Earlier this week we reported on the case of a Palestinian man who just completed his conversion to Judaism who was then, on the even of Yom Kippur, arrested and imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority on Yom Kippur and reportedly tortured.
I found two small Israeli NGOs working to help this man. One is B'Tzalmo, which works for equal rights for all concentrating on religious Jews in Israeli courts, and the other is Itim, which works to help people (including converts) navigate through Israel rabbinical bureaucracy.
One would think that this case would appeal to the larger human rights organizations working in Israel - Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, Amnesty International, Rabbis for Human Rights, Yesh Din. All these groups are pro-Palestinian, and here is a Palestinian who is being oppressed simply because of his beliefs.
These organizations either don't care about human rights, or they don't consider Jews to be fully human.
All they need to do is a single tweet to defend a man who is being persecuted for his beliefs. A Palestinian, no less. Public pressure from any major human rights organization will shame the PA into releasing them.
But they refuse, even when asked.
The hypocrisy of the so called "human rights" community is disgusting.
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J-Street released a really unprofessional survey on Democratic voters' attitudes towards Israel and the Palestinians.
The questions are so biased as to be laughable.
For example:
People often talk about being pro-Israel. Do you think someone can be critical of Israeli government policies and still be pro-Israel? Total Yes.........................................................................................81 No ..........................................................................................13 (Don't know/refused) ..............................................................5
I'm actually surprised at the 13%. Every thinking person, right or left, agrees that someone can be critical of Israeli policies and still pro-Israel. J-Street, of course, is critical of virtually every Israeli government policy. If they would have asked "Do you think someone can have thousands of anti-Israel tweets and not a single pro-Israel tweet, and still be pro-Israel?" then the answer would not have pleased them, because that is what J-Street is.
Similarly, J-Street worded this question not to illuminate but to pretend that their opinions are mainstream, asking whether voters would be more likely to choose "A candidate who says he or she strongly supports Israel, and the United States must stand behind all of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's policies." Who thinks that?
Here's another loaded question that proves that J-Street themselves have no idea why anyone should support Israel:
Please tell me which statement comes closest to your own point of view, even if neither is exactly right. 1.The United States should act as a fair and impartial broker in order to achieve a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. 2. The United States should side with Israel during peace negotiations because Israel is our democratic ally and needs our support against a world that isolates them.
Is that the only reason why Americans support Israel?
Why didn't J-Street try this statement?
The United States should side with Israel because Israel shares American liberal values, giving rights to minorities, women and LGBT who are oppressed in Arab countries. Israel has offered to live in peace with its Arab neighbors multiple times yet the Palestinians have rejected every single plan. An "even handed" approach rewards Palestinian intransigence.
How would liberals answer that one? After all, only one side has liberal values and has shown a real desire for peace - but J-Street will never point that out.
The fact is that J-Street knows that most respondents don't know squat about the Middle East so it phrases questions to lead the ignorant to the conclusions they want.
While 61% of the respondents said that they followed news about Israel "very" or "somewhat" closely, only 9% said that they were very familiar with what BDS was about. If you don't know what BDS is, you aren't following the news. Meaning that the vast majority of Democratic voters do not follow the Middle East closely at all, but they think they know what they are talking about.
J-Street uses this ignorance to create a poll that provides the answers they pre-determine within the questions themselves.
Professional pollster Steve Miller called this "shitty polling and incoherent questions."
In the annals of shitty polling and incoherent questions lies this slide https://t.co/pvYnJGrsoN
Why did J-Street release this poll, taken in May, now? Because it wants to use the results to pretend that it is mainstream ahead of its conference next week. The poll is meant to do one thing only: to make J-Street look good.
Anyone who reports on the poll as if it actually reflects reality is ignorant or knowingly deceptive.
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Review of 'The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir' by Samantha Power
It surprised no one, least of all U.S. intelligence agencies. As Joby Warrick reported in the Washington Post the following week, “U.S. spy agencies recorded each step in the alleged chemical attack, from the extensive preparations to the launching of rockets to the after-action assessments by Syrian officials.” The administration had no doubt now, and no plausible deniability either.
Obama was now convinced he had to strike Syria. But he had a problem of his own making: UN inspectors were on the ground. So the president waited. And as he waited, he got cold feet and started looking for a way out. He chose to put the matter in the hands of Congress—he needed no authorization for strikes, he said, but wouldn’t strike without congressional say-so. No real strategy to persuade even Democrats in Congress was set forth. And there was, Power writes, no Plan B.
In the end, Obama’s desperation to be bailed out of action led him to agree to a joint U.S.-Russian plan to rid Syria of the chemical weapons. It was a sham. Assad hid some weapons from inspectors and continued bombing civilians with chemicals that were left off the list. Obama rewarded Assad and Vladimir Putin by ceding them the playing field conclusively. Power looks back on one administration meeting after the August chemical attacks:
What I did not know in that Saturday meeting was that this would end up being the only time Obama would seriously contemplate using military force against the Assad regime. We would have countless meetings and debates on Syria over the next three and a half years, but he would never again consider taking the kind of risk he had been prepared to bear in the immediate aftermath of the August 21st attack.
And why wouldn’t he ever again consider it? Because he had undertaken to strike a deal with Assad’s patron in Tehran and to reorganize American alliances to allow Iran and Russia to fill the vacuum of U.S. influence in the region, a vacuum that Obama specifically aimed to create. As Frederic Hof, a U.S. envoy to Syria in 2012, put it: “To complicate the ability of Iran’s man in Syria to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity would have placed at risk nuclear negotiations aimed ultimately at dissolving American relationships of trust and confidence with key regional powers.”
