Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 11, 2019

07/11 Links Pt2: The Many Deceits of Edward Said; Remembering Ross Perot’s Relationship With Israel and the American Jewish Community; UN Launches All-out War on Free Speech

From Ian:

Few thinkers have had so enormous an impact on the humanities as Edward Said, an English professor whose 1978 book Orientalism argued that all Western scholarship of the Middle East—indeed, all European writing about the Islamic world—was inherently suspect, reflecting only stereotypes and fantasies. Accompanying this argument was vituperation against Israel, to which Said dedicated much of his subsequent public life, inspiring multiple generations of academic Israel-haters. William D. Rubinstein examines Said’s distortions and tortured logic:

[I]n films and popular culture, every identifiable group is depicted initially in stereotypical terms: upper-class Englishmen are depicted as plummy-voiced toffs, American army sergeants as martinets, Australians as beer-swilling ockers from the outback. So what? But Said presents only the most negative views of the Islamic world as representative of its depiction in the mainstream West, ignoring any more positive views.

[For instance], the academic and scholarly “orientalists” who wrote about the Islamic world between about 1750 and 1940 were seldom hostile to Islam or to Muslim culture; quite the opposite. Typical was Gottlieb Leitner (1840–99), born in Budapest to Jewish parents who became Protestants. Leitner lived in India and was a renowned linguist. . . . In 1889 he published a pamphlet, Muhammedism, which defended Islam against its critics, and, in the same year, established the Woking Mosque in Surrey, the first mosque in Britain.

Dozens of other scholars and anthropologists throughout the West, normally termed “orientalists,” were highly sympathetic to Islam and its culture. These scholars were ignored in Said’s works, as were modern scholars who studied the politics, economy, and religious culture of the Islamic world in a serious way.

It appears that Said became an ardent supporter of the Palestinian cause and, by extension, of the Islamic world, following the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and the Arabs. At the time, Israel enjoyed the virtually unanimous support of the Western world’s left intelligentsia. . . . Said effectively—and, it seems, deliberately—provided scholarly backing for the reverse of this former consensus, and for whitewashing the culture and lifestyles of the Islamic world.

NGO Monitor: NGO Failure: Viva Palestina’s Delivery of Cash and Goods to Hamas Leaders

UK Charity Commission Investigation

On June 6, 2019, the Charity Commission for England and Wales released a statement on their investigation into “Viva Palestina,” a charity led by former Member of Parliament and former War on Want General Secretary, George Galloway. The Charity Commission concluded that Viva Palestina “was not properly governed, managed or administered by its trustees – as a result of those failings its reputation, that of the wider charitable sector, and charitable funds donated by the public to the charity were put at risk.”

The Commission paid special attention to Viva Palestina’s failure regarding “the basic requirement to keep receipts and records of income and expenditure and so be able to properly account for charitable funds raised and spent. These basic requirements are all the more important when charitable funds are raised from members of the public and used for humanitarian needs in conflict zones.” Viva Palestina reportedly claimed to have raised over £1 million in 2009 alone.
Viva Palestina’s Material Support for Hamas

In addition to the concerns cited by the Charity Commission, Viva Palestina has had significant contact with leaders of the Hamas terrorist organization, including providing them with cash, vehicles, and other items.

For example, during a March 2009 “aid convoy,” George Galloway met with then Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and directly provided him with three cars and £25,000 in cash. Galloway claimed, “Just in case the British government or the European Union want to face me in any court, let me tell them live on television: I personally am about to break the sanctions on the elected government of Palestine…By Allah, we carried a lot of cash here… But I, now, here, on behalf of myself, my sister Yvonne Ridley…are giving three cars and 25,000 pounds in cash to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh”

David Collier: The Guardian newspaper: Decades of baiting British Jews

What changed at the Guardian?

This isn’t difficult. The ‘rational left’ lost its soul when it became infected by the very viruses it used to be able to identify. It saw Islamic antisemitism until it became infected with it. So too Soviet antisemitism. Today those people writing these letters to the Guardian support the same ideology as those the Guardian quickly dismissed back in 1953. They started to use these media outlets to push their obsession. This is a map of the increase in mentions of the word ‘Israel’ from 1947-2003:

1966-1967, which includes the six-day war and its aftermath, saw 960 articles. 2002-2003 was to reach 3,402. I can only imagine how bad things are today. To put this in perspective. Israel’s 3,402 came over 24 months. ‘Congo’ did not even make 1,500 articles over the whole five years of the Second Congo War that cost millions of lives. Adding Rwanda to the search terms didn’t make much difference. Israel has become a Guardian obsession.

It becomes even more interesting when we search for ‘anti-Zionism’. Beyond criticism, until the 1990s there were no references to the words in the Guardian archives and a whole year could pass without a single article using it. In 1998 there was one article. Another two in 1999 and 2000. In 2001 that double to four and in 2003 it tripled to thirteen. Since then it has risen to a tsunami.

The only reference in 1998 was to a book from the 1930s. In 1999 the play ‘Perdition‘ was on the theatre pages as it enjoyed a short run at the Gate Theatre. January of 2000 saw David Ceserani used the term when he was critical of Norman Finkelstein. In June, John Fordham wrote a Jazz column about Gilad Atzmon. Then in August 2001, there was a mention in article about the Woodcraft folk, and the complexities of global politics. In September it was another Jazz advert for Gilad Atzmon.

Who speaks for Gazans? Good question, but be skeptical about the answer

Israel Hayom has an article by Muhammad AlZanati and Muhammad AlBuhaisi, called "Who Speaks for Gazans?", that is most interesting.

Their bio:

Muhammad AlZanati and Muhammad AlBuhaisi are natives of Gaza who have fled to Europe and are members of the Palestinian Opposition Coalition that is under formation.

The article says in part:

Now is the perfect time for the Palestinian populace to stand up and follow new leaders. We propose the creation of a new organization that can provide that leadership: the Palestinian Opposition Coalition.

We, the writers of these lines, are two Gazans who have fled Hamas’ hell to Europe. Both of us are computer geeks with good jobs in the EU. We have made it.

