In light of the revisionist history going around from Rashida Tlaib and others, including Professor Rashid Khalidi who said that Arabs were largely against the Nazis, I looked up some contemporaneous articles about Nazis in Palestine.
July 1935:
February 1937:
May 1937:
December 1937:
1943:
1948:
Any questions?
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Most of the Arabs who fled their homes in 1948 left out of fear of war, before they saw a single Zionist soldier. Even the New Wave historians agree that the waves of Arab flight until June 1948 were prompted by fear of war and that there were no expulsions at that point.
The interesting thing is that the first wave of those leaving, in December 1947 and January 1948, were the wealthy; many of the leaders left by June. The entire social structure of Arabs in Palestine collapsed, and as the Arab people saw their leaders abandon them, they left as well.
According to Efraim Karsh in April 1948 "some 100,000 Palestinians, mostly from the main urban centres of Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem and from villages in the coastal plain, had gone. Within a month those numbers had nearly doubled; and by early June, ... some 390,000 Palestinians had left."30,000 Arabs, mostly intellectuals and members of the social elite, had fled Palestine in the months following the approval of the partition plan, undermining the social infrastructure of Palestine. A 10 May 1948 Time magazine article states: "Said one British official in Jerusalem last week: 'The whole effendi class has gone. It is remarkable how many of the younger ones are suddenly deciding that this might be a good time to resume their studies at Oxford....'"
Although the question seems rhetorical, it should be asked: Why did the Arab social structure disappear in anticipation of fighting, and the Jewish one stayed intact? Jews were certainly fearful, and the ones captured by Arabs were shown no mercy, as Joseph Schechtman wrote:
Arab warfare against the Jews in Palestine ... had always been marked by indiscriminate killing, mutilating, raping, looting and pillaging. This 1947–48 attack on the Jewish community was more savage than ever. Until the Arab armies invaded Israel on the very day of its birth, May 15, 1948, no quarter whatsoever had ever been given to a Jew who fell into Arab hands. Wounded and dead alike were mutilated. Every member of the Jewish community was regarded as an enemy to be mercilessly destroyed.
Yet the Jews stayed and the Arab leaders fled. Why?
The obvious reason is that the Jews had no place to go. Israel was their home and its neighbors would murder them. They had no choice.
Arabs had a choice. Many of the Arab families had not been in Palestine for more than a century, and practically all the Muslim Arabs could trace their family history showing their travels throughout the Middle East from their origins in Arabia or Yemen or Egypt. The idea of separate Arab nations was still new - the Ottoman Empire controlled the entire Middle East until the end of World War I, only three decades earlier - and Arabs considered the entire region to be their home, not "Palestine." Palestine was just another Arab region to them and their ties were not that strong.
On the other hand, they made an assumption that they can migrate to other Arab countries without a problem. Who could have anticipated that they would not be able to integrate into the lands of their fellow Arabs? The idea that they would be stateless for decades to come was simply inconceivable.
Jews had no options. Jews had to fight for their land, or die trying. Even though most of the Jews were recent immigrants, their psychological ties to Eretz Yisrael were far stronger than those of the Arabs of Palestine whose leaders fled at the first sign of trouble.
In a sense, 1948 was a test to see which population wanted the land the most.
There is a reason that most of the Arab fighters were not from Palestine. The idea of a huge victory, the romantic notion of defeating and massacring the Jews, was strong in the Muslim world and attracted adventurers and jihadists. But the actual Arab residents of the land just wanted to live their lives as Arabs - not as Palestinians, which none of them identified as, but as Arabs - anywhere. The ones who fought the Jews defended their own villages and towns, but had no interest in defending a "Palestine" that they never identified with.
Some Arab nations were incensed that the men of Palestine fled to them and the refugees had to be forced to go back to fight.
In the end, the Arab ties to their supposed homeland was far weaker than that of the "colonial" Jews. The victors were the ones who wanted the land more.
People who love the land don't run away at the first opportunity. People who love the land stay and fight for it.
This is why the Jews stayed and the Arabs fled. It is why the Jews deserve their own nation in their historic homeland far more than the Arabs deserve yet another nation in one tiny corner of the huge Arab world.
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The Zionist movement long predated Hitler, even if Palestinian leadership had aligned itself with the Nazis during the war. By the time the Holocaust was over, Jews had already gained enough power to defend themselves, and Arabs had already been launching pogroms, terrorism, and political attacks for decades.
Although some Arabs initially welcomed Jewish migration in the 1900s, they would become victim to Palestinian leadership—a number of Arab mayors, landowners, and others were assassinated for conspiring with Jews, just as they are today.
After the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a British government document that endorsed “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and pledged to “use its best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” there was immediate and violent anti-Semitic reaction.
This, despite the fact that Jewish migration had been exceptionally beneficial for the Arabs living in the area. Rarely mentioned in the Israeli-Palestinian debate, in fact, is that significant Arab migration into a largely empty land was spurred by Jewish economic development. Jews were not displacing Arabs, they were attracting them.
Not that it mattered. As the Peel Commission Report, a British paper recommending partition in 1936, noted, “the Arabs have benefited by the development of the country owing to Jewish immigration, this has had no conciliatory effect. On the contrary… with almost mathematical precision the betterment of the economic situation in Palestine meant the deterioration of the political situation.”
Even Palestinian “moderates” like Musa Alami told Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion “he would prefer the land to remain poor and desolate even for another hundred years” if the alternative was collaboration with Jews. Neither Alami nor Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestinian cause, nor the father of modern terrorism, Yasser Arafat, nor his protégé, Mahmoud Abbas, ever shared in their deprivations of their people. It was the opposite, in fact. Palestinian leaders have always enriched themselves on this conflict.
When Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib stated that she often gets “a calming feeling” when she thinks about the Holocaust, she made it perfectly clear that she is calmed not by the deaths of six million Jews but by the thought that her Palestinian ancestors “lost their land, . . . their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways [sic], . . . to create a safe haven for Jews.” Liel Leibovitz, rather than attempting to unpack the perverse logic of Tlaib’s words, simply notes some relevant historical examples. Among them is the case of the Polish-born Atara Abramson, who—after surviving Auschwitz, where the rest of her family was killed—came to the Land of Israel and settled in the Kfar Etzion kibbutz in 1946:
On May 12, 1948, two days before Israel’s declaration of independence, an Arab army consisting of Jordanian legionnaires and local Palestinian gunmen attacked Kfar Etzion with armored vehicles and heavy artillery. The Jewish defenders, armed with just a handful of rifles and mortars, did their best to fight back, but by the following day were no longer able to persist. Their leader, Avraham Fishgrund, who escaped Bratislava just a few years before Hitler’s armies marched in, stepped into the open, waving the white flag of surrender. He was shot on the spot by an armed Palestinian.
The rest of the people in Kfar Etzion, numbering 133 men and women, had no choice but to reiterate their surrender and hope for the best. Again, they stepped into the open waving a white flag and declaring their surrender. Again, they were met with gunfire. They rushed to take shelter in the basement of a nearby monastery; gathering outside, local Palestinians tossed grenades into the building and shot at anyone trying to escape. Like most of Kfar Etzion’s residents, Atara Abramson did not survive. She was twenty-one when she died, one of eighteen women who had survived the Holocaust only to be slaughtered by Palestinians that day. . . .
There were 433 more Holocaust survivors killed by Palestinians and Jordanians violently opposing the creation of a “safe haven” for Jews in the what had historically and spiritually been their homeland. To attempt and rewrite their well-documented experiences is . . . an unforgivable and deeply anti-Semitic act.
More than a radical case of historical revisionism, Tlaib's comments are part of something more sinister: an effort to separate the Jewish people from the land of Israel, in an effort to destroy Israel as the Jewish state. Tlaib grounds Israel's legitimacy, and the moral and historical reasons for its existence, in the horrors of the Holocaust. Forget about the more than 3,000 years of continuous Jewish presence in the land of Israel, and of the deeply entrenched legal, historical, and religious ties that Jews have there; certainly forget about the Jewish people yearning to return to the land throughout 2,000 years in exile, not to mention the modern Zionist movement, which began in the mid-19th century; also forget about Britain's commitments to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, including the Balfour Declaration, which, far from being a unilateral move, received the contemporary equivalent of the international community's endorsement; and, of course, forget the U.N.'s recommendation to create a Jewish state in Palestine. The Jewish people only have Israel because of the Holocaust, and the sympathy it created for them among Europeans. So the imperialist powers worked with the Jews to kick the Palestinians off of their land. At least that is the Palestinian narrative, which Tlaib seems to endorse. And still, the congresswoman has the audacity to think the Jews of Israel should be kissing the feet of the Palestinians for being so noble, so generous to sacrifice their collective wellbeing to help a people whose population has still not recovered from the six million it lost during the Holocaust.
Ignoring, hoping ultimately to erase, the Jewish people's ties to Israel is part of a campaign to destroy Israel as the Jewish state through demonization and delegitimization. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which Tlaib supports, is the leading effort of this vile campaign. That a member of Congress supports this agenda is deeply disturbing. More disturbing, however, is that her deceitful, anti-intellectual approach to issues concerning Israel is a tenet of the progressive movement, which has institutionalized the modern form of anti-Semitism in an effort to undermine Israel to the point that it submits to the mob and ceases to exist as the world has come to know it, leaving millions of Jews vulnerable to the whims of those who are at best indifferent to their fate, and at worst eager to solve the world's "Jewish problem."
Now, it is possible that Tlaib is just unaware of all of this history and does not have malicious intent. If that is the case, then I hope she reads this piece and reconsiders her position with an open mind. That being said, I am not holding my breath.
Haaretz surveyed some historians to see if any of them agree with Rashida Tlaib's assertion that Palestinians provided Jews with "safe refuge" from the Holocaust.
Not surprisingly, most of them say that the idea has no basis in reality, but the comments from notoriously anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalidi are interesting:
Prof. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, charged that many of Tlaib’s detractors were also historically off base.
Tlaib, he said, “is facing an ‘idiot wind’ that makes the Arabs into accomplices of the Nazis, when hundreds of thousands of Arab troops fought with the Allies in World War II, while Jews who escaped the Holocaust were sheltered in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, as well as Palestine."
This is the first I have heard of European Jews being sheltered in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.
I've been looking for examples of this online and coming up empty. I do have a counter-example I recently discussed of a ship of Jews who attempted suicide after Egypt rejected them, and they were treated in Egyptian hospitals until they were presumably well enough to be sent to their doom.
I cannot even find an anecdote of Jews who somehow managed to sneak into Egypt, Syria or Lebanon, which is not proof it didn't happen...but if it did, it doesn't sound like it was anything close to these Arab countries sheltering European Jews.
Khalidi is not usually stupid enough to make things up from scratch. Maybe he is referring to an extraordinarily low number of Jews who somehow managed to sneak into those countries due to family connections or luck.
I would love to know what he is talking about. If true, then the world should know about it. If false, then it is more evidence that a Columbia University professor is willing to put his reputation on the line to lie to defend a false narrative.