Power never realized that she wasn’t there to be heeded. Rather, she was there to be silenced. Obama’s conduct of U.S. foreign policy required the coopting of his critics. He found a way to let the world burn without running afoul of Samantha Power’s network of interventionist scolds: Make Power the public face of doing nothing.
A key problem is denialism. As Stellman points out, “Anti-Zionists are very sensitive when charged with antisemitism.” Anti-Zionists protest their revulsion against all forms of racism and, in an ironic twist, accuse their accusers of conspiring against them “to shut down criticism of Israel.”
What is astonishing is that this transparent ruse, itself utilizing an antisemitic trope, appears to have worked. At a recent Intelligence Squared debate in London, the motion that “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism” was defeated by a margin of 4-1. Those who applaud that result will be discomfited to read Kaplan and Small’s landmark 2006 study of 5,000 citizens in 10 European countries. Stellman quotes their important finding of a direct statistical correlation between anti-Israel rhetoric and antisemitism: “Even after controlling for numerous potentially confounding factors...anti-Israel sentiment consistently predicts the probability that an individual is antisemitic.”
The sickness that lies at the heart of the current assault on Israel’s legitimacy is laid out in forensic detail by Stellman’s dispassionate, methodologically rigorous approach. The result is this little volume packed with valuable – if often depressing – information presented in a way that activists and scholars alike should find compelling. The short chapters are easy to read, aided by bullet points and a comprehensive index. The final section contains a set of tools specifically designed for use by trainers and educators.
Some of Stellman’s assertions will elicit controversy: is there really any practical difference between “political” and “anti-Israel” anti-Zionism? Both have the same ultimate objective. And are statements lacking nuance, such as “Islam is basically an expansionist religion” and that “Muslims must wage a ‘Jihad’, a ‘Holy War’, until the whole world becomes “Dar al-Islam” appropriate in a text that explores (among other issues) religiously inspired hatred of one group by another?
The evidence for the central thesis of the book – that anti-Zionsim and antisemitism are closely interlinked – is overwhelming. This is an observation with major implications for the discourse around the Arab-Israeli conflict, yet it is one that is rarely discussed or even acknowledged by allegedly “expert” commentators, academics, politicians, NGOs and the media. That lacuna of awareness represents an existential threat to the future of Israel (and, by extension, the Jewish people) and, in consequence, the prospects for peace.
This handbook is an important contribution to the scant but growing literature on anti-Zionism. Stellman has formulated an important response to that vacuum of serious academic thought. In any future edition (and I gather that the Stellman is planning a follow-up book containing new material), it would be helpful to the reader if the author could add a section by tying together the disparate threads of his argument into a small number of key conclusions. Ideally, these would be linked to a series of recommendations as to how activists might develop practical and effective strategies for countering the anti-Zionist threat to Israel, Jews and civilized norms everywhere.
At a conference held at Bard College two weeks ago on the subject of “racism and anti-Semitism,” a group of protesters—organized by Students for Justice in Palestine—attempted with some success to disrupt a talk by Ruth Wisse and two (Jewish) discussants. (Wisse, known for speaking her mind forcefully against campus anti-Semitism, thanked the protestors for “providing a demonstration” of the topic at hand.) Administrators and security did little to stop the demonstrators.
While such scenes are hardly remarkable in today’s universities, more notable was the flood of indignant denials from conference participants that followed an article by one of the discussants, Batya Ungar-Sargon, describing what happened. The indignation, perhaps, stemmed from Ungar-Sargon’s willingness to label the demonstrations anti-Semitic. Shany Mor, a professor at Bard and the third participant on the panel, defends Ungar-Sargon’s account and exposes the feeble excuses for the thuggish behavior of the students:
The protest was only against Wisse, I was told repeatedly, even though flyers against all three of us were distributed. This was the reception controversial speakers should expect, I was told, even though there were many far more controversial speakers at the conference. But this is a liberal campus, I was told, and the reception was always going to be worse for controversial speakers from the right than from the left. This was doubly odd, as neither Ungar-Sargon nor I can be fairly imagined as being on the right by anyone’s imagination.
And, while many of the more provocative lectures were not terribly provocative to a left-liberal audience, [others] were. There was a panelist who argued that black underachievement was not due to racism but to fathers. There was a panelist arguing that “chosenness” had distorted Jewish political thought and as such infected later European thought on colonialism. . . . . There was a panelist who argued that certain African and Asian countries might have been better off had they remained under European colonial rule. . . . Some had difficult questions from the audience; many didn’t even have that. None was protested.
This is what makes [one Bard professor’s] claim that the demonstration was motivated by nothing more than the fact that the three panelists “espouse political opinions with which the students disagree” so outrageous. It’s understandable that this is what he might want believe, but it’s verifiably false. The three of us up there on that stage actually have radically different political views from each other, and radically different views on the issue in question at that session. This would have been apparent had a civilized discussion taken place.
It has been note that the left and right do not exist on the opposite sides of a straight line, but on each prong of a horseshoe, where they get close to meeting at the extremes.
Here's the horseshoe.
