Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 05, 2019

Unpacking the PACBI Excuse (Divest This!)

Last time, I pointed out the various excuses the boycott-Israel crowd uses when forced to confront their clear double-standard on human rights stances (i.e., Israel deserves to be boycotted for building a fence to keep suicide bombers from its cities, but Syria and China should not be boycotted since they merely killed 3-500,000 or 70,000,000 of their own people).

As noted, most of these excuses have the distinction of being both transparently self-serving and unbelievably lame. But one “reason,” the one claiming that the call to boycott Israel wells up from Palestinian civil society and is thus unique, begs for a more careful review.

The claim that BDS is a response to boycott calls originating from people in the region is based on the 2004 Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (or PACBI). Whenever Naomi Klein or some other boycott advocate talk about a boycott call endorsed by over 200 Palestinian civic organizations, the groups on the list of original PACBI signatories is what they’re talking about.

Within that original list of participating organizations (which I can no longer find now that PACBI has been folded under a general BDS Web umbrella), 10-15% of the signatories were identified as originating outside Israel, the West Bank or Gaza, including over 20 organizations from surrounding countries (13 from Syria, 6 from Lebanon and 2 from Jordan) and another 9 from Europe or North America. Now it may be that some of these (as well as some of the organizations not identified by location) are refugee or Diaspora groups. But given the large Syrian contingent on PACBI’s original roster, the notion that we’re talking entirely about un-coerced volunteers becomes shaky.

Second, as the name implies PACBI stands for an academic and cultural boycott (the least popular form of BDS, by the way), meaning those who signed up in 2004 were not necessarily joining a movement for wholesale economic isolation of the Jewish state. So those claiming that PACBI is the origin for broad-based BDS activities may be putting words into the mouths of Palestinian agricultural, medical and industrial unions/organizations, many of whom may not be that excited about economic boycotts that punish them as well as Israel.

On more meatier matters, the first group that topped the list of “Unions, Associations, Campaigns” supporting the PACBI boycott call is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, a coalition that includes Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and some of the more violent sub-sets of Fatah. Call me crazy, but I suspect that it’s much easier for this Council to get the Palestinian Dentist’s Association (also a PACBI signatory) to agree to its requests that vice versa.

The potential that the PACBI boycott call arises from coercion within Palestinian society (vs. being a consensus welling up from the grass roots) also points out an interesting paradox. The claim that Israel uniquely deserves the BDS treatment is, to a certain extent, based on Israel supposedly being exceptional with regard to its level of human rights abuses (vs. Iran, China, North Korea, etc.). And yet the members making up PACBI can only be seen as legitimately representing Palestinian civic society if Israel’s “repression” does not extend to eliminating such civic space in both Israel and the West Bank.

Like the claim that Israel is inflicting a “Holocaust” on a Palestinian population that is simultaneously experiencing a population explosion, the very existence of PACBI demonstrates that the level of repression found in countries ignored by BDS activists (Sudan, Saudi Arabia, etc.) does not exist in Israel. And thus we are led back to the conclusion that the best way to avoid being a target of alleged “human rights” activists pushing boycott, divestment and sanction is to actually be a repressive dictatorship that crushes civic society rather than letting it exist to sign boycott petitions.

Finally, a note on dates. PACBI, as stated on their own Web site, made its “plea” for academic BDS in 2004, years after divestment programs originating at the 2001 Durban conference were well underway in North American and European universities, unions, churches and municipalities. In other words, the PACBI call was the result of the success BDS was seeing between 2001-2004, and being the result it could not have simultaneously been the cause.

Time travel underlies much of the BDS project, as is underlies much of what passes for analysis of the Middle East. My favorite example of this is the projection of today’s US support for Israel (which didn’t really kick into high gear until the 1970s) back to 1948 and beyond in hope of finding a US-Zionist conspiracy going back to before the founding of the Jewish state.

If ignorance is bliss, then the folks behind the PACBI excuse for BDS are either the happiest people on earth, or at least the most manipulative.

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This week, Americans for Peace and Tolerance issued an alert:

Boston University to hire radical anti-Israel lecturer
Sarah Ihmoud says Jews are rapists and Jewish women orgasm to fantasies of the IDF bombing Palestinian civilians.

Here is an excerpt:

“Rape and killing of Palestinian women was a central aspect of Israeli troops’ systematic massacres and evictions during the destruction of Palestinian villages in 1948. During the Deir Yassin massacre, for instance:

All the inhabitants were ordered into the village square. Here, they were lined up against a wall and shot. One eyewitness said her sister, who was nine months pregnant, was shot in the back of the neck. Her assailants then cut open her stomach with a butcher’s knife and extracted the unborn baby. When an Arab woman tried to take the baby, she was shot… Women were raped before the eyes of their children before being murdered and dumped down the well.”

(This is fiction.)

There are claims of criminal actions and pronouncements attributed to Jewish leaders and community similar to the blood libel, accusations of poisoning of the wells, etc. NONE of them is supported by any references to evidence because the supporting evidence does not exist — the claims made are false. The paper, like all of Ihmoud’s writings, is not simply anti-Israeli, it is blatantly anti-Semitic and unsupported by any facts and does not merit “academic scholarship” status.