Why would Gazans choose to run an article in an Israeli newspaper? The answer is simple: No one but Israel cares what Gazans think and what Gazans want.

When UN officials open their mouths before the world’s media to speak about Gazans' suffering, they don’t know what they are talking about nor do they know what we are striving for as human beings.

When Arab dictators bleat about our rights and how Israel is allegedly crushing us, they don’t care for us. In fact, those very Arab rulers have played the greater part in creating suffering for Gaza.

When European officials talk about the need to help Gazans, it is, in most cases, a sugarcoating of their deep-seated anti-Semitism.

We will tell you what we Gazans want.

We want Hamas out. We voted for Hamas almost 14 years ago because we had enough of the corrupt Palestinian Authority. Even Christians in Gaza voted for Hamas as the lesser of two evils. Gazans have been historically more liberal and less religious than other Palestinians. This has been known since the British Mandate for Palestine was created.

We thought our lives could improve a little under Hamas. And what did we get? Hamas is more corrupt than the Palestinian Authority thugs. Even worse, Hamas labels anyone who opposes it an "infidel." At least the PLO would not do that.

And Hamas itself is not self-governed. It is common knowledge in Gaza is that Hamas is the Palestine chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood of Jordan.

...We are Hamas’ biggest victims. The parades you see in support of Hamas are staged. Schoolchildren are threatened: If they don't attend, their parents will be arrested.

Except for the 5,000 people who comprise Hamas' leadership and their children, we Gazans would love to see Israel taking over Gaza again and running it under the Civil Administration, as it did before the Oslo Accords.

We do not want the corrupt Palestinian Authority to take over Gaza again. And as much as we love Egypt and its president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, we don’t want Egyptian rule, either. We want things to return to the days before Oslo.

For those who wonder what our identity and citizenship will be: Most Gazans are educated and well-read. We know Jordan’s regime stands on shaky ground. A change in Jordan would result in an extension of Jordanian citizenship to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and then, we would have peace based on facts and reality on the ground as US President Donald Trump said when he addressed the UN in September of last year. We are willing to hold Jordanian citizenship and connect administratively to Jordan, but that will require a change of the status quo in Jordan first.

This is the truth that could set all of us free.

Everything they say seems almost too good to be true.

It's been my experience that moderate Arabs still want independence - they might hate their leaders, but very few would say they want to be occupied by Israel.

And when two people claim, in an article asking who speaks for Gazans, that they speak for Gazans when they say they'd rather live in pre-Oslo days, we should be skeptical. If that thinking was prevalent, we would have heard about people like these years ago.

There is a small cottage industry with people who claim to speak for Palestinians in terms that are nearly identical to right-wing Zionist talking points. We want to believe this so much that some Zionists are willing to fund them. But invariably they claim to have lots of followers who don't exist.

I hope I'm wrong. I'd love to know that there is a groundswell of Palestinians that Zionists can talk to. But when things like this come out of nowhere, we have to fight the impulse to think that an intractable problem can be easily solved.

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Palestinian Astronomers Challenge Heliocentric Model: 'Universe Revolves Around Us' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Ramallah, July 11 - The longstanding assumption governing human conception of the solar system and beyond must undergo revision, insists a group of West Bank and Gaza scientists who accuse the scientific mainstream of ignoring definitive evidence that they and their people, not the Sun, occupy the center of everything.

Palestinian astronomers convened a press conference today (Thursday) to rail against the scientific establishment for its refusal to recognize mounting evidence against the centuries-old heliocentric model of the solar system, which has the Sun at the center and numerous other bodies in orbit around it. The astronomers pointed to the phenomenon of every progressive cause allying itself with the Palestinian national movement, which they argue indicates that Palestine, or at least Palestinians, occupy the center of the universe, and nothing else can.

"Anyone observing the movement of social justice activity over the last several decades can come to only one conclusion," stated Professor of Astrophysics Inr Shah. "All social justice movement eventually comes to revolve around the Palestinian cause, indicating that the Palestinian cause constitutes the bulk of the mass, and exerts the most gravitational pull. We see this with the Women's March, human rights organizations in general, child welfare groups, and countless other instances. Astronomers who dismiss this evidence have much to explain."

Professor Shah suggested that establishment astronomy feels beholden to Zionists. "Just look at the number of Jews among Nobel Prize winners in the hard sciences," he indicated. "That can't be a coincidence. We know who holds sway and calls the shots in astronomy and related fields. No one will escape with his career intact if he challenges the so-called 'consensus' view of the Sun at the center. We all know who's behind that."

The heliocentric model gained currency in the study of the heavens only in the last five hundred years as a better explanation for the movements of celestial phenomena than the ancient geocentric model with the observer, on Earth, as the center. The old model, argue Palestinian scientists, better reflects the truth of a Palestinian-centered solar system and universe.

"In broad terms the geocentric model should once again be considered correct," noted Bir Zeit University postdoctoral researcher Massieff Iggo. "On the intergalactic scale, or even just in terms of our part of the Milky Way, not much should change in the way we see the universe. But closer to home we'll see some subtle and not-as-subtle shifts in understanding of the moon, nearby planets, and maybe some asteroids, because it's not the center of Earth from which to calculate things, but the center of Palestine. That of course can be tricky, because it shifts from day to day as we and our allies decide on new focuses for the world to revolve around."

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07/11 Links Pt1: You can’t Judaize Jerusalem; Abbas’ advisor praises Nazi collaborator as “role model”; Panorama: New revelations on UK Labour antisemitism

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: You can’t Judaize Jerusalem

“It has nothing to do with religion, it is fake,” Erekat told journalists at his office in Ramallah. “It’s a settlement project. It’s based on a lie that has nothing to do with history.”

We beg to differ. It has everything to do with history: Jewish history. Clear evidence – which no archaeologist denies – that this road was used by hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims ascending to the Second Temple three times a year.

It was found by happenstance when a pipe burst, to everyone’s good fortune, for it is a visual manifestation of Jewish practice 2,000 years ago. To continue to deny that Jews were here, that Jews started here – and that Jews are deeply connected to the land beginning with Jerusalem – is to declare perpetual war between Jews and Arabs, between Israelis and Palestinians.
“The region is not interested in leaving the Palestinians behind,” Greenblatt told CUFI, “but I think the region is also tired of the Palestinian leadership preventing progress in the region.”