(h/t David G)
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- In 2000, she justified the murder of Jewish civilians in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza, saying, "In a sense, the army of occupation and the settlers have become legitimate and select targets of Palestinian resistance."
-The PLO has rejected any talks with the US and even rejects accepting money. Why should the US not treat PLO members the same way?
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The capital invites the public, as well as visitors, to celebrate Eurovision during a four day public broadcasting celebration in the First Station.
Jerusalem residents, as well as visitors to the Israeli capital, are invited to attend a four day public celebration of Eurovision music to be held at the First Station starting from Tuesday evening and ending with the announcement of the 2019 winners on Saturday night.
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion said in a press release that “the Eurovision is one of the largest and most important musical events in Europe” and called the public to use this opportunity to visit “the most beautiful city in the world, Jerusalem.”
Starting on Tuesday at six p.m. D.J Yaeli will play a live set composed of Eurovision songs as the opening of the event will be screened on a wide screen. The events will continue on Wednesday when a special radio booth will be built in which comedian Michal Shem Tov and broadcaster Noam Fathi, among others, will cover the triumphs and losses of the competition.
1978 Eurovision winner Izhar Cohen will perform at an evening party which is meant to go on until the small hours of the night including old Eurovision hits.
Pop superstar Madonna struck a defiant chord Tuesday, declaring that boycott calls will not stop her from make a guest appearance during the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv over the weekend.
“I’ll never stop playing music to suit someone’s political agenda nor will I stop speaking out against violations of human rights wherever in the world they may be,” Madonna said in a statement to Reuters.
Israel earned the right to host the Eurovision after local singer Netta Barzilai won the contest last year. Pro-Palestinian supporters of boycotting Israel have called for competitors and fans to shun the competition and Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip have threatened to disrupt the event with rocket attacks on the country.
“My heart breaks every time I hear about the innocent lives that are lost in this region and the violence that is so often perpetuated to suit the political goals of people who benefit from this ancient conflict,” Madonna said. “I hope and pray that we will soon break free from this terrible cycle of destruction and create a new path towards peace.”
Last September, some 140 artists, including former Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, called for a boycott of the song contest. In April, Waters made a personal appeal to Madonna to not perform at Eurovision, saying it “normalizes the occupation, the apartheid, the ethnic cleansing, the incarceration of children, the slaughter of unarmed protesters.”
According to Reuters, Madonna supports several Palestinian projects through her Ray of Light foundation, which encourages social justice and women’s rights around the world.
Madonna, 60, is due to land in Israel on Wednesday morning, accompanied by an entourage of 135 people, ahead of her planned performance during the Eurovision finals on Saturday night.
Bird, a US transportation startup that provides commuters with e-scooters, is stepping up its game in Tel Aviv amid the start of the Eurovision song festival.
Tel Aviv is hosting the Eurovision Song Contest from Tuesday to Saturday, after Israeli singer Netta Barzilai won last year’s contest in Portugal. The competition consists of semifinal rounds on Tuesday and Thursday, followed by the finals on Saturday evening.
Bird said Tuesday its scooters will be available in Tel Aviv, for the first time in any city in which it operates, for 24-hour operations, to help tourists and locals get to Eurovision events at all times. Until now the scooter service was available only until 11 p.m.
The firm, which started providing its services in Tel Aviv last year and now says it has hundreds of scooters deployed there as well as in the adjacent cities of Givatayim and Ramat Gan, is also introducing a new feature in its app that will allow users to reserve scooters 30 minutes in advance of picking them up. That way a user won’t turn up to the pickup point and find the scooter taken by someone else, as sometimes happens.
Israel is one of the most misunderstood,
misrepresented and maligned countries on earth. The question is, why?
Jew hate? Or because our “hasbara” is
terrible? In pro-Israel circles either (or both) of these are go-to
explanations however neither are enough to explain the dissonance between
Israeli reality and the concepts different people have about Israel – from rabid
haters to faithful fans and the ambivalent in between – very few people have a
good grasp of what Israel is or what Israel means.
After reading Clotaire Rapaille’s book
“The Culture Code,” I think the extreme difficulty in realistically grasping
the concept of Israel comes from not understanding our culture code.
Cultural anthropologist and marketing
expert Clotaire Rapaille explains that every culture has underlying, unspoken
“codes” which form unified cultural understandings or attitudes to important
life issues. These are what define the unique identity of different cultures. In
the book Rapaille decodes two dozen of our most fundamental archetypes—ranging
from sex to money to health to America itself.
His understanding of culture codes is a
product of extensive market research which he applied to improve profitability in
America and in foreign markets for companies such as GE, AT&T, Boeing,
Honda, Kellogg, and L’Oréal.
Rapaille discovered that in standard
focus groups, which might last an hour, he would hear what the participants
declared they wanted. Through special techniques and longer durations he would
begin to uncover the patterns of meaning behind the different declarations
made.
For example, the discovery that in
America “food” is a code for “fuel for the body” whereas in France “food” means
“life” it becomes easy to understand why in America there is less emphasis on
the quality of the food or why it is America that brought the world fast food
restaurants. In America food is something you do “on the go” whereas in French
culture food is an experience to linger over and savor.
In the book, Rapaille explains the
challenge of selling coffee in Japan. How do you create an environment where
coffee is the staple hot drink in a country where tea is deeply rooted in the
cultural traditions? Trying to aggressively compete against tea would not have
been successful because of what tea means in that culture. Instead of fighting
the culture, it was wiser to introduce a positive association with the product
by targeting kids with coffee flavored treats.
