Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, August 24, 2019

08/24 Links: Without Israel, the Middle East is lost; The myth of Jewish influence in the Democrat Party; Palestinian Rioters Again Raise Nazi Swastika on Israel-Gaza Border

From Ian:

For example, the Arab world contains around one-third of the world’s deserts. Most Arab countries have insufficient water resources, and poor water management, making the region especially vulnerable to desertification and drought. Israeli agricultural and water technology can resolve this problem.

However, the problem is that Arab hearts are full of conspiracy theories and Jew-hatred. According to the latest Pew research center study, 100% of Jordanian, 99% of Lebanese and 98% of Egyptians hate Jews.

This hatred is blinding Arabs to Israel’s contribution to the security of their countries and potential contribution to their economies. But then, the rest of the world has failed to see this as well.

Although Israel certainly needs to set out its case to the world, the world also needs to recognize the contribution Israel is already making in the Middle East, and open its eyes to the much larger potential. Israel on its own cannot do much to change Arab public opinion.

In conclusion, Israeli policy should not be defined by the narrow Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but mainly by the economic and security future of the wider Middle East, particularly Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.

What would the situation be today if the Golan Heights were under Syrian control? What would have happened to the security of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, etc., if Iran had established proxy militias in the Syrian Golan Heights? Would we see the rise of another terrorist group like Hamas and Hezbollah?

Above all Israel needs to see and think, remain strong and make sure that the Jordan Valley remains part and parcel of the Jewish state, indeed becoming its economic center and stays highly populated. The Middle East needs a strong Israel.

Klavan's One-State Solution: Give the Middle East to the Jews (2011)

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Victims of Arab Discrimination, Racism

The controversy surrounding the crackdown on illegal workers and businesses, and the increased fear in Lebanon that the Palestinian protests could plunge the country into violence and anarchy, are likely to escalate in the coming days: the Lebanese authorities appear determined to continue.

Lebanon's discriminatory and apartheid laws and measures against Palestinians are not new. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Palestinians in Lebanon are excluded from key facets of social, political and economic life. Palestinian refugees face legal restrictions that limit their rights, including the prohibition to work in 39 professions and to own property. Moreover, they have limited access to state-provided services such as health and education. Professions that remain prohibited for Palestinians include healthcare, engineering, transport, fishing, and the public sector and law.

It takes little imagination to predict the global uproar were, say, Israel to ban Arabs from working as engineers, can drivers, nurses or physicians. The international community and pro-Palestinian groups, however, seem distinctly indifferent about the plight of Palestinians in an Arab country.

While the Lebanese people's fear of Palestinian violence in their country is warranted, there is no reason why any Arab country should be subjecting Palestinians to discriminatory and apartheid regulations. The story of the mistreatment of Palestinians in Lebanon is a microcosm of a bigger problem: the Arab "betrayal" and "abandonment" of Palestinians.

It is time for the Arab countries to replace lip service to the Palestinians with deeds. It is also time for the international community and so-called pro-Palestinian groups to start reckoning with the real suffering of Palestinians, particularly in Lebanon.

08/23 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Getting to the bottom of a tragic 'disloyalty'; How an Australian sheepshearer’s al-Aqsa arson nearly torched Middle East peace

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Getting to the bottom of a tragic 'disloyalty'

There are many reasons why the Democrats and their Jewish supporters refuse to call out the anti-Jewish bigots on their own side and instead accuse President Trump, the most pro-Israel president in American history, of antisemitism.

As has also been demonstrated in Britain over the epidemic Jew-hatred within the Labour Party, there is an iron conviction on the left that they cannot be guilty of antisemitism because they are “anti-racists.” Their political identity is rooted in their belief that they are always on the side of virtue against evil-doers.

If they were ever to admit evil attitudes on their own side, their political and moral identity would collapse. So they turn reality inside out to defend the indefensible. And to protect themselves, they project their own evil onto their opponents. Thus, they falsely accuse President Trump of having the odious views of which their own side is guilty.

Nor can they admit that the Palestinian cause they support may be vile. The journalist Peter Beinart tweeted in defense of Miftah: “Frustrating to hear people who’d never heard of Miftah until today use its alleged sins to distract from deep injustice [Omar and Tlaib] were going to witness. As if an anti-white comment by SNCC (the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee which fought for black civil rights) justified segregation.”

Genocidal attitudes and attacks by Palestinians most certainly do justify the security measures Israel uses against them. Through this tweet, Beinart has not only supported a virulently antisemitic outfit, but also whitewashed the Jew-hatred and Israel-bashing of those it promotes — and promoted his own.

Such moral bankruptcy has become a pathology that is steady poisoning the Democratic Party against the Jewish people, towards which those American Jews who still support the Democrats are indeed displaying a most tragic disloyalty.