The Pilgrimage Road is part of Jewish history, and as Friedman said, Israel is as likely to give up that heritage site as the United States would surrender the Statue of Liberty. Soon it will be open to all, allowing visitors to walk in the footsteps of ancient pilgrims along a 350-meter stretch of the main thoroughfare that ran uphill to the Jewish temple.

What Pilgrimage Road does is uncover truth. Without an acknowledgment by Palestinians and the Arab world of the veracity of Jewish history – which is starting to happen – there can be no peace agreement that will include the “end of conflict” clause – which means no peace agreement.

We applaud Greenblatt’s statement – “You cannot possibly build peace without a foundation of truth” – because it confirms the absurdity of continuous Palestinian denial of Jewish history. One cannot “Judaize” Jerusalem.

“Stand up to this garbage, this nonsense,” Greenblatt told Evangelical Christians. “Let’s push back – and no longer should we tolerate their myths and their falsification of history.”

PMW: Abbas’ advisor praises Nazi collaborator as “role model”

Known Nazi collaborator, the former Mufti of Palestine Haj Amin Al-Husseini, was openly honored by Abbas' Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, Mahmoud Al-Habbash.

During World War II Al-Husseini moved to Berlin, where he was an associate of Hitler and gave active support to the Nazi war effort. Al-Husseini was on Yugoslavia's list of wanted war criminals, and was responsible for a Muslim SS division that murdered thousands of Serbs and Croats. When the Nazis offered to free some Jewish children, Al-Husseini fought against their release, and as a result, 5000 children were sent to the gas chambers.

Amin Al-Husseini meeting with Adolf Hitler (December 1941)

This week, on the anniversary of his death, Abbas' advisor posted Al-Husseini's photo and praised him as a "role model":
Posted text: "On this day, on July 4, 1974, the great Palestinian national leader, [former] Mufti of Palestine and Head of the Arab Higher Committee Haj Amin Al-Husseini - who for many years led the Palestinian struggle against the British and Israeli occupation - passed away; our leaders are our role models."
[Facebook page of Mahmoud Al-Habbash, July 4, 2019]

But Al-Habbash's praise is not an isolated example. The PA has named at least one school after the Nazi collaborator - the Amin Al-Husseini Elementary School in El-Bireh, the current PA Mufti has honored his predecessor by laying a wreath on his grave, and the PA National Security Forces have highlighted Al-Husseini on Facebook.

BBC Panorama’s exposé of Jeremy Corbyn’s meddling in antisemitism cases is further evidence that he is racist and unfit for office

Former Labour Party employees have spoken out publicly on the BBC’s flagship investigative documentary programme, Panorama, to reveal Jeremy Corbyn’s personal meddling in disciplinary cases relating to antisemitism.

The documentary lays bare the scale of the interference by agents of Mr Corbyn in the process. The programme is peppered with unconvincing denials from Labour’s press team.

The programme explains how senior Labour Party staffers, some of whom Campaign Against Antisemitism has known for years, used to independently run Labour’s disciplinary process, but soon after Mr Corbyn’s election as Party leader found themselves contending with his most senior aides.

The programme shows how brazen Mr Corbyn’s staff were in their efforts to subvert due process.

Early in the Party’s antisemitism crisis, Seumas Milne, often referred to as the ‘brain’ behind Mr Corbyn, is described as laughing by Mike Creighton, who led the Party’s disciplinary team, when Mr Creighton suggested means of improving the Party’s response to antisemitism. In a statement, Labour claimed Mr Creighton was lying.

However during the programme, one staffer after another described how gradually Mr Corbyn’s agents increased their interference in the disciplinary process. According to the former staffers’ testimony and e-mails shown to Panorama, Mr Corbyn’s team and his ally, General Secretary Jennie Formby, intervened to reduce the punishment for antisemites, and even to try to alter the composition of a disciplinary panel of the Party’s National Constitutional Committee.

One staffer described how a member of staff in Mr Corbyn’s office said that there was a “Jewish conspiracy” against Ken Livingstone, after Mr Livingstone said that Hitler was “supporting Zionism”. Another official said that a new leader of the disciplinary team installed by allies of Mr Corbyn claimed that there was no problem with an image shared by a Labour member from a far-right website depicting an alien parasite emblazoned with a Star of David smothering the Statue of Liberty.

Panorama: New revelations on UK Labour antisemitism (July 10, 2019)

Was Labour Twitter Account Really 'Hacked'

Isn’t it likely that an exasperated current or former staffer who knew the password sent this tweet? The hacked line is invariably a lame excuse.

Once again, the media gets BDS wrong. From Liam Hoare in The Forward:

BDS is a failed political movement, and the Israeli government stalks a tiger that walks on paper feet.

While BDS supporters are still able to muster enough people to gather outside stores selling Israeli products, underwrite letters to the Guardian, or pressure this or that artist into not stopping in Tel Aviv on their world tour, these are but demonstrative acts that, together, constitute a carnival sideshow.

In fourteen years, BDS has failed to attract support beyond those who were already inclined to dislike Israel to begin with ...and has made no perceptible impact on the Israeli economy.

Like so many others, Hoare misses the point of what BDS is about.

Even BDSers admit that they choose their targets of boycott for maximum leverage and publicity, even as they use Israeli products themselves. The boycotts are indeed a sideshow to their real aim - to have average people associate Israel with racism and apartheid.

By repeating the lies that Zionism is racism, Israel is an apartheid state, Israel must be boycotted for human rights abuses, and so on - over and over again - it makes an impression on college students and people who don't follow Israel closely.

When an artist boycotts Israel, it makes a huge impression on people who want to identify as supporting social justice.

When an academic group calls to boycott Israel, it puts an aura of respectability on hating Israel.

That's the real goal. They want to make the very idea of being pro-Israel toxic. They want to put proud Zionists on the defensive. They want to make people question any dealing with Israel as if it is immoral.