Understanding the culture codes enables
effective persuasion because it is resonates on an unspoken level, speaking
directly to the deep seated concepts that form our cultural norms and motivate
our decision making.
As a marketer I found these revelations
fascinating but what captured my mind was the idea that culture codes include
what countries mean to us.
Rapaille declares that the culture code
for America is: DREAM. This makes sense considering that America is known as
“the land of golden opportunities,” a place where you can arrive with $20 in
your pocket and become a multi-millionaire, a place where anyone can become
whatever they envision.
If the code for America is “dream,” what
is the culture code for Israel? Could it be that Israel is so misunderstood
because the codes other people have for Israel do not match the code Israelis
have for our country?
When you ask different people: “What is
Israel? What does Israel mean?” the answers vary enormously. On the positive
side there is: Holy Land. Land of prophecy. Innovation, Start-up Nation.
Resilience. Change. Safe-haven.
On the negative side there is: Oppressor.
Bully. Aggressive. No heart.
Both the positive and negative
definitions are laden with emotion. Neither truly recognize the humanity of the
people behind those big concepts. Tellingly, none match what Israelis say when
you ask them what Israel means to them.
There is one concept that unites
religious, secular and even Israelis that have been living in America for 15
years. All of them will tell you that Israel is HOME.
One little word, so simple, yet so
profound, explains everything about this country of ours.
HOME is the place we returned to after
2000 years of exile, after centuries of longing to return. This is the
difference between “house” and “home.” You can live in any house but home is
the place you long to go back to, even if it takes 2000 years. How is a place
where you always belong, even if you haven’t been there for ages. It is the
place you feel complete. Home is the place you are attached to, even if it is
less convenient or attractive than someone else’s home.
HOME is the place where your FAMILY is. That’s
why, in Israel, family extends beyond the walls of our private homes to include
strangers – they are just family members we haven’t met yet.
This is why Israeli cab drivers and shopkeepers think it’s perfectly natural to
ask you extraordinarily intrusive questions. Manners are for strangers, with
family you can say whatever you want.
This is why strangers will invite you over for meals and even to stay in their
home – especially if they think you might be alone on Shabbat or a holiday or
if your area of the country is under attack and your kids need a few days rest
someplace quiet.
This is why one soldier is everyone’s
soldier and why grief is not private. This is why we can argue viciously and immediately
unite over an external threat. “Family” are the people that might drive you
nuts but you are also willing to die for. Literally.
Israel’s strength comes from HOME.
Wherever we are in the world, no matter how much we enjoy it, home is where the
heart is. That’s why when there is a war one might expect people to leave but
instead many Israelis abroad come back (or at least feel like they should).
When your family is in trouble, you stand by their side. Even if you can’t
really help, there is strength in being together.
Our resilience and tenacity come from the
simple truth that home is the place you don’t give up on. Where else would you
go?
People who understand Israel as “the Holy
Land” or “the land of prophecy” often find themselves disappointed when they
encounter the realities of normal, standard and sometimes very inconvenient
life. Bureaucracy and poor service seem incongruent with the concept of
holiness.
Those who see Israel as a land of
innovation don’t necessarily understand why the same kind of innovation can’t
happen elsewhere. Why insist on living in a “bad neighborhood” when true
innovators could go work in Silicon Valley or some other place? And why do so
many of those who do go, live and work, someplace else still say that Israel is
HOME even when they have been away for years? Why do they long for the smells,
the food, the warmth of friends and community (family)? Why is it that anywhere
there are Israelis abroad you will find more Israelis and when there are enough
of them you will find stores that sell Bamba, chocolate spread, Elite coffee
and “shkedey marak” (a kind of Israel soup crouton)?
Of course those that see Israel as an
“occupier” do not understand that it is impossible to occupy your own home.
They see “bully” not a family trying to protect its family members. Because
they don’t know, or don’t care to know the truth, they see “no heart” rather
than “all heart.”
Does any other nation on earth have a
collective home? How is it possible for people born in Iraq, America, Brazil
and Russia to all belong to the same home? How can our home be ancient and yet
new? Holy and singular yet at the same time cosmopolitan?
These seem like inexplicable paradoxes
but they are no different than your parents liking different kinds of food or
siblings having conflicting personalities. Facts and figures will never convey
what Israel means to Israelis. Diversity or doing good for the world is not a
justification for existence. Jew hate is not enough to explain why people don’t
understand our reality. Even the most virulent Jew hate is not enough to explain
why protecting Israel as a sanctuary for Jews is vital (because why not just
address the local cultural problem, teach people not to be violent to anyone?).
It is important to protect HOME because
it’s yours. Because that’s where your family is.
Perhaps if we explained THAT to the
world, we would be better understood.
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One cannot understand Arab society without understanding the honor/shame dynamic.
It is not racist to point out that Arabs are brought up in a culture where receiving honor, and avoiding shame, are the top priorities. Westerners, on the other hand, are raised in a "guilt" society. In the West, what you do has inherent value even if no one else knows about it; in the Arab world nearly everything is dependent on how you are perceived as opposed to what you are.
In Arab culture, shame must be avoided at all costs. This is why there are so-called "honor killings." Even someone's life can be sacrificed to preserve one's supposed honor.
Arabs historically regarded themselves as warriors, with romantic Islamic artwork showing Muslims on horseback with swords fighting their enemies.
Yet Arabs and Muslims have lost wars many times in their history to the Christian West, possibly starting in 732 with the Battle of Tours.
After a while, it was not considered so shameful to lose to the Christians and their powerful armies.
This never applied to Jews, though.
