Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

10/16 Links Pt2: David Collier: UK GCSE textbook on Israel – full of errors, lies, distortion; BDS, Antisemitism, and Class; No Half Measures in Fighting Left Wing Antisemitism

From Ian:

David Collier: UK GCSE textbook on Israel – full of errors, lies, distortion

Beyond all acceptable norms
It is wrong to describe this as a textbook, and some of the distortions and omissions are beyond all logical understanding. Most of the damage is done in the early pages. Anti-Israel feeling works like a computer virus inserted into the base code. If you can shape the way the initial history is viewed, then you no longer need to worry how that person will see the defensive barrier or the blockade on Gaza. This is something anti-Israel activism has long understood, and whilst pro-Israelis spend most of their time justifying a clampdown on Hamas – anti-Israel activists are revising the timeline of the 1920s and 1930s. They know how this works.

There is no point listing every error. It would take a year to completely unpack a textbook such as this. The report chiefly deals with errors in the first chapter. I have just opened a random page and found additional errors in the description of the 1948 war. The book suggests the Israelis ‘broke the truce‘ after the first phase – which left it able to suggest that ‘once again, Israel broke the truce early‘ at the start of the third. Which would be fair if it were true. But Egypt launched a surprise attack on the 8th July, which renewed the hostilities and opened the second phase. (Morris, 1948 p273). Which once again begs the question – what is the source material for this book?

The manipulation of students
The book continues in similar fashion, Israel are always looking for the ‘excuse’ to fight. Students are manipulated through imagery, misleading maps and distorted statistics. The book’s exercises and suggested activities are all designed to reinforce the story the book is clearly trying to tell. During the Arab anti-British violence, the focus is on Arab victims and the unfair and harsh British attitude. When the Jewish people were violent, sympathies are switched. Suddenly the focus becomes the British victims. The book creates a hierarchy. Arabs>British>Jews. Through the provided exercises, the students are forced to swallow it. When the book wants to get its message across, it really is not shy about how it does it:

The distortion is all one way. As are the errors. This book fails the David Irving test. A book that is simply sloppy would make errors in both directions – this book NEVER does. The Irgun are openly and consistently described as terrorists. The PFLP are a ‘Guerrilla’ group and the Fedayeen could be classed as ‘freedom fighters’, depending on your ‘point of view’. The book does describe the violence of the Second Intifada but never uses the word terrorist to do so. Throughout the book, the word terrorist is (almost) exclusively reserved for Jewish actions.
Needing answers for a textbook such as this

To explain the massive influx of immigrants into Israel, the book describes how growing antisemitism in the Arab countries was ‘making it dangerous’ for Jews in Arab lands. The Mizrahi Jews ‘asked to leave’. The cause given was the 1948 conflict – not rising Arab nationalism. The book continually ignores all the pre-Zionist antisemitism – and any Arab motivation for violence other than opposition to Zionism – because it doesn’t fit the narrative. The destruction of Jewish civilisation in dozens of countries across the Middle East and North Africa is not mentioned.

We need to take stock of this. This type of damage is far larger than some meeting of ageing Marxists in a local scout hall – and much more insidious. How many times is this type of material entering our schools. How many children have sat through this course? In truth we need to work out how this book was ever considered acceptable. We really do need answers.

Children’s Book Reading Prompts Legal Action Against Borough in Central New Jersey

A controversy that began last summer, pitting community library-event planners in a New Jersey suburb and various Palestinian sympathizers against a Jewish community, is now moving into the legal arena.

The almost 20-year-old Central Jersey Jewish Public Affairs Committee (CJJPAC)—a pro-Israel advocacy organization headed by Dr. Marc Hanfling and Marc Kalton, in concert with Zachor Legal Institute, an anti-BDS legal think tank—is launching action against both the borough of Highland Park, NJ, and its library. The suit will center on the library’s planned book reading of P Is for Palestine, an alphabet book written for young children by Golbarg Bashi, a professor of Middle East Studies.

In its current form, the book is thought to be an adaptation of a Palestinian teacher manual, designed to indoctrinate children to vilify Jews and Israel, as well as advocate for the destruction of the Jewish state. It is widely considered to be antisemitic in nature, and includes the phrase “I Is for Intifada” (for the letter “I”; each letter of the alphabet matches a phrase with the respective letter), which, according to the book, means “to stand up for what is right.”

However, the word “intifada” means something else to Jews and to Israeli law. In Jerusalem district court documents (Shurat Hadin), the word was defined in 2018 as a premeditated terror and murder campaign, the second of which justified claims for damages to the Palestinian Authority from terror victims and their families.

The book event was initially set to take place in June, but was delayed due to a significant backlash from the Jewish community. After canceling a planned public meeting on the topic because of concerns regarding potential violence and an insufficient location to hold the event, library personnel, with borough leadership, announced a closed-door compromise, paving the way for the event to go on.

BDS, Antisemitism, and Class

Contemporary antisemitism has the ability to graft itself onto a variety of causes and movements. But the social and information environment in the US and Europe is strongly conditioned by virtue-signaling among elites and increasingly among portions of the middle class. Antisemitism, in part through BDS-fueled antipathy toward Israel, is becoming a signal of middle class respectability. At the same time, though left-wing Western elites remain strongly anti-national, the working classes and other parts of the middle class are becoming renationalized. These and other class conflicts will shape antisemitism in the next decades.

Class has emerged as one of the most important features of global politics. Predictably, antisemitism and the boycott-Israel movement are enmeshed in class-based patterns of belief and behavior – but some of these patterns are new and counter-intuitive.

One unique feature of the BDS movement, consistent with antisemitic movements historically, is the ability to graft itself onto other contemporary concerns and movements. Three to four years ago in North America the equation was between the burgeoning Black Lives Matters movement and the Palestinian experience under the Israeli “occupation,” and moving from there to alleged connections between American and Israel “police” violence.

In the past year the migration crisis on the US southern border was the cause célèbre, with American “concentration camps” equated with the Palestinians’ “open air prison” of Gaza. Now, with the rise of “climate change” (rebranded from “global warming”) as the latest moral panic, the BDS movement has taken to equating portents of climate damage with the environmental “crisis” in Gaza.

