Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday that outsiders will be deported from the Palestinian land to the "dustbin of history" because this land is for the Canaanites.
“We are the Canaanites,” he stressed.
Addressing the crown in Jalazone refugee camp in Ramallah, Abbas said the Palestinians will remain “steadfast, patient and resilient.”
“We will remain in our homeland, and the outsiders on this land has no right in this country. The land is for its inhabitants, this land is for the Canaanites who were here 5,000 years ago, and we are the Canaanites.”
It doesn't sound like he recognizes Israel, does it?
Mahmoud Abbas' family name almost certainly comes from the Abbasid dynasty, whose founder came from Mecca. Very few Palestinian families can trace their ancestry in the land more than 1200 years (Christians being the exception, at least the few who are left.) Most of them have family genealogy pages on Facebook and elsewhere that proudly trace their heritage to Arabia.
Abbas also laid a wreath on the grave of terrorists from the Jalazone camp.
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The most prominent BDS-related story of the last month is
Congresses 398-17 vote to condemn the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions “movement,”
an overwhelming (and bi-partisan) tally reaffirming a long-standing trend
within the most representative body of American politics (Congress) to support
the Jewish state against efforts to attack it militarily and economically.
In an age of partisan fervor where We vs. They defines most
political commentary, it was natural that this vote be characterized along the
Left-Right axis that colors all our conversations. This included a focus on the most vociferous
voices against the measure (represented by “The Squad” of Democrats who have
generated considerable controversy related to Jewish issues over the last six
months).
While not ignoring the filters that color so many political
conversations, it is important to keep in mind some practical matters regarding
Congress taking such a strong stand against efforts to harm Israel
economically.
First, this vote was one of a series that shores up measures
taken by more than half the US states which impose penalties on companies
participating in anti-Israel boycotts in the form of refusing to do state
business with such companies. While
claims that these anti-BDS state laws were an infringement on free speech
proved impossible to support (unless one is ready to throw out the entire
anti-discrimination legal apparatus), there was a genuine issue regarding
whether states should be allowed to pass measures that imply a role for the
states in America’s foreign policy, given that, constitutionally, foreign
policy is the responsibility of the federal government.
But that same federal government is allowed to specify what
political activity performed by other parts of government are allowed and not
allowed, including ones that relate to interaction with foreign nations. So, with regard to recent Congressional BDS
actions, these votes were meant to declare that state are allowed to apply
anti-discrimination law to those who participate in discrimination against the
Jewish state.
Keep in mind that the federal government has had rules in
place for decades that make it a crime for American companies to participate in
the century-long Arab boycott of Israel.
What made new rules necessary, at both the state and federal level, was
the migration of anti-Israel boycott activity from the Arab states to
non-governmental organizations (notably the UN) over the last several
decades. With the UN and allied
organizations preparing blacklists of Israeli companies that member states
would be asked to comply with, it was only natural that US anti-boycott rules
needed to change to take this changed world into account.
In other words, those who have been advocating for boycott
measures up and down the NGO landscape have only themselves to blame for
America’s natural reaction to their activity.
And by “America” I mean every state and federal representative
body that has voted to condemn BDS as a form of bigotry and punish those who
participate in this discriminatory “movement.”
Several commenters on recent BDS-related votes have described them as
“largely symbolic.” Putting aside the
practical impact of these measures described above, their symbolic value cannot
be ignored – especially in the context of the propaganda wars that BDS is part
of.
To understand what I mean, consider how the BDSers
themselves have treated any attempt to get a representative body to pass one of
their boycott or divestment measures.
The tiniest of successes (like a small district in Scotland
banning Israeli books) or temporary or failed measures to get local governments
to pass divestment measures (as in Somerville)
are treated as staggering triumphs, paving the way to ultimate victory for the
forces of BDS. Given such behavior, one
can only imagine the celebrations that would be exploding across the globe if a
single US state passed anything that could be construed as mildly supporting
this or that BDS talking point.
Yet here we have more than half of the states in the
country, backed up by a Congress representing the country as a whole, joining
in one voice to declare BDS a form of bigotry that must be fought and
sanctioned. If we had the same mindset
as our political enemies, we would spend the next twenty years shoving these
votes into the boycotters’ faces and declaring they represent the opinion of
the nation against their squalid little movement and insisting they recognize
it as such.
For better or for worse, we are not our enemies which means
we are more likely to focus on the 17 representatives who voted against the
recent anti-BDS vote, or engage in arguments on our enemy’s terrain (such as
those involving free speech), rather than demand the boycotters live by their
own rules and recognize their project as a form of bigotry, and a failure.
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It is estimated that approximately 4,000 Israelis have been killed in terrorist attacks since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. This is the equivalent of 200,000 Americans.
Despite this notorious history of Palestinian violence, there are those in America and Europe who, for their own reasons, continue to enable and normalize Palestinian terrorism by their support for the Palestinian “narrative.” In response to the brutal murder of Dvir Sorek, The Forward published an opinion piece that urged its audience not to “politicize” Sorek’s death, but to remember the message of peace he was carrying when he was slaughtered (books by a peace activist).
