presumably her co-authors, there is only one moral imperative, and it is the kindergarten version of morality. They are showing not only ignorance but also breathtaking arrogance.

The questions that come up in real Judaism, and in real world Zionism, are not the pre-school level precepts JVP pretends they are - but how to balance competing ethical rules.

How to treat Palestinians while still protecting the lives of Israelis? Do you choose to attack a house with a terrorist inside from the air or from the ground, endangering more troops? Do you open the border on Jewish holidays when there is a history of attacks on those very holidays? Do you allow online incitement to go unchecked or do you arrest the ones who are advocating murdering Jewish civilians? Is it moral to abandon Jewish nationalism to give way to Palestinian nationalism? Is a 1% chance for a major terror attack enough to inconvenience 1000 people? Is administrative detention a moral choice sometimes? What is allowed in espionage?

These are hard questions. Israel has ethicists as well as rabbis who grapple with these sorts of issues. The IDF has moral codes based on these decisions, and the Israeli court systems apply them to every situation.

No Zionist claims that Palestinian Arabs do not have human rights. Not one. The questions of how to deal with this population of people, some of whom want to destroy you while others want to just live in peace with you, are what every thinking Zionist has to consider.

Those taking the moral high road, pretending that they have the only moral viewpoint yet don't have the slightest grasp of Judaism or ethics are the immoral ones.

It is not ethical to decide that Israel is wrong and then finding "ethical" arguments to support that position, while purposefully ignoring the arguments that would make you uncomfortable. It is an insult to the very idea of ethics. It is an insult to generations of Jews who take their faith seriously. It is an insult to Israelis and Zionists who struggle with where to draw the line for competing ethical directives. It is an insult to the very field of ethics. The cover of her book, showing a Torah whose teaching are directly in contradiction to her "Jewish ethics," is offensive and insulting, as is the title.

The Torah says sometimes you have to go to war. The Torah says you must prioritize the lives of your people over your enemies. "Loving the stranger" does not include people who want to murder you.

In truth, the "ethics" espoused by Karcher and JVP are unethical and immoral. All the proof we need is Karcher's statement that protecting Jews and the Jewish people is not an ethical imperative, but "tikun olam" is - the immoral idea that one should prioritize others before your own people. Taken to the extreme, Karcher's stated "ethics" would mean that she must fly to Gaza to try to save Palestinian lives ("love the stranger") while her own daughter starves to death ("physical survival of the Jewish people.")

When your morals are that simplistic, they are not moral.

Karcher, and her JVP friends, should be ashamed.

If they had any real sense of morality, they would be.

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