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The thing is, J Street knows that the essence of the BDS movement is not peace but hatred. At its core is not a two-state solution but the elimination of the State of Israel. It is not anti-violent it is anti-Semitic. It is not a proponent of freedom of speech, but rather seeks to silence every speaker who expresses a different position.
The fact that Jews and Israelis support such a movement does not indicate blindness, for when it comes to blindness, the presentation of facts is supposed to change attitudes. But this is not the case here.
BDS supporters are afflicted with the oldest hatred, so why does J Street, whose movers and shakers support peace and two states, raise their eyes to the heavens and support Omar's proposal, which has an anti-Semitic motive? It seems that it is mainly because hypocrisy has become a central component of what was once a "peace organization."
There is no connection between J Street's official platform and its activities. Granted, Tzipi Livni, Tamar Zandberg and Stav Shafir will attend the organization's upcoming conference in late October, and there will be sane statements made there. But an ultra-liberal obsession has led the organization to activities that are mainly anti-Israel: They even protest Birthright, claiming it is a one-sided organization.
But he fact is that the initiative behind Taglit-Birthright Israel was a byproduct of the anti-Israel brainwashing on campuses. So what do they want, for Judith Butler and Norman Finkelstein to be included in a "balanced" program? What balance does J Street in its campus operations?
Did they invite Dr. Einat Wilf to give a series of lectures on campuses about the book she wrote (with Adi Schwartz) on the so-called Palestinian right of return? Not a chance, but they are happy to complain about others.
The liberal camp was supposed to play an important role. J Street is a legitimate organization that, at least when it was founded, represented a large proportion of the prevailing views among American Jews. Their pro-peace, pro-Israel slogan is also excellent. I am in favor.
But somewhere along the line it all became a fraud. Whoever supports Omar is neither pro-peace nor pro-Israel – they are helping a campaign that opposes Israel's very existence. This did not just happen to J Street – it happened to too many bodies that purport to speak in the name of "peace" and "human rights."
It has afflicted many, and there is no comfort to be found in that. (h/t IsaacStorm)
So my question is, is there anything other than national suicide that Israel can do to help their adversaries wash out the shame of the establishment of a Jewish state on land claimed by the Arabs as their own? You will recall that in 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert offered to return the entire 'West Bank' plus extra acreage only to have his offer ignored. Other prior offers received the same response.
Shouldn’t the history of Arab rejectionism be included in J Street’s pro-Israel narrative? And while we’re at it, why does J Street not have the desire to compliment and be proud of Israel for all the good it does, the countries it helps, the people it cures (including Arabs), the kids it educates and the water it desalinates distributed to all the communities including Arab ones.
If J Street does not believe that Israel is my country right or wrong, then what can it possibly accomplish by presenting itself as a Jewish organization that believes that my county Israel is always wrong.
What a sad depressing attitude. Surely as Jews, you ought to be proud of the renewal of a Jewish country after 2000 years.
Mr. Ben-Ami, it would appear that many people, organizations and countries believe that supporting Israel is a moral crime. I beg you to think about the implication this has not only for Israel but for our children and grandchildren. Maybe it’s time for J Street to use its brains and resources to fight antisemitism, but first it has to accept the Reverend Martin Luther King’s opinion that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
The United States Condemns BDS
By a vote of 398 to 17, the US House of Representatives almost unanimously condemned the boycott movement against Israel, alienating Reps Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Republicans oppose them, Democrats oppose them, and America stands pro-peace and anti-BDS.
An absolutely stunning moment from a member of Congress this morning.
Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib: Israel “exists” to the “detriment” of Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/B1JE7hkgjU
The Jordanian director and actor Ali Elayan has opted to withdraw from the international film entitled "Jaber," in which he was set to play a Jordanian intelligence officer.
In a statement to Roya and on his Facebook official account, Elayan explained that the film obviously claims that Jews have a right to Palestine and have a historical right to Petra and southern Jordan and that they lived there 1400 years ago.
Elayan pointed out that a group of other Jordanian actors has also decided to withdraw from the film for the same reason, stating that the film will be shot in Amman soon and will be screened in Hollywood, but he gave up on stardom and materialistic temptations for the national sense.
When Elayan was discussing the content of the film with the director, the latter said that these are all historical facts and that it's normal, as the film will be screened in the U.S., not in the Arab world. He then asked Elayan, "Don't you believe in these ideas?" Elayan replied, "Of course I don't."
The director then told Elayan, "You will no longer be participating in this work." Elayan replied, "Yes, I am going to withdraw from the film."
For his part, President of the Jordanian Artists Association, Hussein Khatib has called on all Jordanian actors involved in the film to withdraw because of the fallacies affecting the historical constants, confirming that a number of Jordanian actors have already withdrawn from it.
OK, so what's really going on?