At the end of the day, the terrorists who murdered Sorek, and their families, will likely get a sweeter deal than treats in the street. The Palestinian government has created a “Martyrs Fund” to pay a monthly stipend to the families of Palestinians killed, injured, or imprisoned for involvement in attacking Israelis.
It is a system called “pay for slay,” and it was reported that the fund paid out over $300 million in 2017, in amounts often exceeding $3,000 a month, at a time when the Palestinian government was struggling to pay its own civil servants. Sorek’s killers and their families are set for life, further incentivizing the murder of Jews.
Israel’s Shin Bet security service announced Saturday that it had arrested two Palestinian cousins suspected of Sorek’s murder. The suspects hail from the Palestinian village of Beit Kahil near Migdal Oz, and at least one is a member of Hamas. The Israel army said that more than 100 residents of Beit Kahil began hurling stones at troops while they were carrying out the arrest raid.
In his strongly worded essay for Mosaic, Avi Weiss meticulously documents the painful history of the cover-up of the devastating July 1994 bombing of the AMIA building in Buenos Aires—“the largest single attack,” as he puts it, “against a Jewish community in the Diaspora since the Holocaust,” leaving 85 dead and hundreds wounded.
The cover-up was not entirely successful. Despite the dysfunction of the early Argentinean investigation into the bombing, the eventual removal of corrupt politicians and judges did allow a new team of prosecutors to produce, against all odds, a definitive accounting of the plot and its perpetrators. Its conclusion was crystal-clear:
The decision to carry out the AMIA attack was made, and the attack was orchestrated, by the highest officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran at the time, and . . . these officials instructed Lebanese Hizballah—a group that has historically been subordinated to the economic and political interests of the Tehran regime—to carry out the attack.
But that still leaves much undone. Despite the publication of three detailed reports on the AMIA bombing itself, on the role of Hizballah, and on Iranian agents in Argentina, not one of the key suspects has been apprehended, let alone tried or convicted. To the contrary: the failure to hold Iran or Hizballah accountable for the bombing has had adverse real-life repercussions for Argentinean politics and society—not to mention the country’s Jewish community. At the same time, it has positively reinforced and emboldened the leaders of Iran and Hizballah.
Indeed, several individuals who were personally involved in the AMIA bombing have since been promoted through the ranks to senior positions within the Iranian government or Hizballah. This includes not only senior Iranian officials but also less known but more operationally significant Iranian and Hizballah agents.
In sum, those who executed the AMIA bombing 25 years ago continue to oversee international terrorist operations today. In what follows, I’ll cite chapter and verse, beginning with the senior Iranian officials indicted by Argentina, several of whom are also subjects of Interpol Red Notice warrants and whose cases are relatively well known.
In a July 30, 2019 article in Al-Sabil, the mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Jordan, writer Kathem 'Ayesh published an "Open Letter to the Leaders of the West," in which he blamed these leaders for the problems of the Arab and Muslim world. 'Ayesh is a former chairman of the of the UNRWA teachers union, and in his student days at the University of Jordan he studied under 'Abdallah 'Azzam, one of the founders of Al-Qaeda.[1] In his letter, Ayesh accused the Western leaders of deliberately imposing oppressive and corrupt regimes upon the Arab and Muslim countries with the aim of keeping them weak, backward and dependent on the West, because this serves the Wests' interests. He claimed further that the West does not wish the Muslims to return to their religious roots, which were the source of their past might and cultural dominance, and is therefore waging a "malicious war" on Islam and its values in the name of the war on terror. It is also acting to distort Islam by planting in the Muslim countries preachers who spread extremism and terror, in order to prove to the world that Islam is a source of danger. Even Israel, he added, was placed in the region by the West as a policeman to safeguard its interests. 'Ayesh ended his article with a series of Quranic verses stating that all the efforts to harm Islam will fail because Allah will stand by the Muslims.
The following are excerpts from his article:[2]
"Open letter to the leaders of the West:
"This is a message from an Arab Muslim citizen who follows events and examines them closely, and who expresses the feelings and positions of the absolute majority of people like him, who are very numerous. [We are] the silent majority that is deliberately excluded in our so-called Arab and Muslim world, which you [Western leaders] use as an arena for performing every kind of forbidden experiment, and where you permit every kind of abomination and violate every human norm of justice, decency and objectivity, while disregarding human rights without batting an eyelid.
"We know very well that the democracy you purport to advocate is intended solely for yourselves and your peoples, not for us, because according to your view we are backward, barbaric and dependent peoples who are not worthy of this enormous privilege. That is why you imposed upon us failing governments and 'deep states' steeped in corruption, oppression and injustice, in order to prove to your peoples that we truly do not deserve to live in dignity or enjoy any rights, for we accept all this backwardness that plagues our countries without lifting a finger [against it]. Even when we decide to act and change the situation, you oppose us and support the evil tumor you planted in our midst [i.e., the Arab regimes], hurling vicious accusations at us and drowning us in chaos and bloodshed, in order to convince the gullible that we do not deserve change or freedom...
Gigi and Bella Hadid are two of the highest paid supermodels in the world. Each of them make millions of dollars a year.
They are both American citizens, raised in Los Angeles.
And, according to UNRWA rules, they are both "Palestine refugees," eligible for aid if they move to Lebanon or Jordan.
