Friday, May 24, 2019

By Daled Amos

How do we judge if someone -- especially a politician -- is a friend of Israel?

Putting aside the political exclamations, a key component is the actual support for Israel, beyond just words. After all, Nixon -- who is recognized as having been an antisemite -- nevertheless came to Israel's aid during the Yom Kippur War. He is arguably the US president who first articulated the policy of seeing Israel as a key ally in the Middle East, a policy that continues till today.

Nixon wasn't particularly friendly to Jews, but he was a friend of Israel.
Compare him with Donald Trump, whom Democrats accuse of trafficking in antisemitic tropes.

Better yet, compare Nixon to Joe Biden.

photo
Joe Biden. Public Domain

Is there any politician, especially among the Democrats in the running for their party's presidential nomination, who is more highly regarded as a friend of Israel than Joe Biden?

In his list of 5 Jewish things to know about Joe Biden, Ron Kampeas points out:
Biden's ties to the Jewish state go back almost 50 years, to his visit to Israel on the eve of the Yom Kippur War
Biden has personally known every Prime Minister since Golda Meir
Biden talks about his large collection of yarmulkes he has accumulated from attending Jewish functions over the years
One of Biden's favorite anecdotes retells his conversation with Golda Meir, where she confided in him "We have a secret weapon in our conflict with the Arabs. You see, we have no place else to go."
Biden's friendliness comes in spite of the fact that his state, Delaware, has a Jewish population of only 15,000.
But while he has been friendly with members of the Israeli government, has Biden been supportive of the Israeli government?

From the start, we understand that this is not an issue of backing every decision Israel has made or every action it has taken -- but has Biden consistently supported Israel?

For example, in June 1982, upon his return from the US, Menachem Begin gave a press conference on his experience there. He recounted that when he appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
a young senator rose and delivered a very impassioned speech - I must say that it's been a while since I've heard such a talented speaker - and he actually supported Operation "Peace for the Galilee" [The Lebanon War]. He even went further, and said that if someone from Canada were to infiltrate into the United States, and kill its citizens all of us (and thus he indicated a circle) would demand attacking them, and we wouldn't pay attention as to whether men, women or children were killed. That's what he said. 
Begin distanced himself on the spot from what were ostensibly supportive remarks, noting that "according to our values, it is forbidden to hurt women and children, even in war...We did not want to hurt civilians under any circumstances...we never approved a plan knowing that civilians would be hurt directly or on purpose. Unintentionally, that can happen. It must not be denied."

We know that "young senator" was Joe Biden because Begin went on to recount the famous clash between the two that immediately followed. After overplaying his hand in what was supposed to be a supportive comment, Biden went beyond criticizing Israel. He not only voiced his opposition to the Israeli settlements (a criticism which Begin did not begrudge him), but went on to suggest that he would propose cutting financial aid to Israel because of them. Begin's rebuke of Biden is famous:
Don't threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us.
The account, identifying Biden, was carried both by the New York Times and Time Magazine.

Biden's first comment was an attempt to be 'friendly.'
Biden's second comment, however, was not the type made by a friend.

Kampeas notes that similarly, Biden made 2 different kinds of statements depending on whether speaking to AIPAC or J Street.

During his speech at AIPAC in 2013, Biden stressed that Netanyahu wanted peace, and the Arabs needed to step up. In fact, if you read the actual speech, Biden  -- who once threatened Begin he would cut off aid on account of the settlements -- not only mentions the settlements, but goes so far as to brag:
As recently as last year, the only country on the United Nations Human Rights Council to vote against — I think it’s 36 countries, don’t hold me to the exact number — but the only country on the Human Rights Council of the United Nations to vote against the establishment of a fact-finding mission on settlements was the United States of America. [emphasis added]
Did Biden change his mind about the settlements?
Not really.

When speaking before a J Street crowd in 2016, the day after the bus bombing that wounded 21 Israelis and following months of stabbing attacks, Biden felt perfectly comfortable telling the crowd that in fact, the settlements prove that Netanyahu is taking Israel in the “wrong direction”:
“I firmly believe that the actions that Israel’s government has taken over the past several years — the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures — they’re moving us and, more importantly, they’re moving Israel in the wrong direction,” he said.
At AIPAC he proudly claimed that the US is the sole defender of Israel's settlement policy, but at J Street Biden turns around and condemns Israel over that very same policy.