There are two supposed posters for the film. This one accompanies all the Jordanian stories about the movie:
There is another poster in IMDB, for a film in pre-production with the same title, same production company and same director, but completely different tone and different actors. Perhaps Hollywood makes up sample movie posters with their wish list of actors, I don't know:
During road construction works leading up to Petra in Wadi Musa (Valley of Moses). a peace of Basanite rock with Hebrew lettering is discovered in the rubble by JABER a young 10 year old Bedouin boy. This find leads to a journey of discovery and adventure contradicting the biblical story of the Exodus of Jews with Moses from Egypt. It exemplifies confirmation of a controversial theory written by Dr. Louise Liggins, that Moses welcomed his Jews to Petra instead of mount Sinai where they spent the 40 years before moving on to Palestine. Dr. Liggins' concept further establishes that Christianity actually began in Jordan and not in Palestine with the baptism of Jesus, at 30 years of age, on the eastern side of the river, thus establishing Jordan as the real Holy land for Christians.
The Rock becomes a valuable artifact pursued by various organizations and governmental agencies, including gangster elements who see in it serious monetary gain. The tenacious boy JABER eludes all pursuers and brings the chase to a surprise ending using his childish instincts to avoid capture.
While the plot is absurd, it in no way makes the claim that Jews have the historic right to Petra. Christians would probably be more offended by this film's reality than Jordanians.
Either way, it looks like the actor is making himself into a martyr for his own future enrichment by making up these stories about why he is no longer with the film.
During a meeting of the House of Representatives held today, MP Abdullah Akaileh stressed the great danger of allowing the Israeli occupation citizens to own lands and property in Jordan.
For her part, MP Wafaa Bani Mustafa stressed the need to prevent Israeli citizens from owning lands and property in Jordan or even those who hold two nationalities, if one of them is Israeli.
Bani Mustafa pointed out that the Israeli occupation is already planning to dominate lands in Jordan through the "Deal of the Century," confirming that the film entitled "Jaber," which will be filmed in Amman soon, is a sign of this plan.
Can they get more paranoid?
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The New York Times published a seemingly even-handed article by its top Israel reporters David M. Halbfinger and Steven Erlanger along with national correspondent Michael Wines asking whether the BDS campaign is antisemitic.
On that specific question, it mentions both sides of the claim without looking at any objective facts:
Is B.D.S. anti-Semitic?
Leaders of B.D.S. insist that it is not anti-Semitic, and the movement’s umbrella group explicitly rejects anti-Semitism.
But many Israelis and American Jews say it is, using the so-called three-Ds test to distinguish fair criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism: Does the criticism delegitimize Israel, apply a double standard or demonize it?
B.D.S. does all three, its critics say, by questioning Israel’s right to exist, and by singling out Israel for its treatment of Israel’s Arab citizens when minorities in some countries suffer far more. The columnist Ben-Dror Yemini, a critic of the movement, said B.D.S. supporters also demonize Israel when they portray the country as “the great danger to humanity.”
Rebutting the double-standard charge, B.D.S. leaders say that Palestinians fighting for their own rights should not be expected to give equivalent attention to abused minorities elsewhere.And Kenneth Stern, director of Bard College’s Center for the Study of Hate, urges a distinction between effect and motivation: Palestinians who feel no ill will toward Jews but yearn for self-determination in the land of their forebears may rightly argue that to disparage that yearning is a form of bigotry.
That defense is based on the myth that BDS is a Palestinian-run movement. It isn't.
It's origins pre-date the official "BDS Movement call" which lists a hodgepodge of so-called "Palestinian civil society groups" that no one has heard of and many of which are not even Palestinian.
Even the NYT admits that "A host of affiliated groups lead the charge for B.D.S., such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in the United States, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and War on Want in Britain, and the World Council of Churches in Europe." They, and not the list of trade unions and "civil society" groups that BDS lists, are the people who run BDS.
Meaning that the "3 D's" test for antisemitism is without a doubt passed by the American and European leaders of the BDS movement. The Palestinians who are supposedly the leaders of BDS all happily consume Israeli products themselves - partially out of necessity but in reality because they don't want to inconvenience themselves while claiming to support everyone else boycotting Israel.
This NYT article is more disturbing than just parroting BDS talking points uncritically. It mentions Natan Sharansky's excellent 2005 3-D test for antisemitism as the reason Jews find BDS to be antisemitic, but it ignores the more recent and more comprehensive IHRA definition of antisemitism when asking whether BDS is antisemitic.
By the IHRA standard, it undoubtedly is, as one of its examples of antisemitism are:
-Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
The NYT proves later that BDS fits this example exactly:
Is B.D.S. anti-Zionist?
Yes, loudly and proudly. Its founding documents explicitly reject Zionism — the belief in self-determination for the Jewish people in the biblical land of Israel — calling it the “ideological pillar of Israel’s regime of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.”
“A Jewish state in Palestine in any shape or form cannot but contravene the basic rights of the indigenous Palestinian population and perpetuate a system of racial discrimination that ought to be opposed categorically,” Mr. Barghouti said.