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Jerusalem, October 24 - Every delegation to the Knesset restated its acceptance of pedophiles, abusers, polygamists, and other criminals among their backers and decision-makers today, promising to maintain ties and curry favor with such persons unless and until public attention to such relationships renders those ties politically problematic.
Fractured polity notwithstanding, each of the nine factions in Israel's parliament gave its unanimous imprimatur to a statement underlining their individual and collective commitment to sex offenders, whether those offenders occupy prominent positions within the parties, make significant funding contributions thereto, or otherwise wield electoral influence, at least as long as the nature of those individuals' behavior and their relationships to their respective political parties of choice attract negative attention in measures beyond which such relationships will do the party in question more electoral harm than good.
Sex offenders around the country hailed the move, which they characterized as a crucial measure at a time when those who exploit vulnerable victims for lustful satisfaction or for a sense of power face increasing isolation and threats to their continued political influence. "I understand that certain social taboos prevent a full-throated endorsement of our demographic, but we welcome this announcement just the same," stated Rabbi Eliezer Berland, whose endorsement Haredi politicians often seek. "I, for one, commend [Minister of Health and United Torah Judaism MK Yaakov] Litzman for his steadfastness in ignoring the pernicious influence of the wider secular culture that automatically disqualifies a person from public life when credible reports emerge of his sexual misconduct, instead of waiting for the eventual reestablishment of the Sanhedrin to adjudicate such cases and in the meantime acting as if nothing is wrong."
Berland was not alone in singling out Litzman for praise. Malka Leifer, whose extradition Australian authorities have sought so that she may face child sexual abuse charges there, voiced confidence that the minister would continue to frustrate efforts to bring her to justice. "It's a community issue," she explained. "I'm Haredi; he's Haredi; we're in this together, no matter how horrific the things I might have perpetrated or abetted."
Joint List parties expressed appreciation for authorities continuing to ignore the flagrant polygamy of one of its legislators, and the Democratic Union hailed the mainstream media's curious lack of curiosity regarding Ehud Barak's documented associations with the late pedophile and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein; Likud MKs joined their colleagues in showing solidarity with sex offenders, but several privately conveyed regret that no prominent figures from the party's present composition number among the ranks of those with problematic peccadilloes. "[Former President Moshe] Katzav is already out of jail - he's ancient history," lamented one. "We don't have anyone who can compete with the other parties on this front right now, regardless of Bibi's corruption cases."
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In total, as of Jan. 1 more than half of council members will be non-democracies.
Does it matter that the world’s highest human-rights body is being subverted?
It does. The council’s pronouncements and reports are translated into multiple languages and influence the hearts and minds of millions worldwide.
Dictators on the council will continue to ensure that most of the world’s worst abusers enjoy impunity. Violators like China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia have never been the object of a single resolution, urgent session or commission of inquiry.
Instead, Israel is repeatedly singled out for condemnation, the only country targeted under a special agenda item at every meeting. Hamas terrorism is ignored.
Dictators will also make sure to appoint more anti-Western figures like Jean Ziegler, the longest-serving council official, who openly defends the Maduro regime. In 1989, he announced the creation of the Moammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize, which over the years was awarded to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and, in 2002, to Ziegler himself.
After Moammar Khadafy’s Libya was elected to the council in 2010, Swiss foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey defended the choice, saying it was “important to keep a dialogue” in order to “improve the human-rights situation across the world.” Yet after regimes like Russia, China and Cuba served on the council for a decade, their repression only got worse.
Sadly, for the foreseeable future at the United Nations, the inmates will be running the asylum.
Dictators will appoint more scoundrels like Jean Ziegler—the longest-serving council official—who defends the Maduro regime. In 1989 he co-founded the Qaddafi Human Rights Prize, awarded to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and, in 2002, to Ziegler himself. pic.twitter.com/cKsjkOyLEE
The UN independent expert on human rights in the Palestinian territories on Wednesday called for an international ban on all products made in Israeli settlements, as a step to potentially end Israel’s 52-year-old “illegal occupation” of the West Bank.
Michael Lynk, the Special Rapporteur on Palestinian territories, told the General Assembly’s human rights committee Wednesday that the international community should also issue “a clarion call to the United Nations” to complete and release a database “on businesses engaged in activities related to the illegal settlements.”
Lynk said the international community has a responsibility and a legal obligation to compel Israel to completely end its occupation and remove barriers to self-determination for the Palestinians.
Israel is deeply opposed to a Palestinian-led international boycott movement, which it views as an attack on its very existence. Supporters of the boycotts say they are a non-violent way of protesting Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
The UN Human Rights Council has repeatedly delayed the release of a controversial report about companies doing business in Israeli settlements, which was originally to be published in 2017.
There is a new World Jewish Congress survey of German attitudes towards Jews - and the results are not encouraging.
41% of Germans say that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to Germany.
41% also say that Jews talk too much about the Holocaust.
29% say that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the countries in which they live.
26% say Jews have too much economic power, and 24% say Jews have too much power in the international financial markets.
24% also say Jews have too much power over world politics.
24% say that Jews think they are better than other people.
21% say Jews have too much control over the global media landscape.
19% say Jews do not care what happens to anyone else.
12% blame Jews for most wars.
25% said that something like the Holocaust could happen in Germany today, and 38% said it could happen in another European country.
On the other hand, only 16% of Germans admitted to having unfavorable opinions of Jews (meaning that many people with antisemitic attitudes don't believe that they do) - compared to 53% who have unfavorable opinions of Muslims, 23% who have an unfavorable opinion of Christians and 64% who do not like Roma (Gypsies.)