You see, UNRWA has no means to take someone out of the category of refugee. UNHCR requires that refugees prove that they are still refugees periodically or else they lose that designation; UNRWA designates them and their descendants refugees forever.
Even if they are born in the US. Even if they become millionaire supermodels.
The Hadids' father is Mohamed Hadid, a very successful real estate developer who was born in Nazareth in 1948. His family now tells an antisemitic story about how they were supposedly forced to leave their home:
...Mohamed Hadid added to his family’s historical narrative, explaining they sheltered a Jewish refugee family from Poland at their home in Safed (today Tzfat in northern Israel) who later “kicked us out of our own home.”
“Thats [sic] how we became refugees to Syria and we lost our home in Safad to a Jewish family that we sheltered when they were refugees from Poland on the ship that was sailing from country to country and no one would take them… they were our guest for 2 years till they made us refugees and they kicked us out of our own home. That my history.. Strange thing. That I and my family would do it again.”
But the Washington Post in a 1989 profile of the mogul wrote a very different, and far more believable, story:
Hadid was an infant when his family left Palestine. His father, Anwar Hadid, said he did not want the family "to live under the Israeli occupation." The parents walked for two nights to reach the Lebanese border -- with Hadid's mother carrying her oldest son. The family finally settled in Damascus, where Anwar Hadid went to work as a translator for Voice of America and traveled widely. The family eventually made its way to Washington, and Mohamed Hadid became an American citizen.
That's how many of the Arabs of Palestine became "refugees" both in 1948 and 1967: They simply did not want to live under Jewish rule. In the case of Mahmoud Abbas' family who lived in Safed, they were convinced the Jews would slaughter them the way Arabs slaughtered Jews there only 19 years earlier, so they left on their own.
By the current definition of refugee, Mohamed Hadid was never a refugee - his family left on their own but could have stayed safely. His daughters were certainly never refugees. Hadid himself has both Jordanian and American citizenship.
But by UNRWA's twisted standards, all the Hadids (besides the model's Dutch mother) are "Palestine refugees" and get counted in the ever increasing numbers of "refugees" that get published year after year.
(h/t Teresa)
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Yesterday, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on the international community and the Arab and Islamic world to take urgent action to "protect Al-Aqsa Mosque from the conspiracy targeting it" by Israel.
In a press release, the ministry called on the international community and the relevant UN organizations, especially UNESCO, to "raise their voices in the face of the violations and crimes of the occupation."
The letter said that "the occupation seeks to provide an arena for the establishment of settler Talmudic rituals, as a first step towards the full occupation of Al-Aqsa fully, and then to demolish it".
This is not a single imam or leader of Hamas. The official position of the Palestinian government is that Israel is attempting to destroy Al Aqsa (and presumably the Dome of the Rock.)
This is the exact same false charge that Palestinian Arabs have been hurling at Jews since the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem first made the accusation in the 1920s.
It is pure incitement against Jews being pushed by a member of the UN.
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The animal must be slaughtered by the use of a sharp knife. The knife must not kill due to its weight. If it kills due to the impact the meat may not be permissible.
The windpipe (throat), food-tract (oesophagus) and the two jugular veins must be cut. The slaughtering must be done in one stroke without lifting the knife. The knife should not be placed and lifted when slaughtering the animal.
The knife should be hidden from the animal, and slaughtering should be done out of sight of other animals waiting to be slaughtered. Animals should be killed in a comfortable way. Unnecessary suffering to them must be avoided.
This sounds virtually identical to kosher slaughter (although kosher slaughter requires a much longer knife to ensure that the animal is killed swiftly.)
But as many videos from Eid al Adha show (this one from Gaza,) the requirement of a single stroke is almost never done, at least in front of the crowds recording the slaughter.
(Warning: this is horrific to watch.)
The slaughterer does not even hold the blade so the sharp end severs the neck. Instead, he is stabbing the poor creature in the neck, repeatedly, to the cheers of the crowd watching it painfully die over the course of minutes - as the next animal watches and is clearly agitated when its turn comes up.
Forget PETA. Shouldn't religious Muslims themselves be upset over this fairly clear violation of Muslim law?
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The real irony comes when you juxtapose that song with what Rabbi Jill Jacobs, also of T'ruah, wrote about Jews ascending to the Temple Mount on Tisha B'Av today:
As someone who is 21+ hours into fasting in commemoration of the destruction of the Temple (I'm in Israel) I am also mourning the loss of our holiest site. But those who choose to go up to the Temple Mount today are there to provoke & endanger Jews & Muslims on holy day for both. https://t.co/7PQ9CzFv3s
Wow! She is congratulating herself on fasting (something I have done nearly 300 times, I guess that makes me wonderful!) and claiming she is mourning the loss of the Temple - at the same time that she is casting aspersions on Jews who wanted to visit their holiest spot today. the very site of that Temple, to meditate and even pray, claiming they are only interested in causing a scene.
Sorry, Jill. You don't mourn the Temple's destruction. You contributed to it, in spirit. The Second Temple was famously said to be destroyed by "sinat chinam," baseless hatred against one's fellow Jew. By falsely claiming that those who yearn to visit Judaism's holiest site are only wanting to cause trouble, you are contributing to sinat chinam.