So why doesn't this article even mention the IHRA definition, which is the closest thing there is to a universal definition of antisemitism?
Sadly, this crime of omission indicates that the NYT authors subliminally accept the criticisms of the IHRA definition that it demonizes legitimate criticism of Israel, even though it explicitly makes clear it does no such thing.
The New York Times readers deserve to have all the relevant facts in an article entitled "Is BDS Antisemitic?" By not even mentioning the IHRA definition that leaves no room for debate on the topic, the NYT made a decision to consciously make it look like there is a debate to begin with.
Denying the Jewish people's right to self-determination is antisemitic. The official IHRA working definition says this explicitly, and this is accepted by the vast majority of Jews and any thinking non-Jew.
This article simply ignores the keystone of the argument that BDS is antisemitic.
It is hard to believe that this was not a conscious decision.
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On Saturday, Director of Human Rights Watch Ken Roth met with Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh.
While smiling, Shtayyeh informed Roth that the Palestinian Authority will no longer arrest people for political speech.
Today I met with a senior delegation from HRW, headed by @kenroth and confirmed my government’s commitment to/ guarantee of the right of Palestinian citizens to free speech through constructive criticism. In this regard I emphasised that no arrests or persecution will happen. pic.twitter.com/FWC8HSLe4Z
— Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh د. محمد اشتية (@DrShtayyeh) July 27, 2019
Roth appreciated the "pledge."
For some reason, Roth - a supposed defender of human rights - didn't seem to ask for the Palestinian leaders to drop the laws on their books that allow them to arrest anyone for anything they write online that might be considered offensive to the government.
According to Article 4, “any person who…has abused any information technology…shall be liable to either imprisonment, a fine between two hundred and one thousand Jordanian dinars, or a combination of the two.” ... The ‘abuse’ in question is not defined and open to interpretation by the authorities.
Article 15 states that, in regard to the use of the internet or an information technology, “if a person threatens to commit a felony or an immoral act, they shall be punished by temporary hard labor…”. Again, the definition of an ‘immoral act’ is up to the discretion of the authorities and a felony can constitute any act detailed within this Presidential decree, or any other.
Regarding freedom of the press, the most threatening section is Article 20. It declares that, “anyone who creates or manages a website or an information technology platform that aims to publish news that would endanger the integrity of the Palestinian state, the public order or the internal or external security of the State shall be punished…” with a fine between one thousand dinar [$1414 USD] and five thousand dinar [$7070 USD], at least a year of jail time, or both.
Further to this, the second section of the Article states that “any person who propagates the kinds of news mentioned above by any means…shall be sentenced to a maximum of one year in prison or be required to pay a fine of no less than two hundred Jordanian dinar [$283 USD] and no more than one thousand dinars [$1414 USD] or be subjected to both penalties.”
This means that not only is the writer, or publisher of the news liable to be punished, something as simple as a share on Facebook could result in a fine, jail time, or both. The decree even goes as far as to criminalise the use of any means to bypass the blocking of certain websites, such as a VPN. Article 31 mandates a minimum sentence of three months or a fine of between five hundred ($707 USD) and a thousand dinar ($1414 USD).
All of the above is compounded by Article 51, which states that “[i]f any of these offences are committed for the purpose of disturbing public order...or with the intention of harming national unity...the penalty shall be hard labour or temporary hard labour.”
In essence, besides the infringement on freedom of the press, the PA can now imprison and fine individuals for a Facebook share, watching Game of Thrones using a VPN, making an ‘offensive’ meme, posting a tweet against certain policies, or asserting political allegiances.
That's just one law. There is another law criminalizing "insulting the President" and “extending the tongue” against the Palestinian leadership.
These laws are on the books. They can be and are used regularly. The only real reform would be to strike them from the laws - but Roth didn't even ask for that. He believed a "pledge' that the laws won't be enforced any more.
Does that sound like speaking truth to power?
Shtayyeh is a puppet of Mahmoud Abbas. Yet Ken Roth, instead of pushing for real reform as the head of a major human rights organization should do, simply thanked Shtayyeh for his worthless promise.
The contrast between how Roth insults democratically elected Israeli leaders and how he fawns over cogs working in Abbas' dictatorship could not be starker.
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Thousands of Palestinian rioted along the Gaza-Israel border on Friday, and the Israeli army said some in the crowd hurled explosive devices and grenades toward the border fence in the southern Gaza Strip.
The riots are part of the Hamas-controlled “Great March of Return,” which has seen ongoing violence along the border for more than a year.
One military vehicle was reported damaged, though no soldiers were hurt.
A military spokeswoman said troops responded with riot dispersal means and opened fire in accordance with standard operating procedures.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said one Palestinian was killed and 40 others were wounded throughout the day.
It was the first fatality in a few weeks, with Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations working to keep the border calm.