34% don't like Israelis, and 51% don't like Palestinians.
66% say Israel has the right to exist as the Jewish state. But 58% disagree with the statement that Israel is unfairly criticized internationally for its treatment of Palestinians, only 19% agree.
42% say supporters of Israel use the charge of antisemitism to shut down criticism of Israel as opposed to 22% who disagree.
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Last month it was reported that the Facebook page of Fatah, the political party that dominates the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, was taken down after Palestinian Media Watch documented its explicit support for terror.
Fatah admitted it took down the page because it was worried that Facebook would find it to be promoting terror.
Only a few days later, it returned. And it still pushes a pro-terrorist message.
It regularly gives biographies of other terrorists; this week featuring two who raided Israeli villages in 1968 from Lebanon and were killed.
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Telegraph India reports that on October 14, students at Jamia Millia Islamia University protested a medical infrastructure expo hosted at the university in which Israel showed some innovations.
The international conference titled "Global Health Zenith Confluence ’19" was seemingly organized by the Faculty of Architecture and Ekistics, which now denies any involvement. When students found out that there was going to be an Israeli presence, they protested.
Five students were being charged with discipline violations for their violent protest. Other students went on strike in solidarity, paralyzing the university.
On Wednesday, the university caved into all their demands. Besides giving amnesty to the students, the demand included an agreement that no Israelis would be allowed to participate in any university program.
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What I’m about to write will probably be off-putting, even offensive to some Western readers. But it’s a subject that is extremely relevant to life in much of the rest of the world, especially in the Middle East. Everyone knows that tribal identity plays an important role here, more so than in the West. And there is a related idea that is no less important.
I’m talking about honor, and what I believe to be the moral imperative to maintain one’s honor and the honor of one’s tribe or nation.
Right now, the Tikkunists of liberal Judaism (and liberal Christianity as well) are running for the exits. According to the philosophy espoused by liberal, humanistic Westerners, the only moral considerations are those that relate to not hurting others and being fair to all. Indeed, many believe that tribalism and nationalism are actually immoral, because they imply treating outsiders and insiders differently.
But in other cultures, there are other principles that are important, in many cases important enough to die – or kill – for. One of them is honor, which refers to the public reputation of a person or tribe for the willingness to do whatever is necessary to defend its property and interests. In the Middle East, a person (or nation) that will not fight to protect their property deserves to lose it.
This is at variance with Western usage of the word. In the West, honor is an objective characteristic of an individual. In the Middle East, it refers to the subjective beliefs of others about an individual, a family, a tribe, or a nation. In the West, honesty is the most important component of honor. In the Middle East, toughness and the willingness to do what you must to protect yourself or your group are what determine the degree of honor you possess.
When you lose honor, which you do by not defending yourself when someone takes something of yours or hurts you in some other way, you put the world at large on notice that it is permissible to hurt you.The consequences of losing your honor include losing your property or your life.
In some Arab societies the concept has expanded to a pathological degree. Insofar as women are considered property, even a hint that the “ownership” of a woman by her own or her husband’s family is compromised is enough to damage the honor of her family. Such cases often have tragic endings, when the woman is murdered by close family members in order to restore the family’s honor. This happens even among well-off, educated Arab citizens of Israel.
I do not suggest that we adopt the hateful pathologies of Arab societies. But many Israelis, particularly the Ashkenazi elite that comprise our decision-making classes, are too quick to trade honor for peace and quiet. Our enemies value honor more than we do. There are countless examples of damaging compromises: we don’t punish terrorists in a manner commensurate with their crimes (i.e., we don’t kill them, and sometimes we even punish our own soldiers for killing them). We don’t retaliate for arson balloons, or sometimes even for rocket attacks.
We allow Arab members of the Knesset to literally call for the destruction of the state, despite a law that says that anyone who does that may not sit in the Knesset (we disqualify right-wing Jewish candidates for less). We selectively enforce laws, tax regulations, etc., in favor of Arab citizens to avoid trouble. We allow our enemies to hold our citizens, dead and alive, captive. And, disgracefully, we have allowed the piecemeal takeover of the Temple Mount and most of the Old City of Jerusalem by the Palestinian Arabs, after the high price in blood that we paid to take them back in 1967.
I could go on and on, but it is always the same: it would be hard, expensive, dangerous, or – very important – make us look bad in the eyes of the West, if we were to protect our honor; and since honor is only subjective, why bother?
But honor is not “only subjective.” In the Middle East, deterrence is not determined only by the size of your army and whether you have nuclear weapons (not that these aren’t important); honor is a big part of it. Why is it possible for Hamas to keep throwing thousands of terrorists at our border fence every Friday, and to burn our fields and forests with impunity? Could it be that the repetition of rocket attacks is due to our policy of attacking empty buildings? When we don’t kill those who are trying to kill us, the message is sent that they should keep trying.
While Israel has great military power at hand, it keeps squandering its honor. When Hillel said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” he was saying that it is morally required to act in one’s own interest, no less so than it is morally wrong to be “for myself alone.” One of the characteristics of moral situations is that moral principles sometimes conflict, and that makes it hard to take decisions in particular cases. In Israel, it often happens that our Western moral sensibility conflicts with Middle Eastern imperatives. Unfortunately, the Western sensibility usually pushes the Middle Eastern one aside. We need to learn to balance these principles before our honor deficit becomes so great that we completely lose the ability to defend ourselves.