Sad to say, The Forward itself is a major contributor to that mindset.

Every time a college student hesitates before defending Israel publicly because of the very real consequences that can happen, BDS wins.

This week we saw a perfect example of a BDS victory - one that in terms of boycotts is minor, but in terms of the real goals of BDS is a huge win:

In a first-of-its-kind incident, a European academic association has reportedly canceled a planned conference in Israel due to fear that it will come under pressure from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Two weeks after the European Network for Mental Health Service Evaluation (ENMESH) last month concluded its 2019 meeting with a decision to hold its next biennial conference in Jerusalem in 2021, the chairman of its executive committee unilaterally canceled that resolution, Haaretz reported Sunday.

In a letter sent to board members, Mike Slade said his decision came after several members complained about the location, and that he was trying to preempt the resulting outcry from boycott supporters, the report said, citing sources who had read the letter.

Had he gone forward with the plans to hold the next conference in Israel, Slade contended, ENMESH’s work over the next two years would have been dominated by dealing with the controversy and the pressure from anti-Israel activists.

ENMESH didn't choose to boycott Israel because it is anti-Israel; it chose to boycott Israel because it didn't want to hassle with two years of anti-Israel idiots harassing its members.

Or look at this from the Hollywood Reporter this week:

"It's much more difficult to get people to support Friends of the IDF and Israel, even those who are Jewish," says Hollywood attorney and Friends of the IDF board member Marty Singer. "Sometimes people are afraid that it could have an adverse impact on them. It's not politically correct."

That fear is the biggest BDS victory, and it is not (yet) being effectively countered.

Just as we saw in the 1970s, where the fear by European nations of being the victim of Palestinian terrorism quickly morphed into a pretense that they support Palestinian nationalism, people don't want to think of themselves as being susceptible to blackmail. It is much easier to pretend to be idealistic, and to change one's self-view from a sniveling coward into a heroic defender of justice.

The constant threats by the Israel haters - along with the drumbeat of so-called social justice warriors who push the lie that being anti-Israel is progressive - results in a toxic environment where public support for Israel is eroded and derided. And where public opposition to Israel is done with pride.

BDS has already won in many venues. Any college, any European capital where a pro-Israel demonstration can be expected to be attacked and where an anti-Israel demonstration cannot is a BDS victory.

Similarly, every time J-Street style Jews says they are pro-Israel but they feel that they must emphasize the huge BUT more than their supposed love for Israel itself, BDS has won.

It doesn't have to be this way, even for people who are critical of Israel's policies or government.

When Nurit Baytch accepted a Hasby Award from me, she said to the crowd that she was a member of the far-left Meretz party in Israel. Yet she is a passionate defender of Israel online, one of the best there is.

Hen Mazzig is another perfect example. A gay Mizrahi Jew with a non-Jewish partner is not exactly a right-wing icon - but he is a lover and tireless defender of Israel.

They are as liberal as can be, they can criticize Israel when appropriate, but their overwhelming love for the country and ability to look at it in perspective show what Zionism from the progressive side can look like.

If J-Street would adopt the methods of Baytch and Mazzig, then we can believe that they are pro-Israel. As it is, J-Street legitimizes BDS' aims with every single email and press release, even if they are officially against BDS. Because BDS isn't about boycotts, it is only about turning Israel into a pariah state, and J-Street does more than its part in accomplishing that goal.

BDS doesn't care about boycotts. Its aim is to make Israel toxic in the public sphere. It has been fairly successful by that standard. And it must be fought by showing that true progressives should support Israel and that those who oppose Jewish self-determination are simply bigots.

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IfNotNow shows its antisemitism twice in one tweet

This tweet from IfNotNow is the perfect example of how modern anti-Zionism is simply antisemitism in progressive clothing.

The Haaretz article that they refer to goes into great detail about how Elad, a Jewish organization, has managed over 30 years to legally purchase half of the building from the shares of four of the eight Arab children who inherited it, and 25% more purchased from the Custodian of Absentee Property. Israeli courts looked at the case numerous times, sometimes ruling for Elad and sometimes against it. In the end, Eldad was ruled to own most of the building and therefore has the rights to act as the primary owner.

IfNotNow is saying that Jews should not have the right to legally purchase property in most of Jerusalem, simply because they are Jewish. According to these progressive, woke people, some parts of the planet should discriminate against Jews.

This is antisemitism in its purest form. But it is acceptable antisemitism - in certain circles, even laudable antisemitism.

The second way that IfNotNow shows its antisemitism is by using the word "Judaization" as an epithet. This is of course exactly how Arabs use the term; they coined it in this context as an insult and IfNotNow fully embraces the idea that Jerusalem is fundamentally an Arab city and Jews are the interlopers; anything that restores the Jewishness of Jerusalem is decried as "Judaization."

I found a similar use of that word as an epithet in the notorious The International Jew - The World's Foremost Problem, Henry Ford's famous antisemitic tract.

The most insidious aspect of modern antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism is that these examples of pure hate against Jews are not denounced, but celebrated, as if antisemitism is a new form of human rights.

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An ice cream shop in Gaza - Great looking treats, barrier separating women from men

Palestine Today has a photo essay of an ice cream shop in Gaza, which is getting lots of business in the summer heat.

At first glance, it looks just like any Western ice cream shop - and not at all like the Gaza you see in the media. Men and women are enjoying their treats.

The food looks delicious.

But in all the pictures, women are in the back and men in the front.

And there is actually a barrier between them!

I've seen the Saudi religious police enforce such rules there. At least some parts of Gaza apparently are just as bad.

The difference is that it is fashionable for the Left to bash Saudi Arabia (rightly) for its discrimination against women, but Gaza's similar attitudes are covered up because there are other political reasons to pretend to love Gaza.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

One who becomes compassionate instead of cruel, will ultimately become cruel instead of compassionate…
Midrash Kohelet Rabba (a discussion of this is here)

The lead editorial in Ha’aretz today is headlined “The Nakba isn’t Going Away,” and it touts a longer article by investigative journalist Hagar Shezaf published last week, about how Defense Ministry personnel have collected and sealed documents that describe the alleged expulsion and other ill-treatment of Arabs at the time of Israel’s War of Independence and afterwards.