You are also lying. As I reported on Friday, Muslims were preparing to riot to stop Jews from being allowed to visit the Mount on Tisha B'Av. Muslim leaders called to close all Jerusalem mosques today - on Eid al Adha! - just to force Muslims to go to Al Aqsa and pack the area with more potential cannon fodder.
I have followed Jews visiting the Temple Mount for years now, and I have joined them twice. I've watched hundreds of videos of Jews on the Mount. I have not once seen them act provocatively towards the Muslims in even the slightest way. Not even a smirk.
By claiming that they are trying to cause trouble, you are the one who is acting directly contradictory to how a rabbi should act.
The closing word we recite in the end of Lamentations are indeed "הֲשִׁיבֵ֨נוּ הֹ' ׀ אֵלֶ֙יךָ֙ וְֽנָשׁ֔וּבָה חַדֵּ֥שׁ יָמֵ֖ינוּ כְּקֶֽדֶם",
"Turn us unto You, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old." This is calling to rebuild the Temple.
Does T'ruah really want the Temple to be rebuilt? Do they want animal sacrifices? Do they want a Kohen Gadol? Every Jew visiting three times a year? A sovereign religious Jewish state? A Passover sacrifice per family?
And if they don't - are they really mourning the Temple today?
My suspicion is that the answer is an emphatic "no" to all those questions.
Spare us you self-congratulatory 21 hours of fasting, Jill. This isn't what the religion asks of you. It asks that you actually treat your fellow Jews as family, that you give them the benefit of the doubt, that you don't look at people with kipot visiting the most sacred spot in history and think they are criminals and troublemakers - while saying that the Muslims who have subverted and taken over this area, placing Hamas banners on the Mount on the very day we mourn the destruction of the Temple on that spot, are somehow righteous.
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August 9 marks the 18th anniversary of a very dark day — the day that Ahlam Tamimi calmly picked up Izz-al-Din Shuheil al Masri from his home in al-Aqabah in Judea (the West Bank), and serenely delivered him to the Sbarro pizzeria shop in Jerusalem.
That was the site Ms. Tamimi had intentionally scoped out, because it was a popular eatery frequented by families, singles, and Jews of all ages.
It had been a sultry day, and many young students, who were off from school during the long summer recess, were looking for ways to spend their time. One of these students, Malki Roth, entered the restaurant with her best friend, Mihal Raziel. At the same time, Izz Al-Din entered the restaurant and — using a guitar case rigged with nuts, bolts, and nails, together with a suicide vest rigged with 10 kilograms of explosives — detonated himself. The explosion rocked the nearby vicinity, murdering 15 people, eight of them children.
Two of the murdered were American citizens: 15-year-old Roth, and Judith Greenbaum, 31, who was five months pregnant at the time. A third American, Chana Nachenberg, lies in a permanent vegetative state.
Immediately after the bombing, Ahlam Tamimi was on a Palestinian bus back to Ramallah, and described what happened as news came in about the mounting death toll. “As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding. They didn’t even know that I was among them,” she said. “On the way back [to Ramallah], we passed a Palestinian police checkpoint, and the policemen were laughing. One of them stuck his head in and said: ‘Congratulations to us all.’ Everybody was happy.”
Herein lies the heart of the matter regarding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which also pertains to our treatment of the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday slammed Iran’s “faux concern” for the Palestinians after its supreme leader called on Muslims to oppose the Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan, accusing him of threatening violence against Israel before the fast day of Tisha B’Av.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday called the US plan a “a crime against human society,” and urged “active participation” in efforts to block the still-unreleased proposal. In a letter marking the Islamic hajj pilgrimage, Khamenei said the plan was a “ruse” that’s “doomed to failure.”
Khamenei, who has regularly called for Israel’s destruction, said the Palestinians had “not given in to defeat” and “stand tall on the battlefield.” “The ultimate result requires all Muslims’ assistance,” he said.
Pompeo hit back on Sunday, accusing Khamenei and the Iranian government of destabilizing the region by backing terrorist groups with millions of dollars “to kill more Jews.”
“Khamenei’s faux concern for the Palestinian people runs so deep that under his reign of terror he provided less than $20,000 in aid since 2008, while sending millions to Hamas & other terrorists,” Pompeo tweeted. “In contrast, US provided $6.3 billion in support to Palestinians since 1994.”
“It’s sick that on the eve of Tisha B’Av — a solemn day for the Jewish people — Khamenei calls for violence against the Jewish state,” he said.
Tisha B’Av, which began Saturday evening, marks the destruction of the two Jewish temples and other disasters in Jewish history.
On #EidAlAdha, the Festival of Sacrifice, I ask the 57 Islamic states who say they care about Muslims, and the the EU states who say they care about international law: Why won't you bring a single UN resolution for 1 million Muslims locked up in camps by China?
He opposes the notion of "Arab Jews" on the basis of historical analysis and an appreciation for the ways that the language we use heavily influences the outcome of the discussion... as he has in the past with terms such as "West Bank", a phrase designed to rob the Jewish people of our heritage within our own historical homeland.
He also references the fact that:
"Some pro-Palestinian writers even suggest that Mizrahi Jews actually have a common interest with Palestinian Arabs, their “brown” brothers, to overthrow the hegemony of “white” Ashkenazi settler-colonialists."