There is nothing wrong with Biden criticizing Israel over the settlements.
But it was presumptuous of him to publicly threaten the leader of a sovereign country.
o  As a "friend" of Israel, Biden should be consistent in his position and not flip-flop in order to curry favor with the current crowd he is speaking to. US policy has been to refrain from approving of the settlements.
o  Furthermore, Biden - as a friend of Israel - should not be going around exaggerating the "systematic expansion" of the settlements. In 2012, Peace Now noted on their website For the First Time Since 1990 – the Government is to Approve the Establishment of New Settlements. That number of settlements was 3. If Biden wants to criticize Israel, at the very least he should have gotten his facts straight.
During this mutual admiration society meeting with J Street, Biden talked knowingly about Israel and what "they know in their gut"




In the absence of an Israeli leader like Menachem Begin, Biden feels free to openly speak of what Israel must do, ignoring the changing Israeli electorate that even 3 years ago was showing signs of moving to the right and an unwillingness to unilaterally make concessions to a non-existent peace partner.

Yet, during a conference call with members of the Jewish media in 2008, 2 months before the presidential election, Biden sang a different tune, saying it was up to the Israelis to make decisions about war and peace, especially the question of whether to launch a strike aimed at disrupting Iran’s nuclear program.
“This is not a question for us to tell the Israelis what they can and cannot do,” said the Democratic vice presidential candidate. ”I have faith in the democracy of Israel. They will arrive at the right decision that they view as being in their own interests.”
That is a far cry from what Biden told that J Street crowd, where he went so far as to claim
We have an overwhelming obligation — notwithstanding our sometimes overwhelming frustration with the Israeli government — we have an obligation to push them as hard as we can toward what they know in their gut is the only solution: a two-state solution.
Which of these two stands will Biden adopt during the months leading up to next years election?
More importantly, which of these 2 stands would Biden adopt if he should be elected president?

Gaffes Or Errors of Fact?

Some of Biden's statements over the years have been problematic, where he has made a gaffe -- for instance, when Biden confused Prime Minister May and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

There are statements Biden has made in connection with Israel too which are either gaffes or errors of fact.

Who cares?

Biden once boasted in 2008
I’ve spent 35 years of my career dealing with issues relating to Israel. My support for Israel begins in my stomach, goes to my heart and ends up in my head.”
Part of Biden's claim as a "friend of Israel" is that he knows Israel so well, so let's just skip the first 2 parts and see what's there.

Jonathan Pollard

Back in 2011, Biden took credit for preventing the release of Jonathan Pollard:
President Obama was considering clemency, but I told him, ‘Over my dead body are we going to let him out before his time. If it were up to me, he would stay in jail for life. [emphasis added]
One question is whether his claim was accurate, or whether Biden was trying to protect Obama from the ire of the rabbis.

But it is not completely clear from what he said if Biden realized that Pollard was in fact sentenced to life and "his time" would never be up. It simply was not "up to Biden" for Pollard to stay in jail for life, since that was, in fact, his sentence, despite the plea deal he had made and the US government had violated.

Giving Obama Credit For Bush's Agreement

Another example of Biden's misstatement of fact is when he told AIPAC in 2013:
President Obama last year requested $3.1 billion in military assistance for Israel — the most in history.
According to FactCheck.org -- Biden was wrong on 2 counts.

At the time, the actual record was held by the Clinton administration, which in 2000 gave Israel $3.12 billion "which is not only slightly more in nominal dollars but much more in inflation-adjusted dollars"

More to the point, Biden was crediting Obama for something that Bush had done:
Biden is also taking credit for a level of spending that was set by the Bush administration as part of a 10-year, $30 billion agreement reached with Israel in 2007. In requesting $3.1 billion in his fiscal 2013 budget last February, Obama was honoring that agreement.

Hamas and Hezbollah

Here's another double error made by Biden during his 2008 debate with Palin where he was supposed to show his obvious superior knowledge of foreign affairs:
Here's what the president [Bush] said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won.

When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it."

Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.
First, as Israel Medad points out in his blog My Right Word -- Biden confused the West Bank and Gaza:
Another absurdly wrong statement from Joe “Foreign Policy Expert” Biden, who very obviously does not know the difference between the Gaza Strip [where Hamas rules] and the West Bank [where the PA rules]
But Biden didn't get Hezbollah quite right either --
First, the US did not kick Hezbollah out of Lebanon.
Second, if Hezbollah was kicked out, how would it be able to fill that vacuum Biden warns about?

Demographics

Here's another one - in 2010, Biden lectured Israel on the demographic realities
The demographic realities make it difficult for Israel to be a Jewish homeland and a democratic country. The status quo is not sustainable.
Biden claims that the larger birthrate of the Arabs as opposed to the Jews, is a potent argument for Israel to "make peace" -- i.e., retreat from the "West Bank" as soon as possible.