Muslim antipathy to Jews is as old as Islam itself, and Arab hate for Jews goes back to Ishmael. Under Muslim rule, Jews were regarded as despised and weak second class citizens.
In 1948, the combined Arab armies not only failed to push the hated Jews into the sea, but they lost, convincingly, to these weak dhimmi Jews.
This is the reason the loss, alone among all Arab and Muslim losses in history, is called the "nakba." The scale of the military defeat isn't the important factor - the fact that it was so humiliating is.
There are two reasons the Arabs of Palestine who fled were never integrated into the Arab world and remain a separate, stateless people 71 years later. One is that their very existence reminds the Arab nations of their impotence in war, and the Arab leaders want to blame the Palestinian Arabs for fleeing rather than fighting for their lands. The other is the realization that a large refugee population can be weaponized itself in the insistence of the "right to return." The hope that Israel can still be destroyed through a combination of terror, demographics and politics remains.
Israeli concessions for peace are invariably looked upon as evidence of weakness and they embolden Israel's enemies, rather than appease them.
Something interesting has happened in recent years. Arab nations have slowly gotten used to the fact that Israel is strong and will not disappear so soon. As they did with the Christian West, they are recognizing that they cannot defeat Israel militarily and therefore it starts to make sense to begin to cooperate with Israel in cases of common interest.
Palestinian Arabs have not reached that point. Their classrooms still teach that they will one day "return" and claim all of the land from the river to the sea. They still pretend that symbolic support from the Arabs is meaningful. They have created an entire mythology around a Palestinian nation that never existed. Their need for pride precludes their ability to recognize reality.
Until they reach the point of knowing that Israel is a Jewish state and will remain there for a long time, the Nakba will remain a catastrophe to them.
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One of the more outlandish lies that one sees often in Arab media is the claim that there is no hint of Jewish history in Jerusalem, and the ties between Jews and Jerusalem are all of recent vintage and false.
I've seen many articles, including one today from AlGhad.tv, that say as a fact that Israeli archaeologists have never found a single stone in Jerusalem that testifies to an ancient Jewish city there.
Jewish archaeologists unanimously agree that there is no Jewish impact in Jerusalem, despite the years spent by the Israeli occupation authorities in searching for Jewish monuments in the city, through excavations on the outskirts of the city, to prove their Jewishness....The results of the excavations that took place in Jerusalem since 1964 until today, confirmed the facts that all historical and archaeological sites are of churches, mosques, houses, schools, monasteries...No trace of the reign of David or Solomon or the kings of the children of Israel can be found within the walls of Jerusalem.
This theme has been around for a while. In 2016, in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper, a columnist wrote:
All of their news is a crime or lies... I challenge them daily to bring me one Jewish archaeological remnant from Jerusalem, or to show us a rock from the alleged Temple.
The irony is that they say this in context of Jews fabricating history.
Even Yasir Arafat claimed at Camp David that the Jewish Temples were not in Jerusalem, but in Nablus.
Even the Arabs know they are lying. Plenty of Muslim literature before 1967 freely admits the existence of Jewish Temples in Jerusalem.
There is not a single Israeli archaeologist who doubts that the two Jewish Temples were in Jerusalem, even the ones who say that the Kingdom of David was much smaller than the Bible says. From Haaretz in 2015:
Was there once a great Jewish temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount? Yes. Does any scholar genuinely doubt there was? No, say archaeologists who have spent their lives studying Jerusalem. "I feel stupid even having to comment on it," says Dr. Yuval Baruch, a leading Israeli archaeologist who has studied Jerusalem throughout his career. "Demanding proof that the Temples stood on the Mount is like demanding proof that the ancient stone walls surrounding Jerusalem, which stand to this day, were the ancient stone walls surrounding Jerusalem," he adds.
As Prof. Israel Finkelstein, a world-renowned expert on Jerusalem archaeology, spells out in an email to Haaretz, "There is no scholarly school of thought that doubts the existence of the First Temple."
Concrete finds definitively from the Temple exist in abundance, says Bar-Ilan University Prof. Gabriel Barkay, an archaeologist who has spent many years working in Jerusalem, and the area of Temple Mount in particular.
"Two copies of inscriptions prohibiting the entry of nonbelievers to the Temple have been found on Temple Mount, which Josephus wrote about. These inscriptions were on the dividing wall that surrounded the Second Temple, which prevented non-Jews from accessing the interior of the [Temple] courtyard," Barkay says, adding that both were written in ancient Greek. The "warning" stone, which is at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, warns non-Jews of the perils of entering the sacred Temple. There were additional, similar inscriptions in Latin, he says.
Another inscription in stone, "To the trumpeting place," was found in 1968 at the southwest corner of Temple Mount. "It is known that trumpets were blown at the corners of Temple Mount, to declare the advent of Shabbat and other dates," Barkay explains. Josephus, the ancient historian of ephemeral loyalties, explains that it was customary for a Temple priest to "stand and to give notice, by sound of trumpet, in the afternoon of the approach, and on the following evening of the close, of every seventh day." The stone is now at the Israel Museum.
Further concrete evidence attests to Jerusalem’s uniqueness in religious observance. "The ancient city of Jerusalem at the time of the First Temple was clearly a hub of ritual worship," says Baruch, who heads the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Jerusalem district. "The hundreds of mikvehs [ritual purification baths] found around the Temple Mount compound and Jewish artifacts made of stone found there show that until the Temple's destruction, at least, Jerusalem was an 'ir mikdash' [holy city], where what matters is the house of worship. Athens and Olympia were like that, too."