Caroline B. Glick: BDS is Primarily an Assault on American Jews

Given the context in which Trump made his remarks — that is, the Democratic Party’s open embrace of anti-Semites and anti-Semitic messaging — it is literally impossible for even a semi-literate person to misunderstand what he was saying.

Moreover, it is telling that the same people insisting that Trump’s statement was anti-Semitic are giving a pass to the Democrats for refusing to take any action to rein in their Jew hating members. It shows the disingenuousness of their sudden professed concern for anti-Jewish bigotry.

American Jews refuse to see what is happening to them while it is happening.

The likes of Tlaib and Omar are rendering them political non-entities. By attacking Trump, the main politician supporting them, while giving a free pass to the Democrats who are facilitating discrimination against them, American Jews are disenfranchising themselves. Democrats see they can abandon the Jews without consequence, and Republicans see that there is no point in sticking up for the Jews who will hate them no matter what they say and do.

This is a tragedy of epic proportions, first and foremost for the American Jewish community but really for America as a whole and for the Jewish people as a whole.

Left-wing antisemitism has had British Jews debating loyalty for years

The mainstreaming of antisemitic rhetoric within Labour’s ranks ushered in a debate within the Jewish community and beyond on whether it was ethical, sensible and — yes — loyal for Jews to continue to support Labour.

The Conservative cabinet minister Sajid Javid angered some Jews when, in a Rosh Hashanah greeting last year, wrote that when British Jews are feeling under threat from Corbyn, “all decent people” must “stand together and celebrate our Jewish community.” To critics, the implication was that Jews who support Labour aren’t decent.

Others have been more explicit. Fred Dalah, a 64-year-old Jewish businessman from Edgware in northern London, wrote in 2018 in the Jewish News of London that, “Jews who vote Labour are lambs to the slaughter.”

In addition to Sacks, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and three of the leading British Jewish newspapers have called Corbyn an existential threat to British Jewry. These warnings were designed to sound an alarm and prevent Corbyn from becoming prime minister. But they also emboldened British Jews and non-Jews to call out Jewish supporters of Corbyn as traitors.

At the same time, Corbyn’s supporters cite these loud warnings as a political attempt to weaponize antisemitism and sabotage a left-wing politician’s chances.

All this means that, in Britain, “Now you have the situation where there is good Jews, bad Jews, and good antisemites and bad antisemites,” said Dave Rich, head of policy at the Community Security Trust and author of a 2016 book, “The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and antisemitism,” during a speech in 2018. “I don’t think this is really going to work.”

Ruthie Blum: Right From Wrong: What Trump doesn’t understand about Jews

Contrary to the outcry on the part of his critics, Trump was not accusing Jews of being disloyal to America, but rather to themselves.

In his bull-in-a-china-shop way, he was inadvertently repeating the aphorism coined in the 1950s by social critic Milton Himmelfarb: “Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans.”

In other words, Trump was expressing shock and disappointment that Jews would willingly betray their own interests. In his eyes, this means that they must be ignorant of the direction in which the party they overwhelmingly support has been going. If not, they appear to be purposely sabotaging US relations with the single state established in their ancestral homeland to protect their people and serve as America’s buffer against hostile, anti-democratic forces in the volatile, strategically important region.

THOUGH TRUMP’S disillusionment may be understandable, it indicates that he doesn’t know much about Jews. This is peculiar, considering the massive amount of time he has spent around them throughout his life as a New York real estate guy and Hollywood reality TV star.

Here is what he doesn’t grasp: Only a handful of non-Orthodox Jews vote Republican; the rest pray at the altar of the Democratic Party, no matter what, even when the party turns against Israel.

This apparent oddity spurred my father, Norman Podhoretz – a lifelong liberal Democrat who became a conservative Republican – to write an entire book examining the phenomenon.

Pierre Rehov: Palestine - The Invention of a Nation

Was there a country called "Palestine" before 1948? Who really are the Palestinians? What was the connection between Nazism, communism, and Palestinian nationalism? Why do media always take Palestinians side against Israel? And so much more. Everything in this film is factual and can be checked. (h/t vwVwwVwv)

08/23 Links Pt1: Israeli Teenage Girl Killed in Bombing at West Bank Spring; Hamas lauds ‘heroic’ perpetrators of bombing; Cutting aid – be careful what you wish for

From Ian:

Israeli Teenage Girl Killed in Bombing at West Bank Spring

An Israeli teenage girl was killed and her father and older brother were wounded on Friday when a bomb was detonated at a natural spring near the West Bank settlement of Dolev.

The fatality was identified as 17-year-old Rina Shnerb, from the central Israeli city of Lod. Her father Eitan, 46, and brother Dvir, 21, were helicoptered to a hospital in Jerusalem for medical treatment. Neither is in life-threatening condition.

The late Rina Shnerb.