The problem is that the demographic argument just does not hold water. For example, an op-ed in Haaretz from 2009, the previous year, notes how easy it is to exploit demographics and the fears generated by it to further an agenda and justify or attack policies in Israel.
In 2001, there were around 95,000 Jewish births in Israel and 41,000 Arab births. Just seven years later, in 2008, Jewish births had risen to over 117,000, but Arab births had declined to less than 40,000. In a period that constitutes barely a quarter of a generation, Arab births had fallen from around 30 percent of the total to around 25 percent. This has been a steady trend and, should it continue, it will only be a very short time before Jewish and Arab births each year are broadly proportionate to the overall balance of Jews and Arabs in the population as whole - that is, 4:1, or 80 percent and 20 percent, respectively.
But the problem with Joe Biden goes beyond his misstatements and insistence he knows better than Israel what is best for it.

The issue is not that Biden does not support Israeli policy, but rather the kinds of actions Biden has actively taken that are directly against Israeli interests

Does Joe Biden Really Support Putting The Western Wall Under Palestinian Control?

Biden took an active part in US support for the UN vote on Resolution 2334, which was passed at the end of Obama's term in office thanks to the US abstention. That resolution did more than just condemn Israeli settlements.

According to Tablet Magazine, Biden was actively involved in pushing the UN vote condemning settlements
A wealth of evidence is now emerging that, far from simply abstaining from a UN vote, which is how the Administration and its press circle at first sought to characterize its actions, the anti-Israel resolution was actively vetted at the highest levels of the U.S. Administration, which then led a pressure campaign—both directly and through Great Britain—to convince other countries to vote in favor of it.

Tablet has confirmed that one tangible consequence of the high-level U.S. campaign was a phone call from Vice President Joseph Biden to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which succeeded in changing Ukraine’s vote from an expected abstention to a “yes.” According to one U.S. national security source, the Obama Administration needed a 14-0 vote to justify what the source called “the optics” of its own abstention.
As Danny Danon, Israel's representative to the UN makes clear:
Among its many “biased and false” clauses, he recalled, the resolution designated Israel’s presence in parts of Jerusalem liberated in 1967 as a flagrant violation under international law. That included Jerusalem’s Old City and Jewish Quarter, as well as the Western Wall, the last remnant of the temple first built by King Solomon some 3,000 years ago
A pity that in this case, Biden went along instead of telling Obama "over my dead body." But the question is whether Biden has actually thought through the ramifications of his position on the settlements.

Biden Opposed Sanctions on Iran Even Before Becoming Obama's Running Mate

On the issue of Iran, Biden already voted against pressuring them back in 2007, before being nominated as Obama's running mate:
The Senate approved a resolution on Wednesday urging the Bush administration to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, and lawmakers briefly set aside partisan differences to approve a measure calling for stepped-up diplomacy to forge a political solution in Iraq.

Also called for economic sanctions.

Among those voting against it was Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who said he feared that the administration could use the measure to justify military action against Iran.
It would be a good idea to hear Biden articulate just what he would be prepared to do to counteract Iran's support of global terrorism in general and support of Hezbollah and Hamas in particular.

Biden vs. AIPAC?

AIPAC does not speak for the entire American Jewish community. There’s other organizations as strong and as consequential.
What other organizations?
Was he referring to J Street -- which had only just been founded the year before?

Biden also claimed that despite any occasional claims to the contrary, AIPAC does not speak for Israel. He did not elaborate on that one.

In any case, Biden and AIPAC patched things up, but it is obvious that it is J Street and not AIPAC that he is listening to.

Biden & Sharpton

On the other hand, Biden has apparently had no problems with Al Sharpton, whose anti-Jewish incitement played a role in both the Crown Heights Riots and the Freddie's Fashion Mart Massacre.

photo
Sharpton and Biden. Screengrab from Facebook
It was in part as a result of his many visits to Obama at the White House that Sharpton's image was rehabilitated, and Biden is far from being the only one of the Democratic candidates to seek Sharpton's endorsement.

But this serves as a reminder that Biden's claim to friendship with Israel does not outweigh certain political considerations.


The bottom line is that Biden is a staunch opponent of the Israeli settlements. If elected, he would not be the first president to oppose them. The issue is what policies he might pursue, based on actions he has taken and the statements he has made. Biden was willing to actively support UN Resolution 2334. That raises the question of where he stands on the real-world implications of that stand.