Gaza officials say about 210 Palestinians have been killed since the weekly protests began more than a year ago. In that time an Israeli soldier was also shot dead by a Palestinian sniper along the frontier and another was killed during an undercover raid into Gaza.
Multiple attempts by Palestinian terrorists to infiltrate Israel under cover of the riots have occurred.
The likely reason for the high number of Palestinian child casualties in 2018 are the weekly border protests in the Gaza Strip which began in March 2018 and continue to this day, though they have recently been tempered by a reported ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Israel says the Hamas terror group has used the violence as cover for attacks on troops. The protests, encouraged by Hamas, have consistently included rioting, with Palestinians burning tires and attacking Israeli soldiers with rocks, hand grenades and bombs. Protesters regularly attempt to sabotage and breach the border fence.
Demonstrators have also adopted the tactic of launching incendiary balloons into Israel, burning thousands of acres of forestry and farmlands.
Hamas also formed units tasked with sustaining tensions along the border fence with riots during nighttime and early morning hours.
Earlier this year the Israeli army said Hamas operatives had been heard on loudspeakers promising children at the border NIS 300 ($83) if they get injured at the protests.
A group of prominent New York rabbis has joined the call for the US Congress to formally investigate why a Department of Justice extradition request for a Hamas terrorist living in Jordan remains outstanding more than two years after it was unsealed.
As reported exclusively by The Algemeiner on July 17, Arnold and Frimet Roth — whose 15-year-old daughter Malki was murdered in the Aug. 9, 2001 attack at a Sbarro pizza restaurant in downtown Jerusalem — are urging American legislators to probe concerns that efforts to bring to justice Ahlam al-Tamimi, a Hamas terrorist who planned and helped execute the atrocity, had been subordinated to continued good relations with Jordan.
In their letter to Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the head of the House Judiciary Committee, the rabbis urged a probe “into whether the State Department is properly coordinating with the Justice Department as well as taking appropriate action necessary to bring Tamimi to America for justice.”
“We demand the DoJ stand by its word and enforce its own policies,” the letter stated.
New York rabbis who signed the letter included Shlomo Riskin, Menachem Genack, Jason Herman, Dovid Zirkind and Elchanan Poupko.
Jordan’s highest court rebuffed a US request for Tamimi’s deportation to America in March 2017, despite an extradition treaty agreed on by the two countries in 1995.
Omar tried to drum up support for her competing resolution in support of BDS by likening Israel to Nazi Germany and comparing the Hamas-linked movement to the Boston Tea Party. Tlaib, too, echoed these themes. The anti-BDS resolution, she said, “attempts to delegitimize a certain people’s political speech and to send a message that our government can and will take action against speech it doesn’t like” (a federal judge in Arkansas has already dismissed Tlaib’s constitutional objections). “My concern with being overly punitive on nonviolent forms of protest is that it forces people into other channels,” said squad member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The congresswoman has a habit of speaking in vague terms so that she can plausibly deny the obvious implication, but her meaning is clear enough; if boycotting Israeli goods isn’t an option, opponents of the Jewish state will be forced to take more drastic measures.
These arguments were not enough to sway an overwhelming majority of the Democratic Caucus. They weren’t even sufficient to convince squad member Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who voted with the majority.
Though a vote in support of Israel’s right to produce and export goods abroad was not a tough one, the decision to hold the vote was. Progressives lobbied leadership against holding such a vote, noting that it would be construed as an attack on the Democratic Caucus’s progressive members just days after Donald Trump had attacked them. Even moderate Democrats expressed concerns about the prospect of exposing the ideological fissures within the party’s House majority. But whereas a union between the Congressional Black Caucus and the Progressive Caucus forced Democrats to scuttle a resolution condemning Omar’s repeated anti-Semitic remarks, that alliance has been strained in recent weeks. The squad climbed out on a limb, and House Democrats sawed it off.
Say what you will about Donald Trump’s sloppy and counterproductive execution, the president knows how to pick his targets. Trump’s effort to elevate the most progressive members of the Democratic Caucus beyond their relative statures in Congress is a clever and calculated strategy. The vote on this resolution betrays how discomfited Democrats are by the views of their most impetuous members (as if more confirmation was needed). Democrats are happy to wrap their arms around the “squad” so long as they don’t have to talk about what its members actually believe. The GOP’s job will be to make that balancing act untenable. If this vote is any indication, the GOP’s job won’t be all that difficult.
It is shameful to liken Nazi Germany to a country full of survivors, and descendants of survivors, of the Holocaust. One reason why so many Jews were slaughtered in Europe is because they could not flee to Israel, then known as Mandatory Palestine, where Arabs actually revolted to prevent Jews from coming there.
Unfortunately, attacks like Rhodes and Tlaib's are now typical of far-left progressives, who have made hatred of the world's only Jewish state part of their moral and political doctrines. Such attacks reveal a creepy obsession with Israel, a country about the size of New Jersey that, in the progressive worldview, is somehow behind much of the world's evils.