Boston University should not hire a person who portrays Jews as rapists, Jewish leaders and academics as promoting rape, Jewish women as having orgasms while thinking about bombs being dropped on Gaza, and more. This hateful propaganda, posing as scholarship, is no different from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the crudest German junk science proving that Jews are genetically inferior to Aryans.

This paper was not published in any scholarly journal. It was published instead by the Arab Studies Institute website Jadaliyya. There does not appear to be any peer review.

But despite that, Ihmoud's lies and sick theories in this article have been accepted by academia. I found 10 academic papers and books that used this paper as a source.

Meaning that absolute lies posted on a website can become seemingly trusted source materials for academic papers.

In the social sciences, any crackpot theory - or even lie - can become mainstream as long as it is quoted by others. No evidence or proof is required. Here we see that the libels and antisemitism of Ihmoud and her co-authors can be converted into respectability, as long as academics who share the same hate launder the source though their own papers.

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11/05 Links Pt1: ‘I like your frame on this’: Warren nods as supporter claims US backs 'genocide in Palestine'; It’s Time to Close Down UNRWA; Israel’s Supreme Court rules HRW Director can be deported over BDS

From Ian:

‘I like your frame on this’: Warren nods as supporter claims US backs 'genocide in Palestine'

Elizabeth Warren nodded along with an attendee at her town hall event while he claimed the American military supported genocide.

The Massachusetts senator and 2020 presidential hopeful took questions from the crowd in Grinnell, Iowa, on Monday, with one attendee saying, “Right now, the United States is bombing at least seven countries. We support genocides in Palestine and in Yemen. The U.S. military is actually the biggest polluter of any organization in the world.”

He continued, “United States sanctions on Venezuela caused over 40,000 deaths, and we also have sanctions on many other countries like Iran, North Korea, and you can name many more.”

The attendee asked Warren, “I’m wondering, as president, will you stop U.S.-supported murder, whether it’s through sanctions, arms support, or boots on the ground?”

Warren responded, “I like your frame on this.”

Republican Jewish group’s campaign slams Democrats as a ‘disgrace’ — in Yiddish

The Republican Jewish Coalition on Sunday launched a $10 million campaign — an unprecedented amount in partisan Jewish advertising — with online ads depicting 2020 Democratic US presidential candidates as a “disgrace.”

Videos titled “Shanda,” Yiddish for “disgrace,” blast the Democrats for saying they would consider reducing aid to Israel.

“The radical Left has taken the reins of the Democratic Party, and their policy proposals will devastate our national security, our alliance with Israel, our economy, and our health care system,” Matt Brooks, the RJC’s executive director, said in a statement announcing the release of the 15- to 30-second ads.

The placement of the videos on Facebook, YouTube and other media will cost $50,000. Brooks confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency a report in Axios that the RJC had budgeted $10 million for its 2020 efforts.

In the spots, “leading Democrats” are accused of “turning their back” on Israel. They show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish.

This morning we launched our first ad of the 2020 campaign cycle. The ad, called “Shanda,” criticizes leading Democrats for turning their backs on Israel and threatening to cut US aid to our closest ally.
See more >>> https://t.co/x1uNDX86g6 pic.twitter.com/GkyX0Wy2EK
— RJC (@RJC) November 4, 2019

Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be the second favorite target of Democratic Presidential candidates and fringe left-wing groups -- not all that far behind Donald Trump.

That may seem odd, considering that Israel is a long-time ally of the US. Contrast that with, Iran, a global sponsor of terrorism where crowds of people chant "Death to America," a country with a long-standing practice of holding Americans hostage.

But Netanyahu, not Khameini, is the villain.
The reason given is the treatment of the Arabs -- both Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Arabs.

But those posting the de rigueur boilerplate accusations against Israel of "Apartheid," "Genocide," and "Racist" have no interest in what is actually happening in Israel. While there is clearly a difficult and challenging situation, there is a process of integration going on.

Five years ago, in 2014, US News & World Report came out with an article suggesting that there was Slow But Certain Integration in Israel.

Robert Cherry and Robert Lerman, two economics professors, came to this conclusion based in part on the voluntary national service in Israel, relying on a 2012 survey from the University of Haifa. That survey found that 40% of Arab youth in Israel were personally willing to volunteer with the civil service and 62% of the Arab public were supportive. This represented a small decrease in support from previous years. There was Arab opposition to the idea of civil service, based on

o The assumption the project was linked to national security
o The fear civil service could become a precedent for imposing military or civil service duty in the future
o The belief such service would dilute the Palestinian-Arab identity
o The opposition to national service being administered by the state of Israel instead of the Arabs themselves,

Those Arabs who did participate in the program gave it high grades:

o 91.6% of the volunteers were satisfied with the service
o  95.8% were proud of their volunteering
o  96.4% said they were treated well
o  89.0% thought that volunteering contributed to Arab society
o  82.4% said their volunteering contributed to the state.

Still, as impressive as those numbers are, the fact remains that those entering the program would be favorably inclined to begin with.
Also, the Israeli government was not making any effort on its own to counteract the strong pressure Arab leaders applied against participating in the program.

What the Israeli government did do was take steps from the social to the economic spheres. According to Cherry and Lerman, Israel was not limiting the goal of just employing Arabs in government agencies:

The educational performance of Arab students has improved significantly as well, leading to a substantial increase in enrollment in Israeli universities. More Arab women are employed in professional careers, and Arabs with high-tech training have transformed Nazareth into a hub where numerous national and international companies run production development sites.