The IDF is conducting searches for the perpetrators of the attack.

The scene of the incident — the Bubin spring, a popular recreation spot — is located about halfway between Modi’in and Ramallah, adjacent to Dolev and the Palestinian village of Deir Ibzi.

It is believed that an improvised explosive device was planted on an access route to the site and later set off remotely when the Shnerb family was in its vicinity.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated, “On behalf of myself and the citizens of Israel, I send deep condolences to the family of young Rina Shnerb who was murdered in a harsh terrorist attack this morning, and wishes for a quick recovery to her father, Rabbi Eitan, and her brother Dvir.”

“We will continue to strengthen settlement,” Netanyahu added. “We will deepen our roots and strike at our enemies. The security arms are in pursuit after the abhorrent terrorists. We will apprehend them. The long arm of Israel reaches all those who seek our lives and will settle accounts with them.”

IDF chief: I believe in our ability to ‘quickly’ locate killers of Rina Shnerb

Security forces launched a large-scale manhunt throughout the central West Bank on Friday, after terrorists set off a bomb in a spring near the Dolev settlement, killing a teenage girl and seriously injuring her father and brother and the IDF chief said he believed they would apprehend the killers “quickly.”

“We are in the midst of a manhunt that is being led by troops from the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet security service and Israel Police. We are focusing our large operational intelligence effort to finding the perpetrators of this severe and deadly terror attack,” IDF chief Aviv Kohavi said at the site of the bombing on Friday afternoon.

At approximately 10:00 a.m., the explosive device was detonated at a natural spring, known as Ein Bubin, northwest of Ramallah, as three members of the Shnerb family from the central Israeli town of Lod were visiting.

The teenage daughter, Rina, 17, was pronounced dead at the scene. Her father, Eitan, a rabbi in Lod, and her brother Dvir, 19, were taken by military helicopter to a Jerusalem hospital in serious condition.

The army said an improvised explosive device was used in the attack. Police sappers determined that the bomb had been planted earlier at the spring and was triggered remotely when the family approached it.

Security services were reportedly tracking a car that fled the scene shortly after the explosion, believing it to have been used by the culprits.

From hospital, dad of murdered teen tells funeral: ‘We’re strong, will prevail’

Hundreds gathered Friday to bury Rina Shnerb, an Israeli teenager killed in a terrorist bombing in the West Bank earlier in the day. Her father, wounded in the attack along with her brother, was unable to attend but addressed mourners by telephone from his hospital bed.

“We are trying to be strong here in the Land of Israel, the people of Israel, Rina believed in that,” said Rabbi Eitan Shnerb. “Our response to the murderers is that we are here and we are strong and we will prevail.”

Shnerb, her father Eitan and 19-year-old brother Dvir were all wounded in the explosion at a natural spring outside the Dolev settlement. Shnerb was pronounced dead from her injuries, while her father and brother were hospitalized in serious condition.

“We’re in a war of love against hate and hope against despair. We came here in order to accompany our loved one,” said Eli Weissberg, Rina’s uncle, at the funeral in her home town of Lod.

Weissberg said Rabbi Shnerb had asked him to convey a message to the funeral: He “asked us only to deal with the strength and love we have and the wonderful nation we have here in this great land of ours,” said Weissberg.

Zionist protest SJP conference at UCLA

Last November, UCLA hosted the National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) conference, despite protests by those who don't want to see Israel destroyed.

There was something unusual to this conference, though: The organizers did not reveal the names of the speakers, for bogus "security" reasons:

Gurutam Thockchom, an SJP board member and third-year mathematics student, said they hoped the conference would promote discussion among student activists about human rights issues in Palestine.

Thockchom said SJP would not release the names of the speakers because of security concerns.

“The Israel and Zionist lobby have many ways to try to silence people who are speaking out in support of Palestine,” Thockchom said. “One of those ways is with blacklists and smear campaigns.”

One day, I'd love to know who has been silenced.

David Abrams, a lawyer who has gone after anti-Israel groups before, has filed a lawsuit against UCLA to reveal the names of the speakers.

Abrams told me, "My argument is that UCLA permitted the conference to go forward on the ground that there should be 'open debate.' In my view, 'open debate' does not mean that you get to make a public presentation on the campus of a public university in secret. "

"Moreover," he continued, "the public has a right to investigate UCLA's compliance with anti-terrorism laws."

Abrams is suing based on his information that UCLA has received grants from USAID and therefore
must regularly certify to the State Department that it does not provide material support to anyone associated with terrorism. Hosting a known terrorist speaker at a conference may be considered material support for terrorism. Abrams points out in the official complaint that SJP has previously hosted Khader Adnan, an admitted member of Islamic Jihad, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

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Elaph reports that a theatrical performance by the Cairo-based Commerce Faculty Theater Theater, entitled "Sobibor," has caused a storm of controversy among Egyptians, particularly in their cultural and artistic community.