The editorial accuses Israel of “expulsion, looting, murder and rape” in 1948. There is no doubt that some of these things did occur, although it is also true that we were far kinder to the Arabs than they would have been to us if they had won. I don’t object to the publication of such facts, although Ha’aretz has a tendency to exaggerate the extent and cruelty of our deeds and to accept the narrative of our enemies uncritically. What I do violently object to is their attribution of moral guilt and demand for some kind of accounting for it toward the Palestinians.

The editorial concludes:

Israel at age 71 is strong enough to address the moral failings of its past. The Nakba won’t go away. It’s still there in the landscape, in the rows of pear cactus of the abandoned villages, in the many arched houses of Jaffa and Haifa, and in the memory of the Palestinian community in Israel, and in the territories and across the border.

Instead of censoring and concealing things, the history of Israel’s establishment and the Palestinian society that was uprooted should be studied and taught. Commemoration signs should be put up at the sites of destroyed villages, and the moral dilemmas that have accompanied Israel since 1948 should be faced. Such recognition won’t resolve the conflict, but it will place dialogue between Jews and Palestinians in Israel on a foundation of truth instead of lies, shame and concealment.

No, this is absolutely not what “should” happen. Israel was born in war, a war that was forced on it by Arabs who couldn’t abide Jewish sovereignty, and who planned – in the words of Abdul Rahman Azzam, Secretary-General of the Arab League – "a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades." A pity, for the Ha’aretz editorial board, that we won the war and now have “moral failings” to address as a result. But we did, and there is no reason to be apologetic about it, or to get nostalgic over the losses of our enemies, who, incidentally, have not stopped murdering us whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Perhaps they wouldn’t be murdering us today if we had followed the same policy in 1967 that the Jordanians did when they conquered Judea/Samaria and part of Jerusalem in 1948. Every single Jew living in areas under their control was forced to leave at gunpoint. Some were murdered. Synagogues were destroyed, gravestones uprooted, and not a trace of the former Jewish inhabitants was allowed to remain. Did newspapers in Jordan call for a “dialogue” or agonize about their “moral failures?” To ask the question is to answer it.

War is ugly, especially when two peoples are fighting over a piece of ground. There were massacres and rapes on both sides (Benny Morris believes that he has evidence for at least a dozen rapes committed by Jewish forces, something that surprised both Morris and me). I think that he is correct when he says that “the entire [Jewish] leadership” understood that there would be no Jewish state as long as there wasn’t a large Jewish majority, and that it was absolutely necessary to encourage the Arabs to leave.

And that isn’t a moral problem. It was them or us, quite simply; and our claim on the land was stronger than theirs and we had fewer alternatives. Would Israel have survived its first 19 years if significantly fewer Arabs had fled in 1948? I doubt it. And if the Arabs had won the war, Azzam’s threat would surely have been carried out.

This is a fact of human life. It has always been so. Population transfers have occurred after almost every major war. Indeed, we were not cruel enough. I think that in the long run, there would have been fewer victims on both sides and more security in the region as a whole if Israel had expelled the Arabs of Judea, Samaria, and Eastern Jerusalem in 1967.

Just a note about “investigative journalist” Shazef. She works for Ha’aretz, but she is also paid by a European foundation, supported in part by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Flemish (Belgian) government, and other European sources, to write anti-Israel articles. But naturally she doesn’t let that cloud her journalistic judgment. Naturally.

What is the matter with Jews like the ones on the Ha’aretz editorial board? Why are they obsessed with bashing their country, the one that may have given their parents and grandparents a home when no other country would? Why do they find it so easy to understand the pain of the Palestinian Arabs, who themselves have brought so much pain into the world, but they can’t cut Israel a break? Why do they advocate national suicide for their own people out of concern for others? That isn’t morality, it’s stupidity.

We do not have to feel “shame” for 1948, and we have nothing to be ashamed of today, when the IDF shoots Arabs dead when they climb border fences. Gideon Levy, another Ha’aretz operative, eloquently mourns poor Abdallah Gheith, a teenager who “dreamed of praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” and was shot climbing the fence. According to Levy, his father took him and a cousin to the fence and dropped them off! I am sure that he just wanted to live his dream of praying at al-Aqsa, aren’t you? Levy calls the border policeman that shot him a “murderer.” I call him someone doing a dangerous job, protecting traitors like Levy and the rest of the Ha’aretz gang from young men like Gheith, who might stick a knife in their necks on the street.

Because “traitor” is not too strong a word. Israel’s War of Independence never ended; every few years it flares up, but between times smolders in a deadly way. And the Ha’aretz newspaper, 60% owned by publisher Amos Schocken, who controls its editorial policy, is a brigade in service of Israel’s enemies. Although its Hebrew edition is the by far the least popular of Israel’s major newspapers, its English edition and website in English are widely read by government officials and businesspeople around the world. By presenting an almost uniformly critical view of Israel and Israelis in its opinion pages, and by slanting news reports to present Israel in the worst possible light, Ha’aretz contributes to the campaign to demonize and delegitimize Israel that is part of the international effort to destroy it.

This constitutes treason. I understand that a free press is an important part of a free country, and that makes it difficult to shut down or prosecute a newspaper. But why do we need Ha’aretz when we have Aljazeera and Palestinian Authority newspapers?

I would like to understand what Schocken, Levy, and the others see when they stand in front of the mirror. After all, they are Israelis too. Does this cause them to feel the “shame” that they want all of us to feel? Or do they see themselves as courageous fighters for the “truth,” which is that Israelis are murderers and Arabs saintly victims?

It’s the latter, of course. They are not “self-hating” Jews, because they clearly love and value themselves. It’s just the Jewish people that they hate.