But how invested is the Israeli government -- and Netanyahu -- in investing in those educational opportunities?

Just last month Haaretz came out with a piece asking Could Netanyahu Actually Be Good for Israel's Arabs?

The article notes that in 2015, one year after the article by Cherry and Lerman, the Finance Ministry conducted a secret study of budgetary discrimination between Israel’s Jewish and Arab communities -- and wanted to directly address the problem head-on with a new program, Resolution No. 922: a five-year Economic Development Plan for the Arab Sector:

This would involve not a one-time payment to the country’s Arab communities, as had been made in the past, rather it would change the budgeting mechanisms fundamentally, so that the population would receive its fair, proportionate share of support in some areas, like public transportation, but a favorably disproportionate amount in other areas, as part of a process of affirmative action [emphasis added].

There were several disagreements and opposition to the program, but after 3 cabinet meetings, it was pushed through.
By Netanyahu.

And he pushed the proposal through in the form presented by the budget committee, with only a few added conditions.

Ron Gerlitz, who was involved, is quoted in the article. He had a birds-eye view of the proceedings and admits it is not clear why Netanyahu actually backed the plan. It may have simply been an issue of Israel's economic interests, or a decision to support Kahlon and the budget department -- or maybe Netanyahu wanted to offset the negative impact of previous anti-Arab statements.

In any case, not only did the resolution pass; in the end, it passed unanimously.

Amos Ben Gershom/GPO, for Haaretz

The changes resulting from the program, according to Haaretz, are real:

o  According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, over the past 7 years, the number of Arab students enrolled in universities and colleges in Israel has risen by 80%.
o  Over 5 years, the number of Arabs studying computer sciences, and the number pursuing master’s degrees (in all fields) have both jumped 50%
o  The number of Arab students studying for a Ph.D. has soared 60%.
o  During the last decade, the number of Arabs working in high-tech has increased 18-fold -- and 25% of them are women.
o  By 2020, it is estimated that Arabs will make up 10 percent of the country’s high-tech work force
o  The proportion of Arab doctors in Israel has climbed from 10% in 2008 to 15% in 2018
21% of all male doctors are Arab, according to the Health Ministry.

There is a natural carryover into the ability to get a job. In the private sector, for example, the proportion of Arab civil servants rose from 5.7% in 2007 to 11.3% in 2017.”

That's how the Israeli Arabs are benefitting.
What about the Palestinian Arabs?

According to another article in Haaretz, coming out last week, Palestinians Are Attending Hebrew U in Record Numbers, Changing the Face of Jerusalem.

Haaretz correspondent Nir Hasson writes that Hebrew University has seen an overall trend showing a growth of hundreds of percent of Palestinian students being accepted into bachelor degree programs over the last 10 years. This runs counter to the traditional trend of Arab Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem attending universities in the West Bank and in Arab countries. From just a few dozen Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem attending Hebrew University 10 years ago, last year 586 students from East Jerusalem attended -- 18 doing doctorates and 69 doing other graduate degrees. The most popular degrees were education, social work, communications, international relations and nursing.

Why the change?

o The separation barrier makes it more difficult to study at Palestinian universities
o Changes to regulations make it harder for Arabs with degrees from Palestinian institutions to work in Israel
o The Council for Higher Education provides funding which makes it possible for Israeli universities to offer stipends to nearly every Palestinian student who meets the requirements
o The convenience of the new light rail system also plays a part in the decision to study in Israel

There is more to this educational advancement than economic opportunity. University studies are also bringing Jerusalem’s Palestinian and Israeli Jewish societies closer together. There is a rise in the demand for Israeli citizenship and an increase in the number of Palestinians working in West Jerusalem.

According to Hasson, in Jerusalem, the social taboos forbidding forging ties within Israeli society have weakened. So too the taboo against applying for Israeli citizenship and criticizing someone who chooses to study at an Israeli institution.

While it may be slow, there is some real change going on.

According to Gerlitz, the change extends to the attitudes of Israelis as well. According to him, on the Israeli side, there is an attempt to compensate for the demotion of Arabic as an official language. Arabic studies are flourishing and there is a rise in the use of Arabic in public, to the extent that there are Arabic signs on the trains and buses -- something he says you did not see just 2 years ago. He believes the separation between Jews and Arabs is "cracking," on the campuses, for example, where Arab graduate students serve as teaching assistants for Jewish undergrads. And then there is the beach:

A Jewish boy who goes to the shower and hears Arab children laughing no longer thinks they are necessarily terrorists. When a Jewish kid in Be’er Sheva takes the bus to basketball practice and hears the name of his bus stop in Arabic, he’s no longer frightened it’s the language of terrorists. That is also the reality in Israel.

On a more pragmatic level, Ben Avrahami, the mayor’s adviser for east Jerusalem affairs, says

it is dripping into the consciousness [of Arabs] that Israel is a reality and that if east Jerusalemites want to improve their lives, they might be willing to pay the price of integration.

Clearly, there is a long way to go and many hurdles that Israel faces in addressing the issue of its Arab population.

But if this 5-year economic plan can show that it not only is capable of improving the lives of the Arabs but also encourage their integration and "Israelfication" -- what would Trump's peace plan actually be capable of doing?