It doesn't take an expert psychologist to understand that the Arabs feel they must deny Jewish history in order to deny Jewish rights to Israel. Truth is not important; only the narrative is.
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Contestants from 41 countries walked an orange carpet in Tel Aviv’s “Culture Square” on Sunday for the opening ceremony of Eurovision 2019, brushing aside security concerns and calls for a pro-Palestinian boycott.
The 64th Eurovision Song Contest holds semi-finals in Tel Aviv on Tuesday and Thursday ahead of the grand final on Saturday.
Instead of the traditional red carpet, an orange carpet, matching the logo of a company sponsoring the international song fest, was rolled out at the Tel Aviv square that houses Israel’s Habima national theater and the Israel Philharmonic.
“Everyone is excited in my team. I’m really happy to be here,” said Cypriot singer Tamta, the first artist to stroll the walkway flanked by visiting photographers and reporters.
The four members of Poland’s Tulia gave a quick sample of their folk singing style called “śpiewokrzyk” or “scream singing” to the crowd’s enjoyment.
Finish DJ Darude said artists behind the scenes of the festival were “slapping high-fives and having a good time.”
Concerns had been raised that the contest could be disrupted by a surge in cross-border violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza. But a ceasefire that went into effect a week ago has been holding.
Pop superstar Madonna will land in Israel on Wednesday morning, accompanied by an entourage of 135 people, ahead of her planned performance during the Eurovision finals on Saturday night.
But on Monday, Eurovision executive producer Jon Ola Sand said her performance was not yet confirmed, since the European Broadcasting Union does not have a signed contract with her team.
Disagreements apparently remained regarding the EBU’s broadcasting rights for the performance, as the union is demanding all member networks be granted full rights to the materials.
“If we don’t have a signed contract, she can’t perform on that stage,” Sand said at a Monday night press conference at the Tel Aviv Expo. “We’re negotiating that now.”
Earlier Monday, the public relations team for Sylvan Adams, the Canadian-Israeli philanthropist, who is reportedly funding a large portion of Madonna’s $1.3 million fee and bringing her to Israel on his private jet, stated that preparations for Madonna’s performance were already taking place.
Daniel Benaim, the CEO of the Comtec Group, an Israeli events producer that is handling the singer’s production in Israel, stated in a press release that her performance was a complicated one with demands and standards similar to those of other international performers.
The pro-Israel NGO StandWithUs has purchased and will erect a massive vertical billboard over the Ayalon Highway in protest to a campaign by the left-wing NGO Breaking the Silence, daring Eurovision visitors to “dream of peace, security and coexistence.”
Breaking the Silence put up a billboard on Sunday in Tel Aviv contrasting an image of Tel Aviv with the security barrier, and offering visitors the opportunity to take a tour of “occupied Hebron” and see “the reality of everyday life in the occupied territories.”
The StandWithUs billboard will offer counter-tours to Gush Etzion, the Gaza periphery and Haifa.
“As soon as we found out about this campaign, we acted,” said StandWithUs CEO Roz Rothstein, who is currently visiting Israel. “Within an hour, we had plans to promote our own tours on a giant billboard. We have never, and we will never, leave the playing field to those who tell lies about Israel.”
On the Gush Etzion tour, visitors will meet with local Israelis and Palestinians, and participate in conversations about their efforts to “create a brighter future together,” according to the StandWithUs tour website. On the Gaza periphery, participants will get a glimpse at life on the border under constant threat of rockets. The Haifa tour will focus on coexistence through the eyes of the city’s diverse population.
Palestine Today shows photos of Islamic Jihad and Hamas terrorists - in masks - giving out water and dates to people in Gaza for Ramadan.
Because they are so humane.
Wouldn't you feel good seeing these people reaching into your car?
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.
I recently encountered the term titling this piece in the
comments section of an
article about how an organization become politicized when leaders of the
group started taking stands on controversial matters. When some members protested, these same
leaders recruited enough like-minded new members to confirm their authority
over the organization.
The term “entryism,”
which describes such institutional takeovers, originated in the early 20th
century to describe Communist partisans trying to get a foothold, and
eventually take control of, labor organizations or political parties that were
left leaning but did not subscribe to this or that flavor of Marxism.
While past labor groups and left-but-not-Marxist parties historically
found the means and backbone to kick out those who had join with ulterior
motives (the most notable example being the expulsion of the Trotskyite Militant
Tendency from the UK’s Labour Party in the 1980s), the end of global Communism
did not spell an end to entryism. In
fact, the democratic spirit reignited with the fall of the Soviet Union had the
ironic effect of bringing a tactic once embraced by only a small conspiratorial
fringe into the mainstream.
One could actually look at the Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions (BDS) “movement,” if not the entire anti-Israel project, as entryism turned
up to eleven, dwarfing any version that has come before in both its scale and
success.
When student governments rejected divestment measures
earlier this decade, proponents of those measures simply ran for office with
the sole purpose of turning those “No’s” into “Yes’s”. On the surface, this might seem like a
democratically elected majority doing what it was elected to do, but in many of
these elections pro-BDS candidates deliberately hid their divestment priorities
during their campaigns for office, meaning their real goal for obtaining
student council seats was hidden from voters.
In other words, they successfully took advantage of a political
situation (in this case, student council elections with very low voter turnout)
to practice a bit of entryism.
The way BDS has played out in other communities, such as
churches and academic associations, has followed a similar entryist pattern,
with members who are anti-Israel activists first, Presbyterians or American
Studies professors second, taking leadership positions and forcing the
organization to take stands that reflect their preferred views, the spiritual
or professional needs of the organization be damned. And
when internal protests against those decisions erupted, steps were taken to
limit the number of voices who could participate in discussions of those choices,
or new members were found to shore up the power base of anti-Israel voices in
charge.
