A tweet from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei:
The size of Iran's Jewish population since 1947 (based on Wikipedia):
The vast majority of Iran's Jews don't seem to feel safe enough to stay.
But what do they know?
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The Neturei Karta is a tiny fringe group of Orthodox Jewish-appearing people that thrives on publicity for its anti-Israel, pro-Islamist political positions.
One of its leaders, Yisroel Meir Hirsch, recently released a video that has been shown on Palestinian TV, in Hebrew with English subtitles, where he repeats the NK position that Zionism is evil and Palestinian Arabs are the only people with a right to the land.
The most interesting part is at the end, where Hirsch says, that the whole world will worship Allah together, inshallah (Arabic for God willing.)
Hirsch also attacked J-Street for being too Zionist: "We also wish to clarify here that the position of J-Street and such like-minded organizations do not represent the Jewish people and are certainly not benefiting the Palestinian people. The entirety of their position is a lie and a diversion tactic against those who seek peace and justice, as they promote a false discourse of rights which totally rejects the basic rights of Palestinians."
Neturei Karta has traveled to Iran to attend the "International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust." It issued a leaflet supporting the murder of Jews in the Chabad in Mumbai. Every major Orthodox Jewish group, including the anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidim, have strongly condemned Neturei Karta for allying itself with the murderers of Jews.
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Here is a photo from a memorial service of Khaled Moawad Farraj, 39, showing what appears to be his son dressed in a uniform and with a gun.
This photo is from a similar memorial service of Yousef Rizk Khalil Abu Kamil, 35, which shows what appears to be his son and younger brother again dressed like jihadis and the older one with a weapon.
Recruiting child soldier is against international law. And it is child abuse.
But people who pretend to be attuned to these sorts of outrages seem to have a blind spot when it is done by jihadists.
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A Toronto student union has refused to support a drive to make kosher food accessible on campus because its backers are “pro-Israel.”
Last week, a Jewish student wrote to the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (GSU), asking it to consider supporting an ongoing campaign by Hillel to secure kosher food access on campus. In response, the student was told: “I doubt the Executive Committee will be comfortable recommending this motion given that the organisation hosting it (Hillel) is openly pro-Israel.”
The response email added that any move to support the kosher food campaign could be contrary to “the will of the membership,” an apparent reference to the GSU’s adoption of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement targeting the Jewish State in 2012.
The GSU is the only student union in Canada with a committee dedicated to promoting the BDS Movement.
On Sunday, B’nai Brith wrote to officials at the University, asking them to swiftly condemn the GSU’s stance on the kosher food initiative, ensure that the complaint against the GSU BDS Committee is expedited, and work to make kosher food more accessible on campus.
Here is Hillel's press release.
The BDSers are effectively saying that as long as Jews support Israel, they should starve.
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The origins of the legal dispute stretch back several years to when the EU issued a mandate in 2015 declaring that products produced in the West Bank and Golan Heights be labeled as coming from an Israeli settlement, facially for the purpose of promoting “consumer protection,” although it’s unclear if that is actually achieved here. In late 2016, France became the first EU member state to attempt to enforce the mandate, resulting in the Israeli winery Psagot filing a lawsuit claiming that such a mandate violated the EU’s anti-discrimination laws.
Under the new rule, goods produced by Jews will be labeled as having been produced in an Israeli settlement, while goods produced by Muslims may be labeled as made in “Palestine,” indicating blatant discriminatory treatment. Unsurprisingly, Israel’s presence in the West Bank and the Golan Heights are the only contested areas in the world to be the focus of the labeling ire of the EU.
“No other territory, occupied, disputed, or otherwise is subject to such requirements,” noted Eugene Kontorovich, director of the Center for International Law in the Middle East at George Mason University. Kontorovich emphasized the peculiarity of the ruling. “In no other case does any ‘origin labeling’ require any kind of statement about the political circumstances in the area. This is a special Yellow Star for Jewish products only.”
Indeed, there are a multitude of contested areas throughout the world that produce goods for which the EU has deemed politicized labeling requirements unnecessary. Despite Russia’s occupation of parts of Georgia or Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara, nothing in EU law or greater international law requires labeling goods produced by Russia in occupied parts of Georgia as “Made in Georgia” or goods produced by Morocco in Western Sahara as “Made in Western Sahara.”