There were brawls and clashes between the audience and some members of the theater team, which occurred during the National Theater Festival with the jury and critics looking on during the Wednesday performance.

During the show, there were verbal altercations between the audience and members of the theater group because of what members of the audience considered "bias in favor of Israel," and echoing the Jewish narrative about the Holocaust, "while the Israelis are practicing the same methods against the Palestinians."

The show defended Jewish victims of the Holocaust and called for sympathy for them regardless of their religious affiliation. This was apparently way too much for many in the audience.

If any more proof is needed that Arab anti-Zionism is antisemitism....

Critic Omnia Talaat accused the play of "defending Zionism, and trying to sabotage the minds of young people." She added that "Sobibor falsifies history and is begging for sympathy for the Jews of the Holocaust."

Awful, right?

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Boruch Dayan HaEmet: Mrs. Elder lost her father

Only eight months after her mother passed away, Mrs. Elder lost her father Thursday.

My blogging will be greatly reduced over the next week.

May we only have happy occasions.

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08/22 Links Pt2: NYPost: Dems are heading for a complete split with Israel; 'Our Boys' vs. 'Their Boys'; PBS Distorts the Truth About Gaza Violence

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: Dems are heading for a complete split with Israel

Meanwhile, Dems close their eyes to the pair’s blatant anti-Semitism, which is only growing after Israel’s decision. On Friday, for example, the two posted an anti-Israel cartoon by an artist known for drawings that mock Holocaust victims and feature anti-Semitic imagery. Outrage from Dems? Ha.

The pair also upped their “We Hate Israel” campaign. Tlaib teared up before the cameras over how her family members had to pass through “dehumanizing” checkpoints — with nary a word about how those stops are needed to prevent terrorism by Palestinians. Omar called for ending aid to Israel (which lets it buy US military equipment).

Where are the Dems who’ll stand up for the Jewish state against such attacks?

True, Democrats have been moving away from Israel for years now, a shift that makes little strategic — or moral — sense. If they continue to stick with Tlaib and Omar, the split will be complete.

The great 'non-visit'

I suggest that the visit would have been a nightmare for Israel, one with possibly far worse implications than might initially had been conceived. The two women are skilled demagogues, and everywhere they would have gone would have been an up close and personal indictment and delegitimization slugfest.

Israel would have been on the defensive, and as it often is, and not very effective or compelling in its responses.

The greater damage would have taken place on their return as the two would have sought to whip up anti-Israel sentiment in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party based on their personal experiences.

They would have pulled the center of gravity of the party toward the left-wing position (as they have been doing on several fronts), which is increasingly hostile to Israel.

While those who are upset with Israel’s decision believe it will weaken bi-partisan support (meaning Democratic support), the aftermath of the Magical Misery Tour would have been intense criticism of an “apartheid, colonialist regime.”

It is hard for many Israelis to understand just how toxic American political discourse has become. Given the Democratic hatred of all things Trump or Trump-related, Israel, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular, are walking around with targets on their backs. In the world of intersectionality, with designated victims and designated oppressors, Israel and, increasingly, Jews are being categorized as bad guys.

The visit would have heavily played into this narrative and mindset.

While we can never know the implications of that which did not happen, my strong intuition is that notwithstanding the current criticism, Israel dodged a bullet.

'Our Boys' vs. 'Their Boys'

The actors playing the roles of the hilltop youth do a professional job of convincing us that all young settlers are just as crazy as the young Haredi killer. The scenes involving the Israel Police and Security Forces are dramatized in a constantly negative light, as if the Israeli Authorities are conducting a cover-up, not wanting the truth to be discovered, making all of Israeli society seem responsible for the Arab boy’s murder.

All these decisions are deliberate directoral decision.

The director, Yosef Cedar, has allowed the main actor, playing the role of the investigating Shabak agent of the Jewish Division, only one facial expression throughout every scene, a constant sneer which seems to say, “Everything in Israel is corrupt and evil.”

In short, in this unabashedly leftist Israeli masterminded TV mini-series, the Jews are always the villains, and the Arabs always are the victims.

When you add to this the very deliberate use of one-sided dramatization, manipulated dialogue, slick camera angles which make the Jews look constantly guilty and the Arabs persecuted, plus professional editing favoring the Arab side of the story, scary music accompanying the Jews and sympathetic music heightening the injustices against the Arabs, with seasoned actors in tear-jerking performances portraying the victimized Arabs and no actors at all playing the three slaughtered Jewish boys and their families, you end up with a movie that is sure to win top awards in Hamas and Islamic Jihad film festivals and Cannes.