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07/10 Links Pt2: The Anti-Israel Bias of the UNHRC; Warren Completes Her Total Abandonment Of Israel

From Ian:

The Anti-Israel Bias of the UN Human Rights Council

The Council’s lack of true concern for human rights violations around the world and its single-minded focus against Israel became most conspicuous in June 2007 when its members voted 46-1, to make Israel’s actions a permanent item on the Council’s agenda. From that point and onward, every meeting of the UNHRC includes Item #7 on the agenda: Israel and its “human rights violations.” The United States, Australia, and numerous European countries have been critical of the Council for this fixed agenda item, noting that the Council does not scrutinize countries with far worse rights records than Israel. (In June 2018, the United States pulled out of the UNHRC because of its anti-Israel bias, labeling the organization as “a cesspool of political bias.”)

The final dimension of the UNHRC farce are the countries which have been allowed to sit on the 47-member council. Just to give one example, in 2017, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola were given seats on the Council. Angola and the DRC are countries known for gender-based violence, restrictions of freedom of expression, harassment of opposition leaders, lack of fair and free elections, suppression of freedom of assembly, discrimination against women, minorities, and people with disabilities, and persecution of the LGBT community.

Part of the mandate of the UNHRC is to “address important thematic human rights” such as “freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, freedom of belief and religion, LGBT rights, and the rights of racial and ethnic minorities.” How can they have been given the reins to monitor and condemn human rights violations around the world if they are in constant violation of those rights as outlined by the UN itself?

This stands in stark contrast with Israel where there is complete freedom of speech, freedom to protest, religious freedom, full equal rights for women, LGBT rights, open and fair democratic elections, and laws protecting women, minorities, and people with disabilities from discrimination.

JCPA: The Truth about Jerusalem’s City of David – The Lies about Silwan

The ancient Pilgrimage Road in the City of David is one of the most sensational archaeological discoveries to be made in Jerusalem since Israel’s establishment. On this road, remarkably preserved under the ashes of the Roman destruction, many thousands of Jews in Second Temple times, after a ritual bath in the Shiloah Pool, walked about 700 meters up the hill to the Temple Mount.

The site was first excavated more than a hundred years ago by French, British, and American archaeologists, at a time when the State of Israel did not exist and Jerusalem was under Muslim rule.

The City of David, which is under archaeological examination, covers about 15 acres – or about 6 percent of the Arab Silwan neighborhood. The Israeli Supreme Court has rebuffed claims that the digging endangers the homes of Silwan residents and has clarified that it is done under strict engineering supervision and in line with professional standards.

Hundreds of Arab residents of Silwan have been employed in the excavations under the houses of the village – so much so that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority threatened them and forced them to leave their jobs.

The excavations are being done in the vicinity of the Temple Mount and not under it. That has been true of all the excavations Israel has carried out over the years in other parts of the Old City and the Temple Mount vicinity. Al-Aqsa is not in danger; what is in danger is the freedom of scientific archaeological research in this area.

July 1938: The evil Evian Conference on the Jews

Exactly 81 years ago the Evian Conference on the Jews, took place from July 6-15, 1938

Helpless in the face of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed an international conference to rescue Jews who no longer wanted to live in Germany.

The so-called cvilized world gathers from 6 to 14 July 1938 at the Royal Hotel Evian, on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Several factors determine the ebb and flow of the emigration of Jews from Germany at different times. These include the degree of pressure on the Jewish community in Germany and the willingness of other countries to admit Jewish immigrants. With the intensification of legal repression and physical violence, many Jews wish to flee Germany.

Until October 1941, German policy officially encourages Jewish emigration. Gradually, however, the Nazis sought to deprive Jews fleeing Germany of their property by levying an increasing emigration tax and limiting the amounts that could be transferred abroad by German banks.

In January 1933, there are about 550,000 Jews in Germany, less than 1% of the total population of the country.

For a really long time, I wanted an Israel necklace with a pendant depicting the shape of the State of Israel. I thought this would be a unique way of expressing my love for the Jewish State. Everyone has a Star of David necklace, but not everyone has a State of Israel necklace. They are different. I wanted one, and I decided that if I got one, I would put it on and never take it off.

Dov took me out for dinner on my 57^th birthday, and when we were done, we walked around Jerusalem and happened to pass a jewelry store that was still open. We went in and I picked out a simple gold chain and pendant. It’s just an outline of the Jewish State, unpretentious, simple. I like it. And the only time I have removed it was during a medical procedure.

It takes time to get used to wearing something around your neck 24/7; sleeping with a chain isn’t comfortable at first. But I knew that after a while, I wouldn’t even feel the necklace. And I don’t, though in my waking hours, my fingers often wander up to the pendant, to feel its distinctive shape with my fingers, or to adjust the chain.

I love my necklace because I love my country. Which is why it was so disturbing when my son Aharon drew my attention to a website called PaliRoots. The website and its Facebook page market things with the same shape you see on my necklace—the shape of Israel—except they are calling it “Palestine.” They boast that they are “The first and only brand in the world that seeks to cultivate education and awareness about the unique Palestinian culture and traditions.”

Except that they are doing no such thing. Instead, they are pushing the modern State of Israel as if it were a place called “Palestine.” It is obvious that the items they are selling depict the Jewish State, because there never was a place with these same borders called “Palestine.”

Which makes it all a huge lie.

In fact, as Dov remarked when I showed him the website, PaliRoots is not about “Palestine” but about “Not Israel.” Their mission isn’t to “cultivate education and awareness,” but to eradicate the Jewish State and annihilate the Jews. The reason we know this is so is that if they were being honest, the shape of the items they sell at PaliRoots, would be in the shape of the 1920 British Mandate for Palestine, before it was divided up, rather than in the shape of the modern State of Israel, the Jewish State.

I decided I wanted to demonstrate for the people at PaliRoots what their stock would look like, if they were being honest. So I asked a daughter and a friend's son to render sketches of these items using the 1920 map of the British Mandate for Palestine. Here are side-by-side pictures of PaliRoots items with how they should really look, rendered in pencil by my daughter and by Mark David Cherney.

(sketch on bottom right by Mark David Cherney)

I want to encourage PaliRoots to develop a new line based on these sketches. They don’t need to credit me, my anonymous daughter, or Mark David Cherney. Having a more honest line of stock will be thanks enough.