Progressives are not just affecting Israel; they are inspiring hatred everywhere, including in the United States. Just look at Sam Zahr, a Lebanese-American who lives in Dearborn, Mich. Zahr recently delayed the scheduled opening of a franchise of Burgerim, a restaurant chain founded in Israel, after the Arab-American community lashed out at him. His kids were bullied, and he even received threatening messages, all because the burger company started in Israel. Progressives like Rhodes and Tlaib inspire—one could even argue encourage—such hatred by demonizing and delegitimizing Israel, making it seem perfectly fine to terrorize a man to crush his dreams. Zahr is a victim of the BDS movement, which Rhodes may not explicitly support but certainly helps with his rhetoric and actions.
This kind of behavior will inevitably target Jews, who are already the main victims of hate crimes, even without such pervasive assaults on Jewish sovereignty. There have been numerous examples of hatred toward Israel manifesting as attacks on Jews. The line is so blurred, in part because Israel and the Jewish people are inexorably linked. Criticizing Israel is fine, but demonizing and delegitimizing the Jewish state crosses a clear, red line, into the realm of something much worse. When progressives discard the truth to demonize Israel, they also demonize the Jewish community, whether they know it or not. They are creating an environment hostile toward Jews—an environment that, one day, may make Jews in the West that much more grateful for having Israel as a refuge.
SOME LIBERAL academics supported the boycott. Others not only opposed the boycott, but personally violated it by visiting Germany in the 1930s and maintaining student exchange programs with German universities that were totally controlled by the Hitler regime. The sordid details are recounted in Prof. Stephen Norwood’s study, The Third Reich and the Ivory Tower.
Smith College president William Neilson, a longtime NAACP board member, visited Nazi Germany in 1933 and found “no cases of mistreatment” of Jewish citizens. Barnard College dean Virginia Gildersleeve, a staunch Roosevelt supporter, announced after touring Germany in 1935 that Hitler’s desire to acquire “new land” was “legitimate,” and that the sharp reduction in the admission of Jews and women to German universities was justified.
Pacifists such as Vassar College president Henry MacCraken saw the boycott as a step toward war, and in 1934, organized a tour of Nazi Germany for college students and professors. Footage of the trip was used for a Nazi propaganda film called Germany Today, which was shown in the United States in an effort to soften Hitler’s image.
Another prominent pacifist, Bryn Mawr professor Henry Cadbury, denounced the boycott as “simply war without bloodshed.” He admonished American Jews to “display good will instead of hatred” toward Hitler, claiming, “By hating him and trying to fight him, you will only help make him worse in his attack on the Jews.”
The boycott controversy roiled the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a leading left-of-center activist group. Its mostly-Jewish Brooklyn chapter asked the group’s national leadership to endorse the boycott. The request was rebuffed. WILPF leaders said they resented the notion of “separating the Jewish question from the larger minority problems.” One WILPF leader confided to a colleague, “For the first time in my life I am beginning to feel a little antisemitic.” Many members of the Brooklyn branch, and nearly the entire Bronx chapter, resigned in protest over the boycott issue.
Although the boycott fell short of its goal of driving Hitler from power, its impact was evident from the significant decline in German exports and the repeated complaints by German officials to the US ambassador in Berlin about the damage the boycott was doing to their economy.
A symbol of hate over the Hudson River, the swastika flag fluttered from the bowsprit of the German luxury liner S.S. Bremen in the summer of 1935. At the time, the Bremen made regular visits to New York, and many Americans ventured on board to marvel at this floating symbol of the Reich’s technology.
Others, however, looked beyond the gleaming decks and Oompah bands, and focused on what was happening across the Atlantic, as the Nazis assaulted Jews in bloody riots.
On July 26, 1935, a group of Americans took action. Led by 20-year-old merchant seaman William “Bill” Bailey, they snuck into the ship’s going-away gala, determined to remove the Nazi flag waving in public view. Pursued by the crew and New York policemen, Bailey succeeded in sending Hitler’s emblem plummeting into the Hudson.
The incident made worldwide headlines. The United States government repeatedly apologized to the outraged Nazi regime. Bailey and five co-participants, collectively nicknamed the Bremen Six, were put on trial and eventually acquitted by Judge Louis B. Brodsky.
But despite the celebrated nature of the event, Bailey was soon forgotten by history.
I was inspired to make this cartoon by the Twitter exchange shown below.
Me: Your 1st trip to #Israel?
Diplomat: Yes.
-And?
-Totally different than I thought.
-How so?
-Vibrant democracy. Amazing diversity. Freedom of worship. Thirst for peace. Big threats around it.
-All this was hardly a secret.