The question of the "whiteness" of Ashkenazi Jews is hot at the moment. It suggests that the Ashkenazim are not ethnically Jewish, but merely Europeans who happen to practice Judaism.
It is an interesting question that I am only really beginning to grapple with.
The truth is that most Ashkenazim have a considerable amount of European blood, but most also have DNA characteristics that primarily go to the Levant and to the Land of Israel.
Arabs often like to call Ashkenazim "white" -- and thus European -- because it implies that we are interlopers in the land of their ancestry... this despite the fact that Arabs are indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula, not Judea and Samaria. This, in turn, justifies violence against our brothers and sisters in Israel.
However, the question of indigeneity does not rest solely upon genetics... although genetics count.
What counts more is if the land of the people represents the source of their culture. That is the defining characteristic of indigeneity. The Ashkenazim, like the Sephardim, are a Jewish colonized people, indigenous to the Land of Israel, who the Romans sent scattering to the winds after the Bar Kochba Rebellion (132 - 136 CE) Naturally, this meant that we took on many of the cultural elements -- such as language and food -- of the generally unfriendly European nations.
The ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews, such as my own, were forced out of Judea and over many centuries found themselves within the Pale of Settlement within eastern Europe where they faced the violent pogroms of those who most certainly did not consider us "white."
But as a people who were kicked out of our native homeland, stripped of our identity and language throughout the many centuries of the diaspora, we are now told by antisemitic anti-Zionists that Israel is no longer really Jewish or, at least. should not be. The Mizrahim may have a place as second-class citizens under Arab rule, but now "Palestine" is decisively Arab or, at least, should be. So go the fantastical midnight dreams of people like Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
As we saw in the news recently Tlaib even suggested that Palestinian-Arabs who attempt to murder Jews in Israel are "activists" while the Jews of Israel, seeking nothing more than to protect their children and their homeland, are dubbed "White Nationalists."
What is particularly troubling, however, are Ashkenazim in the diaspora who refer to themselves as "white." I, too, as an Ashkenazi born outside of New York in 1963 within a Reform community, also was raised to think of myself as "white." But the truth is, we are not. We may have some European ancestry, but we are most definitely not "white."
Furthermore, the word "white," when it comes to people, is not a biological term, but a political term.
In the centuries preceding the second half of the twentieth-century, in Europe and the United States, Jews were never considered on par with the good, actual "white" people. It was only when that word ceased to have positive connotations and, instead, emerged -- in the wake of the New Left -- as an epithet meaning "racist, colonial, oppressor" that -- Ta Da! -- the Jews suddenly became "white" in the eyes of the progressive-left. It is, at least in part for this reason, that all sorts of "progressive" groups, including much of the Democratic Party, consider Jewish-Israelis interlopers onto the land of the alleged "indigenous Arab population."
And it is, for this reason, that much of the western-left actually pays Palestinian-Arabs to murder Jews, including women and children, under Pay-to Slay. Many in the Democratic Party wish to continue this practice wherein US tax-payers pay out many millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority who then use much of those funds to reward the murderers of Jews within the Jewish homeland.
In the meantime, the Jews of the Middle East (i.e., Jewish-Israelis) will defend themselves whether the Arabs or their Western paymasters like it or not.
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I am not posting anything new during Tisha B'Av until at least the afternoon, but here are the top tweets of mine for the past couple of weeks being queued up from Friday:
So if you support Elizabeth Warren, are you responsible for the Dayton murderer who loved her?
Editors should take a course in basic logic and logical fallacies because greenlighting such articles makes them and their sites look stupid. pic.twitter.com/YcNhCNE3pw
It is Jews in Israel who have had to worry about being murdered by terrorists in nightclubs, department stores, supermarkets and pizza shops, not Palestinian Arabs, you disgusting man.
Sorry, @RashidaTlaib . The only people who claim nowadays that Arabs and Jews lived together in peace are...Arabs. Jews were the ones your sidy and friends dehumanized. Jews were second class dhimmis. Look at the 1929 pogroms.
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Of the seventeen members of the House who voted against the anti-Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of Israel and stood with Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, sixteen were Democrats.
Let that sink in, because some three-quarters of Jewish voters blindly vote for the Democrats. They will rationalize this outcome by saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi kept the boycotters in check.
But if Jewish voters look closely at the demographics of those 16 members of the House, they will see the face of the changing character of the Democrat Party.
Congresswoman Tlaib, who took the oath of office on the Koran and celebrated her victory by wrapping herself in the Palestinian flag, knew her earlier attempt to get the House to pass a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions bill had no chance of success.
The point, of course, was not to get the bill passed, no more than BDS hate-fests on American campuses are about getting a BDS policy enacted.
They are about providing a propaganda forum for the dissemination of anti-Israel hate and with it anti-Semitism. It is no accident that anti-Semitic incidents on campus rise when BDS resolutions come before the student legislative body.