It is tempting to dismiss such blatant hijacking as a variant of the much-parodied left-wing trope “world ends tomorrow; women, minorities hardest hit.” But the pattern indicates that the BDS movement sees an advantage to the strategy. The now well-documented association of ersatz grassroots organizations such as IfNotNow with incubators that train and fund-raise for a variety of far left causes demonstrates that at least some parts of the BDS movement are instruments for broad spectrum social mobilization. That these are aimed at Jews and Jewish interests demonstrates further that antisemitic agitation remains a useful revolutionary strategy. And as always, Jews are given the choice of either joining the revolution for “justice” or being condemned for their tribal adherence to retrograde parochial causes.

There is growing evidence that in Western social and information environments saturated with virtue-signaling, such strategies are having some success with members of the image-conscious, predominantly white middle class. Class attitudes are being set by a limited number of sources from the elite, interlocking media-education-NGO sector, which is to say coastal universities, celebrities, late night television hosts, “human rights” organizations, minority activists, and, increasingly, K-12 teachers. Perceptions of grievance, real and imagined, are the primary drivers in a victimhood arms race, where the reliably malleable notion of “social justice” has been weaponized against the foundations of the middle class itself. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Kate Millet (left) and Phyllis Chesler (right), 1972 (photo: courtesy Phyllis Chesler)

Phyllis Chesler is a puzzling figure. She’s an academic and a feminist, so she can’t be on the right. She won’t "hate on" Jews or Israel, so she's can't be on the left.

That makes Phyllis Chesler a problem. Which is a compliment. No one is thinking for Chesler; her thoughts are her own: they’re original.

A leader of the feminist movement, and embedded as she is in the thick of academia as Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at City University of New York, Professor Chesler is obstinate in her refusal to jump on the intersectional bash-Israel bandwagon. And she fights against antisemitism.

Now, when you look at the sad state of today’s limited discourse, with seems confined to two very loud competing narratives, Chesler’s originality is compelling, attention-getting. And this is what makes Phyllis Chesler interesting to read. She is not preaching to the choir: how can she as a soloist?

We may not be able to fit the best-selling author, retired psychotherapist, expert courtroom witness, and founding member of the International Committee for Women of the Wall into a slot. Not ours. Not theirs. But if you try to fit this distinctive peg into your one-size-fits-all slot, Phyllis Chesler will be sure to correct you, as she did this author, during the intimate question and answer session that follows:

Varda Epstein: You were a leader in the Second Wave feminist movement in the United States. In your memoir “APolitically Incorrect Feminist,” we can see you rubbed elbows with some of the most important names in that movement. What do you think of Gloria Steinem’s recent criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu in which she calls him a bully for his application of Israel’s No Entry Law with regard to Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib? (See https://www.facebook.com/GloriaSteinem/posts/10156303734472854)

Phyllis Chesler: I didn’t just “rub elbows.” I taught, I learned, I co-wrote articles and planned conferences together with some of the best minds of my Second Wave feminist generation, the pioneers, both known and unknown. Also, I have written about feminist anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism at length in hundreds of articles and in some books, for example: In “The New Anti-Semitism” (2003); “The Death of Feminism” (2005); and in “A Politically Incorrect Feminist” (2018).

I am deeply saddened and outraged by the leftward turn taken by so many feminists and feminist leaders, the extent to which their concern with anti-black racism and transgenderism trumps their concern with sexism. As I’ve written many times before, the institutional feminist movements in the West have been Palestinianized and many, but not all, are often more concerned with the occupation of a country that does not exist than with the occupation of women’s bodies and minds globally.

Phyllis Chesler on the cover of the New York Times Magazine with Kate Millett, Alix Kates Shulman, Ann Snitow, and Ellen Willis, 1990 (photo: courtesy Phyllis Chesler)

Varda Epstein: How are we to understand what seems to be a wave of antisemitism in the women’s movement, for instance among the leaders of the Women’s March?

Phyllis Chesler: The anti-Israel propaganda kicked in minutes after Israel won its 1967 war of self-defense. The well-funded cognitive war has borne its poisoned fruit. Neither Israel nor pro-Israel Jewish organizations launched a Stuxnet-like virus to combat this campaign. I know because I kept advising individual feminists, Jewish feminist magazines, Jewish-American organizations, Israeli diplomats and organizations—from the 1970s on, that this cognitive war was essential. Today, three Islamist leaders have announced a new global channel to focus on Muslim realities. We do not yet have an Al-Jazeera for Israel and the Jews—one that would cover the world and simply not lie about Israel and the Jews. The Israeli government and the IDF media have gotten somewhat better in terms of getting out our side, (the truth) more quickly. We are still mainly playing defense, not offense. Absent a miracle, we, too, will need massive funding and about fifty years to catch up in terms of the demonization campaign against Israel which continues the world’s long, long history of Jew hatred.

Debating anthropologist Margaret Mead on Feminism, 1977 (photo: courtesy Phyllis Chesler)

Varda Epstein: How does your work in the field of psychology inform your politics?

Phyllis Chesler: It doesn’t. I judge a political actor by what they do, not by what they say or by what the media attributes to them. I cannot psycho-analyze a political candidate from afar. I do have ethical standards that I bring to bear on the political process. In general, it does not interest me; rather, it terrifies and repulses me because so many politicians lie and are corrupt. There are too few statesmen and women on the horizon today. The Big Lies exist on both sides of the aisle and only if one is quite expert in a few specific areas can you begin to suspect what the highly partisan media might be revealing.

Congressional Briefing on Custody Battles. From left to right: Chuck Schumer, Barbara Boxer (both congresspeople who later became senators), Phyllis Chesler, and Nancy Polikoff, 1986 (photo: courtesy Phyllis Chesler)

Varda Epstein: Would you still describe yourself as a liberal? How have your colleagues responded to your latest positions on Israel and Islam?