As Kontorovich explained on Twitter, “Products around the world are made in many situations that raise ‘ethical’ and legal questions, from Chinese prison labor factories to Moroccan drilling Sahrawi oil. Only such concern that requires labeling in EU is Jews living in neighborhoods where they are not ‘supposed’ to be.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has led the fight against antisemitism on a federal level, echoed those thoughts: “This labeling singles out Jews who live in communities where Europeans don’t think they should be allowed to live and identifies them for boycotts.” The senator elaborated on the somber gravity of the EU ruling, declaring the decision to be “reminiscent of the darkest moments in Europe’s history.”
Compare:
Iranian Violation:
Iran refused to let its judo athlete compete against an Israeli athlete
IJF Punishment:
International Judo Federation immediately suspended Iran from all competitions
Palestinian Violation:
The Palestinian Football Association (PFA) refuses to let Palestinian players compete against Israelis
FIFA Punishment:
None - The International Federation of Football Association (FIFA) ignores the fundamental PFA violations
On October 22, the International Judo Federation showed its clear moral fiber by suspending the Iran Judo Federation "from all competitions, administrative and social activities organized or authorized by the IJF and its Unions, until the Iran Judo Federation gives strong guarantees and prove that they will respect the IJF Statutes and accept that their athletes fight against Israeli athletes."
The suspension followed Iran's forcing its athlete to withdraw from the Judo World Championships last August, rather than compete against an Israeli.
For years, the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) under Jibril Rajoub, President of the Palestinian Football Association and Head of the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, has prohibited Palestinian participation in any sporting event with Israel. Rajoub has also used Palestinian football to support and glorify terrorism; incite hatred and violence; and promote racism.
While Palestinian Media Watch has provided FIFA - the international football association - with all the proof necessary to penalize the PFA and to suspend its membership in FIFA, as well as to take disciplinary measures against Rajoub, to FIFA's great shame, it sadly lacks the moral clarity that was shown by the International Judo Federation, and only temporarily suspended Rajoub himself and has not yet penalized the PFA.
In the terminology of the Palestinian Authority, participating in any joint activities with Israelis, including sporting events, is called "normalization." It is strictly forbidden, and also when it comes to football.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that more must be done to eradicate antisemitism from modern society in the UK, and that the current government was investing in the protection of places of worship and in tolerance education.
Johnson made his comments in a letter to Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog, who wrote last month to the British prime minister expressing concern about rising antisemitism in Europe in the wake of the Halle, Germany, synagogue attack, and to call for heightened security measures at Jewish institutions.
Johnson’s letter comes as the UK is currently in the midst of a campaign leading to the December 12 election in which antisemitism has become a key issue, due to the failure of the Labour Party to adequately tackle the widespread antisemitism among its members at all levels of the party.
According to the annual report by the Community Security Trust in the UK, 2018 saw a record level of antisemitic incidents, following two other record-breaking years in 2017 and 2016.
“Please be assured of my resolute support for all aspects of Jewish life,” Johnson said in his letter to Herzog, adding that he had read “with a heavy heart” about the Halle synagogue shooting and other recent incidents of antisemitism in Europe.
“I completely agree that we need to do more to stamp this out and better protect our Jewish friends and neighbors,” the British prime minister said.
Whenever you ask haters why they target Israel, they always claim that there is something uniquely evil about the Jewish state. But when you point out that Israel is not close to the worst in any area they can name, after weakly accusing you of "whataboutism," they fall back to the same answer.
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The popular Egyptian news site Seventh Day (Youm7) calls the Muslim Brotherhood, the Jews and the Shiites the "trinity" that is responsible for all world problems.
There is no catastrophe in the world today that is not from one of the sources of evil: the Jewish lobby, the terrorist Brotherhood, and the Shiites with their extremist and armed wings. The evil triad is similar in their approach as if they were born from one womb.
When the Israeli state was founded by Theodore Herzl, it was founded on the basis of religious belief. The same thing happened when the Iranian revolution in 1979 was based on a religious belief, as the exclusive source to speak in the name of Islam.
The Trinity agrees that hostility to Jews is anti-Semitism, anti-Shia is hostility to Al-Bayt Rasulullah (peace be upon him), and hostility to the terrorist Brotherhood is anti-Islam, as if the Trinity were emissaries of heaven to earth to speak in the name of the Lord.