Biden told an appreciative J Street that "we have an obligation to push them as hard as we can toward what they know in their gut is the only solution: a two-state solution." It is not hard to imagine Biden ignoring the implications of Netanyahu's re-election for what Israelis actually do know "in their gut" and instead pushing what he "knows" is the only solution -- with the aid of the same J Street that once bragged about being the "blocking back" for Obama.

That is not to say that none of the other Democratic candidates might try the same thing, but Biden has the reputation of being a "friend" of Israel that would shield him from a lot of the resultant criticism.

It is the fact that so many seem to buy into Biden's "friend of Israel" shtick that can be so disconcerting.




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  • Friday, May 24, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon


Ma'an reports that the organizers of the weekly March of Return have instructed parents not to bring kids outside the tents that are set up at a distance from the fence, because of the heat wave in the region.

Khalid Al-Batsh, Chairman of the High Commission for Return and Breaking the Siege, said: "In order to ensure the safety of our people participating today in the activities of the 59th Friday, we send the most important message to continue the process of liberation and return ...We ask them to stay inside the covered return tents in the five camps throughout the period."

Funny how they are concerned for kids' safety from the sun but not from ricocheting bullets or tear gas.

Kids getting injured or killed by Israelis is the entire point of the riots. If they die from heatstroke it does no one any good.




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  • Friday, May 24, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
Islamic Jihad has a photo essay of its "mujhadeen" participating in Ramadan Iftar meals, studying the Quran and praying with their masks and machine guns: (I'm not sure how they can eat with their mouths covered...)








I have never seen a Muslim complain about how terrorists are co-opting sacred Muslim rituals to make themselves look pious. Nor have I seen any Muslim complain that it is incongruous to say that Ramadan is a time for peaceful reflection and piousness while holding automatic weapons.

Maybe I am looking in the wrong places, though.

Are any Muslims upset when they see things like this, or do all Muslims look at this and think it is an appropriate way to mark Ramadan?




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Thursday, May 23, 2019

From Ian:

Netanyahu to Modi on apparent election victory: 'Well done, my friend'
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Thursday to congratulate him on his landslide victory, the second time this week that a key Netanyahu ally won an election abroad.

On Sunday Netanyahu congratulated Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on his surprise re-election the day before.

“Narendra, my friend, congratulations! What an enormous victory,” Netanyahu enthused in a phone call. Excerpts of the call were videoed and placed on the prime minister’s Facebook page, after it became clear that Modi had won a clear majority following an election process that took six months.

“I hope that we can see each other very soon, as soon as you form a government and as soon as we form a government,” Netanyahu said. “There is much to discuss on so many other things.”

Netanyahu thanked Modi as well for his warm wishes following the Israeli elections, but added a caveat: “There is one difference: you don’t need a coalition, I do.”

Netanyahu – who likes to underline Israel’s vastly improved relations with a number of countries around the world – tweeted his congratulations to Modi in Hebrew even before their phone call. (h/t MtTB)

Morrison’s win in Australia foretells even stronger ties with Israel
The surprise election victory of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison last weekend not only shook up the country’s political landscape but also potentially bodes well for another country thousands of miles away – Israel.

“We have had a strong and constructive relationship with Scott Morrison personally and had a very good working relationship with the government he led,” Jeremy Jones, director of international and community affairs for the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), told Jewish News Syndicate. “We also have worked with many members of the Opposition and the Cross-benchers. We saw the defeat of a number of racist candidates and MPs who associated with maximalist anti-Israel groups.”

The victory by Morrison, who hails from the center-right Liberal Party, echoes some of the surprise electoral success other decidedly pro-Israel right-wing candidates have seen in recent years around the world, such as with U.S. President Donald Trump and more recently with Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and potentially in Canada as well next October. However, Austria’s Sebastian Kurz, who has also staked a strong pro-Israel stance in Europe, now faces snap elections after his junior coalition partner resigned from the government following a video scandal.

“The Australian government is not ‘populist’ in the sense of Donald Trump or Bolsonaro or even [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. It is conservative, center-right and ran on a platform of economic responsibility, not populism. Australia has compulsory voting, which militates in favor of responsible centrism,” said Jones.

Netanyahu, who visited Australia in 2017, quickly congratulated Morrison on his victory.

“I send congratulations to another friend of mine, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who won the elections after the polls consistently predicted that he would lose. At the last minute, in the final hours, he won,” Netanyahu said on Sunday during his cabinet meeting.

Morrison, who took office last August after ousting former party leader and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, drew headlines last fall after he suggested that he was “open” to the idea of moving the Australian embassy to Jerusalem.