Phyllis Chesler: I am not a liberal. Never have been. I am a radical. I try to think deeply—go to the root of any given subject. My colleagues have demonized and defamed me; refused to publish or read me; no longer trust me on all those issues that I myself have pioneered due to my position on Israel and on Islam. I have encountered very painful Holocaust denial as well as lies about Israel among some feminists—while other feminists refuse to take an informed or principled position. They remain bystanders, just as many a good European, good German, did, afraid of the Mean Girls bullies among them. Evil succeeds when good women do nothing.

Phyllis Chesler calls this 1972 photo by Jill Krementz: "The female author as Heathcliff," 1972 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)

Varda Epstein: Are you a Zionist? What does Zionism mean to you? Should every Jew live in Israel?

Phyllis Chesler: too many questions wrapped into one. Of course, I am a Zionist. Zionism is the liberation movement of the Jewish people and a return to our Biblical homeland. I cannot decide for every Jew. I once wanted to live in Israel very much but that proved impossible—and the reasons for it are meant for another article or interview.

With Israeli flag at the Sea of Galilee, 1973 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)

Varda Epstein: I read your book, “An American Bride in Kabul,” where you detailed how you married a fellow student, a Muslim, and ended up Kabul, imprisoned in his family home. The whole time I couldn’t stop thinking of what it must have meant to your family. They were orthodox, he was a Muslim, you had clearly made a bad decision. Did you think about them at all when you made your decision? Were you able to make peace with them, after the fact?

Phyllis Chesler: In retrospect, I believe it was bashert, dare I suggest that it may even have perhaps been divinely orchestrated. I cannot think of another or more humbling reason to explain that misguided adventure. The lessons I learned, what I’ve made of that unusual experience, have ultimately allowed me to understand that certain barbaric customs are indigenous and not caused by imperial, western intervention; that jihadists are not freedom fighters; that the largest practitioner of gender and religious apartheid are Muslim cultures and/or leaders; that one of the things that is NOT new about anti-Semitism in our time is the Islamic version of it. This is what is rising against us on the streets of Europe, in the media, at the UN, and on campuses in the West. Of course, the progressive intelligentsia and old-fashioned anti-Semites have joined forces with the Islamic world, thus creating yet one more perfect storm in terms of Jew-hatred.

I “left” my family in many stages: when I joined Hashomer Ha’tzair in 1948, very much against their will; when I was not Bat Mitzva’ed (girls in Orthodox families did not have this ceremony in Borough Park in 1952–that’s when I ate non-kosher food for the first time—and did not die). I continued “leaving” them as I read more and more books, sang with bands in HS, and then left for good when I refused to even apply to Brooklyn College and instead attended Bard College on a full scholarship. I had no intention of remaining in Kabul. My family never cut me off. My wily mother knew I’d be back. They accepted me. And we continued on in our separate but eternally and genetically joined ways.

Phyllis Chesler's Afghan passport. It is colored bright orange. (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)

Varda Epstein: You saw, up close and personal, the bad side of Islam. What do you think of Islamic reform? Is it possible? Can it catch on? Is there anyone in particular you think is on the right track in that regard?

Phyllis Chesler: I did not see the “bad” side of Islam. I saw Islam in situ, in practice, pre-Taliban. Illiterate, rural Muslims; privileged, educated Muslims, have, in general, been taught to feel superior to infidels whom they are also taught to despise and whom they ceaselessly try to convert. Islam has been spread over 14 centuries via the sword, Buddhists used to populate Afghanistan—Islamic history is a conquering history of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and apartheid.

Of course, definitely, there are Muslims who are dissidents, pro-Israel, feminists, or gay, who are both religious and anti-religious; many Muslims are kind, charming, creative, agnostic, or have converted to another religion. This is a capital crime. I know and have worked with and learned from such Muslim individualists, many of whom are heroic and have been persecuted by their families, mullahs, leaders—and by a Western politically correct intelligentsia. Islam is not a race. It is a political, military, and social ideology which, at this moment in world history has either come into its medieval own or has been even further perverted by totalitarian tyrants.

In which Phyllis Chesler is "beamed up into Teheran and translated into Persian," 2005 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)

Chesler with Ayaan Hirsi Ali at a conference on Honor Based Violence, NYC, 2008 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)

Varda Epstein: You went from fighting for abortion rights to writing about antisemitism and the demonization of Israel. How do you square these ideas? Where are you religiously on Jewish thought and practice?

Phyllis Chesler: And in between these two subjects, I researched and lectured on violence against women (rape, incest, domestic battery, pornography, and prostitution); wrote about becoming a mother; studied and published works on divorce and custody battles, and the nature of commercial surrogacy, woman’s inhumanity to woman. I spent a blessed quarter-century of Torah study, published some Devrai Torah—and then, inevitably, wrote about a subject with which I’ve been engaged since the early 1970s—anti-Semitism. I “square” these subjects and all those that have come since then, including my critique of Women’s Studies and my four studies about honor-based violence, particularly honor killing, as the work of a very inquiring and engaged Jewish mind, heart, and soul.

I attend an Orthodox shul right around the corner. The community is modern, the women are mainly all accomplished, professional career women, some of us attend Torah shiurim. I am privileged to be among them. What more is there to say?

Keynote panel at the first-ever Speak-Out on Rape. Phyllis Chesler and Florence Rush, 1971 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)

Bringing a Torah to Jerusalem with fellow Women of the Wall. Left to right: Phyllis Chesler, Rivka Haut, Shulamit Magnus, JFK, 1989 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)

Chesler hosts Phillip Karsenty. She calls him "the Alfred Dreyfus of our time." 2007 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)

Talking about Antisemitism at Lincoln Square Synagogue (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)

Varda Epstein: You have achieved a great deal in your 78 years. What goals do you have for the future? What work remains for you to do?

Phyllis Chesler: My work will never be done, not in this life, nor in the next one. I have joy and purpose in my work and thus, have been blessed.