The Trinity does not recognize the term "homeland" in its comprehensive sense, nor do they recognize its geographical boundaries. Iran knows only the "divine state of justice," which is to dominate the world, and is ruled by the Mahdi, and Israel does not recognize borders and that its goal is to establish Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates. The Muslim Brotherhood is looking for the rule of the world and the application of sharia to the Islamic Caliphate, and that the Pakistani Muslim and a member of the group is better than the Egyptian Muslim not belonging to the group !!
The Trinity is above apartheid. The Jews see themselves as God's chosen people in general, and within them also racial classes, each with their own characteristics and advantages. For example, Sephardim are different from Ashkenazim, while Falasha Jews are at the bottom of the list of rights, and the same is true among the Shiites ....
The Trinity sanctifies the clergy, rather than the prophets and apostles, and their words are more sacred than the Holy Scriptures. On behalf of the Lord !!
This wasn't written as an op-ed - this was written by Dandrawy Elhawary, the chief executive editor of Youm7.
Youm7 is the fifth most popular website in Egypt and the 235th most popular one in the entire world. Rabid atisemitism is simply part and parcel of every day life in Egypt. As of this writing, there were over 500 "Likes' on Twitter, with many fawning responses on how wonderful this essay is.
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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met Saturday with the family of the late Iraqi Jewish writer Yitzhak Bar Moshe in the presence of the head of the committee for communication with Israeli society Mohammed Al Madani.
The President welcomed the writer's family, stressing that he would reprint the book "Out of Iraq", which was written by the late writer in Arabic.
The president pointed out that the reprint of the book aims to inform the Arab world about the suffering of the Jews of Iraq and how they were driven out of there, pointing out that the camps where they were placed in Israel is a common denominator with the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Writer Isaac Bar-Moshe was born in 1927 in Baghdad.
During his first decades in Israel, despite the hostile attitude toward Iraqi Jews and the Arabic language, Bar-Moshe was optimistic about the country’s future. That optimism turned to deep disappointment. Perhaps paradoxically, it was after Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David Peace Accords in 1979 that Bar-Moshe realized, he said later, that Israel was not interested in living in peace with the wider Arab world. The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 was the final nail in the coffin of his hopes for Israel. He left the country permanently, moving to England and settling in Manchester, where there was a thriving Iraqi Jewish community. “I felt,” he said in a 2003 interview, “that I did not belong in Israel.”
Apparently, Abbas wants to show a kinship with Bar Moshe because some of his autobiographical writings can be twisted to look anti-Israel. However, they were far more nuanced:
Bar Moshe's relationship with Israel was complex, but Abbas wants to portray it as an example of Israel's hate towards Arab Jews to combat his own reputation as an antisemite.
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The rise, or rise again, of anti-Semitism is by no means confined to Britain. Australian academic Peter Kurti warns rising anti-Semitism in Britain, US and Europe risks becoming “commonplace” here too.
In a policy paper for the conservative-leaning Centre for Independent Studies, Kurti attributes the phenomenon to a particular racist mindset among adherents of the postmodern political left. “Increasingly the left has become obsessed with anti-Zionism, which can be a mask for anti-Semitism,” he writes.
Corbyn might be regarded as the model. But Kurti says the state of Israel and Jewish people more widely have become the standard target in Australia as well for leftists in what he brands a “toxic mutation of an ancient hatred”. He argues the left’s unrelenting support for the Palestinian cause, including seemingly unqualified demands for the creation of a Palestinian state, treats Israel as a remnant of Western colonialism to the point of rejecting its legitimacy as a state.
Kurti cites a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Australia (366 last year or a 59 per cent increase across the previous 12 months as recorded by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry). He concurs with the ECAJ’s conclusions that these incidents stem from “left-wing rhetoric exaggerating the power of the so-called Jewish lobby”. The effect has been to “stoke far-right myths about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions”.
The Sanders–Warren–Buttigieg trio display either hostility or ignorance, or possibly both, when they assert that US policy supports creating a Palestinian Arab state. To the contrary, the Trump administration, while not ruling it out, has explicitly not adopted this position — and it is the executive branch that sets foreign policy.