  • Thursday, May 23, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
At a rally on Sunday for the far Right German "Der Rechte" party, people held signs saying, "Israel ist unser Unglück", or "Israel is our misfortune!" - a direct and conscious retelling of the slogan of the Nazi Der Stürmer, "Die Juden sind unser Unglück!", or "The Jews are Our Misfortune!"



The Jewish community in Germany is understandably upset. Legal action is being taken and the issue is being reviewed.

The Federal Commissioner Felix Klein said: "Here is propaganda consciously linked to the National Socialists. Such propaganda against Jews and Israel must not be tolerated in our country. In my estimation, the police and regulatory laws of the federal states offer sufficient possibilities for municipalities to act against them. "

Amazingly, left-wing Jews and others still insist that the neo-Nazis are supporters of Israel and not supporters of BDS, like them.





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Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory


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Tel Aviv Is The Place To Be For Partyi- I Mean For Monitoring Human Rights

By Dominic Lord, human rights activist
activistTel Aviv, May 23 - We activists take our role seriously: forming alliances, raising awareness, generating political pressure, and partying till all hours in this fabulous city. This is where the human rights action is, where Israeli public figures can be held accountable; where journalists frequent, facilitating attention to key human rights issues; where there isn't really any major problem, but damn, is the night life amazing. It's a key location in the human rights realm.

Most people don't realize the centrality of geography as a factor in the human rights arena. Often we rely on volunteers and low-level staff in the field for data and for basic monitoring activities, and yes, such personnel perform valuable functions, but not everything we must accomplish can be accomplished in remote villages in Chad or Syrian towns facing bombardment and disease. Somebody has to undertake the serious work of living and working in Tel Aviv - some choose Jerusalem, for similar reasons - because those restaurants and night clubs are not going to visit themselves. Also, it's dangerous in sub-Saharan Africa.

Human rights workers embrace the challenges of this avenue of endeavor, formidable as they may be; difficulty inheres in all significant paths to achievement. Thus the fierce competition among UN, Red Cross, and other organizations' personnel for postings to Israel, where everyone knows Palestinian rights require ever-increasing protection, and where it's possible to eat at a different world-class restaurant every night and not have the same cuisine twice in six months. Plus we don't get shot at. Also, we have buddy-buddy relationships, not to mention romances, with journalists who share our assumptions about Israeli oppression and Palestinian victimhood and lack of moral or political agency, so this dynamic gets reinforced all the time.

That's a crucial piece of the puzzle, because if the human rights community ever admitted Israel didn't need the disproportionate attention we give the place, we'd lose our pretext to keep coming back here. And that would be a human rights tragedy. I've done work in Darfur, Central America, Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and even passed through some Arab states on my way, so I've been around, and I know which zones require the most urgent attention. Yes, people are being massacred, kidnapped, enslaved, tortured, and raped in those other places, but Jews are building homes here. Priorities.

Also, you can't expect those of us who are openly gay to actually spend time in the Palestinian territories. That would be suicide, and then who would do the crucial work of telling the world how barbaric Israelis are?



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From Ian:

Greenblatt Tells UN: Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Are to Blame for Gaza Suffering
U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt told the UN Security Council on Wednesday: "It is simply unacceptable that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to target Israeli communities, including hospitals and schools, in a cynical attempt to extract concessions from Israel. It is simply unacceptable that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to use civilians in Gaza, including children, as human shields. It is simply unacceptable that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to siphon the scarce resources of the people of Gaza to build their terror arsenal, while preventing donor aid from reaching the people."

"There will be no end to this suffering until all of us, together, say in public...Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are to blame for the suffering of the people of Gaza. Nothing can be meaningfully fixed until they renounce terror and cease their acts of violence and their vow to destroy Israel."
Remarks at a UN Security Council Briefing on the Middle East





PMW: Fatah renews blood libel, Fatah in Lebanon published a cartoon depicting an antisemitic child-killing libel.
Starting in the Middle Ages, Jews have been accused of murdering children for ritual purposes, of poisoning wells, and more. Palestinians regularly renew the child-killing libel, claiming Israel deliberately murders Palestinian children.

Here is a new example from Abbas' Fatah Movement in Lebanon:
[Falestinona, website of Fatah’s Information and Culture Commission in Lebanon, May 6, 2019]

In the cartoon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is shown with a bloody hand, smiling over a presumably dead Palestinian infant from Gaza that has blood dripping from it. Netanyahu murdered the baby, leaving it for the Palestinian Muslim family (symbolized by the man's crescent head) for the month of Ramadan.