Phyllis Chesler (author photo: Joan L. Roth)

***

Read more Judean Rose interviews:
Otzma Yehudit’s Dr Adva Biton: Finding Strength to Fight for Others

Ryan Bellerose: Indigenous Has Nothing to Do with Time and Everything to Do with Connection

Akiva Fuld: “I’m Doing This For Me”

A Father Speaks Out: The Murder of Malki Roth and the Refusal of Jordan to Extradite the Beast Ahlam Tamimi (Arnold Roth)

Israel's Jewish Indigenous Land Rights: A Conversation with Nan Greer, Part 1

Israel's Jewish Indigenous Land Rights: A Conversation with Nan Greer, Part 2

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

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Zion, will you not ask after the welfare of your prisoners,
Who seek your welfare, and are the remnant of your flock? – Rabbi Yehuda Halevi

Israel still doesn’t have a government, and Turkish planes and artillery are striking civilian targets in Kurdish towns in northeast Syria, while Syrian Sunni militias fighting on behalf of Turkey clash with Kurdish fighters. My newspaper this morning mentioned these things, but pages and pages were devoted to another subject: Na’ama Issachar.

Na’ama, 26, was returning to Israel from India in April of this year, but when she changed planes in Moscow, a dog detected a small amount (less than 10 grams) of marijuana in her luggage. She was arrested, and at first charged with possession, a crime that normally draws a sentence of about a month in jail and a fine, if it is prosecuted at all. But at some point, the Russians decided to change the charge to drug smuggling, and last Friday she was sentenced to 7-1/2 years in prison.

The charge is ridiculous. Na’ama did not even have access to her luggage as she waited in the airport’s transit zone. She did not pass the border control. Can you convict someone of “smuggling” when they have not entered your country? Apparently the Russians can.

In a cute touch, the Russians scheduled court hearings for her case on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

Na’ama was born in the US and moved to Israel when she was 16. She served in the army, and like many – virtually all – young Jewish Israelis, she wanted to travel the world and have adventures before settling down. She did not plan on this kind of adventure.

Some say that she was stupid to travel with any marijuana at all. In retrospect it was a bad idea, although as far as she knew, she and her luggage were going to Israel, where possession of less than 15 grams is not generally enforced, and possession of small amounts for “personal use” is punishable only by a smallish fine. And she certainly didn’t expect that her freedom would become a bargaining chip in a larger international drama.

The rub is that Israel is poised to extradite to the US a real Russian criminal, a hacker named Alexey Burkov, who is accused of stealing millions of dollars from Americans in a credit card scheme. He was arrested while visiting Israel in 2015 – he says he was “hijacked” although innocent – and held for extradition. The Israeli Supreme Court has approved the request, and he is expected to be shipped off to the US, whose federal justice system is known to be severe (ask Jonathan Pollard or Bernie Madoff). The Americans want Burkov badly and there are no further legal obstacles to his extradition.

Russia is more like a combination of a medieval kingdom and the Cosa Nostra than an actual country, and Burkov apparently has powerful friends who do not want to see him spend the next 20 or 30 years in an American federal penitentiary. They would like Israel to “extradite” him to Russia instead of the US, and they have let it be known that if that happens, maybe Na’ama will have her sentence reduced. Since she is both Israeli and American, she is the perfect hostage.

PM Netanyahu will raise the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That will put Putin in an interesting position. The government of Israel doesn’t want to irritate the Americans, so maybe they will find something else that Israel can give Russia in return for Na’ama. Or maybe not, in which case a way will be found to send Burkov to Russia.

Israel has a relationship to its children like no other nation. No culture that I am acquainted with dotes on them to the same extent, from the time they are born until well into adulthood. The national feeling about Na’ama is a complicated story, involving the commandment to redeem captives (pidyon shvuim) and the echoes of history, including the Holocaust. It’s often said that our soldiers are “everybody’s children” and she falls into that category. Like Gilad Shalit, who was held captive by Hamas for five years before Israel fought a war and ultimately traded more than 1000 convicted terrorists for him, including mass murderers, the Jewish nation will not let her sit in a Russian prison.

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10/16 Links Pt1: How Israel Helps Uphold the U.S.-Backed Liberal International Order; Turkey’s Assault on the Kurds: The Silence of the Islamists; Europe Must Do the Right Thing on Hezbollah

From Ian:

How Israel Helps Uphold the U.S.-Backed Liberal International Order

Seeking to reverse decades of diplomatic isolation, and in response to increasing hostility from Western Europe, Jerusalem in recent years has cultivated better relations with a variety of states, including some with unsavory rulers—ranging from the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. While such a policy has provoked sharp criticism in some quarters, Seth Cropsey and Harry Halem explain that a small country like Israel does not have the luxury of disdaining potential allies, and, moreover, continues to do much to support American interests and with them the “liberal international order,” such as it is. Take the fraught case of its relations with Russia:

Small powers such as Israel illustrate the liberal international order’s pathology. The Jewish state in particular feels the existential edge of political competition, having faced annihilation from its inception. Today, Iran is Israel’s greatest adversary. A unique blend of Shiite supremacism and Persian imperial revanchism drives Iran’s leaders to recover Sassanid and Safavid lost glory.

Rather than striking Iran directly, Israel has opted to attack its network of proxies that stretch from the Tigris to the Levantine basin. However, the United States no longer dominates the region’s airspace. Any Israeli action against Iran requires Russian assent as a simple geographical fact. This situation will persist indefinitely, as America shows no desire to challenge the Russian presence in Syria. So Israel must work with Russia if it hopes to combat Iranian expansion—as a matter of course, small powers must search for other options during periods of strategic turmoil, whatever their ideological preferences may be.

The irony is that Israel’s cognizance of Russian interests actually furthers American security goals. Iran poses a threat to the United States irrespective of its alliance with Israel. If a hostile power were to control the Middle East, it could sever the U.S.’s sea lines of communication and supply, preventing effective coordination between American forces and allies in Europe and Asia. Moreover, it could use its oil exports to threaten the reliance of U.S. partners on oil imports, such as Japan.

It is therefore no surprise that the U.S.’s interest in a stable Middle Eastern balance of power has persisted since the 1940s. But the age of imperial dominion has passed. America cannot govern as Britain and France once did. It must work with and through local actors. Critically, every attempt that the U.S., or any Western power, has made to court the “Arab street” has failed irrespective of support for Israel.