It is additionally deeply hypocritical that Senators Sanders and Warren have called for cutting aid to Israel over an issue of policy when, in September this year, both senators opposed President Trump’s cuts in aid to Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
The PA has refused negotiations for nearly a decade and insists it will never return to them, refused to dismantle terrorist groups, refused to end the incitement to hatred and murder that suffuses the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps, and has refused to stop paying salaries to blood-soaked, jailed terrorists and stipends to the families of deceased terrorists who murdered Jews. (These payments totaled $318 million in 2016).
The PA, moreover, has made the astonishing declaration that it regards US aid as a “political and moral right” on account of US support for Israel’s establishment in 1948. These policies adhered to by the PA diverge massively from the US position — unless Sanders-Warren-Buttigieg mean to changer that too. Yet none of these positions attracts even the suggestion from these Democrats that the PA deserves no or less US aid.
These new, diametrically-opposed positions will not long coexist in the same party. The Democratic Party is fast reaching the point where it must either succumb to the new radical leftist positions on Israel espoused by Sanders-Warren-Buttigieg (not to mention ‘The Squad’) or reassert its traditional, liberal support for the Jewish state.
It remains only to note that blaming the Jewish state for every species of injustice is a feature of the campus anti-Israel movement, not an anomaly. At the City University of New York in 2015, multiple Students for Justice in Palestine chapters signed a statement against CUNY’s “Zionist administration.” The topics? High tuition and low wages for campus workers. Jewish Voice for Peace has since 2017 been running a “Deadly Exchange” campaign, the core of which is that Israel is responsible for police violence against blacks in America. The strategy is clear enough: if you blame the Jews—sorry, “Zionism”—for everyone’s ills, you can draw more allies into your movement.
Anti-Semitism, you see, is a potent political strategy. It’s even more potent when student governments ignore Jewish students and condemn, as the student Senate at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign did recently, the “equation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.” Four hundred Jewish students, including the lone Jew in the Senate, walked out.
Once, certain student governments were satisfied to make pronouncements about the Middle East without educating themselves about it. Now they have graduated to lecturing and condemning Jews who complain about anti-Semitism without educating themselves about anti-Semitism.
Kudos to Mr. Flayton for stepping forward and to the New York Times for publishing him. No doubt, some adherents of the campus left are beyond shame. But in my experience, even professed anti-Zionists are more thoughtful and persuadable than their public pronouncements suggest. They genuinely believe, perhaps because they rub elbows mainly with the 5 percent of Jews who do not have a favorable view of Israel, that the people who charge them with anti-Semitism are disingenuous.
They haven’t thought it through, but they’re not beyond help.
I do not talk about the "return" of anti-Semitism, because it never left. It just waited for the right time to rise again. Anti-Semitism thinks this is its time. But while the anti-Semites might be the same as they always were, the Jews are not. We won't stay silent. We've got no intention of trying to appease them.
The anti-Semites say, "the Jews are different from us, that's why we're allowed to attack them." Too many Jews in too many places say: "you are wrong, we're not different. All people are the same." It doesn't help because it isn't true. We are different. We have a different religion, we're part of an ancient and unique culture. There is a covenant between us. We're proud of it. Loving your brother isn't a crime. Being different isn't a crime.
We don't need to pretend we're not different. We need to fight for the principle that you don't discriminate against people because they're different. You don't kill people because they're different. Anti-Semitism never admits to what it really is: xenophobia, which is simply the hatred of what you don't understand because you don't understand it.
I'm no pacifist. I don't believe in facing hate with love. You don't fight hate with love, but with organizational ability, clear messaging, with determination and strength. You fight it in TV studios and on the battlefield. You fight it by telling the truth. It's not a debate about Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians. It's an ancient attempt to destroy a small and talented people that insists on maintaining their unique identity and unique voice.
Tonight, as I spoke about how anti-Zionists hung my great grandfather in Iraq, anti-Zionists chanted for my death at Vassar College in NY.
(Note: “from the river to the sea” is a chant used by Hamas when they call for the genocide of all Jews)
Three of the four highest-polling Democratic presidential candidates are talking about Israel in language other politicians reserve for rogue states. It’s the latest and most worrisome sign that a growing number of Democrats place a higher value on pandering to progressives than on Israeli sovereignty and security. The aggressive rhetoric is another reminder of the energy on the political left. Bernie Sanders’s political revolution may be in trouble, but his foreign-policy revolution in how the Democratic Party sees Israel is going swimmingly.