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Lebanon's Al Akhbar (associated with Hezbollah) reports that Qatar's envoy to Gaza has warned that much of its funding to the poor in Gaza may end by 2020.

Mohammed Al Emadi told Hamas and other factions in the Gaza Strip that it would be difficult for Qatar to renew the $30 million it has been giving every month to help Gazans.

Al Akhbar said it received this information from Hamas officials. Palestine Today confirmed the story.

Qatar has been giving some 109,000 Gaza families $100 every month, along with paying for fuel, major building projects and other infrastructure. Qatar has been cooperating with Israel is providing this aid.

Hamas is hoping that either Qatar reverses the decision or that some of the tax revenues that the PA is refusing to accept from Israel will go directly to Gaza. This seems like wishful thinking.

Qatar has been the only Arab country that has seemed to actually care about Gazans beyond lip service. It has coordinated countless shipments of aid to Gaza with Israel. It has given hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid while most Arab countries attend anti-Israel conferences and issue statements.

Yet even though only Qatar has walked the walk, the article says that Gazans resent the Qatari aid because Israel supports it. In the words of the writer, "Gazans know that what Doha offers is an Israeli interest before it is Palestinian."

That zero-sum thinking represents a lot of the problems of the Middle East in a nutshell.

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This is the photo of the Erem article

Erem News has an article about a symposium in Gaza held by the Hamas ministry of culture, to explain religious Jews in Israel.

In the first paragraph it describes their ideas and rituals as "ugly and weird." Indeed, much of the fiction they follow that with is indeed ugly and weird.

Palestinian writer and historian, Tawfiq Abu Shomer, spoke about the results of his research into a community he knows little about.

Abu Shomer describes the Jewish Sabbath. After stressing how important it is, he goes on to say that "Haredim try to defraud the religion and laws by hiring non-Jews to do their work on Saturday, so that they themselves will not break the sanctity of the day. (The laws of asking a non-Jew to do activity on the Sabbath are very complex, but in general it is not allowed without many caveats.)

The supposed "expert" then informed his audience that Hareidi communities in Israel do not allow ambulances or other emergency vehicles into their neighborhoods on Shabbat. This is absurd.

The Gaza audience was told that Haredim "denigrate women and tend to violence them in all forms, treating women as impure and only good for having babies."

The more religious women are required to wear a full body veil, according to Abu Shomer. (There is a tiny cult that forces women to wear a veil but their bizarre rules have nothing to do with Judaism, as they are denigrated as the "Taliban.")

Another new rule that no one has heard of before: "The ultra-Orthodox religion also forbids a man from sitting in a seat on which a woman was sitting, until 10 minutes after she left." I guess religious men can never sit on a bus or subway because they don't know who sat on the seat beforehand.

The speaker then went on to say that Israel imports haredim into the country and pays them to have lots of kids.

As for how the haredim make a living , well, they smuggle drugs!

This Hamas antisemitism under the guise of scholarship is about as explicit as it gets.

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11/04 Links Pt2: Poll: Almost 50% of UK Jews will 'seriously consider' leaving if Corbyn wins elections; Historian: New evidence shows FDR’s bigotry derailed many Holocaust rescue plans; Ray Charles in Israel

From Ian:

Poll: Almost 50% of UK Jews will 'seriously consider' leaving if Corbyn wins elections

Britain's Jewish community so deeply concerned by the prospect of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn winning the next general election that community leaders have launched a campaign to undermine his premiership candidacy.

A recent poll by the Jewish Leadership Council, a British-Jewish advocacy group, found that 47% of British Jews would "seriously consider" emigrating if Corbyn is elected prime minister.

Some 87% of British Jews believed Corbyn to be anti-Semitic, and 90% said they will not vote for Labour, the poll found.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the general elections, set for Dec. 12, following his failure to push the Brexit deal through Parliament. Johnson's promise to have the UK leave the European Union by Oct. 31 had been a key element in the Conservatives' leadership bid, which brought him to power in July.

Corbyn has been repeatedly lambasted for his failure to tackle anti-Semitism within Labour. In 2018, the party received 863 complaints of anti-Semitism but took action in only 101 of those cases. Worse, Labour members who have publicly made statements such as "Jews are the problem" have remained in the party despite complaints against them.

All three of Britain's leading Jewish newspapers made an appearance on #Marr this morning, as @johnmcdonnellMP fails to make any kind of hard line on #LabourAntisemitism.

Says he's "saddened" by it. pic.twitter.com/j0STRAhAEy
— Jewish Telegraph (@JewishTelegraph) November 3, 2019

According to the Jewish Chronicle, prominent British Rabbi Jonathan Romain has even taken the unprecedented step of urging congregants to vote against Labour, warning that a Corbyn-led government "would pose a danger to Jewish life as we know it."

"I should stress that the problem is not the Labour Party itself, which has a long record of fighting discrimination and prejudice, but the problem is Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn-led Labour, has at best, let antisemitism arise within its ranks, or at worst, has encouraged it," Romain wrote in a letter to the 823 families who are members of his Berkshire shul.

"This has never happened under any previous Labour leader … so the finger of responsibility really does seem to point to Jeremy Corbyn. I am therefore suggesting we should each put aside all other considerations and vote for whichever party is most likely to defeat Labour in whatever constituency we are in – even if we would never normally vote for that party."