For those Jews who are wedded to the Democrat Party, perhaps a brief history lesson is in order. Until the realigning election of 1928, when Al Smith ran for the presidency, the Democrat Party was the party of rural America. It was the party of the one-party, solid South and the Klan. (h/t IsaacStorm)
"The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz." – Zvi Rex, Israeli psychiatrist
Last month, Jason Greenblatt, who is the Trump administration's special representative for international negotiations and, along with Jared Kushner, a co-leader of the administration's yet-to-be-unveiled comprehensive proposal for Israeli-Palestinian peace, addressed the United Nations Security Council. In a paradigm-shifting speech, Greenblatt assailed the longstanding consensus of much of the morally relativistic "international community" — for which the anti-Semitic dullards of Turtle Bay serve as quintessential proxies — in no uncertain terms. Whereas the institutionally anti-Israel U.N. Security Council has long tried its best to unilaterally impose a "two-state solution" from the outside in — based on a fundamental misunderstanding of international law with respect to eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria — Greenblatt rebutted that "if there is to be such a solution, only the parties themselves, through direct negotiations, can work this out."
Later in the speech, Greenblatt reiterated, "Both Israel and the Palestinians have asserted a claim to certain land. This is an unresolved dispute and it will only be through direct negotiations between the parties that we have a chance of resolving that dispute and achieving a comprehensive peace."
Greenblatt's speech is well worth watching in full:
Common sense, right? Alas, perhaps not to anti-Israel, sycophantically pro-Palestinian Europeans on the U.N. Security Council.
As Reuters highlighted, Germany, France, and Russia did not exactly respond favorably to Greenblatt's address. That would be the same Germany that refuses to recognize all of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and is leading the European effort to undermine President Trump's decision to exit the catastrophic Iran nuclear deal, the same France whose insane immigration policies have led to crisis levels of Islamist-inspired anti-Semitism, and the same Russia that de facto allies itself with the genocidal Jew-hating mullahs in Tehran to prop up a murderous madman tyrant in Damascus.
"For us, international law is not menu a la carte," said Germany's U.N. ambassador, Christoph Heusgen. "Security Council resolutions are international law, they merely need to be complied with," oh-so-helpfully added Russia' U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia.
Greenblatt pushed back this week against the European backlash, publishing a German newspaper op-ed that firmly but diplomatically rebuked Heusgen. "With respect, Ambassador [Heusgen] ... we clearly stated that a solution cannot be forced upon the parties, and the only way ahead is direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians," Greenblatt wrote. "Our point was that collectively, U.N. Security Council resolutions passed with the intent of providing a framework for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have failed to create progress." Greenblatt also excoriated the Europeans' insistence on the U.N. as a focal point of the peace process, coupled with their own failure to recognize the U.N.'s institutional anti-Israel bias, as "disingenuous."
I have read Fred Maroun’s articles for some time. As he himself admits he shifts his opinion on Israel (ie one state/two states) quite frequently. While others find him unreliable, I actually think he is trying wholeheartedly to understand, and find a solution to a very difficult situation, shifting as he is learning.
However, whether he has intended to or not, Fred Maroun’s latest article “Palestinian statehood would rise from the ashes of Palestinian terrorism” is a mishmash of information and misinformation and he, I hope inadvertently, has made some grave errors.
When one casually reads his article, Fred Maroun appears to be showing an equal analysis, but in reality his terminology usage and his conclusions reveal that he is not as unbiased as he purports to be.
He has painted the ‘Palestinian’ cause as something “nationalistic” and concludes that the Holy Land is the ‘Palestinians’ “ancestral homeland.” He mixes up his terminology but finally in a later paragraph under the heading “Citizenship” makes correct and important distinctions.
The truth is that “Palestinian” is not an ethnicity like the Jews and Arabs. ‘Palestinians’ are an umbrella group of many ethnicities formed as a way of identification, but also as in a combined opposition to the Jewish state. Their nationalistic aspirations are not due to returning to their ancestral homeland like the Jews or other indigenous populations. ‘Palestinian’ nationalism is based on a combined desire to be rid of the actual first nation population, the Jews!
Fred Maroun quotes one of Israel’s “founding fathers” as somehow showing an underlying conspiracy against the ‘Palestinians’ and a journey towards becoming “apartheid” (which by the way is entirely incorrect) but he also fails to quote the ‘Palestinians’ founding fathers, Yasser Arafat would be an obvious choice, about his attitude towards Israelis.
The Golda Meir quote Fred Maroun used was taken out of context. She was not saying there were no other people in the Holy Land, but that historically, it was not until the establishment of Israel that the ‘Palestinian’ people emerged.
The European Union is poised to mandate that Israeli products made in contested territories carry consumer warning labels, a decision that could trigger American anti-boycott laws and open up what legal experts describe as a "Pandora's box" of litigation, according to multiple sources involved in the legal dispute who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.
The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice recently issued non-binding opinion arguing that EU law requires Israeli-made products to be labeled as coming from "settlements" and "Israeli colonies."
The decision was seen as a major win for supporters of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which seeks to wage economic warfare on Israel and its citizens. Pro-Israel activists, as well as the Jewish businesses involved in the legal dispute, see the decision as an ominous warning sign that they say is reminiscent of Holocaust-era boycotts of Jewish businesses.