Bernie is capitalizing on long-running trends. In his recent book We Stand Divided, Daniel Gordis notes that relations between Israel and the American Diaspora have often been fraught: “For most of the time since Theodor Herzl launched political Zionism at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, the relationship between American Jews and Herzl’s idea, and then the country it created, has been complex at best and often even openly antagonistic.”
What many assumed was a durable pro-Israel consensus was in fact a consequence of specific historical circumstances. The American left’s goodwill toward Israel was based in large part on images: Israel the scrappy underdog, Israel the land of social democracy and the kibbutzim, Israel the participant in Camp David and the Oslo Accords. The picture today is different.
For the left, the state created in the aftermath of the Holocaust and invaded by Arab armies has become a conquering power. The nation of communes has become the nation of start-ups. The governments of David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin have become the governments of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Americans who belong to the millennial generation or to Generation Z have no memory of the Middle East “peace process.” Nor can they recall the second intifada or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Many American Jews express their identity not through religious practice and Zionism but through social-justice activism and tikkun olam. To them, Israel is an oppressive state with un-egalitarian religious and political systems. In a 2007 study, fewer than half of American Jews age 35 or younger said, “Israel’s destruction would be a personal tragedy.”
The following year, Barack Obama won two-thirds of the millennial vote and 78 percent of the Jewish vote. While he was sure to pay obeisance to the imperatives of Israeli security, Obama’s actions as president created the space for anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activism within the Democratic Party. “When there is no daylight [between Israel and the United States], Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arabs,” he said in 2009.
Bernie Sanders - who is vying for the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2020 - drew ire from Jew and Palestinians when he weighed in on Israel’s ongoing conflict with Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
In a tweet posted Thursday night, Sanders said that Israelis “should not have to live in fear of rocket fire.” However, in the same breath, he also remarked that “Palestinians should not have to live under occupation and blockade.”
He then called on the US to “lead the effort” to bring peace between Israel and Gaza.
The statement, made well after several Democratic Party heavyweights already chimed in and backed Israel’s right to defend itself, was seen by Jewish groups and Israeli politicians as drawing a false moral equivalence between Israel and terrorists.
Israel’s former ambassador to the US, Danny Ayalon, slammed Sanders's statement.
This isn't a "he-said/she-said" crisis with identical sides.
One side is America's closest ally in the Mideast. The other side celebrated on 9/11.
Never be neutral in a conflict between an ally that shares your country's values & an enemy that seeks your country's destruction.
Latest FBI bias statistics show yet again how disproportionately Jews are targeted for hate crimes compared to other religions. pic.twitter.com/zaTFC8UDl4
F you, @IfNotNowOrg . Only one side TARGETS civilians and only one side DEFENDS civilians. Your "context" is trying to justify terror. It shows how little you care about peace or Israeli lives. https://t.co/2uGE2AQP8B
I see that the usual crowd is blaming Israel for "extrajudicial execution" of a terrorist.
If the US was justified in killing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Israel is equally justified in killing Baha Abu al Ata and any terrorist actively involved in planning terror attacks. pic.twitter.com/dKYCyT57O7
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The bomb that flew through the window of Bahaa Abu al-Ata’s secret apartment in Gaza City did far more than just kill a top Islamic Jihad terrorist. It revealed a new relationship between Israel and Hamas, exposed the IDF’s strengths and weaknesses, and also dealt a critical blow to the possibility that Benny Gantz will form a government with the Arab Joint List.
Military
From a military perspective, the IDF did an impressive job throughout the two days of fighting. First was the accurate targeted assassination of al-Ata, which killed him and his wife but no one else, not a small tactical feat. More importantly, the military showed that it has not lost its ability to strike terrorists on the move, even though it has been some time since it did so.
This was demonstrated by the numbers. In two days of fighting, the IDF struck and killed more than 20 Islamic Jihad terrorists and commanders, some moving on motorcycles and others in fields, ready to launch rockets. This was primarily thanks to what is known in the military as the “fire canopy,” a small war room located at the IDF’s Gaza Division.
It is here, in a heavily-fortified dome-like structure, where officers from the IDF’s different branches – Air Force, Ground Forces and Navy – sat alongside their counterparts from the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and Military Intelligence, received real-time intelligence on various targets, and then allocated the appropriate weapon to be used to attack, in most cases a missile launched from an IAF aircraft. The room is lined with screens, showing live footage of Gaza from Israel’s various sensors, be they ground-based cameras or reconnaissance drones overhead.