Gen. Kuperwasser: The U.S. Commitment to Israel Is Different from Its Commitment to the Syrian Kurds

IDF Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of the IDF Military Intelligence research division, told JNS that the strengthening of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated extremist Sunni forces in northeast Syria "should disturb us." He stressed that Turkey had launched its offensive with "problematic, radical forces."

Kuperwasser predicted that "if the Kurds feel distressed, and American pressure can't stop the Turks, they will try to link up with Assad, as well as with the Russians and the Iranians." The Kurdish-led Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) signed such a cooperation agreement with the Assad regime on Sunday.

While Israel can provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian Kurds and also apply diplomatic pressure, military intervention is out of the question, said Kuperwasser, director of the Project on Regional Middle East Developments at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Kuperwasser insisted that the events in northeast Syria will have no direct repercussions on U.S.-Israel relations. "The depth of the U.S. commitment to Israel is very different" from its commitment to the Syrian Kurds.

He added that while Israel "is acting decisively to prevent an Iranian base in Syria, what is important in this context is that the American economic pressure on Iran continues."

"Despite pinpoint [Iranian] achievements on the ground, the infrastructure of Iran is still eroding. They can't hold on for a long time without money. It all costs money in the end."

Seth Frantzman: From Iran to Turkey, US browbeaten by 'war' narrative

During the run-up to the Iran deal in 2015, the main narrative put forward by those who supported it was that if the US did not do a deal then there would be a “war.” During the phone call between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US President Donald Trump, reports indicate, the same “If you don’t do this, there will be war,” threat was used.

US foreign policy has increasing been hostage to the notion that the US must cater to both allies and adversaries to avoid wars. Oddly, those countries, including Turkey and Iran, are able to bluff their way into things by alleging they are prepared for war with the United States. There is no evidence that either country is willing to risk a real conflict with the US, but their threshold for claiming they do is higher than the US, and they have learned that after decades of foreign wars Washington is more cautious about new tensions.

In 2015 the Obama administration presented a claim, through a sophisticated network of op-eds and surrogates sent to speak to media, which argued that “the only alternative to the Iran nuclear deal is war.” An April 2015 piece at The Atlantic noted that the alternative could be a “substantial war.” In May 2018, when Trump left the Iran deal, the BBC reported that a possibility might be a “new and catastrophic regional war.”

Turkey presented the US with a threat that Turkey would begin its operation regardless of the US presence and begin bombing US partners on the ground, the 100,000-strong Syrian Democratic Forces that the US had helped train since 2015 to fight ISIS.

Trump agreed to let Turkey conduct its “long-planned operation” to attack peaceful towns and cities that the US had enjoyed being stationed next to. Turkey has become proficient at using threats against Western powers to get them to do what it wants. It threatened to send 3.6 million refugees to Europe if the EU critiqued its operation. Is it normal for US allies to threaten to send refugees forcefully into their countries to punish them for policies?

Pointing out that Palestinian textbooks erased all mention of peace agreements is "incitement" and "racism" according to PA

Six weeks ago, I noted that the latest review of Palestinian textbooks revealed that they removed nearly every reference to peace agreements with Israel.

Israeli media caught up with the story last week.

(Seriously, journalists, is it that hard to actually read the report rather than regurgitate the press release?)

Anyway, the weekly Palestinian review of Israeli media highlighted the stories about Palestinian textbooks as a prime example of "incitement" and "racism" in Israeli newspapers and TV shows.

Pointing out the fact that Palestinians have erased mentions of peace with Israel from their textbooks is considered "incitement!"

As always, in honor/shame societies, the perception is more important than the truth. When the truth is embarrassing, revealing it is "shameful" and therefore it is "incitement" and "racism."

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

Every Palestine Museum artifact from before 1850 is about Jews, not Arabs

I have been looking at the online digital archives of the Palestine Museum where you can search under lots of criteria.

The museum says it has over 70,000 artifacts indexed, which sounds like an impressive number, until you look a little closer.

For example, about 7000 of those artifacts comes from a single person, a teacher named Nabīl ‘alqam, who would wrote individual Arabic proverbs on single pieces of paper - and donated the entire collection.

'Alqam also printed out some other folktales, like this one called "The Fart."

If you look at the oldest pieces in the collection, there are only four artifacts supposedly from before 1850.

Two of them are miscategorized. This photo of a mosque in Lod is probably from 1981, not 1081:

This wedding photo is not from 1847 as it is listed. Maybe early 1900s.

That leaves two artifacts from before 1850, both of them Latin maps.

One is a 1651 map of Biblical Canaan.

The other is a 1838 map of Palestine, showing the land divided up by the Jewish tribes.

Both of these maps feature sites from the Jewish Bible. They have no Arab place names that I can find.

The more the "Palestine Museum" puts out, the less it appears that there is anything that can be remotely called Palestinian history that existed before Zionism.

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Israel has been enforcing a no-man's land buffer zone between 100 and 300 meters from the Gaza fence, to ensure that Hamas or other terror groups do not try to infiltrate into Israel.

The weekly Gaza riots have been inside this buffer zone.

After 18 months of the riots with limited Israeli responses, Hamas has decided to make their children into human shields once again.

It has built a playground within the buffer zone, practically inviting Israel to shoot at Gaza children.

In a major ceremony this week, the playground - called Al Awda (Return) Park - was inaugurated with speeches from people who noted explicitly that the park was built as a challenge to Israel, not a needed place of recreation for kids.

Officials say that they plan to build more in the buffer zone.

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10/15 Links: Israel and Kurdistan - time for an alliance of the ages; UNRWA in trouble; Fatah official calls for “escalation” so Israelis will “pay a heavy price every day”; Failed mass murder in Germany's dysfunctional liberal democracy

From Ian:

Israel and Kurdistan - time for an alliance of the ages.

The Kurdish experiment, in at least the territory's current quasi-independence, has shown the world a decent society where all its inhabitants, men and women, enjoy far greater freedoms than can be found anywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world.