But as things stand at PaliRoots, there are two rhetorical questions we need to ask:

Do they want all of the territory? Or do they just want Israel? Because if they just want Israel, it’s because they don’t want the Jews to have it and because they don’t want the Jews to live on land they deem part of the Islamic caliphate. Because otherwise it makes no historical or territorial sense to sell items with the shape of the modern State of Israel, and call that shape “Palestine.”

The PaliRoots endeavor, it is clear to see, is rooted in hate. This is distinct from the purpose of the necklace I never remove from my neck: the necklace I wear as I write this piece. My necklace with its pendant in the shape of the Jewish State was always about love. To be specific, my Israel necklace is about love of country and my nation.

At PaliRoots, on the other hand, the items on display are all about jealousy and hate. They use the shape of Israel as a template for an idea that never was. Stealing that shape and calling it “Palestine” is all about hating the Jews. It’s about denying Jewish history, expelling Jews from Israel, and ridding the world of them once and for all.

It’s about taking what belongs to someone else. And if you want to know the truth, it just shows what losers they are, that they could have had a “Palestine” in some form or another, if they’d just accepted we’d whupped their butts, and taken whatever they could get in negotiations. But that isn’t what they want.

They never wanted that. They never wanted “Palestine.”

They only want “Not Israel.”

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In 2005, the Palestinian Authority passed an anti-smoking law, law number 25. It limits and bans smoking in various public areas and in schools. It also prohibits tobacco advertisements, forces cigarettes to have warnings, and institutes fines and other punishments for non-adherence.

Fourteen years later, this law has never been put into practice.

Six years after the law was passed, a committee was established in September 2011 with the aim of following up the implementation of Law No. (25). The PA never followed up to activate the executive regulations and judicial controls and community awareness needed to support the law.

As far as I can tell, nothing has changed. Kids are smoking in schools, as are teachers (but generally not in front of students.)

Ironically, Hamas has implemented anti-smoking measures that are effective. While 26.9% of the West Bank Arab adults are smokers; only 14.6% in the Gaza Strip are.

To give an idea of how dysfunctional this PA government is, yesterday - after 14 years, the Ministry of Health finally decided to ban smoking in its own buildings.

The Health Ministry itself didn't bother to ban smoking in its own facilities until now!

This is only a single example among many about how incompetent the Palestinian Arab leaders are at actually running a government. These types of stories are unreported for whatever politically correct reason, but the fact remains. The EU comes in and spends hundreds of millions to teach them how to run a country and they do the minimum necessary to get that cash, but show little interest in pro-actively governing on their own. Sure, there are lots of committees and meetings but nothing to show for it.

One reason is that the government is a dictatorship, with Mahmoud Abbas controlling Fatah, the PA, the PLO, the cabinet and the judicial system. This is why the priorities are paying terrorists and opposing Israel in international venues as opposed to actually trying to build a state.

When will Western media and diplomats start to wake up?

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

07/10 Links Pt1: The Opportunity the Palestinians Choose to Miss; PMW: Would you name a kids’ summer camp after a murderer?; Iraqi Beauty Queen’s citizenship under threat after defense of Israel

From Ian:

The Opportunity the Palestinians Choose to Miss

The Palestinian leaders' true intention is to thwart in advance any Israeli or international initiative that would put them on the road to genuinely and ideologically accepting the existence of the State of Israel, which could be interpreted as confirmation of the Jewish people's right to a state in any part of Palestine.

It is more important for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to go down in Palestinian history as one who stood firm against this eventuality rather than to take practical measures that would ease the hardships of his own people.

The recent meeting in Bahrain had a precedent: the Casablanca Conference following the Oslo Accords. There, too, politicians and businesspeople gathered from all over the world, including a few Arab countries. The Israeli delegation prepared detailed plans for economic cooperation with all the parties, the Palestinians first and foremost.

But the unofficial Palestinian representatives (there were no official ones) announced right from the start: "No cooperation with Israel." Thus, Shimon Peres' vision of the "New Middle East," the main project of that conference, died before it was born.

‘Deal of the Century’ and the choosy beggars

How did the choosy beggars respond? “Absolutely not,” they said. “We have conditions. Honorable people like ourselves will not agree to accept handouts unless our conditions are met.”

Throughout its existence, leaders of the Palestinian Authority have set standards of corruption unmatched by any crooked country, infamous junta or unelected dictatorship anywhere in the world. These “public servants” in the impoverished PA have become rich beyond words. How? By stealing from their brothers. Rejecting the assistance being offered is no skin off their back. They have everything they could want. So what if the citizens are suffering? The cries for help won’t reach their corrupt ears.

They also refuse to accept the tax revenues transferred by Israel. Why? Because of the sacred principle they uphold: to pay the people who blow up buses and stab elderly women and children. Israel deducts a small percentage of the tax monies, only the amount designated for murderers and their accomplices through the PA “pay-to-slay” policy. And what do the choosy beggars say? “All or nothing.”

This same century-old attitude has led them to where they are today. But that doesn’t matter to the head of the PA. He has already looted the funds meant for his destitute citizens, and lined his own pockets with enough for himself and his own, down to his great-great-grandchildren. He and his family are certainly not going to pay any price for peace.

“Palestinian honor is not for sale,” say the corrupt leaders. What honor are they talking about? Within a sea of poverty and deprivation, a small, filthy-rich cadre speaks eloquently about “honor” that can’t be bought. But they’re not the ones who will suffer the consequences.

However bad we may feel about what could have been and will never be – whatever sense of missed opportunity about the potential blossoming that quickly became a desolate wasteland before the first seed was ever planted – it is what it is. This offer of prosperity will never materialize because of one simple, immutable fact: Our neighbors don’t recognize our right to live here in Israel, within any borders whatsoever. As long as their desire to destroy us is stronger than a desire to improve their own lives, nothing will change – and no economic or political plan can alter that fact.

PMW: Would you name a kids’ summer camp after a murderer?

Would you name a kids’ summer camp after the perpetrators of 9/11, the New Zealand mosque shooter, or the Pittsburgh synagogue killer?

You wouldn’t, right?

But the PLO readily names kids’ summer camps after murderers of Israelis.

At least 2 PLO summer camps for Palestinian children are named after such murderers this summer. Both are held under the auspices of the PLO Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs.