Of course, Israel’s Minister of Culture, Mir Regev, will raise her voice in protest, but no positive and truthful movies about the life of Israel’s brave and idealistic settlers are ever funded and therefore never made, leaving a vacuum for movies like “Our Boys” and their hateful propaganda to thrive.

The 1929 pogroms as reported in Palestine Bulletin

Read it all.

Here are some parts you may never had heard about:

The Arabs said, sure, we'll stop killing Jews - if you just throw away any possibility of a Jewish homeland. Otherwise, well, what do you expect?

As we know from harsh experience, murderous Arab mobs and their inciters are not likely to look at facts.

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It's Easier To Launch Semantic Tangents Such As 'Arabs Are Semites Too' Than Address Arab Antisemitism (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

It's Easier To Launch Semantic Tangents Such As 'Arabs Are Semites Too' Than Address Arab Antisemitism

By Rebecca Goldsmith, If Not Now activist

I always counsel my pro-Palestine allies to keep the focus of rhetoric on Islamophobic manifestations and anti-Muslim violence, especially from Israel, but it can be hard to maintain that focus when others bring up Arab enmity toward Jews. That's why my go-to tactic always involves dismissing such points with a wave of the hand and the assertion that since Arabs are also Semites, calling them antisemites makes no sense.

This rhetorical move leaves opponents confused, which gives us the opportunity to seize the initiative once again and return to blasting Israel for its racism and brutality. Better to silence them with historical incoherence than have to confront any justice to Jewish fears of Arab violence.

Now, anyone with even minimal education in the subject already knows that the term "antisemitism" always refers specifically to hatred toward Jews; the term itself was coined in nineteenth-century Germany as a euphemism because "hatred toward Jews" just sounds bad. Including Arabs in the mix only muddles the issue, but that is where we strike: in the muddle. A coherent argument is the worst enemy of a cause that rests primarily on emotionally charged distortions.

Anyone with slightly more than a minimal education also knows that the term "Semitic" refers to languages, not ethnicities; the Semitic group of language, which includes both Hebrew and Arabic, forms part of the larger Afro-Asiatic family of languages, meaning that a speaker of Arabic speaks a Semitic language, but that has no bearing on ancestry or race. As it appears in the term "antisemite," the term replaces the linguistic sense with a racial one. With just a little rhetorical sleight of hand, presto, Arabs are Semites too, and Zionists have no argument!

Good thing we have that tool available, too, because it's less convincing to deny centuries of Arab persecution of Jews than to undermine the way it's framed. The idea is not to concede any legitimacy to the notion of Jewish sovereignty as a necessity, lest the entire conceptual edifice of destroying Israel for the sake of everyone involved suffer irreparable damage. Regardless of our contention that Jews and Arabs lived harmoniously until Zionism, getting involved in a discussion of whether Jews suffered as an underclass at the hands of Arabs distracts from the essential point, so better to dismiss it with sophistry.

And you know I have credibility on this issue because I identify as a Jew and a Jew can't be antisemitic either.

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08/22 Links Pt1: Blood money -The PA has paid 2,692,500 shekels to terrorists who murdered 23 people

From Ian:

PMW: Blood money -The PA has paid 2,692,500 shekels to terrorists who murdered 23 people

16 years ago tonight, the 22nd of the Hebrew month of Av, 23 Jews were murdered in a suicide bombing while traveling on a bus in Jerusalem's Beit Yisroel neighborhood. Those murdered included 7 children. There were six terrorists directly involved in the attack, including the suicide bomber, two terrorists killed in an attempt to arrest them and three terrorists who are still in prison.

According to the calculations of Palestinian Media Watch, the Palestinian Authority has paid the imprisoned terrorists and the families of the dead terrorists, as payment for the murderous attack, a cumulative sum of 2,692,500 shekels ($764,482).

One of the more dominant terrorists who planned the attack was Majdi Za'atri who was sentenced to 23 consecutive life sentences and an additional 50 years. He alone, through June 2019, has been paid by the PA 706,800 shekels ($188,996).

Two other terrorist arrested at the same time have been paid the same amount. Accordingly, since the arrest of the three terrorists in August 2003, the PA has paid them, to date, a total of 2,142,300 shekels ($608,263).

Confronting UNRWA education antisemitism at the UN

The timing of the Palestinian Authority being called to task for antisemitism in its textbooks by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination coincides with the UNRWA mandate coming under debate for renewal every five years, since 1949.

This year, for the first time, there will be no automatic renewal.

What is the connection between the PA textbooks and UNRWA?

I personally interviewed Dr. Na’im Abu Hummus, who was then Palestinian education minister, at his office on August 1, 2000, the very day the first textbooks published by the PA curriculum were provided to UNRWA.

In that interview, Al-Hummus explained that the PA had contracted with UNRWA to function as the exclusive supplier of schoolbooks for all UNRWA schools in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem.