We can start by removing those members of the Knesset who despise and incite against the Jewish state, by ensuring that terrorists do not survive to enjoy the benefits paid to them by the Palestinian Authority, by taking back sovereignty over the Temple Mount and the Old City, by making Hamas pay in blood for burning our fields, and so on.
Some will say that this is unjust or illiberal, and perhaps by Western standards – standards growing out of Hellenistic and Christian traditions, which do not factor in honor – they may be correct. But we live in the Middle East, not Seattle or Berkeley, and in this neighborhood you can’t ignore tribe, nationality, or religion – and above all, honor.
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Hiding pro-Israel videos and content is nothing short of antisemitic. Maybe some want to claim that it is anti-Israel and not antisemitic, but we just call that modern antisemitism. It might look different than it did before the modern state of Israel existed, but antisemitism is antisemitism. Stopping people from seeing content that supports the Jewish state – well, what else would that be called? It screams antisemitism!
If YouTube tried to stop people from seeing pro-Muslim videos, the world would be outraged. If YouTube tried to stop people from supporting the Palestinian Arabs, again, the world would be outraged. But when it comes to the Jewish people and the Jewish state, the world is silent.
YouTube has shut down the channel of the Center for Near East Policy (otherwise known as the Israel Resource Review) for what it claims were “repeated or severe violations of our Community Guidelines on Violence or Graphic content.”
In a letter sent last week to the center’s head, David Bedein, “the YouTube Team” said that the platform “prohibits violent or gory content posted in a shocking, sensational or disrespectful manner.
“We have decided to keep your account suspended,” the letter continued. “You won’t be able to access or create any other YouTube accounts.”
The letter, according to Bedein, was in response to an appeal by the organization. The YouTube channel was shut down for the first time about one week prior.
The Center for Near East Policy works to uncover corruption within the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA. The organization has produced several mini documentaries, including UNRWA in Jerusalem: Anatomy of Chaos, which examines what it describes as the “human tragedy of life in the UNRWA refugee camp of Shuafat, in the heart of Jerusalem.”
Another documentary, Terror of Return, was shot on the Gaza border in the summer of 2018, showing how “UNRWA’s right of return policy is the ideological foundation with which the next generation of children are brainwashed to believe.”
The documentaries are filmed by Arabs on site and produced by academics in Israel.
“The only real proof that UNRWA is violent is film,” Bedein told The Jerusalem Post. “We have statements by UNRWA children, but these are just statements. The films are convincing proof.”
He said he was shocked that a social media outlet would shut down a team of journalists for doing their jobs.
The lower house of the Czech parliament on Tuesday passed a resolution condemning all forms of anti-Semitism as well as calls for boycotts of Israel.
The non-binding resolution, which passed the Chamber of Deputies with an overwhelming majority, strongly condemns “all manifestations of anti-Semitism directed against individuals, religious institutions, organizations as well as the State of Israel, including the denial of the Holocaust.”
It further rejects “any questioning of the State of Israel’s right of existence and defense” and “condemns all activities and statements by groups calling for a boycott of the State of Israel, its goods, services or citizens.”
The resolution calls on the government in Prague not to offer any financial support to groups that promote a boycott of Israel and to intensify efforts to prevent anti-Semitism. It also urges the government to provide “greater security” to people and institutions that could become the target of anti-Semitic attacks.
During a brief discussion before the vote, lawmakers stressed the historically close relations between Israel and the Czech Republic.
Jan Bartošek, the head of the Christian Democrats faction in the chamber, who introduced the resolution, said the Czech Foreign Ministry helped formulate the wording of the resolution.
“I am convinced that Israel is our strategic partner and ally in the Middle East,” he said.
The whole thing happened in front of a class of 28 ten-year-olds, 11 of whom are Jewish. Trying to
get them to hand in their work, the teacher said, “You better finish off your
work quick, or I’ll ship you all off to the gas chambers.”
The kids told their parents, the
teacher got fired, and that’s all fine, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t need a
backstory. These basic facts are enough. That teacher deserved to be fired.
Newberries Primary School, in Hertfordshire
But one of my friends (let’s
call him “Max”) thought the dismissal of the teacher was “a shonda for de
goyim.” From his point of view, we had a chance to show this teacher just how
wonderful and merciful we are, and instead of least giving her a chance to prove that she was ONLY JOKING,
we got her fired.
To Max, it’s as if a
traditional antisemitic trope has been played out ON THE STAGE OF REAL LIFE and
now this teachers thinks we are nasty Jews who run the world and get people
fired.
This is sad and bad.
Max thinks we would have done
better to educate the teacher, (in particular about the destruction of the
Temple!) rather than fire her. Otherwise, he says, we are “only creating more
Jew-haters.”
Max, it is clear, prefers to take
a gentler approach, to be “nice” about the Holocaust, and assume the teacher
had only been joking, just like she said. He thinks we have no reason NOT to
believe her.
But this I do not understand: Why
does Max want to be “nice” about the Holocaust?
Scratch marks on gas chamber wall in Auschwitz
Because from my point of view,
there is no world in which we should be nice about the Holocaust, ever. There
is no paradigm or context in which the idea of systematically gassing and
burning millions of my people because they are Jews, is funny. And for an
educator to have access to young minds using such horrific images with such a
stupendous lack of sensitivity is, to me, pure evil.