“This is a place where you see a synthesis and synergy of intelligence and operations,” one officer who has participated in these kinds of missions in the past explained. “The fire canopy is the center of everything that Israel does over and inside Gaza.”
What contributed to the success was the constant flow of high-quality intelligence that enabled the IDF to shorten the sensor-to-shooter cycle in ways that used to be unimaginable. If a few years ago it took five minutes or longer from the moment the IDF identified an enemy until it was able to attack, today it is just a fraction of the time.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the IDF misread what Islamic Jihad would do after the assassination of al-Ata and decided to close all schools and offices in the Tel Aviv area, sowing panic across the country.
The IDF Home Front Command explained that the initial decision was based on the assumption that Islamic Jihad would use the long-range missiles it has in its arsenal to strike at Tel Aviv and its surrounding areas. It is easy to criticize the decision after nothing happened, they say, but if a school or office building had been hit, people would be speaking a lot differently.
The operations during Black Belt were managed from a mobile command and control center full of flat screens, showing troops everything that was happening.
With a dense network of surveillance and attack resources, from unmanned aerial vehicles to fighter jets over the Strip and significant intelligence resources from the Shin Bet, the military was able to spot and identify its targets and close the circle on them in real time.
While a total of 11 Palestinian civilians, including several children, were killed in the two-day operation, the IDF stressed that precision airstrikes reduced the number of civilian casualties and stopped the PIJ operatives from carrying out their attacks in real time.
That Hamas also stayed out of the violence was also considered a success in Israel’s books.
The killing of al-Ata allowed Hamas to breathe a sigh of relief, as the PIJ commander hampered the group’s ability to govern the Strip and adhere to the ceasefire arrangement with Israel, which gives them millions of dollars from Qatar and other much needed infrastructure, such as electricity, fuel and a new hospital.
Unlike PIJ, Hamas has the Gazan street to contend with. It needed to be the responsible adult.
Following intense mediation by Egypt, the two sides agreed to a ceasefire after 50 hours of fighting. Both sides claimed victory; but for the IDF, the fact that the conflict didn’t stretch into weeks of fighting was paramount.
“We are at high readiness and preparedness on all fronts, not only in Gaza,” Zilberman said. “We are facing a significant challenge against Iranian activity in a variety of arenas, and not only in Syria.”
THE STRUGGLE Israel has faced against Islamic Jihad is directly related to the escalating tensions throughout the region. It does not operate in a vacuum.
Israel’s ability to conduct an operation against it and isolate it by keeping Hamas out of the fighting was an extraordinary achievement.
The larger problem is that PIJ is one of the smaller Iranian-backed forces arrayed against Israel. It is dangerous because it is so close to Israel. But it has only 5% of the number of rockets that Hezbollah has.
When compared to the IRGC’s roots in Syria and the Iraqi Shi’ite militia bases, and even the technology Iran has transferred to the Houthis in Yemen, PIJ is less important. It is also blockaded and isolated.
Breaking its ability to threaten Israel in the case of a two-front war is important; the 450 rockets it fired over 48 hours on November 12-13 are 450 rockets it no longer has. It has saved some of its long-range ordnance. This is a concern.
Iran has used PIJ in the past to pester and threaten Israel and heat up conflicts at times of Tehran’s choosing. By striking Al-Ata, Israel turned the tables on this Iranian “ticking bomb.”
But the larger context is still an Iranian threat across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Removing one of PIJ’s pawns from the board was a move in a larger conflict.
I was upset when I saw Brant Rosen, a Reconstructionist-ordained anti-Zionist rabbi, suggest that Jews should say Psalms for Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
Sickeningly, this was retweeted by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association.
I responded:
I challenge you to show me a SINGLE war crime under international law that Israel has committed in Gaza since Monday, @rabbibrant.
Israel's allowed to attack military targets. Israel's allowed to kill terrorists while minimizing civilian deaths. So what are the crimes? https://t.co/YQYD742YNz
A day later I tweeted out two articles (Distinction and Proportionality) I wrote in 2014 about Gaza and international law, pointing out that people who claim Israel is guilty of war crimes simply do not know a thing about international law. I tagged Rosen.