Israel Advocacy Movement: Why vote Labour?

In the upcoming election, a vote for Labour is a vote for:
☠️ Terrorism supporters
🇻🇪 An economy like Venezuela
🚫 Racism
A vote for Labour is a vote for insanity… watch the election video Labour don't want you to see.

Jewish Caller Tells Maajid Nawaz He Would Emigrate If Corbyn Elected

A Jewish caller told Maajid Nawaz that he would close his business and leave the UK if Jeremy Corbyn were to become Prime Minister because of anti-Semitism.

David, from Hendon, said: "I will leave the country as soon as Corbyn comes in, God forbid that he should.

"I will not stay in a country where anti-Semitism is now accepted because I think, brilliantly, he and his PR people just didn't answer really, just deflected old accusations.

Now people are fed up with hearing the word so it's almost as if it's accepted and whether that's the case or people are actually anti-Semitic in this country... I hope not but I'm beginning to have my doubts."

He also explained that he would shut down his business of 53 people.

He said: "I will leave, I will close down all of my businesses which I can. I've been nervous of this, I'm in the position where I'll be able to close them down.

"These people won't be employed anymore and that's fine. I'm looking after myself and I'm sure people, some of your viewers or listeners will be saying 'good riddance, let's get rid of the guy'.

But there are hundreds of people like me, and not all of them are Jewish, there are hundreds of wealthy people who have built up businesses who know that in the end Mr. Corbyn will take it all away from us because he doesn't appreciate people who work hard."

Palestinians: "Don't shame us by telling the truth!"

The official Wafa press agency of the Palestinian Authority has published another of its lists of "incitement" in Israeli media.

Here's a great example of what they call incitement in a story published last week:

"We must not speak in Hebrew," is the answer that Ariel Ginsburg, a resident of Nof Galilee, received on Saturday evening at the Arab restaurant "Al Reda" in Nazareth, with his family. Ginsburg, surprised to find that although the waiter understands Hebrew, he refuses to answer him back in Hebrew. "We arrived at the restaurant and saw four tourist tables," Ginsburg says. "I asked the waiter in Hebrew whether the restaurant is for tourists only. The waiter answered in English that the place is open to everyone, and that I can sit inside or outside, for my choice. But then he replied in English, "I can't speak to you in Hebrew, these are our rules." I asked him who wouldn't let him speak in Hebrew, and he answered "my boss."

Wafa is upset that this story was published. After quoting the entire part above, it said, "The aim is to shed light and create a stir that could end with a boycott of Arab restaurants in Nazareth."

Reporting that a Christian Arab restaurant owner is a bigot is of course newsworthy. But Wafa doesn't like it because it is embarrassing and shameful to Arabs. Instead of accepting that, the PA lashes out at the reporter and publisher for daring to publicize the truth that makes them look bad.

And this is what they call "incitement."

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"Cash strapped" Palestinian Authority has given $1 million to Harvard U

In September, the Clarion Project released an incredible report showing a minimum of how much various dictatorships and repressive regimes have been donating to American universities.

Dominating the field is Qatar, which has given an astonishing $1.5 billion to some 28 universities.

Other huge amounts were given by China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

These gifts aren't because these foreign countries love American universities. These are attempts to influence what the university teaches, and with that to influence the next generation of American leaders.

Even the Palestinian Authority, supposedly with no money to pay its own bills, manages to give a million dollars to Harvard University, in 2017.

In case you are wondering, many other countries do this as well. Israel gave some $53 million since 2012. The largest amount was to Johns Hopkins University, and the next two are USC and UCLA.

Every country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe gives money to US universities. The largest single gift I saw was $750 million from Bermuda to Carnegie Mellon University, which might be a typo. A handful of countries gave gifts to individual universities of over $100 million, besides Qatar - India to University of Phoenix, Hong Kong and England to Harvard, France to Duke.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

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11/04 Links Pt1: The missing billions of the Palestinian Authority; The delusional one-state solution; Netanyahu: Arab Countries Now See Israel as an ‘Indispensable Ally’ Against Iran

From Ian:

PMW: The missing billions of the Palestinian Authority

Since its creation, the Palestinian Authority has received tens of billions of dollars of international aid. Just since 2011, the European Union, the United States, and other countries have provided the PA with hundreds of millions of dollars and euros of aid.

While the PA has constantly complained about its financial difficulties, scrutiny of the PA’s own financial records for the years 2011 - 2018, shows that the PA transferred from its coffers over 7 billion shekels to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), some of which was then given to terrorist organizations. In that same period, the PA also spent over 440 million shekels to fund its non-functioning institutions.

Funding to the PLO and internationally designated terrorist organizations

The PLO, which is also headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is an umbrella organization for several Palestinian groups. The largest and most dominant member is Abbas’ Fatah party. Other members include groups designated as terror organizations by the US and the EU such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestinian Liberation Front. PLO members are entitled to and receive funding from the PLO.

While international donors have demanded that the PA show financial transparency, the PLO is not subject to any financial regulation or demands of transparency. Accordingly, it is impossible to know what happens with billions of dollars of donor money the PA has given and continues to give today to the PLO.

Only on sporadic occasions are the financial workings of the PLO exposed. In June 2018, a senior PFLP official, Maher Mazhar, complained that the PFLP was not getting its monthly allocations from the PLO.