That day, the PA provided the Center for Near East Policy Research (CFNEPR) with its first 80 school books, and the center has over the last 19 years received and examined all 365 school books which the PA has supplied to UNRWA.

Conclusions? The CFNEPR has found that PA textbooks used by UNRWA have been indoctrinating virulent antisemitism into the hearts and minds of refugees from the 1948 War of Independence and their descendants.

Significance? UNRWA is responsible for the education of 321,000 students in 370 schools.

UN agency for Palestinians is too corrupt to save

The United Nations General Assembly renews UNRWA’s mandate every three years and is expected to rubber-stamp its extension this November. Perhaps the assembly would reconsider if UNRWA’s top donors — the European Union, Germany, Britain, and Saudi Arabia — made clear that their patience is at an end.

Instead, UNRWA donors should call on the UN to treat Palestinian refugees like all other refugees in the world and address their needs through the UNHCR, which is less prone to corruption, though still not immune. The provision of services to Palestinians in need would continue or even improve. The U.S. could incentivize the proposed reform by offering to restore most or all of its $360 million annual funding if the UNHCR takes charge.

Additionally, as President Trump’s special envoy Jason Greenblatt suggested, nearby countries hosting Palestinians should assume many of UNRWA’s responsibilities — with donor support — so that these populations can finally start building lives outside the camps.

Corruption within a self-serving and self-preserving bureaucracy is entirely predictable. UNRWA has become a vestigial organ, no longer serving its purpose of helping actual refugees. Eliminating a bloated, bureaucratic UNRWA and redirecting its work towards more efficient bodies determined to solve the problem will ultimately serve all interested parties. It would cause some pain, but it is better than condemning another generation of Palestinians to grow up in the camps, where they learn to blame Israel for their suffering.

What's Wrong with Advice for Dealing with Zionophobia on Campus? Part 1 (Victor Muslin)

A guest post by Victor Muslin. I have divided it up into parts - EoZ

A toxic anti-Israel climate on college campuses is on the rise. This increase in Zionophobia is a source of anxiety to Jewish students and their parents. Students are wondering what awaits them on campus and how to best navigate the hostile environment of academia. Parents are wondering what can be done to protect their children and combat Jew hatred at their school. With the next school year approaching, there has been no dearth of advice from professional advice-givers of mainstream Jewish organizations and well-meaning intellectuals. But how effective has this avalanche of advice been?

Recently I read a blog in the Times of Israel entitled "Before you head to campus, read this." The author acknowledges that "many campuses have become ground-zero for anti-Israel activism" and advises pro-Israel students "to be knowledgeable enough, open to talking with others in your circle, willing to grapple with complexity, and confidently owning your identity." When it comes to Israel, the advice is to "discuss with nuance and sophistication, not bombast" and to "understand that there is more to every student than where they stand on this issue. Disagreements on Israel shouldn’t be the only thing keeping individuals or student groups from interacting."

In broad daylight on Broadway in front of the main entrance to Columbia University campus. This is the reality of Jewish experience on a toxic anti-Israel campus. As a Jewish student, are you prepared to see this at the main entrance to your campus?

It is solid advice that might work well on campuses where pro-Israel students are confronted by peers who, as the TOI piece states, "may have never met a Jew before and for whom Israel is simply a faraway country." If only such open-minded peers who are genuinely ignorant about Israel were the main problem.

Unfortunately, this is not the reality on many problematic campuses and this sensible advice has a fatal flaw as it presupposes that one's opponents are acting in good faith, i.e., that they are fair people, sincere in their beliefs, open to examining whether these beliefs are based on the truth, and are willing to change their minds if shown contrary facts.

Protesters attempting to disrupt a talk at Columbia University by the Israeli UN Ambassardor Danny Danon. (click this caption for the videos)

If only it were possible to prevail in arguments by "discuss[ing] [Israel] with nuance and sophistication" as the article recommends. If only it were possible to educate by a calm presentation of facts and reason. If only it were possible to win sympathy by explaining what Israel means to the Jewish people who were exiled by the Romans and persecuted in the Diaspora. If only it were possible to win admiration by extolling the miraculous success of the tiny nation of refugees who, surrounded by enemies, overcame tremendous odds and who, by sheer hard work and intellectual brilliance, created amazing technologies and medical breakthroughs benefiting the entire world. If only it were possible to win empathy by pointing out how Israel has been always the first nation to help in a disaster, even when the disaster strikes its enemies. If only it were possible to win hearts and minds by dispelling lies. If only...