He responded, instead of answering my question, by trying to ask me a "gotcha" question:
Prove to me that the Israeli military tries to “minimize casualties.”
Leaflets? Phone calls? Comparison with civilian/militant ratio in any similar conflicts in history in urban areas? Reading Israel's MAG reports? Testimony of hundreds of IDF soldiers?
Are you that completely clueless? Or is it on purpose that you don't educate yourself?
I didn't even mention roof knocking, or that US military brass come to Israel to learn how to minimize casualties, or the reports from major military figures worldwide that assert that no one does more than Israel to minimize civilian casualties.
People like Brant Rosen use Electronic Intifada as their Torah and Philip Weiss as their prophet. For someone to call himself a rabbi and yet revel in his ignorance about a conflict that he spends so much time opining on is mind blowing.
The mentality of Jewish haters of Israel could fill a psychology textbook.
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The New York Times published an excellent op-ed by Blake Flayton, a self-described young, gay, left-wing Jewish college sophomore who considers himself a progressive on all social issues.
Yet he is also a Zionist - a Zionist who is ardently against "occupation" but a supporter of the Jewish state.
As such, he is subjected to abuse within his own progressive circles:
Before I arrived on campus, I could proudly say that I was both a strong progressive and a Zionist. I didn’t think there was a conflict between those two ideas. In fact, I understood them as being in sync, given that progressives have long championed the liberation movements of downtrodden minorities. I viewed — and still view — the establishment of the state of Israel as a fundamentally just cause: the most persecuted people in human history finally gaining the right of self-determination after centuries of displacement, intimidation, violence and genocide. For me, this remains true even as I oppose the occupation of the West Bank. It is my Zionism that informs my view that the Palestinian people also have the right to their own state.
But my view is not at all shared by the progressive activist crowd I encountered on campus. They have made it abundantly clear to me and other Jews on campus that any form of Zionism — even my own liberal variant, which criticizes various policies of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and seeks a just two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — is a political nonstarter. For this group at my school, and similar groups on campuses and cities around the country, Zionism itself is, to parrot the Soviet propaganda of several decades ago, racist. And anybody who so dares to utter the words “right to exist” is undeniably a proponent of racism.
Given that almost all American Jews identify as “pro-Israel,” even as the majority of us are also critical of Israeli government policy, this intolerance affects huge numbers of young American Jews. I am one of them.
At many American universities, mine included, it is now normal for student organizations to freely call Israel an imperialist power and an outpost of white colonialism with little pushback or discussion — never mind that more than half of Israel’s population consists of Israeli Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, and that the country boasts a 20 percent Arab minority. The word “apartheid” is thrown around without hesitation. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is repeatedly dragged into discussions ranging anywhere from L.G.B.T.Q. equality (where to mention Israel’s vastly better record on gay rights compared with that of any other country in the Middle East is branded “pinkwashing”), to health care to criminal justice reform.
At a recent political club meeting I attended, Zionism was described by leadership as a “transnational project,” an anti-Semitic trope that characterizes the desire for a Jewish state as a bid for global domination by the Jewish people. The organization went on to say that Zionism should not be “normalized.” Later, when I advised a member to add more Jewish voices to the organization’s leadership as a means of adding more nuance to their platform, I was assured that anti-Zionist Jews were already a part of the club and thus my concerns of anti-Semitism were baseless.
I expected this loophole, as it is all too common across progressive spaces: groups protect themselves against accusations of anti-Semitism by trotting out their anti-Zionist Jewish supporters, despite the fact that such Jews are a tiny fringe of the Jewish community. Such tokenism is seen as unacceptable — and rightfully so — in any other space where a marginalized community feels threatened.
All of this puts progressive Jews like myself in an extraordinarily difficult position. We often refrain from calling out anti-Semitism on our side for fear of our political bona fides being questioned or, worse, losing friends or being smeared as the things we most revile: racist, white supremacist, colonialist and so on. And that is exactly what happens when we do speak up.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs of T'ruah, "the rabbinic call to human rights," had a reaction that, while admitting the antisemitism of the Left, blamed the mainstream Jewish community.
This piece is important on two fronts:
1) Yes, it's antisemitic to exclude Jewish students from groups unless they denounce Israel.
2) Mainstream Jewish community has contributed to problem by insisting that supporting Israel=supporting occupation.