Denying the claim of the PFLP, PLO Executive Committee member and Fatah Central Committee member Azzam Al-Ahmad confirmed that Abbas and the Palestinian National Fund - the financial branch of the PLO - are responsible for funding the PFLP, and stressed that the allocations had not been stopped:

“PLO Executive Committee member [and Fatah Central Committee member] Azzam Al-Ahmad denied that the allocation from the Palestinian National Fund to any Palestinian organization, including the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine] (PFLP), has been stopped. In a telephone conversation with Al-Ahmad from Amman, he said: ‘There is no truth to the rumors that [PA] President Abbas or any other party has stopped the allocation to the PFLP.” [Ma’an, (Independent Palestinian news agency), June 17, 2018]

The delusional one-state solution

Events like the Jaffa Riots of 1921 (95 dead) and the Riots of 1929 (249 dead) were a common fixture. When all out war inevitably emerged in 1948 due to Arab rejection of a Jewish state, it ended with the permanent exile of up to 90% of Palestinians from Israeli-controlled territory. Nothing unusual here. Population transfers are a common result of intrastate ethnic conflict. Those wishing to alleviate Palestinian hardship should consider this when contemplating a situation that would result in a power struggle similar to what emerged following the British Mandate.

And a power struggle it will be. One-staters envision shared governance between Jews and Arabs, who will work together under a liberal democratic framework, but the Palestinians have proven unable to do this even amongst themselves. Two years after Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas overthrew the PLO and instituted a totalitarian Islamist regime.

Things are not much better in the West Bank, where President Mahmoud Abbas is now in his 15th year of a four-year term. The “occupation” cannot be blamed. After all, pre-state Israel somehow managed to uphold democratic norms under the brutality of the British Mandate. Democracy is simply not presently part of the Palestinian lexicon.

The same goes for the “liberal” part of “liberal democracy.” Polls by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center show that the Palestinians hold beliefs vehemently at odds with an inclusive society. A majority support honor killings, and 93% of the population harbors antisemitic views, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Before the one-state solution as envisioned by Palestinian advocates is even discussed, Palestinians have a very long way to go. Looking at examples from the broader region, there’s good reason to believe that an Israeli-Palestinian utopia will forever remain a pipe dream.

Understandably, as US President Donald Trump continues to delay his vision for resolving the conflict, ideas counter to the mainstream two-state solution will be discussed. Some are worse than others, but few are as bad as the one-state solution.

Trump’s Middle East shake-up led to killing of al-Baghdadi

As it turns out, the killing of both Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his heir apparent, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, was a direct result of Trump’s shake-up of the pre-existing order in northern Syria and northern Iraq. While it should be obvious, it bears repeating: the media and the American people are not privy to the vast trove of intelligence the commander in chief has at his fingertips. This is particularly important in the complex and multidimensional Middle East, where alliances and verbal agreements are the rule, rather than the exception.

We think in black-and-white terms, but the truth is often closer to gray and white, or black and gray. I have many theories as to just how our US special forces pulled off this miraculous assault against the No. 1 terrorist in the world, but overall, I would venture that what it boils down to is that the president caught al-Baghdadi off-guard.

Al-Baghdadi was no doubt celebrating America’s pullout from the region and got careless. Essentially, it flushed him out into the open. He was planning a new barrage of terror, especially against the Kurds and Yazidis. What he was not prepared for was the determination and steadfastness of Trump. He miscalculated regarding our president and suffered the consequences.

By taking out al-Baghdadi and al-Muhajir, Trump has now sent the clearest message yet to all of our enemies, including Iran and North Korea, that he means business. This was and is a major turning point in his presidency, and it is a crying shame that he can’t seem to get one iota of credit for it from his political opponents.

In the final analysis, the American people will ultimately decide how much credit to give him. I am a firm believer they will be much kinder and wiser judging his record in hindsight.

Hamas' Al Resalah site has a video report on how Fatah persecutes Christians in the West Bank.

The report talks about Fatah thugs in a Christian-majority village called Jifna, north of Ramallah. These thugs fired shots at homes and businesses, threw Molotov cocktails and demanded the Christians to pay jizya (poll tax for non-Muslims to live in "peace.")

The one who was accused of being responsible for this was formerly the head of chamber of commerce in Ramallah and a former candidate for the revolutionary council of Fatah. He was not arrested nor called in for questioning by the PA.

In another incident, the PA security forces "stormed" the house of a Christian woman named Teresa Hajl in Bethlehem. They beat her daughter, and when she tried to protect her daughter, they killed her. Since the mother had Jordanian citizenship, the daughter appealed, apparently unsuccessfully, to the king of Jordan (the report does not say whether the king did anything). The PA didn't do anything.

The report ends with the question "in whose interest do the security forces of the PA harm social peace"? The implicit answer is, of course, the Jews.

Of course, nearly all of the Christians in Gaza have fled under Hamas rule, and a huge number of Christians in the West Bank have fled under PA rule. But it is November, meaning that the media will start publishing stories next month about how Israel is responsible for Christian flight from under Muslim rule, even though Christians are fleeing from every Muslim majority nation.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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More than 700 people from 50 countries from around the world participated in the “Together Against the Deal of the Century and Normalization” conference in Istanbul, Turkey on Friday.