The level of Zionophobia fueled by BDS-inspired Jew hatred is not the same on every campus. Anti-Israel activities are concentrated in a small number of prestigious campuses popular with Jewish students; the larger the Jewish student population the more pervasive is the anti-Israel hostility. The worst anti-Israel schools tend to be prominent, prestigious universities that wield enormous influence and generate the largest amount of publicity. Averaging anti-Israel sentiment of Columbia University which had 108 incidents recorded by AMCHA or New York University which had 75 incidents with Appalachian State University which had 4 incidents or Bradley University which had 1 incident distorts the reality. It tempers what it feels like to be an isolated pro-Israel student on a campus with an active pro-BDS movement fueled by aggressive chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), IfNotNow and J Street U, where professors are anti-Israel propagandists, where Hillel eschews involvement beyond anodyne statements and serving Shabbat dinners to avoid antagonizing their liberal donors, and where the administrators—the supposed "adults in the room"—are intimidated by, if not openly complicit with, the students and faculty claiming for themselves the exclusive right to be the arbiters of human rights and social justice.

To appreciate the intensity of what pro-Israel students face on an actively anti-Israel campus, watch this excerpt from an excellent documentary "Hate Spaces: The Politics of Intolerance on Campus" or consider an article from the New York Post entitled "Israeli student at Columbia says she’s being bullied by Palestinian group" that stated,

"Ofir, the 24-year-old daughter of Israel Consul General in New York Dani Dayan, said she is harassed and threatened over her background by the group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and that the school is failing to protect her. 'SJP is violent,' she said. 'I’m worried about my personal safety.' The political science major had her initial run-in about a month into the fall 2017 semester, when she was in the lobby of Knox Hall — home to the Middle East Institute — having a phone conversation in Hebrew. 'A girl heard me and started screaming, "Stop killing Muslim babies! . . . You’re a murderer!" Ofir said. 'Then she screamed, "Zionist, get out!" A nearby public-safety administrator did nothing.'"

Are you prepared for pro-Israel events to be disrupted and be called "colonizers" and "baby killers"? Anti-Israel students disrupting a Columbia University event "Indigenous People Unite!" organized by Students Supporting Israel (click on the caption for the full article).

If you really want to know how it feels to be a pro-Israel student on a hostile anti-Israel campus imagine the opprobrium, scorn, animosity, ostracism, ridicule, harassment, and insults anyone openly advocating racist, misogynistic or homophobic views would face on a liberal campus. It is not an exaggeration. Israel is accused of every imaginable crime, such as apartheid, genocide, organ trafficking, testing weapons on children, testing drugs on Palestinian prisoners, stealing Palestinian water, poisoning Palestinian wells, raping Palestinian women and not raping Palestinian women (both accusations were made by the same academic!), police brutality against African Americans in the US—you name it—by the virulently anti-Israel academics and semi-professional student agitators, and not a word of criticism from the school's administration who routinely ignore or dismiss student complaints.

It is no surprise that in an environment like this students who express sympathy for Israel are treated as evil supporters of a bloodthirsty regime that has no right to exist and needs to be exterminated together with its supporters. Are these the people to whom the pro-Israel students are supposed to listen and with whom they are expected to engage in nuanced conversations?

Part 2 next week.

For more information about Zionophobia in academia and specifically at Columbia University and Barnard College, please visit https://www.cu-monitor.com/

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As Arab media marks the 50th anniversary of the arson attack by Australian Christian Denis Michael Rohan there is a lot of analysis to blame Israel.

This one from Al Resalah in English is similar to the Arabic articles out there.

On August 21, 1969, the Al-Aqsa Mosque was burned, the first of the two Islamic Qibla and the third major mosque that attracts the traveler. The Zionist entity claimed that a young Australian named Dennis Michael Rohan carried it out, but this incident came within the framework of a series of actions carried out by the Zionist occupation since 1948 with the aim of obliterating the Islamic civilization identity of the city of Jerusalem.

Golda Meir, then Prime Minister of the Zionist entity, said after the incident; "I did not sleep all night, I was afraid that the Arabs could enter Israel in big groups from everywhere, but when the sun rose the next day I knew that we can do anything we want!"

These words were the key to Zionist barbarism in the occupied territories.

The Golda Meir quote is, of course, a complete fabrication.

It has been mentioned in other Arab newspapers . It is even listed as a "famous quote" in the Arabic Wikipedia page for Golda Meir (without a footnote.)

If there is ever to be peace, the Arab side has to learn to distinguish between truth and falsehood. They argue with complete conviction the most absurd lies, but too many in the West believe the conviction and don't bother to check the facts.

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In 19th century Algeria, no worse insult than to call someone a Jew

Here's another in a never-ending series showing how Arabs and Muslims are lying when they say how wonderfully they got along with Jews in their countries.

This is from the 1890 book Winters In Algeria, by F.A. Bridgman:

The hatred which exists between Arab and Jew is very marked, and "Youdi" (damned Jew) is a term that he reserves for one of that race, and uses also when he wishes to exhaust, in one ejaculation, his vocabulary of curses against a member of his own persuasion.