The Jewish state must now, more than ever, not ignore the 35-40 million Kurds, who remain stateless and shunned by the world and who seek, at last, the historic justice they have craved for centuries, nay millennia, but have been denied; an independent Kurdish state of their own.

According to an article titled "Can Israel make it alone?" written some years ago by James Lewis in the American Thinker, Lewis wrote: "Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests - like survival." He realized that with the stark reality of a profoundly unfriendly Obama Administration towards the Jewish state, creating facts on the ground was more important than ever. He wrote:

"If the United States abandons the Jewish State, Jerusalem will have to seek new alliances." Fortunately that is what Prime Minister Netanyahu successfully and largely has achieved. Since then Israel enjoys the friendliest American President it has ever experienced, but there is never any guarantee that a president will succeed to a second term.

Turkey has now chosen to break its alliance with Israel and instead has sought alliances with rogue states such as Iran and Syria, along with the Hamas occupied and terrorist infested Gaza Strip. Under Erdogan it has turned on Israel with a viciousness that is quite desolating. It is a nation turning its back upon the Ataturk secular revolution of the 1920s. Instead, it is sliding remorsefully back to the 7th century mindset and cesspit that so many of its neighbors wallow in.

Israel should advance the restoration of a profoundly just, moral and enduring pact with the Kurdish people, and assistance towards creating a future independent State of Kurdistan. An enduring alliance between Israel and Kurdistan would be a vindication of history, a recognition of the shared sufferings of both peoples, and bring closer the advent of a brighter and strategically stronger future for both non-Arab nations.

UNRWA in trouble

UNRWA’s mandate from the General Assembly comes up for renewal every three years. Due to expire in June 2020, it was renewed during the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, which came to end on September 30, 2019. Nothing has emerged in the media to suggest that Guterres’s investigation into the ethics report came up in the discussions.

Speaking during the 42nd session of the UN Human Rights Council on September 23, 2019, former UNRWA general counsel James Lindsay declared that the agency must evolve or dissolve. UNRWA’s major structural problem, he said, is its unique definition of who qualifies as a refugee. This differs fundamentally from the definition used by the UNHCR, which is responsible for all other refugees around the world. By not demanding that UNRWA adopt this definition,” says Lindsay, “the General Assembly has elevated politics over morality.”

Also speaking on September 23, former Knesset member Einat Wilf said the Palestinians had “hijacked” UNRWA after refusing to accept the outcome of the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel.

“The core issue,” she said, “is that in their mind the war is not over. In their mind, the State of Israel is temporary. If they view Israel as temporary, they will never sign an agreement that will bring peace. They will wait it out.”

Wilf castigated Western donor states “whose definition of peace is two states” but who continue to “funnel money into this organization that makes [Palestinian refugees] think otherwise.”

All in all, the Palestinian refugee story is one of heartless exploitation of Arabs by Arabs – the callous manipulation of powerless victims for political ends, with little regard for their welfare or human rights. Whatever the result of the inquiry into the UNRWA ethics report, this inhumanity must be brought out into the open, the UNRWA farce of “refugee status” in perpetuity must be ended, and steps must be taken to allow people and their families who may have lived in a country for 50 years or more to settle and become full citizens.

PMW: Top Fatah official calls for “escalation” so Israelis will “pay a heavy price every day”

Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki:
"There is no avoiding an escalating policy on the ground with great momentum from the masses, which will not allow the occupiers to live routine lives. Their occupation of our land must have a heavy price, which they will pay every day"

"If we [Fatah and Hamas] consolidate our ranks and unify our internal front... then we will certainly defeat our enemy, which is Israel."

Zaki in speech to Palestinian youth:
"If this enemy [Israel] and America continue with their arrogance, then [our descendants will wave the flag] above Jaffa, the Negev, the Galilee, the Carmel, the Triangle, etc. Land that we don't restore - we are not worthy of it."

One of Fatah's top officials, Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, has called for Fatah-Hamas to unite in order to "defeat" Israel, the common "enemy":
"If we consolidate our ranks and unify our internal front we will begin to work with an open mind, will, and strategy that are undebatable, then we will certainly defeat our enemy, which is Israel."
[Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, Sept. 22, 2019]

In response to US Envoy Jason Greenblatt's statements at a UN Security Council Open Debate on the Middle East on July 23, 2019, that the West Bank is "disputed" and not "occupied" territory, Zaki called for escalation "on the ground" - implicitly calling for violence against Israelis - to "not allow the occupiers to live routine lives" but make them pay "a heavy price every day":
"There is no avoiding an escalating policy on the ground with great momentum from the masses, which will not allow the occupiers to live routine lives. Their occupation of our land must have a heavy price, which they will pay every day."
[Al-Dustour, Jordanian news website, Sept. 8, 2019]

Fatah official: We will obliterate Israel “If enemy [Israel] and America continue their arrogance”

Fatah official: “Wherever there is a problem in the world, behind it is a Zionist fingerprint”

TRANSCRIPT: Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki: “Libya is also about to come out of its crisis.” Host: “How?” Abbas Zaki: “The external interference [in Libya] is the problem... Wherever there is a problem in the world, behind it is a Zionist fingerprint.” [Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV, Jan. 1, 2019] Abbas Zaki also holds the position as Fatah Commissioner for Arab and China Relations

Chag sameach!

The Jewish holidays keep on coming. Wishing a chag sameach to my readers for the Sukkot holiday starting tonight.

I will not be online until at least Tuesday night.