-I thought it was just pro-Israel spin. It’s not. pic.twitter.com/8JkEbJcOu6
In which head of one of largest US Jewish orgs ignores 1) Bibi govt is actively destroying Israeli democracy 2) Yes, it's democracy for citizens (≈6 mil Jewish ≈ 2 mil Arab) but not for ≈ 5 mil Palestinians under occupation 3) There's not even religious freedom for all Jews. https://t.co/8R6qVuszw0
— Rabbi Jill Jacobs (@rabbijilljacobs) July 26, 2019
What exactly is the pathology that forces you to insult Israel when you see someone give it a compliment?
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On Tuesday, I reported that the online and cable music station provider Stingray Music had been advertising a station called "Alternative Dance (W/O Israeli Station)".
Although they didn't answer my initial query about this, when I published the post they responded back (to a blog aggregator tweeter):
Hi,
Thank you for bringing this technical glitch to our attention! Rest assured that our music curators adapt the content of the channels to local markets: this display error will be fixed within the next few hours!
Indeed, the offensive language has been removed, and I thank Stingray Music for acting so quickly.
Their explanation still seems a little sour. They seem to be saying that their curators will create a station for some local markets (presumably Arab countries, but maybe more) that specifically exclude Israeli artists. The "technical glitch" was in exposing the station title to the countries that don't demand that Israeli music be censored out.
If that is true, it might make sense economically but it is a quite cowardly position to take.
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Similarly, the fact that Judea and Samaria have always been considered by Jews to be part of their patrimony of the Land of Israel; or that they were an undisputed part of the territory promised to the Jewish people as its “national home” by the 1917 Balfour Declaration, subsequently ratified by the League of Nations; or that the 1949 armistice line between Israel and Jordan, drawn at the end of Israel’s War of Independence, was never recognized by Jordan as more than a makeshift demarcation that would be erased by Israel’s destruction; or that it was Jordan that started the 1967 fighting; or that the UN’s post-1967 resolution 242 did not require Israel to withdraw from all of the West Bank; or that Jordan ceded its claim to the area to the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1988; or that many of the administrative powers there have been delegated by Israel to the Palestinian Authority (PA); or that the PA itself has not taken the kind of steps that might enable the “Occupation” to end—all of this, though true, doesn’t change the letter of the law.
Indeed, starting with 1967, Israel itself repeatedly invoked the Fourth Geneva Convention as a legitimation of its presence in Judea and Samaria, and Israel’s High Court of Justice has accepted this as the basis for various rulings on Israel’s actions there. This was a convenient position for Israeli governments to take. On the one hand, it made it easier for Europe and the United States to accept Israeli control over the West Bank while objecting to some of its features, such as the settlements. On the other hand, it served as an excuse for government after government in Jerusalem to put off making politically difficult decisions about the ultimate disposition of Judea and Samaria by postponing those decisions to a theoretical day when a peace settlement could be negotiated with the Palestinians and the Arab world.
But how long can a “temporary” occupation last? The French and Belgian occupation of the Rhineland after World War I lasted twelve years. The British occupation of Iceland during World War II lasted five years. The postwar U.S. occupation of Japan lasted seven. So did the Allied occupation of Germany. The Israeli “occupation” of Judea and Samaria has lasted 52 years. This strikes the world, not entirely unreasonably, as a perversion of the concept and contributes to giving “the Occupation” its bad name.
It is interesting to compare Israel with some other countries in this respect. India, when it took possession of Kashmir in its 1948 war with Pakistan, didn’t invoke the Fourth Geneva Convention or claim to be “occupying” the territory it conquered. Nor did the Turks in invading Cyprus in 1974 or the Russians in Crimea. All behaved according to the right of conquest. Although all have been or are accused of human-rights violations in these areas, none is today cowering in fear of the wheels of international justice. Nor can they be charged, as Israel repeatedly has been, with hypocritically violating the Fourth Geneva Convention’s provisions, which they never agreed to apply.
Perhaps it is indeed time to begin to “end the Occupation”—not by Israel’s acceding to the demand that it engage in an impossible and undesirable withdrawal from all of Judea and Samaria as demanded by its enemies (with whom IfNotNow needs to be classed) but by its confronting the need to decide, or at least seriously and openly to debate, the area’s permanent future in a way that its governments have avoided doing until now. A 52-year-old occupation, whatever its excuses, is indeed a bit too long.
The 41st Session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) (June 24 – July 12) continued the bias and hypocrisy that has come to define the UN in general and the UNHRC in particular. NGO Monitor was present, speaking before the Council and documenting the numerous false accusations made by self-proclaimed human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The statements made during the session and side events by NGO officials, many of which receive large portions of their funding from European governments, are summarized below, highlighting the inflammatory and false allegations.
Item 7
UNHRC Permanent Agenda Item 7, purporting to address Israeli human rights violations, is the only permanent agenda item targeting a single country. Numerous Western countries democracies boycott this agenda item because of this discrimination.
In contrast, NGOs used Item 7 as a platform to promote demonization and BDS. In particular, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Defense for Children International (DCI), and Palestinian groups reinforced and echoed the rhetoric of the “vital importance of item 7” promoted by the dictatorships on the Council.