This is the eleventh session of the annual anti-Israel conference.

It was organized by the World Coalition for Jerusalem and Palestine along with the Center for Relations of Turkey and the Islamic World, the Pioneers International Foundation, the World Coalition for Women in Support of Jerusalem and Palestine, the World Youth Coalition, Sports for Solidarity with Jerusalem and Palestine, the Association of Palestinian Scholars Abroad and the World Scout Coalition in Support of Jerusalem and Palestine.

There is quite a cottage industry in creating anti-Israel organizations!

The head of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, delivered a speech where he called on participants in the conference to "develop a plan, a program of action and a vision to bring down the deal of the century and projects to liquidate Palestine."

You know how Palestinian leaders like to accuse Israel of turning the conflict into a religious war? Well, Haniyeh said that anti-Israel actions "represents a legitimate duty and a national and international duty on every Muslim."

These conferences happen all the time. They result in a statement of support for Palestinians and Jerusalem and perhaps vague promises to create a fund for them. Nothing ever happens, and the participants fly to the next conference.

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The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics Jerusalem Yearbook 2011 has a timeline of the history of the city that includes direct antisemitic lies, as well as regular lies.

Like these

29 The Jews attack Jesus Christ and his prophecy.

Millions were killed because of this lie, and Palestinians want their people to believe it today.

1929 A massive Palestinian revolution in defense of the Palestinian rights as a
reaction to militant and bloody Jewish demonstrations at Al-Buraq
“Wailing Wall”.

There was nothing violent about the demonstration at the Kotel. No blood. No injuries. But the Arabs started pogroms throughout the Jewish areas of Jerusalem, Hebron and elsewhere, killing scores in the most obscene ways. This is as offensive as it gets.

22/07/1969 The Supreme Israeli Rabbi issued a statement calling for the Israelis to hold prayers in the Wailing Wall.

And...? The Palestinian Authority is saying that Jews shouldn't even have the right to pray at the Kotel!

Otherwise, the "history" is filled with other outrageous lies:

3000 BC Building of Jerusalem (Ursalem) by Jebusites, who were Arab Canaanite.

Canaanites weren't Arab by any definition of the term.

1920 Jerusalem, Capital of Palestine, falls under British mandate.

Jerusalem was never the capital of Palestine, although it was the seat of the British Mandate government before 1948.

Law of Safeguarding Holy Places, 1967 Ensures access to holy places; refers to the Holy Haram al-Sharif as the Temple Mount and that it is a holy place for Jews not Muslims.

The law does not such thing. It doesn't even mention the Temple Mount.

21/08/1969 Burning of Al-Aqsa Mosque and damage by arson, in an attempt to make
the holy compound Jewish and erase its main Arabic features.

Implying that this was an official Israeli initiative and not the actions of a crazed Christian.

These false history snippets have one thing in common: inciting hate against Jews.

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Absurd article posted by fake academic Juan Cole blames Israel for "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinian Christians

The Hamas-supporting Middle East Monitor (MEMO) site has an article by the always ridiculous Ramzy Baroud, claiming that Israel is engaging in "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinian Christians.

After quoting lots of statistics on the disappearance of Christians and blaming Israel, not Muslims or the PA, the article brings its only piece of "evidence:"

A study conducted by Dar al-Kalima University in the West Bank town of Beit Jala and published in December 2017, interviewed nearly 1,000 Palestinians, half of them Christian and the other half Muslim. One of the main goals of the research was to understand the reason behind the depleting Christian population in Palestine.
The study concluded that “the pressure of Israeli occupation, ongoing constraints, discriminatory policies, arbitrary arrests, confiscation of lands added to the general sense of hopelessness among Palestinian Christians,” who are finding themselves in “a despairing situation where they can no longer perceive a future for their offspring or for themselves”.

There are three problems with this study.

One is that it is biased against Israel. One of the authors, Bernard Sabella, was at the time also a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. There is no way that this study would look objectively at Muslim persecution of Christians, well documented not only in the territories but also throughout the Middle East.

And when Christians think that the survey is associated with the government, they are unlikely to say anything that might upset the government.

Two is that in order to prove Israeli "ethnic cleansing" of Christians, it would mean that Israel is somehow targeting Christians more than Muslims. Yet this same study showed that Palestinian Muslims shared nearly the exact same level of fear as well as optimism as the Christians surveyed.

If they suffer equally, and the Muslims aren't persecuting the Christians, then why are only the Christians leaving and not nearly as many Muslims?

The third issue is methodological. If one wants to understand why Christians are fleeing the PA-controlled areas, you don't ask the people who are still there - you ask the people who left!

To be sure, part of the reason more Christians leave than Muslims because Christians were more middle class and had more economic opportunity to leave, as well as welcoming communities to go to where there are already many established Palestinian Christians, in the US and South America. But it is just as certain that there has been many cases of reported persecution of Christians by Muslims.

The most hilarious part of this absurd article is that after invoking this ridiculous report as the be all and end all on proof of Israeli persecution of Christians, it adds:

Unfounded claims that Palestinian Christians are leaving because of religious tensions between them and their Muslim brethren are, therefore, irrelevant.

I've published many articles over the past fifteen years documenting how Muslims have been attacking Christians in the West Bank and Gaza, forcing the Christians to look to live elsewhere. This study does not refute that at all.