Entities not bound by democratic politics have been even
more ripe for entriest-style infiltration.
For example, the descent of non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
ostensibly dedicated to human rights into Israel-hating madness reflects a pattern
in which every organization from Human Rights Watch to the United Nations, has
been targeted for successful takeover by anti-Israel forces, dramatically
limiting their ability to engage in genuine human rights practice anywhere in
the world.
With regard to NGOs, problems of entryism can be seen in the
category as a whole as hundreds of freshly minted anti-Israel “human rights”
groups have formed (or been created, with financial support from the world’s
great human rights abusers) creating a “community” in which horrific displays
of anti-Jewish animus (like the 2001
Durban conference where BDS was born) became the sea in which once noble and
effective groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International must swim.
Unfortunately, our side lacks the ability to meet fire with
fire. There are not, after all, 50
Jewish states able to exert control over bodies like the UN or finance the
creation of hundreds of NGOs dedicated to smearing our enemies. We also lack what is needed to turn the
entire human rights project into a weapon to be pointed exclusively as our
enemies. But this might be a source of
strength for our side, rather than weakness.
This is because the tendency of entryism to cripple an
organization can impact even the organizations practicing entryism against
others. The most illustrative example of
this is the Palestinian
Solidarity Movement (PSM), a group that led divestment efforts in the early
2010s. Because their efforts earned them
such a high profile, they became a target for takeover by every political and
religious faction involved with left-leaning and Middle East politics. After years of fending off such hostile
takeovers, they eventually shut their doors, unable to both do their work and
keep entriest forces at bay.
It would represent justice if other groups like Students for
Justice in Palestine (SJP) met a similar fate.
But it would be even more preferable if today’s progressive organizations
found the spine their progenitors exhibited when they kept infiltration by
yesterday’s enemies of freedom and democracy at bay.
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.
Most Israeli Jews celebrated Israeli Independence Day (according to the Hebrew calendar) a few days ago. Meanwhile, thousands of Israel’s Arab citizens decried the “Nakba” (The Catastrophe), namely the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, with a day of protest and mourning.
Many more Israeli Jews will have fun, less than two weeks from now, on Lag B’Omer. Israel’s Arab community probably will riot, protest and mourn again, on May 15th (the general calendar date), when the British Mandate was officially terminated, and the State of Israel came into being.
Its also been announced that Arabs in the Gaza Strip plan to stage a general strike on Wednesday to mark Nakba Day. In a statement, the National Authority for Breaking the Siege, also called on “Palestinians” to mark the occasion by taking part in planned demonstrations in Gaza, i.e. riot at the fence. It also warned “the Israeli enemy” against “committing follies against peaceful demonstrators: - aka those trying to attack Israeli soldiers or launch incendiary balloons into Israel.
That says everything...
So while the Jews were happy and dancing, on Independence Day, and then will dance again, on the anniversary of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochi’s death (hundreds of thousands flock to his grave in Meron annually), the Arabs are crying this time of year over what they see as a tragedy.
US President Donald Trump’s policy toward Iran appears to be working.
Sunday morning, President Hassan Rouhani told political activists in Tehran that Iran is facing “unprecedented” pressure from the international sanctions that were re-imposed by Trump; that Iranians must prepare for difficult times resulting from those renewed sanctions; and that they have led to worse economic conditions than Iran faced during the country’s 1980-88 war with Iraq.
“During the war, we did not have a problem with our banks, oil sales or imports and exports – and there were only sanctions on arms purchases,” said Rouhani. “The [current] pressures by enemies are a war unprecedented in the history of our Islamic revolution... But, I do not despair and have great hope for the future, and believe that we can move past these difficult conditions, provided that we are united.”
His comments come amid rising tensions with the US. John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, announced a week ago the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its strike group over “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.”
The Lincoln passed through the Suez Canal on Thursday, according to the US Central Command. Alongside the carrier are three destroyers: the USS Bainbridge, USS Mason and USS Nitze, as well as the guided-missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf and a Spanish frigate, the ESPS Mendez Nunez.
In addition, B-52s from the 20th Bomb Squadron have landed in recent days in Qatar and elsewhere in “southwest Asia” – possibly the United Arab Emirates. And on Friday, the Pentagon announced it would be returning a Patriot missile battery to the wider Mideast, as well as sending the USS Arlington, an amphibious warship carrying marines, to join the Lincoln.
All these moves are a response to a possible threat to US forces in the region by Iran, according to the White House, which did not specify what that threat is. Iran dismissed the claim as nonsense, but Bolton warned the Islamic republic that any attack on American interests or allies would face “unrelenting force.”
The U.N. envoy to the Middle East says it’s the “last chance” to prevent an all-out conflict between Israel and Gaza militants.
Nickolay Mladenov said on Monday that the “risk of war remains imminent,” a week after a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers ended the worst fighting since Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014.
The spate of violence killed 25 Palestinians, including 10 terrorist operatives, and four Israeli civilians.
Mladenov, inaugurating a solar power plant for a Gaza hospital, said parties must “consolidate the understandings” of the cease-fire.
The deal, mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the U.N., promises to let in fuel and humanitarian aid and ease the movement of people from the blockaded territory.
The “Best” Restaurant in America?—An Analysis (12 May 2019) by Lawrence Davidson
We are having one of those “official” Orwellian moments. You know, a moment when one thing stands in for its opposite, like “war is peace” or more to the point here, “ignorance is truth.”