For example, HRW called for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to publish the discriminatory database of companies doing business over the 1949 Armistice line, which is being prepared by the Council’s bureaucratic arm – the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The purpose of the list is to bolster BDS campaigns against Israel. HRW also delegitimized the concerns raised by Western countries regarding Item 7.
DCI read a statement prepared by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)-linked Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P), calling on the UN to include the IDF on the UN Secretary-General’s list of the worst violators of children’s rights. Offenders currently on the list include Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, and ISIS. (See NGO Monitor’s report “UNICEF and its NGO Working Group” for more on this campaign).
Finally, Palestinian NGOs BADIL and Al-Haq claimed that Israel is preventing Palestinians from adapting to climate change.
Former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley blasted a UN council on Thursday for singling out Israel for alleged violations of women’s rights.
The UN Economic and Social Council resolution was approved by a 40-2 margin, with nine abstentions. Among the countries voting yes were Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan, all notorious for often misogynistic policies and denying basic rights to females.
“It amazes me how the U.N. condones votes like these,” Haley tweeted. “It is a total mockery of human rights to allow Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and Yemen to name Israel as the world’s only violator of women’s rights.”
Much of the resolution — which only the US and Canada voted against — did not deal with women’s rights at all, but rather parroted generic anti-Israel rhetoric, accusing the Jewish state of numerous crimes and alleged violations of human rights.
One clause, however, “[r]eaffirms that the Israeli occupation remains a major obstacle for Palestinian women and girls with regard to the fulfilment of their rights, and their advancement, self-reliance and integration in the development of their society.”
LEFT: Morris Abram, civil rights leader & founder of UN Watch, member of UNHRC sub-commission, 1964.
RIGHT: Jean Ziegler, founder of the Moammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize, member of same body (now called UNHRC Advisory Committee), in session this week.https://t.co/uVAjFGI8Jvpic.twitter.com/uMNUlM5L3I
Palestine Today has an article about Joseph's Tomb in Schchem (Nablus) and how the semi-regular Jewish pilgrims that visit the site have "turned it into a place that spreads death and blackness to the villagers" who live nearby.
Jews cannot visit without an army escort because otherwise they'd be lynched.
The article goes through a history of the site, saying that Palestinians are divided between believing that it is the tomb of the Biblical Joseph or of an Arab named Yusuf Dweikat.
It quotes a researcher of archeology from An-Najah National University named Louai Abu al-Saud. Al Saud.
Abu Al-Saud did not deny or confirm that the "Prophet Joseph" is buried in this grave, but he said that in case that is proven - from an archeological point of view - that this grave is the grave of Joseph, "then we Palestinians, as Arabs and Muslims, are worthier of ownership of it than the Jews."
Palestinianism is now a replacement theology for Judaism.
(h/t Ibn Botrous)
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Trump blocks a UN Security Council condemnation of Israel's demolition of ten Palestinian apartment buildings. And then Israel complains that the UN Human Rights Council, where there is no veto, is forced to spend more time on it.https://t.co/SxhjetPBbX? pic.twitter.com/ya3tBwvXV5
Does Roth think that the recent UN ECOSOC condemnation of Israel as the only country in the world violating women's rights is also a direct result of the US veto in the Security Council?
Of course, Roth has it backwards. The US veto is precisely because of the obsessive bias against Israel in the UN, which predates the UNHRC by decades. Roth has a truly twisted view of the world where he claims that the bias is a result of the US acting morally.
A real defender of human rights would rightfully wonder why the UNHRC ignores so many human rights violations worldwide while singling out Israel every year. A real defender of human rights would notice that UNHRC members are often the worst violators of human rights, and their membership gives them impunity.
But Ken Roth is not a real defender of human rights. He is an obsessive hater of Israel, as this tweet shows.
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Given that it is insane to claim that the US is one of the worst countries on Earth for women, the next question is what was the methodology of the survey.
The article tells us:
Conducted online, by phone and in person between March 26th and May 4th, the survey polled 548 experts on women's issues spread evenly across Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific. Those surveyed included academics and policymakers, healthcare staff and NGO workers, aid and development professionals and social commentators.
They were asked which five of the UN's 193 member states they thought were the most dangerous for women in six areas: healthcare, economic resources, cultural or traditional practices, sexual violence and harassment, non-sexual violence, and human trafficking.
Which means that a significant percentage of the "experts" said that the US was one of the top five worst countries for women, enough for the entire ranking to reach #10.
All this proves is that too many "academics and policymakers, healthcare staff and NGO workers, aid and development professionals and social commentators" are completely useless idiots who have no business calling themselves experts on anything.
Those of us who have observed how "experts" speak about Israel are not too surprised that the US can get the same treatment from clueless academics and NGO workers. The difference is that most people can recognize that this survey is bogus because so many people live in or visit America. In Israel's case, constant exposure to anti-Israel messaging makes the pundits who hate Israel sound more reasonable to those who don't know any better.