With the EU court's 15 judge panel now poised to issue its own binding judgment in the case, legal experts are warning that a potential decision mandating such labeling could pave the way for goods from any disputed territory to receive such treatment. The decision also could trigger U.S. anti-boycott laws meant to stop Israeli-made goods from being singled out for unfair treatment on the international market.
Brooke Goldstein, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Lawfare Project, which is involved in the legal dispute, described the EU court's initial decision as "frankly outrageous."
"The Advocate General's opinion said that goods produced by Muslims are to be labeled from ‘Palestine,' and goods produced by Jews labeled as coming from ‘Israeli colonies,' Goldstein said. "Both people are living in the same geographic location, and yet Jewish goods are being treated differently." (h/t IsaacStorm)
Academics today are widely known for letting ideology and politics drive their research and teaching, but nowhere is this more evident than in the determination of Middle East studies scholars to situate rejection of Israel’s right to exist within the social justice pantheon of the mainstream Left. And perhaps nowhere is this determination more evident than in Randolph-Macon College history professor Michael R. Fischbach’s new book, Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color. I eagerly attended his recent talk at UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies to hear him out.
The social sciences today are dominated by intersectional theory, which, in a nutshell, holds that systems of minority oppression — racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, gender, class, and so forth — are overlapping; that oppressed groups share a commonality of interests; and that tapping into that solidarity is essential to bringing about change. In recent years, anti-Israel activists have used intersectionalism as a rallying cry to pressure social justice movements ranging from Occupy Wall Street to the Women’s March to adopt anti-Israel platforms.
But intersectional theory also poses a problem for academics seeking to delegitimize Israel. If, as tenured Middle East studies radicals have been chanting for the past four decades, Israel is an inherently racist state and part of the same global structure of oppression holding down people of color everywhere, why have the overwhelming majority of African Americans historically been supportive of or indifferent to Israel? Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy is particularly problematic for intersectional theory, as he and most other African American civil rights leaders were unwavering both in their public support for Israel and in their disdain for anti-Zionists. “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism!” King famously remarked in a speech shortly before his death.
Fischbach’s answer, in effect, is that pro-Israel sympathies within the African American community aren’t genuine. The professor began his presentation to a small group of 16 attendees — mostly graduate students and younger faculty — with a string of well-worn anecdotes about the supposed depth of solidarity between African Americans and Palestinians today. In 2013, an American activist claimed to have seen a Palestinian mural of Trayvon Martin. During the August 2014 unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, a number of Palestinians posted tips about combating the effects of tear gas. In 2015, anti-Zionist campaigners managed to put just over a thousand African American signatures on a “Black Solidarity Statement.” But the icing on the cake, which Fischbach played to the audience in its entirety, was the 2014 music video “Checkpoint” by the obscure rapper Jasiri X, an angry tract with spurious apartheid comparisons and calls for a “free Palestine” that has managed to garner just 66,911 views on YouTube in the past five years despite zealous promotion by anti-Israel activists everywhere.
In a recent column, David Brooks blames recent mass shootings in America on “a broader movement—anti-pluralism—that now comes in many shapes.” Among the anti-pluralists, writes Brooks, are “Trumpian nationalists, authoritarian populists, and Islamic jihadists”—and also, evidently, Jews. “Eighty years ago,” he laments, “Protestants, Catholics, and Jews did not get along, so a new category was created, Judeo-Christian, which brought formerly feuding people into a new ‘us.’” But now that pluralistic amalgam has come unglued, leaving Judaism in the category of a “dead culture.”
A pure culture is a dead culture while an amalgam culture is a creative culture. . . . The terrorists dream of a pure, static world. But the only thing that’s static is death, which is why they are so pathologically drawn to death. Pluralism is about movement, interdependence, and life.
Ira Stoll takes Brooks to task:
Sorry, but no. Jews who prefer to remain Jewish rather than becoming “Judeo-Christian” are not similar to white supremacists or Islamic jihadists who go into Walmart or a nightclub or an army base and open fire in hopes of committing mass murder. Judaism in the 1930s, before the creation of the “new category” of “Judeo-Christian,” wasn’t static or dead—it was full of vibrant Yiddish culture, Zionist innovation, and religious reform and reaction. . . .
What’s more, the term “Judeo-Christian,” though perhaps useful as a political, rhetorical formulation to label the Jewish and Christian alliance against Nazism and later Communism, never really became a practically meaningful “us.” Jews and Christians still feud, as can be seen in everything from the Christian left’s support for anti-Israel boycotts to the Jewish left’s opposition to Christian conservative legislative moves to restrict abortion. Jews and Christians still go to different synagogues and churches.
When asked about religion, very few people voluntarily describe themselves as “Judeo-Christian.” The theological and ritual differences between the two different religions are just hard to blur without eliminating the force and meaning of the 2,000- or 4,000-year-old traditions. And because Christians far outnumber Jews, it’s not hard to predict that if Jews and Christians did merge into Judeo-Christians, Christianity would dominate. How that counts as “pluralism” rather than as a kind of anti-pluralism—the refusal to accept the continued existence of Judaism as a distinct religion—is a mystery to me.
A series of "progressive" Jewish organizations are setting up prayer groups for Tisha B'Av demanding that immigration camps in the US be shut down and, presumably, the migrants be given opportunities to become full US citizens or at least to have more rights given to them.