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10/13 Links: PA libel: US hospital in Gaza is for “trafficking in organs” and medical "experiments" on Palestinians; Trump swears allegiance to Israel as he decries endless Middle East wars

From Ian:

PMW: PA libel: US hospital in Gaza is for “trafficking in organs” and medical "experiments" on Palestinians

A private American organization is to build a hospital at the northern end of the Gaza Strip. Israel has already admitted hospital equipment into the Strip. But the project is being condemned by the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health, which claims that "the American hospital project is not innocent, and its goals are dangerous." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 27, 2019]

Elaborating on these alleged "dangerous goals," an op-ed in the official PA daily claimed that the hospital is run by "the CIA," and its purpose is not to treat the sick Palestinians but "to carry out experiments on the sick Palestinians," and "to be a partner in trafficking in human organs":

"The American administration and the CIA, which are actually supervising the hospital and its staff, transferred it to the southern Palestinian districts (i.e., the Gaza Strip) to serve the US as an early warning, monitoring, and espionage station where it was established. This was in addition to a matter that I think not one of the observers have noticed: The hospital has an additional functional role, which is to carry out experiments on the sick Palestinians, and not to treat them and care for their health... and it is possible that the hospital will be a partner in trafficking in human organs." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 2, 2019]

The PA Ministry of Health said that it considers it Israel's "deliberate step to finally and completely separate the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by preventing any connection on any level between our people in the two parts of the homeland."

Palestinian Media Watch has exposed previous PA libels claiming Israel does medical experiments on prisoners and steals organs from dead terrorists, the so-called "Martyrs." Even the Arab League has repeated these PA lies.

CAIR and the Rabbis

As anti-Semitism grows in America, synagogue safety has become an urgent concern for most American Jewish leaders. Not so, it would seem, for the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis (MBR). Recently, MBR joined forces with the Hamas front group CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations) to picket the Ahavath Torah Congregation in the South Shore town of Stoughton for hosting speakers whom CAIR calls “anti-Muslim hate group leaders.” The scare campaign ended up working. The synagogue had to permanently shut down its speaker series after CAIR and MBR publicized the synagogue’s address on social media. The synagogue’s rabbi, Jonathan Hausman, got death threats and was forced to hire security guards for his family.

CAIR is a strange ally for a rabbinical board. CAIR’s Massachusetts branch is headed by an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and an anti-police activist with a history of Israel-bashing. In 2009, a federal district judge ruled that there is “at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas.” Ever since, the FBI has refused to work with CAIR because there might still “be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas.” Even the United Arab Emirates, not exactly the most Israel-friendly country in the world, banned CAIR as a terrorist organization in 2014.

Unlike CAIR, Ahavath Torah’s guest speakers would seem like strange enemies for a rabbinical board. Invited by Rabbi Hausman for a talk titled, “National Security Chaos: Are We Passing the Tipping Point?”, the panelists were all former U.S. government officials. One, retired Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin, is an American hero. A veteran of many wars, General Boykin commanded the Delta Force units in the Mogadishu battle dramatized in the movie Black Hawk Down. Off the battlefield, he served as the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence between 2002 and 2007. Another guest was former congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, who worked at a kibbutz as a teenager and has spoken at many an AIPAC event without previous rabbinical umbrage. General Boykin and the event moderator, Tom Trento, together with the third guest, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, have all been honored with “Genesis Awards” by the Boston-based group, Christians and Jews United for Israel, which represents the values and opinions of many Jewish New Englanders.

Forward opinion editor Batya Ungar Sargon came face to face with the ugliness of leftist antisemitism when she was invited to speak at Bard College last week.

She was going to participate in a few sessions in a conference on "Racism and Antisemitism" at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard. One of them were about how to work with people with different opinions on President Trump, and another was about "Racism and Zionism: Black-Jewish relations."

Her first session, though, was called "Who Needs Antisemitism?" with Ruth Wisse and Shany Mor. This session wasn't about Israel or Zionism, but purely about antisemitism today. It was the only session where Jews discussed antisemitism.

That was the only session that was targeted by protesters from Students for Justice in Palestine.

Ungar-Sargon was mystified, and spoke to the protesters: "I told them that I respected their passion and commitment to what they thought was right, but asked why they had picked this panel.

"'Come to my panel tomorrow,' I said. 'Come protest my comments on Zionism. I’ll be talking about the occupation. Bring your signs.'"

Ungar-Sargon tried to explain to them that they can come and protest at her session on Zionism the next day, that she would let them ask all the questions they want. She tried to explain to them that they were undercutting their own cause by targeting a session on antisemitism when they always claim that they are merely anti-Zionist.

She kept trying logic on people who were animated by hate not for Israel but for Jews. Yet she couldn't quite believe it - these were people she often agrees with about Israel, couldn't they see that protesting three Jews talking about Jew-hatred was antisemitic?

Her biggest shock, though, came from her fellow speakers and other academics who defended the obviously antisemitic protest.

“I disagree with what she is saying,” Shahanna McKinney-Baldon, who was to be part of Batya's panel on racism and Zionism the next day, told the SJPers. “I support what you’re doing. I think you should protest.”

When the session began, students started their planned interruption when Ruth Wisse spoke. Ungar-Sargon noticed that several of the conference speakers were applauding the students.

Not one person apologized to her for these interruptions. No one from the conference denounced the attempts to shut down a session on antisemitism by antisemite. Academics seemed to welcome the explanation given by one of the protesters that any discussion of antisemitism is really about supporting Israel.

Worse yet, at a party afterwards for conference speakers, Etienne Balibar, a French philosopher at Columbia University, told Batya he supported the protesters. “Why are you silencing Palestinians?” he demanded. “There should have been a Palestinian discussing anti-Semitism. They have many thoughts about it!”

This was a session about antisemitism in America.

To Batya's credit, she had enough. At her planned session on Black-Jewish relations the next day, she gave a short speech about what she had experienced. She noted her bona-fides at publishing more Palestnian voices in her opinion pages than all major media combined, how she convinced Jews to vote for the Arab parties in Israel - but that what she experienced wasn't anti-Zionism but antisemitism, and her fellow panelists who she used to idolize as luminaries were cowards who egged on pure antisemitism when it appeared right in front of them.

And she walked off the stage.

If anyone claims that there is no such thing as leftist antisemitism, this proves they are just as craven and complicit as the academics that applauded the supposedly "pro-Palestinian" SJP when they interrupted a session on antisemitism - just because talking about antisemitism might get people to be more sympathetic to Jews.

Will Ungar-Sargon be more aware that a lot of the people she proudly publishes in The Forward are also antisemites in "anti-Zionist" clothing, no better than the academics she called out? I don't know, but at least here she recognized antisemitism when she saw it, and she acted in the most effective way she could.