There was one other interesting section:

The origin of the Arab's hatred to the Jews was a legend which he told with religious conviction. Mohammed the prophet owned a large park filled with gazelles; the favorite of these animals had horns and hoofs of pure gold, which attracted one day the eyes of a Jew. He gave chase, and running the gazelle down secured the precious metal.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Donald Trump said:

Five years ago, the concept of even talking about this – even three years ago – of cutting off aid to Israel because of two people that hate Israel and hate Jewish people – I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. … Where has the Democratic Party gone? Where have they gone where they’re defending these two people [Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar] over the State of Israel? … I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat – it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.

The CNN article linked above goes on to quote Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL and several other minor public Jews as saying that Trump is invoking the antisemitic “dual loyalty trope.”

The “dual loyalty trope” is far more than the idea that Jews care about Israel, see American and Israeli interests as aligned, and want US policy to be supportive of Israel. It implies that Jews would be willing to work against American interests in order to help Israel, to stab America in the back – as Hitler accused German Jews of doing to Germany – for their own purposes.

This is a pernicious doctrine, but there is no evidence that this is what he meant. Indeed, if the Jews were more loyal to Israel than the US, they would be more likely to vote against the party of Tlaib and Omar, Israel’s enemies, than for it.

Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, went farther:

If this is about Israel, then Trump is repeating a dual loyalty claim, which is a form of anti-Semitism. If this is about Jews being 'loyal' to him, then Trump needs a reality check. We live in a democracy, and Jewish support for the Republican Party has been halved in the past four years.

I think these responses are not just deliberate misunderstandings intended to attack Trump. I think that these people are really unable to understand his rather obvious intention, which is that Jews who support the Democratic Party are disloyal to the Jewish people. Not to America, not to Trump, but to the Jewish people.

So let me correctly translate his statement, with which you can agree or disagree: “the Democratic Party has tolerated, even embraced, the antisemitic and misozionist* Tlaib and Omar, and Jews who still support it are either ill-informed or disloyal to their own people.”

One could argue that this is not true, that the Democratic Party can be saved from going down the road traveled by Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, that there are elements in the party that are strongly opposed to their positions, that most House Democrats opposed Omar’s pro-BDS resolution and indeed passed one condemning BDS by a large margin, and so on. I don’t intend to discuss this here. My point is that an interpretation of Trump’s words as antisemitic is simply nonsensical.

There is a reason for the inability of these people to get the point. It is that at bottom they do not feel a part of a “Jewish people.” And they also don’t understand or don’t care that the conditions that enabled the Jewish people to survive in the diaspora no longer hold. Today, the survival of the Jewish people as a unique people in history depends on the survival of the Jewish state.

To those Jews whose worldview was inspired by the 19^th century reformers who believed that they could protect their communities from antisemitism and integrate them with non-Jewish society by insisting that Jews were not a people, but only a group sharing a common religion – Germans or Americans of the Jewish Persuasion so to speak – Trump’s remark was unintelligible.

Interestingly, even the Republican Jewish Coalition seems to have missed the point. It tweeted, “President Trump is right, it shows a great deal of disloyalty to oneself to defend a party that protects/emboldens people that hate you for your religion.” That’s wrong. The disloyalty Trump is referring to is not to “oneself,” but to one’s people. And they don’t hate us for our religion: they hate those of us who support a Jewish sovereign state in a place that they believe belongs only to Muslims. They see the Jewish people as a rival, even an enemy of theirs.

The PLO knows there is a real Jewish people and that it has a deep historical connection to Eretz Yisrael. They deny it because they would like the world to accept their false narrative, but they know that the Jewish people are the aboriginal inhabitants – the oldest extant indigenous people – of Eretz Yisrael, the Jewish ancestral homeland. Many American Jews do not know or care.

Trump himself probably thinks the responses were just attempts to attack him, and maybe that is a part of it. Trump, like Polemarchus in Plato’s Republic, seems to believe that “justice resides in helping one’s friends and hurting one’s enemies,” and doesn’t understand people who invert this idea, like the progressive Jews who subscribe to “Tikkunism.”

Because this post mentions Trump, I will get a lot of angry mail. But before you sit down at your keyboard to type all the adjectives that are so beloved of those who believe that Trump is the Devil, please understand that as usual, this post is not primarily about him. It is about the importance for Jews, even in the diaspora, to understand that they are a unique people, with a homeland that is theirs alone.

Trump is comfortable with nationalism, which American liberals have long since rejected, and it makes sense to him that members of a people would naturally want to stick up for their ancestral homeland, even while preferring to live somewhere else.

It makes sense to me too.

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*Misoziony is the extreme and irrational hatred of the Jewish state. It is antisemitism raised up one level of abstraction, although almost all misozionists are antisemites as well.

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