One was named after the PA's role model terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi who led the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history, when she and other Fatah terrorists hijacked a bus on Israel's Coastal Highway in March 1978, murdering 37 civilians, 12 of them children, and wounding over 70:

Would you name a kids’ summer camp after a murderer? -The PLO did!

At least 2 PLO summer camps for Palestinian kids named after murderers:
-The Dalal Mughrabi Summer Camp - after murderer of 37
- The Omar Abu Laila Summer Camp - after murderer of 2
More: https://t.co/R6pBbz9c1B pic.twitter.com/DxI1cFvE80
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) July 10, 2019

Posted text: “’In the name of Allah we will say our words, [in the name of] the revolution and the cause, in the name of our righteous Martyrs, in the name of the prisoners of freedom’ - with this shout the girls of the [summer] camp named after Dalal Mughrabi, which is being held in the Tubas district, received the supervisory staff of the [PLO] Supreme Council [for Sport and Youth Affairs], who are visiting the district in order to monitor the running of the summer camps.”
[Facebook page of the PLO Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs, July 9, 2019]

Fatah and PLO summer camp teaches children to honor arch-terrorists who murdered hundreds:

Kids chant song asking for "mercy" for souls of Yasser Arafat, his deputy Abu Jihad, Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, head of Black Sept. terror org Abu Iyad

More here: https://t.co/cj7I12jci1 pic.twitter.com/vXbGktT8Jb
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) July 10, 2019

IfNotNow plans to "bird dog" US presidential candidates (Daled Amos)

With the presidential campaign heating up and Democratic support for Israel apparently ebbing, the radical left-wing group IfNotNow has now re-formed itself as a 501(c)(4) and is out raising money.

More importantly, IfNotNow has a new goal:

“Our focus is going to be trying to push the candidates past giving lip-service to a two-state solution,” said IfNotNow co-founder Emily Mayer, “without recognizing the underlying dynamics and explicit moves by the Israel government that are creating a one-state reality where Palestinians are denied basic rights.”

The organization is also taking a page out of the playbook of groups such as Black Lives Matter and the American Civil Liberties Union: It plans to “bird-dog” presidential candidates at public events to create viral moments and prod the Democratic Party leftward on the issue of Israel.

In a MoveOn.org PDF on how to do bird-dogging, MoveOn.org describes it as

a great tactic used to directly engage or confront candidates and MoCs [Members of Congress] on our issues at their public events. It lets them know how important these issues are to everyday constituents. The goal of bird-dogging is to put tough questions to MoCs and force them to answer when they are in front of their constituents, voters, and the media.

Bird-dogging can be used to make sure MoCs can’t escape answering questions about important issues and to ensure that we are setting the terms of the debate.

MoveOn.org's playbook provides a checklist on how to prepare for bird-dogging.

For example:

Craft your question.

Ask a yes-or-no question, not an open-ended question. Your goal is to get your member of Congress on the record about a critical issue. Here are some example questions:

■ “Do you understand that by voting to take away the Affordable Care Act, you are taking away my health care?”
■ “Can my fellow constituents and I count on you to vigorously oppose any cut to Medicare, including privatization, which would threaten my ability to retire?”

These are manipulative questions that are meant more to put the person in a corner and pin them down than to get into a substantive discussion.

The goal is supposed to be to push the Democratic candidates to take more left-wing positions against Israel, clarify their stands and draw public attention to the changing attitudes of the Democratic Party. In the Politico article, Emily Mayer -- a co-founder of IfNotNow -- considered Biden and Booker out of sync with the Democratic base on Israel.

IfNotNow started off with an easy one.

They caught up with Bernie Sanders while he was campaigning in New Hampshire. Considering the fact that Sanders has called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “racist,” getting the candidate to back their cause in condemning Israel was not going to be a problem

Not much of a challenge.

Last year in August, Corey Booker got caught doing something similar:

At the time, Booker claimed that he misunderstood the sign and thought it just had to do with Mexico. Since that time, Booker has continued to support Israel.

In Sanders' case, he didn't have to say a word. So the "confrontation" with Sanders was actually nothing more than a photo-op.

But their next target was Elizabeth Warren.

Here is how it went:

Sen. @eWarren says she’d push Israel to end its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank pic.twitter.com/RuT0Xgdr6a
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 9, 2019

If you do a search online, you'll find there are all kinds of headlines now proclaiming that Warren has promised to end the "Israeli occupation."

But is that really what happened?

They did not pin Warren down with a yes-no question.

All they did was gush all over her and say "We'd really love it if you also pushed the Israeli government to end the occupation"

What they got in return was "Yes. Yes. So I'm there."

Whatever that means.

IfNotNow tried to capitalize on all this with a press release:

In the past, Warren has regularly spoken of Israel as a strong ally in a tough neighborhood and has appeared at AIPAC events and used right-wing talking points. But as her career has gone on, her views on the issue have grown to be farther in line with her progressive values: She was one of the 60 Democrats to boycott Netanyahu’s speech in Congress, she supported the Iran Deal, spoke out against the Embassy move, and opposes efforts to criminalize the BDS movement.

Down the road, they may try to pin Warren down to specifics, but it's not clear what she said in the first place. Considering all the billion-dollar plans Warren is going around promising, saying yes to a vague question is not likely to cause her problems down the road.

Did Warren even pay serious attention to what they were saying?

Here is what happened, without the window dressing from the first video:

Two kids gushed about how much they admired Elizabeth Warren and she shepherded them into a photo op and quickly sent them on their way.

Considering the Democratic presidential field, IfNotNow is not likely to corner anyone who is not more than willing to agree on the issue of occupation.

On the other hand, if they instead ask more pointed questions that address other more controversial issues like the Gaza "protests", then we may see sparks fly.

The candidates are unlikely to be prepared for the simplistic one-sided questions that IfNotNow may soon be throwing at them.

While the media has made a point of not pinning down the candidates on how they plan to pay for the numerous plans they are proposing, the candidates may soon find themselves being held responsible for the stands they claim to take on Israel.

That may not be such a bad thing.

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.