No. There is no benign way to
look at this. None at all.
I can’t judge Max, of course. I
can only turn his supposition around in my mind, try to see a context, weigh
these things against my own beliefs and come to a conclusion. Could she have
been joking? Could it be that to the teacher, threatening kids with gas
chambers was a way to inject some lighthearted fun into things? Like telling ghost stories in
the dark or going on a roller coaster? Like, “MWUHAHAHAHA, if you don’t do your
homework, I’ll send you to the gas chambers, My Pretties!”
You see what I did there,
right? I tried to look at things from the perspective of Max.
I failed.
Because there is no way young
minds should be exposed to such an attitude: such appalling insensitivity and
ignorance as that teacher displayed. And that is why the parents had to speak
out. It’s what we have to do, every single time someone is cavalier about the
horrors that have decimated our people. In particular in the case where the offender is an educator. And in particular in front of Jewish children, who feel these
things more deeply than their classmates. Which is only natural.
So you see, from my point of
view, this was exactly the right time to fire this teacher, and it was also the right thing
to do. Why? Because this teacher failed at her job in every possible way: as an educator, as an
example for young people, and as a human being.
Max thinks we should educate
the teacher. We could do that: give her a course on the Holocaust (rather than on
the destruction of the Temple). But here is what I wish Max understood: it is not
our responsibility to educate that teacher. It is her responsibility to educate
herself. It is every person’s responsibility to know and internalize the
lessons of this recent history: the lessons of the Holocaust.
We are speaking of a teacher. Presumably
college-educated. This person can read. What happened in the Holocaust is all on
record.
The Holocaust did not, after all, take place in Ancient
Greece.
This is contemporary history.
It's practically NOW.
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.
A Palestinian from the West Bank who converted to Judaism in Israel was inexplicably arrested by Palestinian Authority forces security forces over two weeks ago and has been held in custody ever since. He claims to have been tortured during that time on multiple occasions, which left his limbs badly burned.
The 50-year-old is Hebron resident who worked at a supermarket in the Jerusalem area. He converted on the eve of Rosh Hashanah three weeks ago at a strict Haredi court in the city of Bnei Brak by Rabbi Nissim Karelitz, who passed away on Monday.
Prior to his conversion he studied at Machon Meir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, an institution strongly associated with nationalist politics and settler movement. He was in the process of having his conversion recognized by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel before he was arrested, which would have allowed him to apply for Israeli passport.
On the eve of Yom Kippur, the man traveled to an area of the West Bank under Palestinian security control, just beyond the section of the territory under Israeli security control. There, he was supposed to meet with one of his nine children, who along with their mother are all Muslim.
During the family reunion, a white Skoda vehicle carrying four men approached the 50-year-old. The men got out of the car, dragged the Palestinian into the vehicle and drove away. Later, the man was dropped off at a police station in Hebron by the four.
Haim Perg, the leader of the Jewish community in Hebron, is helping the Palestinian with his legal troubles and according to him, the 50-year-old is the grandson of a Palestinian man who helped save Jews during the 1929 Hebron massacre.
"As far as I'm concerned, he's like my son, and I will shake up the world for somebody to come and save him," Perg said. "The man's grandfather rescued 26 Jews during the events in Hebron. Now that he is in danger, we have a commitment to help him."
Perg added that he spoke by phone with the Palestinian who told him he was being badly beaten and had even had his hands and feet burned during the torture he’s had to endure.
This story has been out in English for 24 hours, and tweeted to Human Rights Watch. Yet even though they tweet lots about Israel, this story somehow is not important enough to even tweet.
The reason, of course, is that to HRW, Arab and Muslim antisemitism is a topic that must never be mentioned or hinted at.
Look at this article from a HRW researcher about antisemitism in Europe in 2015 after a spate of mostly Muslim attacks on Jews:
In January, four Jewish men were killed in a kosher supermarket in Paris, two days after the brutal attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that left 12 people dead. Last week, a man attacked a synagogue in Copenhagen, killing a Jewish man as he guarded the building during a Bat Mitzvah celebration.... Last May, a man shot four people dead in a Jewish museum in Brussels. In 2012, a man and three children were shot dead at a Jewish school in Toulouse.
Not once is the fact that these were Muslim attacks mentioned. And if you would come up with that conclusion on your own, HRW doesn't want you to take any guesses that perhaps Islamists have a problem with Judaism:
[T]he factors which drive some to commit violence are complex too; some attackers may have been exploited and coerced, while others may have acted more out of frustration than deep-seated hatred.
HRW is bending over backwards to excuse Islamist antisemitism!
But when the synagogue in Halle was attacked on Yom Kippur, then HRW mentioned "right wing extremism." That can be named, Islamic and left wing extremism cannot be.
Interestingly enough, the German report on extremism linked to by HRW has separate sections on right-wing, left-wing and Islamic violence. But HRW only mentions one of them and does everything it can to erase the other two.
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.
Leaders of several Palestinian factions are again calling for stepping up terrorist attacks against Jews. The difference is that this time, the calls were made during a sit-down strike held by Palestinians outside the offices of the United Nations in the Gaza Strip.
The leaders of the Palestinian factions chose to issue their calls for killing Jews in front of the UN offices in the Gaza Strip. It is as if they are asking the UN to approve their continual terrorist attacks against Israel.
What is clear -- and disturbing -- is that the UN officials in the Gaza Strip choose to remain silent when the Palestinian leaders came to their offices to incite their people to step up their terrorist attacks.