One wonders, though, how come they are silent on how Palestinians are treated in Arab countries for over seventy years?
They've been in camps for seven decades. They've been discriminated against. They have been stopped from becoming citizens of their host countries. And most of them want very badly to be offered citizenship.
Why aren't these supposedly progressive groups advocating for Palestinian human rights in Arab countries? Why do they care more about people from Central America than Palestinians?
(h/t Irene)
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From an early age, I was aware of the ancestral scars I inherited at birth, and growing up, I often heard stories about how my relatives lost their homes and happy lives.
My illiterate grandparents, Ahmad and Amni Fakhoury, had worked hard to establish a thriving farm in the village of Irtah, Palestine. But their good life ended in the aftermath of World War II, when the British military stripped away my family’s land and belongings—even killing some of my relatives—to make way for Jewish settlers from Europe. They became unable to support themselves in their own homeland.
Because the Palestinian schools were shut down, my father and his eight siblings were spread across the globe so that they could continue their education, all the while enduring poverty and discrimination in foreign countries.
Remaining Palestinians were not so fortunate. Those who resisted losing their homes were killed or imprisoned, and others were sent to live in inhumane encampments.
The author, Ronya Fakhoury Banks, goes on to describe how her parents moved from Kuwait to the US where she rejected her Palestinian heritage, became a mess, learned about meditation and got her act together.
Even though she ends off her article "May we stop living in fear and begin living in peace and love, and see how we are all one in heart," the quoted piece above shows that she is not exactly practicing what she preaches.
Irtah was a small village south of Tulkarem. Jews never lived there. The British never kicked Arabs out of their houses to make way for Jews. If Ahmad and Amni Fakhoury lived there before World War II, they could have stayed after WWII and after 1948 when Jordan annexed it.
They would have become Jordanian citizens. There was no reason for "Palestinian schools" to have been shut down from Israeli or British actions/
It is possible that her family's land was turned into a no-man's zone in 1948, as Irtah is very close to the 1949 armistice lines. It is more likely that with the influx of refugees, resources became harder to come by and her family decided to move elsewhere in the Arab world voluntarily, as Arabs have for centuries.
Or Banks' family has been lying to her about why they left Palestine/Jordan.
Tulkarem grew and now contains Irtah as a neighborhood.
Palestinians were not "killed or imprisoned" for resisting losing their homes on either side of the Green Line.
This story is nothing less than an attempt to inject anti-Israel hate in an otherwise harmless article about meditation.
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Thousands of Israelis on Thursday evening attended the funeral for a yeshiva student killed in a West Bank terror attack, with mourners remembering him for his “light and love.”
The body of Dvir Sorek was found early Thursday with stab wounds outside the Migdal Oz settlement, where he studied at a seminary as part of a program combining religious study and military service. He was last seen Wednesday leaving Migdal Oz for Jerusalem to buy a book for a teacher.
“Dear precious, beloved Dvir, in a few days we were supposed to celebrate your 19th birthday,” Yoav Sorek, Dvir’s father, said at the funeral in the Ofra settlement. “I think of these 19 years and I can’t avoid smiling because your memory reminds me of a bright face, positive thought, innocence and love for humanity.
Yoav Sorek described his son as a “gift” that his family was privileged to enjoy for nearly 19 years and said his murder in no way tainted his “innocence.”
“A gift that spread light and goodness inside the family and outside of it. Without pretension and without cynicism. For this gift I have said and I will say again: God giveth and God taketh away,” he said.
“Evil lovers of death took your life, my Dvir, but they did not harm your innocence, light and love. You left us pure, and we will try to bring about light and goodness, to strengthen our family despite the pain and to choose life,” Yoav Sorek added.
As the funeral began, those in attendance sang songs in Sorek’s honor.
Fireworks being fired in Silwad, an Arab village near Ofra, during the funeral of Dvir Sorek the Yeshiva bochur/Soldier who was murdered last night in Gush Etzion. pic.twitter.com/eHFbjOeKAn
The father of Dvir Sorek, the yeshiva student found stabbed to death in a terror attack in the West Bank on Thursday, said he hopes that his son died quickly and without a prolonged struggle with his killers.
“I very much hope that it happened the way that I’m imagining it: That he was attacked from behind and wasn’t face to face with evil when he left this world,” Yoav Sorek told reporters outside his home on Friday.
“I [hope] he left the world purely,” he said. “I hope that he didn’t leave this world after an unsuccessful struggle with those that ambushed him.”
Yoav Sorek said the family was waiting to hear the conclusions of the initial investigation into his son’s killing.
“There’s nothing new about Jews being the targets of Arab terrorism,” said Sorek, who is the editor of the influential Tikvah Fund’s Shiloach Journal. “This is something that has accompanied us a long time.”
The body of Dvir Sorek was found early Thursday riddled with stab wounds outside the Migdal Oz settlement, where he studied at a seminary as part of a program combining religious study and military service.
Grandfather and grandson.
They were both murdered by terrorists just because they were born Jewish.
The grandfather, Rabbi Benyamin Herling, was murdered in October 2000. His grandson, Dvir Yehuda Sorek, was murdered early this morning.
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Elder of Ziyon