It’s “official” because it is being asserted by an organization with authority in its field. The organization is the James Beard Foundation, which states its mission as follows: “to celebrate, nurture, and honor chefs and other leaders making America’s food culture more delicious, diverse, and sustainable for everyone.” In order to achieve its mission, “the foundation is guided by the values of respect, transparency, diversity, sustainability, and equality. We believe that in order to achieve our mission, it is expected that everyone who works in and with the foundation shares similar values and operates with integrity.”
OK. That is admirable. One of the ways the James Beard Foundation does its job is by making a yearly award for what it considers to be the “best restaurant in America—open ten years or more.” It should go without saying that in order to bring this off with any authenticity, those making this selection have to know something about the cuisine served by the restaurant they are honoring. They have to make sure that the restaurant is offering that cuisine with, to use the foundation’s term, “transparency.” If it does not, the foundation runs the serious risk of misrepresenting one cuisine for another.
This year the foundation has honored the Philadelphia restaurant Zahav as “the best restaurant in America.” Zahav is a self-described Israeli restaurant where, according to its website, “modern techniques elevate a traditional Israeli menu.” That the James Beard Foundation appears to have taken this claim at face value suggests that its staffers did little or no research into the history of “Israeli” cuisine. Their lack of awareness suggests a sloppy selection process that negates all the hype it has generated.
First of all, it is problematic that there is anything “traditional” about “Israeli” cuisine. Zahav’s menu offers, among others, hummus, tehina, fried cauliflower, kibble, kebabs and other “shishliki” dishes, none of which is actually “Israeli.” Sometimes Zahav does introduce European touches to its dishes. For instance, it offers something labeled “Romanian beef kebab and (oy vey iz mir!) “grilled duck hearts” with “fried cippolini.” But then there is the suggestion that its food is a gateway to the “Israeli soul.”
The truth is that most of Zahav’s dishes are variations on the traditional food of the Palestinians. But for reasons explained below, the Zahav folks might be reluctant, at least in public, to admit that these dishes have a Palestinian, as well as Syrian and Lebanese origin and character. As a result the customer looking for authenticity can eat much of Zahav’s basic fare a lot cheaper and just as tasty (albeit within a different ambiance) at Philadelphia’s Manakeesh Cafe Bakery and Grill, and other authentic Middle Eastern restaurants in the area.
...To demonstrate just what is going on here, I reproduce below my August 2018 essay on the seriousness of Israeli appropriation of Palestinian food. It is hard to believe that the owners and staff at Zahav are not aware of this less-than-honest dimension of their business. The rest of us—those of the James Beard Foundation in particular—should as well be aware of what is happening if only to avoid complicity in a nasty bit of theft.
Food Appropriation as a Form of Cultural Genocide—An Analysis (6 August 2018) by Lawrence Davidson
Zahav does not claim that there is no Levantine influence - it revels in it, as its webpage says:
Zahav offers a small plates menu that encourages guests to sample the large variety of cultural influences on the cuisine of Israel - from Eastern Europe to North Africa and from Persia to the Eastern Mediterranean.
It isn't that Israeli restaurateurs are trying to steal anyone else's cuisine - it is that people who hate Israel are claiming that there is no such thing as Israeli cuisine, which is a fusion and update of the others. Those critics are the liars, not the Israelis.
If a Palestinian Arab wants to open a five star restaurant and call the food Palestinian cuisine (which never existed as a separate cuisine) and get an award from James Beard and they call it "Palestinian cuisine," no one would give a damn. The Lebanese and Syrians and Egyptians who actually created the cuisine won't care.
What is going on here is not defending Palestinian culture, such as it is. It is demonizing Israel and everything Israeli. It is a sick attempt to tag everything Israeli with the "genocide" label. It isn't righteous anger, but pure hate.
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.
As UNRWA tries to justify its existence, it reveals a lot about the people it defends.
From a letter to Jewish Journal by Elizabeth Campbell, Director, Washington Representative Office, UNRWA, in the context of teaching Palestinian children:
UNRWA is a humanitarian institution. The agency’s mandate, as determined by the U.N. General Assembly, is to provide essential services — including health, educational and humanitarian assistance — to promote the well-being and human development of Palestine refugees until there is a just and lasting solution to the conflict. If UNRWA isn’t there to teach Palestine refugee children, and instill key values of neutrality, human rights, tolerance and nondiscrimination, who will be?
Keep in mind that the Palestinian Authority has a school system. Every child who is a citizen can go to their schools. There is no reason that UNRWA needs to have an entirely parallel school system - paid for by the world. (There is also no reason why Palestinian Arabs should be in "refugee camps" when they live in a land that is administered by their own leaders in what they consider their own land.)
UNRWA knows this, so they try to justify their massive school system - by saying that the Palestinian school system teaches hate and intolerance and antisemitism, and therefore UNRWA is necessary to counteract that for the kids who are falsely considered "refugees."
There are a number of problems with this excuse. First of all, UNRWA uses the same textbooks as the Palestinian Authority. UNRWA promised to use supplemental materials that teach human rights and other values, but they were never implemented. So, today, there is no difference in what the kids are taught.
Secondly, we know from the amazing work by David Bedein, UNRWA students are still taught violence and to destroy Israel.
But the important thing is that UNRWA is not only admitting, but basing their argument on, the fact that 25 years after the Oslo process, the Palestinian government is teaching their kids to hate Jews in schools funded by the international community.
Shouldn't state-sanctioned antisemitism - admitted by an UN agency - be a red flag in funding the PA altogether?
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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.
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Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
1943:
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