The sit-down strike was organized by the "Jerusalem Department" of Hamas, the terrorist group that has been ruling the Gaza Strip since the summer of 2007. The purpose of the sit-down strike was, according to Hamas, to protest visits by Jews to the Temple Mount, or Haram Al-Sharif -- a site in Jerusalem sacred to both Muslims and Jews.
Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip near Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank near Jordan, as well as other Palestinian factions have long been waging a vicious campaign of incitement against the decision by Israeli authorities to allow Jews to tour the Temple Mount compound.
The Palestinians are opposed to the presence of Jews on the Temple Mount -- whether as visitors or worshippers. Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount is completely forbidden by the Israeli police, and Jewish visitors are forbidden from singing, whispering, praying or making any kind of religious displays. Still, the Palestinians continue to incite against the Jewish tours, ignoring the fact that the Israeli authorities do not allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount.
The PA and Hamas officials and media outlets regularly describe the peaceful visits by Jews as "violent invasions by extremist Jewish settlers into the Al-Aqsa Mosque."
The lack of a reaction to the death of former Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi and the absence of religious demands by protesters in Algeria, Sudan, and Iraq suggest that political Islam is waning after the defeat of ISIS three years ago.
Few live images were more dramatic than the collapse and death of former Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi, the first-ever Muslim Brotherhood head of state, in a transparent glass cage on June 17, 2019 during his seemingly never-ending trial proceedings in Cairo.
No one outside Egyptian officialdom questioned the severe conditions of Morsi’s incarceration since the day special forces surrounded the presidential home and placed him under arrest in July 2013, paving the way for his minister of defense, Abdel Fatah Sisi, to rise to the presidency in his stead.
For all the human drama of Morsi’s death, it prompted barely a whisper among the Egyptian public. It elicited protests by hapless exiled Muslim Brotherhood leaders, a predictable tirade by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and some ineffective criticism from Qatar’s al-Jazeera, which shares Erdoğan’s antipathy to Sisi and sympathy for the Brotherhood.
When Egyptians took to the streets three months after Morsi’s death, their chants – “Down with Sisi’s tyrannical regime” – had nothing to do with Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Islamist ideology.
The same can be said of the months-long protests that are taking place in Algeria and Sudan, which have been described as the stirrings of a new “Arab Spring.” Their common denominator is the marked absence of political Islam in the protesters’ messages.
Masri pointed out that Palestinians had joined the Arab Spring by launching protests against the PA and Hamas. The protests, however, were swiftly squashed by the PA and Hamas security forces.
He also noted that Palestinians have in recent years proven that they are capable of launching protests, such as the demonstrations in the West Bank against the PA’s social security law and the widespread protests against economic hardship in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.
“Those who believe that Palestine, its leadership and its president are immune from the extension of the Arab Spring because they are under [Israeli] occupation are mistaken,” Masri cautioned.
The “Israeli occupation,” he wrote, “does not provide a guarantee that Palestine won’t face popular uprisings. The general crisis the Palestinian cause is suffering from now, and the disaster we are experiencing as the division [between the West Bank and Gaza Strip] continues and deepens, justify a revolution against the ruling elites.”
Palestinians refer to the split between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which began in 2007, as inkesam (division). Then, Hamas violently took control of the Gaza Strip after toppling the PA.
The Palestinian political analyst warned that if Palestinian leaders don’t implement reforms and allow public participation in the decision-making process, change will come “through a revolution and public outrage.”
Worldwide antisemitism is getting worse, with a spike in expressions of Jew-hatred and attacks on Jews, reminiscent of levels during the years leading up to the Holocaust.
Not so long ago, this seemed to be mostly an issue for European Jews.
Not any more.
In the US, during the past couple of years especially, antisemitism has boiled over from college campuses to social media, to public figures and Congressional representatives.
Antisemitism on the right makes headlines -- the violence that accompanies it ensures that it makes the news.
Islamic antisemitism still escapes scrutiny, and kneejerk cries of "Islamophobia!" effectively deflect criticism.
Meanwhile, antisemitism on the left is still denied outright.
Especially in New York City.
Over the past months, reports of attacks on Chasidic Jews appear regularly on Twitter, often accompanied by video revealing that African Americans are behind the attacks.
This goes against the narrative.
That was the problem in Crown Heights in 1991 during the riots.
Former New York Times journalist Ari Goldman wrote in 2011 about what it was like trying to report on what was happening during those riots. He describes it as a case of Telling It Like It Wasn't, where he witnessed journalism "go terribly wrong." The media insisted on framing the violence as a two-sided "racial conflict" between Blacks and Jews -- ignoring the pervasive antisemitism behind the riots themselves:
In all my reporting during the riots I never saw — or heard of — any violence by Jews against blacks. But the Times was dedicated to this version of events: blacks and Jews clashing amid racial tensions. To show Jewish culpability in the riots, the paper even ran a picture — laughable even at the time — of a chasidic man brandishing an open umbrella before a police officer in riot gear. The caption read: “A police officer scuffling with a Hasidic man yesterday on President Street.”
Today, the relationship between The New York Times and the Jewish Community continues to be problematic.
Last year, The Algemeiner published a collection of posts by Ira Stoll from 2016 to 2018 on anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bias in The New York Times. Entitled "The New York Times and The Jews", the book is divided into chapters such as "Double Standards," "Jerusalem" and "Iran."