The antidote, of course, is to have more people visit Israel and wander around on their own instead of going on tours with an agenda - right or left wing.
Maybe I should lead a tour of Israel where all we do is take a bus to the middle of Ashdod or Abu Ghosh or Nazareth or Bet El and let people go to supermarkets, restaurants, take taxi rides and just hang out and talk to whomever they want for a couple of hours at each site.
Anyone interested?
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The pattern here is so obvious that it would take a diplomat or a politician to miss it. That’s why we’ve been mired in it for so long. And the billions of dollars wasted and thousands of lives lost could have been saved if only our leaders had questioned their premises by asking three simple questions.
1. What if the Palestinians don’t want peace?
2. What if there are no Palestinians?
3. What if there’s no such thing as peace?
The three assumptions, that the Palestinians exist, that they want peace, and that enduring peace is an attainable condition in the region, are at the root of the senselessly Sisyphean peace process.
The peace process was launched under the assumption that the PLO really wanted peace. Or at least a deal. Surely, our best and brightest agreed, they couldn’t possibly want an endless war.
And so, the truth was dismissed out of hand. It was too horrible to believe.
Decades of failed negotiations, rafts of Israel concessions, personal involvement by five presidential administrations, billions of dollars, with nothing to show for it, and the truth is still dismissed.
Instead, the official story is that Israel doesn’t want peace. The media echo chamber resounds with a narrative in which Israel has moved sharply to the right and is run by ultra-orthodox religious fanatics.
And Netanyahu, who is hardly anyone’s idea of an ultra-religious fanatic.
Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan were among members of the UN’s 54-nation economic and social council, a principal organ of the world body, who voted to single out and condemn Israel yesterday as the only country in the world that violates women’s rights.
The Jewish state was harshly and repeatedly condemned in a resolution, adopted 40 to 2 with 9 abstentions and 3 absent (see breakdown below), for allegedly being the “major obstacle” for Palestinian women “with regard to their advancement, self-reliance, and integration in the development of their society.”
Out of 20 items on the UN Economic and Social Council’s 2018-2019 agenda, only one — Item No. 16 against Israel — focuses on condemning a specific country. All the other focus areas concern global topics such as disaster relief assistance and the use of science and technology for development.
The resolution completely ignores how Palestinian women’s rights are impacted by their own governing authorities—the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza—nor does it mention how women are discriminated against within patriarchal Palestinian society.
Moreover, ECOSOC concluded its annual session by ignoring the world’s worst abusers of women’s rights, refusing to pass a single resolution on the situation of women in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, or DR Congo, all of which ranked in the top ten worst countries in last year’s Global Gender Gap Report, produced by the World Economic Forum.
Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, condemned the delegates’ abuse of the UN body as a forum to target Israel.
Since – according to the Palestinian textbooks – there were never any Jewish Temples in Jerusalem, the Western Wall is clearly another recent Zionist-Jewish invention.
The Palestinian “phased plan” to eliminate the "Zionist cancer" from Palestine – which is still in the PLO charter – is diligently taught throughout the curriculum.
Yet the primary concern of PA Education Minister Sabri Saidam is that Israel refuses to use these Palestinian textbooks in Arab-majority schools in Israel or the disputed territories, particularly in Jerusalem. Saidam insists that Israel’s use of versions of the Israeli curriculum for Arab-Israeli kids is “an ugly crime of counterfeit” perpetrated by the “Zionist oppressors.”
Great Britain and the European Union have contributed hundreds of millions to the development and propagation of the Palestinian textbooks and curriculum, but that may be drawing to a close. Both are doing their own reviews of the Palestinian textbooks; each has laws outlawing aid in furtherance of terrorism, incitement, violence and hatred. Their reports are due later this year, and by all rights should spell the end of UK and EU furtherance of this despicable educational charade.
Those who doubt any imminent resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict need look no further than these Palestinian textbooks to become even more pessimistic about a new Palestinian generation leading the way – at long last – to a peaceful future for Arabs and Jews alike. These unfortunate children are being brainwashed by their elders to seek no compromise, but to continue on the suicidal path of terror, hate and ignorance so well established by past generations of Palestinian Arabs and their leaders.
Lebanon's Al Akhbar reports that Lebanese security forces have been chasing after any cars that display the Palestinian Arab flag and arresting their drivers.
The security services have been arresting Palestinans who have been protesting the new draconian laws that make it even more difficult than beforefor them to find jobs in Lebanon.
Al-Akhbar found a police report about a Palestinian arrested in Sidon for displaying the Plaestinian flag and "playing revolutionary songs." He was fined 150,000 Lebanese pounds, equivalent to $100.
There is no law in Lebanon banning flags from car windows.
Rampant discrimination against Palestinians in the Arab world is simply an unreported story in the West, because so many reporters are invested in the idea that only Israelis can be blamed for Palestinian misery.
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Elder of Ziyon