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill recently made an astonishing claim when he declared: “I literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living.” Perhaps Professor Hill doesn’t earn his living at Temple University, because the subjects (media and education) he teaches there seem to have absolutely nothing to do with the study of Yemeni and Moroccan Jews. I was also unable to find any scholarly study of the history of Yemeni and Moroccan Jews authored by Hill.

But while Hill’s claim looks very much like a pathetic attempt to assert academic expertise, it’s noteworthy that he was apparently trying to create an aura of authority for a project he has been working on. As Hill announced: “I finished a film that devotes 20% to Mizrahis [i.e. Middle Eastern Jews]. And I talk about them regularly.”

The film Hill referred to is apparently “Black in the Holy Land”, and you can watch the trailer on YouTube – but before you do so, you should read an EoZ post from last February. Amazingly enough, the trailer for Hill’s “documentary” starts off with convicted terrorist Ali Jiddah, who “planted four hand grenades on Strauss Street in downtown Jerusalem in 1968. The blasts injured nine Israelis.”

Jiddah served 17 years in prison and was released in a prisoner swap. Since then, he has devoted himself to demonizing Israel, and as he told the Times of Israel a few years ago: “I am satisfied, and I am convinced that the work I am doing today is more effective than the bomb I planted in 1968.”


While the film is apparently not yet released, it’s clear what to expect: if your trailer prominently features a convicted terrorist who hopes to achieve with words what he previously tried to achieve with bombs, you really give your game away.

So it was hardly surprising that Marc Lamont Hill wasn’t pleased when well-known Israeli activist and writer Hen Mazzig recently wrote an excellent article that was published in the Los Angeles Times under the title “No, Israel isn’t a country of privileged and powerful white Europeans.”

If you missed the heated exchange that developed between Hen and Hill on social media, you can catch up by reading a Jerusalem Post report about it. Hill’s criticism of Hen’s widely read article included the preposterous claim that “the 20th century identity category of ‘Mizrahi’ [i.e. Middle Eastern Jews]” was created “as a means of detaching them from Palestinian identity.” According to Marc Lamont Hill, those who are now considered Mizrahi should apparently be called “Palestinian Jews” and we should all remember that they “lived peacefully with other Palestinians.”

Well, if Professor Hill studies “Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living,” he presumably knows that they cannot really be described as “Palestinian Jews.” Those Jews who lived among “other Palestinians” – meaning presumably the non-Jews in the area that the Romans designated as “Palestine” – had to endure the fate of an oppressed minority ruled by their conquerors. And if we want to consider the barely century-old history since the local Arabs actually started to consider themselves as Palestinians, we find that the Palestinian leader of the time was the man who started his career by instigating murderous pogroms, and who later became notorious as “Hitler’s mufti.” Incidentally, the mufti was an early proponent of boycotts and would arguably deserve to be honored as the father of BDS. Under his leadership, “‘Filasteen Arduna wa’al yahud Kilabuna’ (Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs)” and “‘Itbach al Yahud’ (slaughter the Jews)” were the first rallying cries of Palestinian nationalism in 1920.

For the narrative that undergirds Marc Lamont Hill’s vile anti-Israel activism, this history has to be ignored. It’s no less obscene than Rashida Tlaib’s recent attempt to rewrite history by claiming that the Palestinians somehow provided a “a safe haven” to Jews. But at least Tlaib doesn’t claim to be “one of the leading intellectual voices” in the US, and she doesn’t claim to “literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living.” As it happens, my dearest friends include both a Yemeni and a Moroccan Jew, and if Marc Lamont Hill ‘studied’ them, he could learn a lot.

But as it is, we can anticipate that Hill’s forthcoming “documentary” will document first and foremost why Hill has fans both among supposedly “progressive” anti-Israel activists and virulent Jew-haters like Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and David Duke.

________________________________
[EoZ]: This article inspired me to look at some previous posts of mine about the history of how Jews lived in Morocco and Yemen. I tweeted this today:

Absurdly, @MarcLamontHill says "I literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living" and he says they lived peacefully among Muslims.
Ali Bey al Abbasi was the pen name of a traveler who described the lives of Jews in Morocco in 1805 quite differently.

There are plenty of examples of contemporaneous studies of Jews in Morocco describing how they were humiliated, daily, by Muslims there.

And Morocco was one of the best places for Jews to live!
Here you can see several attacks against Jews in Yemen between 1908 and 1913.

Marc Lamont Hill is not a scholar. He wants to whitewash history, ,not describe it. 

This shows that his antipathy isn't against Zionists - but Jews.





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  • Thursday, May 23, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
Steven William Thrasher spoke at the NYU Doctoral Convocation a few days ago as a class representative. In his speech, he thanked anti-Israel groups and literally screamed his hate for Israel - to major applause.