There is also a chapter devoted to "Hasidim."
Stoll introduces the chapter:
"If the Times newsroom had any Hasidic Jews as reporters or editors, or if the newspaper's reporters and editors had more Hasidic Jewish friends, maybe the newspaper would be less inclined to hurl pejorative adjectives at them."
A history of pandering to the ultra-Orthodox in Brooklyn goes back at least to the days of Mario M. Cuomo...According to a 2011 study by the UJA-Federation of New York, the Jewish philanthropic organization, just 11 percent of Hasidic men and 6 percent of Hasidic women in and around New York City hold bachelor’s degrees, while the poverty rate among Hasidic households stands at 43 percent, nearly twice the figure citywide.
Stoll points to a significant omission by the New York Times article: the data for the Hasidic poverty rate comes from a Special Report on Poverty which actually readjusts the federal poverty guideline for the purposes of defining poverty so that "a poor household is a household whose annual income is less than 150% of the 2010 federal poverty guideline" [p. 21]. So for example this would contrast "100% of the federal poverty guideline ($22,000) and the 150% level ($33,000) [p. 125].
Similarly, while the article makes a point of mentioning Satmar's geographic roots:
the Satmar, its name taken from the Hungarian town of Szatmar, where Rabbi Teitelbaum had fought to resist the encroachments of a modernizing society. Subsequent decades have seen virtually no retrenchment in the sect’s mistrust of the larger world.”
-- there is no attempt to show the connection between that "mistrust" and the Holocaust.
One of the comments to Stoll's article notes that The New York Times refers to the Satmar having "immigrated to the United States, colonizing a section of Williamsburg in Brooklyn for his Hasidic sect" That kind of language is unlikely to be used with other immigrant groups.
In another article, Stoll notes how the New York Times Obsessively Cheerleads for Those Exiting Orthodox Judaism. While the topic itself is reasonable and "those struggling with their transitions in life certainly deserve compassion and support" -- The New York Times itself appears fixated on the topic:
o An October 2014 Times “On Religion” column by Samuel G. Freedman addressed this topic, mentioning Footsteps -- a non-profit organization that describes itself as helping those "contemplating leaving, insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in their quest to lead self determined lives."
o An August 2015 report for a New York Times subsidiary, 'the Women in the World conference', also mentions the group Footsteps a second time. The subheadline of that report is, “Women who leave ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities often face isolation, loneliness, and a crisis of identity.” That article mentions Faigy Mayer, a former Belz hasid, reporting, “it remains unclear how — or even if — Mayer’s past contributed to her suicide.”
o A March 12, 2017 Times feature about actors in a Yiddish play reported: “During a rehearsal break, the five actors discussed going ‘off the derech’ — or O.T.D. — and refers to leaving the Hasidic religion and lifestyle.”
At no point is proof offered that suicide rates are higher among Orthodox Jews than non-religious Jews -- in fact studies indicate the opposite.
More to the point:
If the Times finds individual religious transitions so newsworthy, one wonders, why doesn’t it write more about people leaving other religious traditions — say, people struggling to abandon Catholicism, or Mormonism, or Islam? Or why doesn’t it write, in the same sympathetic and supportive and non-skeptical tone, about people unhappy with their secular upbringing who are finding meaning and happiness by becoming religious Jews?
Instead the newspaper obsesses over the formerly Orthodox Jews.
39 yeshivas were violating state law by not providing students, particularly boys, an adequate education in secular subjects like English, math and science.
Stoll contacted the paper and wanted to know why no one defending the schools was quoted in the story. When an editor answered his question, they did not say it was because no one responded to their request for comment.
They just didn't think a comment from the Yeshivas themselves was necessary:
We saw this as an article about the city and the status of the investigation, so when we went to get comment, we went to the subject: the city.
Similarly, in Useful Idiots and Trumpist Billionaires Paul Krugman calls out Trump fundraiser Stephen Ross for his support for what Krugman takes for granted is a racist:
Ross is Jewish — and anyone Jewish has to be completely ignorant of history not to know that when bigotry runs free, we’re always next in line for persecution.
In fact, the ingredients for an American pogrom are already in place.
o Jews are rarely next in line for persecution -- usually, we are first in line o Here is Krugman warning that the ingredients for a pogrom are in place -- without any mention of the attacks on synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway that have already happened. o Krugman's attack on "anyone Jewish" casts an awfully wide net o You need not look further than Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to see that Republicans have not cornered the market on bigotry
Stoll concludes
Personally, I’m not hosting any fundraisers for Trump. But, unlike Krugman, neither am I Jew-shaming any of my fellow Jews who choose to do so.
Of course, if anything stood out in The New York Times this year when it came to reporting on Jews, it was this cartoon:
-- featuring a gratuitous kippah on Trump's head, no mean feat for someone who is supposed to be both antisemitic and a racist.
The only thing more stunning than the poor taste The New York Times showed in allowing such a cartoon to begin with, was their claim when they finally got around to apologizing for the cartoon.
More than a few people were left scratching their heads when The New York Times claimed, “We have been and remain stalwart supporters of Israel.”
That was quite an odd claim, considering the fact that it is not even clear The New York Times is a stalwart supporter of Jews in general.
This is not to say that The New York Times is single-handedly encouraging antisemitism. They did not create the problem.
But The New York Times has shown that it is part of the problem.
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.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Friday, October 25, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