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Tunisian run-off presidential candidate Kais Saied, spoke during a television debate on the issue of normalization with Israel.

Saied said, "Normalization is a high betrayal, and anyone who deals with an entity consumes a whole people must be prosecuted."

He said that the word normalization is not accurate, and "we are at war with a usurper entity."

Asked about permits to visit synagogues in Tunisia, Saied said he would refuse entry to those holding an Israeli passport, and said: "We accept Jews, not Israelis."

Saied and his runoff opponent Nabil Karoui were the top two vote getters with about 18% and 15% of the votes in the elections three weeks ago, and now go head to head for the final voting.

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10/12 Links: The two faces of antisemitism; Rolling Stone Continues to Promote BDS; British military cemetery vandalized with swastikas in Haifa; Gal Gadot will star as Warsaw Ghetto heroine

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: The two faces of antisemitism

Today's Europe has two faces. On the one hand, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decided last week, almost without mentioning Israel, that Holocaust denial is not a part of freedom of speech or a human right.

The petitioner, Udo Pastörs, is a member of the German far-right NPD party, who was already convicted for his inciteful language in court.

On the other hand, anti-Semitism continues to run rampant and this Yom Kippur, it led to an anti-Semitic attack on a German synagogue.

What is antisemitism? This is the hottest topic in Germany these days.

Last week, neo-Nazis marched the streets of Dortmund, calling for the Palestinians to destroy Israel.

Meanwhile, there is a debate about whether the BDS campaign is antisemitic. The German Bundestag already decided a few months ago that the answer was yes.

So did many other European countries that adopted this definition of antisemitism.

Extreme left circles, also from Israel, campaign against the decision and against the definition.

The debate intensified following a series of decisions linking political or racist positions with freedom of expression and creativity.

What would have happened if a city in Germany were to award a prize to Pastörs for his literary work, and only afterwards did it turn out he was an activist in an antisemitic movement?

CAMERA: Rolling Stone Continues to Promote BDS

The antisemitic movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel has gained a lot of traction in the music industry, thanks in large part to the activities of Roger Waters. BDS activists frequently threaten and harass musicians who schedule concerts in Israel, in an effort to intimidate them into cancellations. Irish singer Sarah McTernan told the Irish Sun, after she participated in the 2019 Eurovision contest in Israel, “Oh my God, I got threats, I got letters. Horrendous stuff online with someone threatening to do something to me. I had hundreds and hundreds of people messaging me saying the most horrible stuff. I got a few sinister threats.” Singer Eric Burdon told Israel Hayom in 2013, after cancelling and then rescheduling a performance, “it wasn’t my decision to cancel the show, but that of my manager, following numerous threatening emails, she was scared for my life.”

Prior to 2019, the music magazine Rolling Stone resisted being drawn down this road. In March of this year, however, the publication put BDS supporter Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on its cover, and did a glamour photo shoot and video with her as well as three other Congresswomen. In May, the magazine uncritically quoted the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, without any rebuttal, in its coverage of Madonna’s Eurovision performance in Israel. In August, in an article having nothing to do with music, Rolling Stone called BDS a movement that “aims to put economic pressure on the nation in order to force the nation to give equal rights to Palestinians.” (After contact from CAMERA, the magazine changed it to the only slightly better, “aims to use economic pressure to push the nation for large-scale changes in its policies related to Palestinians.”)

Then, on Friday of last week, Rolling Stone continued this unfortunate trend of promoting BDS’s goals in its coverage of the Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Demi Lovato’s trip to Israel. (“Demi Lovato Apologizes for Accepting Controversial Trip to Israel,” Brittany Spanos, October 4, 2019.)

The change in direction appears to coincide with Rolling Stone’s coming under the full ownership of Penske Media, a company that, in February of 2018, sold a $200 million stake to the Saudi Arabian company Saudi Research and Marketing Group. SRMG is headquartered in Riyadh and is majority-owned by the Saudi government.

Co-founder of Extinction Rebellion reportedly shared social media posts dismissing Labour antisemitism and defending Ken Livingstone

Gail Bradbrook, a former biophysicist and co-founder of the climate protest group, Extinction Rebellion, reportedly shared social media posts dismissing Labour antisemitism as a “smear” and defended offensive comments by Ken Livingstone.

According to The Sun Dr Bradbrook shared a post in 2016 that described claims that certain comments made by Mr Livingstone were antisemitic as “ridiculous” and “scurrilous” and that “you will hopefully then agree that what is happening is part of a massive project to manipulate public opinion against, and to destroy the popular progressive movement supporting, Jeremy Corbyn.” The post went on to say that “Corbyn represents a threat to the stranglehold the Netanyahu right-wing Israeli extremists have over any mainstream media coverage of the oppressive Israeli occupation of the little left-over scraps of Palestine.”

Another post reportedly said that Mr Corbyn’s critics “smear him with sexism, misogyny and antisemitism by finding sexist or antisemitic comments by a handful of his millions of supporters”.

The Sun, which broke the story, quotes Dr Bradbrook as saying: “I’m not interested in getting involved in a discussion that is clearly an attempt to create division. Antisemitism is a huge problem across the whole of society and I’m longing for a time when all of us are safe.”

Previously it was also reported that a Facebook page administered by Dr Bradbrook entertained numerous conspiracy theories, linked to a blog which quoted from the infamous antisemitic tract The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and contained a post expressing solidarity with disgraced Labour MP Chris Williamson a day after he was suspended for claiming Labour had been “too apologetic” over antisemitism.

"Jewish Holidays: The opportunity of settlers to desecrate the Al-Aqsa Mosque" - hour long TV special in Jordan

This (sadly untranslated) video was shown on Jordan's Al Ghad TV this past week. It is apparently an hour long show (48 minutes without commercials) all about how Jews are using the Jewish holidays to "desecrate" Al Aqsa Mosque, the Temple Mount, by peacefully strolling and sometimes quietly praying there.

This is incitement that the West ignores.

There are many news stories from the Arab world every week about Jews visiting their holiest spot, in print and on video.

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