 I am so proud, so proud of NYU’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and of Jewish Voice for Peace, and of GSOC, and of the NYU student government, and of my colleagues in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis for supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against the apartheid state government in Israel — because this is what we are called to do. This is our NYU legacy — that we are connected in radical love, and we have a duty and a privilege in this position to protect not the most popular amongst us, but the most vulnerable amongst us on every campus where we serve in every community where we live, in every place that we work.

This is our duty and we must stand together to vanquish racism and Islamophobia and antisemitism and injustice and attacks on women and attacks on abortion rights in Tel Aviv, in Shanghai, in Abu Dhabi, in New York City, in Atlanta, in Washington, in Los Angeles, in San Francisco and everywhere in the world. 
He is going to teach journalism at Northwestern University starting next month.

It is difficult to think of someone less qualified to be a journalist.

NYU has a major problem. Here is a thread from Melissa Weiss that shows just how bad it has been in just this past school year.
__________________________

An incoming college freshman, whose great-grandfather founded @nyuniversity’s music dept and was a professor there for many years, withdrew her acceptance to the university. There will be more like her until NYU shuts down rampant anti-Semitism on campus.
What led to a young Jewish woman walking away from an education at such a prestigious institution as NYU, you ask? A thread on anti-Semitism at NYU... 
Just days after this resolution passes, the Hillel building at NYU is forced to closed for security reasons following the discovery of anti-Semitic, threatening posts from an NYU student. The posts including the terms “nyjews” and “zionist kkkunts.”
In March 2019, half a dozen NYU departments cosponsor an on-campus event featuring Linda Sarsour. The event is held while many Jewish students are out of town for a conference and unable to defend against Sarsour’s blatant lies. apa.nyu.edu/event/skirball… 
When President Hamilton received pushback re: SJP receiving the award, his choice was:

A. To revoke the award
B. To allow SJP to receive the award

Hamilton chose B and himself did not attend the awards ceremony. Not quite a profile in courage.

And there you have it, my friends. The decision to turn down an acceptance to a prestigious university is a personal and difficult one. But it’s reflective of the increasingly anti-Semitic climate that NYU has done relatively little to stop over the last year. 



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  • Thursday, May 23, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
Last week I reported on an answer that the EU provided to a question about Palestinian textbooks:

It can be confirmed that an academic study on Palestinian school text books is planned. Necessary funds have been reserved in the 2019 budget.

The study shall be carried out by an independent and internationally recognised research institute. Terms of Reference for the study are currently being prepared with a view to identifying possible incitement to hatred and violence and any possible lack of compliance with Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) standards of peace and tolerance in education.

The study shall provide for a comprehensive analysis of the current Palestinian text books. The work on the study is indicatively scheduled to start in spring 2019.

Incitement to violence is fundamentally incompatible with advancing a peaceful two-state solution and is greatly exacerbating mistrust between the communities, as already pointed out in the report of the Middle East Quartet of 1 July 2016(1). The EU has therefore repeatedly discussed this issue with the two parties.
Arab news site Ma'an, however, received what seems like a different answer from the EU:
The European Union has said that it has not initiated any study on the content of the Palestinian curriculum and that the allegations of incitement to violence in Israel and Palestine are discussed regularly with the parties.

Asharq al-Awsat also seemed to get mixed messages, where they report that the EU says that it is not initiating any study about the Palestinian curricula. In the next sentence the EU office in Jerusalem is quoted as saying that “there is an intention to conduct an academic study that is meant to provide an objective and comprehensive study of the current Palestinian school books”. Then the statement goes on to say: “This proposed independent academic study of Palestinian school books – in case it is conducted – will assist in examining the Palestinian school books in line with international criteria, for example the criteria of UNESCO about peace and tolerance and non-violence in education."

The headline in Asharq al-Awsat says that the EU will "review" the textbooks, not "investigate" them.

When speaking to the Europeans, it is a plan, with funding and a schedule. To Arabs, it is merely a possibility being discussed that might not even happen.

Which is the truth? Given the support for terror in the newest schoolbooks, which have probably been funded by the EU, this is a very important question.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)







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Wednesday, May 22, 2019

From Ian:

Marc Lamont Hill slams Mizrahi Jews as “identity category” of Palestinians
In a Facebook post on May 20 slamming Hen Mazzig’s article in The LA Times, American academic and activist Marc Lamont Hill described Mizrahi Jews as an “identity category” that had been detached “from Palestinian identity.” CNN severed ties with Hill last year after anti-Israel comments.