Another problem with the article itself is that if Israel wants to persecute Christians, why is the Christian population in Israel itself steady and growing?

It is no surprise that MEMO publishes this garbage. Interestingly, eleventh-rate professor Juan Cole was so enchanted by this piece of bad reporting that he copied the entire thing to his blog.

(h/t Dan)

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11/03 Links: David Collier: The Catholic Church, Interfaith and the Antisemites; Twitter suspends Hamas, Hezbollah-affiliated accounts; Remembering the Balfour Declaration

From Ian:

David Collier: The Catholic Church, Interfaith and the Antisemites

This weekend Chester saw an Interfaith event – at least on paper it did. In reality what took place in the North-West is part of a particularly insidious antisemitic attack. Those responsible are a group called ‘Interfaith for Palestine’. The people behind Interfaith for Palestine created a Facebook page and a website in spring of 2019. This week they held a two-day conference. The programme over the two-days contained the names of highly toxic speakers such as Gilad Atzmon, Stephen Sizer and Mick Napier. The event had originally been scheduled to take place inside St Columba’s, a local Catholic Church, but after successful protests led by North West Friends of Israel, the Church soon cancelled their booking. The event still went ahead at a different venue.
A few questions about interfaith

This type of event shows just how lost the anti-Israel movement has become. With almost no visible Palestinian activists actually calling for peace, anti-Israel activism has been on the slide to oblivion for decades. They’ve aligned with every toxic ideology possible. So much so that there is now no resemblance whatsoever between how they define themselves and what they actually represent. Consider this – was the Roman Catholic Church really going to host an interfaith event about Israel on a Saturday – a day that automatically excludes the religious members of the Jewish community? And just as absurdly, what on earth have Napier, Sizer and Atzmon got to do with Interfaith?
Moving the interfaith event

When the Church cancelled, they were allegedly told by the angry event organiser that they had caved in to the ‘Jewish lobby’. Obviously interfaith to these people doesn’t include the Jews. The event then moved to a local community centre in Hoole. North West Friends of Israel turned to the charity behind the centre to explain why the event was so offensive. This time NWFOI walked into a brick wall. In fact, the response was hostile. This from the first email response:

“Your intervention (and the various other coordinated extreme ones we received today) did nothing to help foster good community relations here in Chester or to improve the understanding of and sympathy for the Jewish cause nationally in the UK.”

The email was signed by Roderick Heather MBE, Chairman of the Hoole Community Trust. A few antisemites dressing up as an interfaith group and hosting an event with toxic speakers isn’t a problem to dear Roderick. He is clearly more concerned about the reaction. The ‘ill-informed and bigoted telephone and social media campaign’ that the victims in this case – the Jewish community – launched in response. The exchange deteriorated even further, with Roderick Heather himself referring to a ‘Jewish lobby’ and additionally becoming an expert on what is and is not antisemitism:

Twitter suspends Hamas, Hezbollah-affiliated accounts

Twitter has suspended all Hamas-affiliated accounts and “most” accounts associated with Hezbollah, according to media reports.

“There is no place on Twitter for illegal terrorist organizations and violent extremist groups,” a Twitter spokesperson told AFP.

Kudos to @Twitter for suspending the accounts of terror groups #Hezbollah and #Hamas.

Internationally recognized terror groups should never have a platform for their violent extremism. pic.twitter.com/2Dm8bEcB6S
— Jonathan Conricus (@LTCJonathan) November 2, 2019

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers accused the social media giant last week of violating American law by allowing content from US-designated terrorist groups to appear on the micro-blogging site. Congress ordered Twitter to suspend all accounts affiliated with Hezbollah and Hamas by November 2, according to Al-Manar TV, a Hezbollah-affiliated station that claimed most of its Twitter accounts had been suspended on Saturday.

The Twitter accounts in Arabic, French, English and Spanish were suspended with no prior notice.

Al-Manar stressed the channel’s “objectivity and accuracy in conveying truth,” in a post about the suspensions. The TV station stressed that, in addition to its “resistance role,” Hezbollah “plays a big role in Lebanese political life.”

PMW: Violence against LGBTQ people "with greater frequency and intensity" since PA police said gay activities "violate highest ideals"

The Israel-based alQaws organization for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society has reported that following a statement by the PA police against LGBTQ people, violence has “continued unabated” and even “with greater frequency and intensity.” The organization further said that “much of the violence and harassment perpetrated... has been at the hands of police officers themselves.” [alQaws’ website, Oct. 30, 2019]

Palestinian Media Watch documented that PA Police in August announced that gay activities are "a violation of the highest ideals and values of the Palestinian society" and that the police would ”prevent any activity by the homosexual group" alQaws - the organizers of a gathering in the West Bank for LGBTQ people. PA police encouraged the Palestinian public to “contact the police and report any person who has a connection to this organization.”

According to alQaws, the PA police has refused to officially retract its statement against the LGBTQ community in general and alQaws’ activities in particular. This is despite the fact that the police has removed the statement from its official website and its spokesman’s Facebook page, apparently after pressure from human rights groups.

However, without an official retraction, the PA police’s implied sanction of violence against LGBTQ people is still valid, - also in the eyes of police officers themselves who, according to alQaws, are the ones perpetrating “much of the violence and harassment.”