Hill’s latest excoriation of Israel, posted to his 90,000 followers, followed Mazzig’s argument that Israel is not a country of “privileged and powerful white Europeans.” Mazzig sought to emphasize the role of Mizrahi Jews in Israeli history and condemned the tendency of critics to define Israelis as Ashkenazi Jews alone. Hill responded that Mazzig ignores “the racial and political project that transformed Palestinian Jews (who lived peacefully with other Palestinians) into the 20th century identity category of ‘Mizrahi’ as a means of detaching them from Palestinian identity.”

Mazzig posted a screenshot of another exchange with Hill in which Hill wrote that “I literally study Yemeni and Moroccan Jews for a living.”

Jimena, an organization that describes itself as committed to achieving universal recognition to the heritage and history of 850,000 indigenous Jewish refugees from Arab countries, said Hill was trying to speaking over the voices of Mizrahi Jews.

“Because he ‘studies us’ for a living," Jimena wrote on Twitter. "Nothing new here, yet another non-representative ‘social justice’ activist who erases Mizrahi voices to assert an anti-Israel agenda.”




The dispute between Mazzig and Hill comes at a sensitive time in the US where there is an increasingly active anti-Israel narrative that has attempted to label Israel a “white supremacist” country. Activist Shaun King wrote in June last year that “white supremacists” in Afula in Israel were surrounding an Arab home because “they want the neighborhood to be for white Jews only.” These comments come at a time in the US when Jews are also being attacked as “white Jews.” Women’s March leaders last year were accused of claiming that Jews “uphold white supremacy.” It is part of a wider agenda to label Jews as a different minority from the rest of American minority groups who are part of the intersectional social justice agenda. For instance, Jews have been told that discrimination against them is not systemic, while Islamophobia is.
What is Terrorism and Why Does its Definition Matter?
What is “terrorism”?

We’re used to hearing the media describe well recognized terror organizations with euphemisms like, militants, extremists, or sometimes even obscenely activists. One might reasonably come to believe that terrorism has no definition at all, or that it’s all a matter of subjective opinion. After all, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” right?

Wrong.

In truth, terrorism can be clearly defined, nations do clearly designate terror organizations as a matter of policy, and the “freedom fighter” quote doesn’t mean what you think.

Words have power, and when journalists use deceptive, vague or inappropriate words, they unfortunately prejudice readers. That’s why misleading terminology is a form of media bias.

Related reading: Defining Bias: Misleading Terminology
Terrorists or freedom fighters?

After the attacks of 9/11, Stephen Jukes, then Reuters’ global news editor, sent a memo instructing the wire service staff not to use the word terror. His explanation became a catch-phrase for the news industry’s moral ambiguity:
We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist.

The Jukes quote is now famous. Less well known is that David Schlesinger, Reuters’ global managing editor later explained the real reasoning behind the decision: after a local newspaper named CanWest used a Reuters article, but added the word “terrorist.” Schlesinger objected to the modification, saying that such changes could lead to “confusion” about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations.

NGO Monitor: WHO Singles Out Israel As Violator of Health Rights At Annual Meeting
The annual assembly of the UN’s World Health Organization today voted 96 to 11 for a resolution, co-sponsored by the Arab bloc and the Palestinian delegation, that singled out Israel over “Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.”

Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, condemned the delegates’ abuse of the UN body as a forum to target Israel.

“Out of 21 items on the meeting’s Agenda, only one—Item No. 14 against Israel—focused on a specific country. There was no agenda item or resolution on any other country, including Syria, where hospitals and medical infrastructure have suffered devastating bombings by Syrian and Russian forces; Yemen, where 19.7 million people lack access to health care service due to the current crisis; or Venezuela, where the health system has collapsed, causing millions to flee the country,” said Neuer.

“Today’s resolution is a fantastic lie. The UN reached new heights of absurdity by enacting a resolution which accuses Israel of violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan, even as in reality Israeli hospitals provide life-saving treatment to Syrians fleeing to the Golan from the Assad regime’s barbaric attacks,” he said.

“Shame on France, Belgium and Sweden for encouraging this hijacking of the annual world health assembly, and diverting precious time, money, and resources from global health priorities, in order to wage a political prosecution of Israel, especially when, in reality, anyone who has ever walked into an Israeli hospital or clinic knows that they are providing world-class health care to thousands of Palestinian Arabs—including last week to Palestinian leader Jibril Rajoub—as well as to Syrians fleeing Assad,” Neuer added.

The vote was 96 to 11 on the resolution, with 21 abstentions and 56 absent.

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