That is--if there were a loud, unified Jewish voice saying clearly that occupation is moral wrong & a human rights violation an investing accordingly--rather than defending it--students (& others) would get difference & we wouldn't leave students like this one out to dry.
To be clear, there are lots of Jewish orgs fighting for Israel & against occupation-- including the 10 in Progressive Israel Network
This is a self-serving, and quite wrong, assumption by Rabbi Jill Jacobs.
The things that Jewish students have to deal with from anti-Zionists are about Israel's existence, not "occupation." There is no evidence that these antisemitic attitudes would change if Jews all belonged to J-Street or other anti-occupation Jewish organizations.
I would also add that the anti-occupation Jews on campus spend very little time defending Israel. They spend FAR more time attacking it. Do you honestly think that this attitude HELPS Israel against the haters? I do not see any Yom Ha'atzmaut activities actually celebrating Israel on campus sponsored by J-Street or similar groups. On the contrary, the only message I see from them towards Israel is criticism, not support.
Face it, J-Street U is a gateway drug for the anti-Zionist "Jewish Voice for Peace," not for aliyah.
There are some extremely eloquent defenders of Israel who are also against occupation. Nurit Baytch and Petra Marquardt-Bigman are two of many. The difference between them and J-Street is night and day. They love Israel while J-Street gives the impression of being the opposite.
They show it is possible to be a pro-Israel, liberal Jew. Even though I disagree with them aboutJudea and Samaria, I have enormous respect for them and how they defend Israel. When does T'ruah or J-Street actually defend Israel without the list of caveats of what they hate about Israel? What kind of message does that give to students on campus? When all they hear is how bad Israel is, is it any wonder the anti-Zionists are making so much progress?
What does T'ruah and J-Street U actually do to combat anti-Zionism? What programs have they put together to teach how important Israel is to Jews? What op-eds have members written wholeheartedly defending Israel? If there are any examples, they are lost in the glare of the opposition to Israel that we see every day from groups like that.
If you want to combat anti-Zionism on campus, be a proud Zionist. Not an apologetic one.
Blake Flayton tries to be a proud Zionist, and the reason it is so difficult for him is because of the lack of support he gets from groups like J-Street who are spending all their time ripping on Israel.
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.
I count 35 people killed in the recent fighting in Gaza from Monday through Wednesday. (The Gaza health ministry counts 34, but I have reports of another killed the first day, Mohammed Shakal, not on that list.)
I count 14 who were members of Islamic Jihad Al Quds Brigades, 2 members of the Popular Resistance Committees Nasser Brigades and 3 from Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades (Update: 1 from Hamas.)
There were 4 human shields - people killed when legitimate targets purposefully stayed near them. 2 of them were brothers of a Hamas terrorist hit in their father's carpenter shop.
One bystander was killed when Israel targeted three Fatah members. The fourth was Al Ata's wife.
In one incident where the IDF bombed a motorcycle I don't have enough information to know what the IDF was targeting. A father and two sons of the Ayyad family were killed. I have suspicions about the older son, Islam Raafat Mohamed Ayyad, 24, an imam who may have been a terrorist based on his funeral shroud showing the Al Aqsa Brigades logo, but that is not conclusive evidence this time - even children were wrapped in various terror flags.
The most infamous incident of the week's conflict was the bombing of the Al Sawarka (Abu Malhous) houses in Deir al Balah, killing eight members of the family. After a day of conflicting reports, the IDF admitted that it thought the house was empty and that it was used for terrorist infrastructure.
Under international law's principle of distinction, a military commander can make his best judgment based on the information available to him at the time as to whether a target is legitimate or not. He doesn't have the luxury of too much time; if he is fed normally-accurate intelligence that the target is empty and used for military purposes, it is enough. This was a true tragedy but it is not a violation of the laws of armed conflict.
Here is the entire list that I put together of the fatalities and circumstances.
Name
Affiliation
Bahaa
Salim Hassan Abu Al-Atta (42 years)
PIJ head
Asmaa
Mohamed Hassan Abu Al-Atta (39 years)
Human
Shield - wife
Mohammed
Attia Musleh Hamouda (20 years)
PIJ,
killed on motorcycle
Zaki
Adnan Mohammed Ghanama (25 years)
PIJ
Ibrahim
Ahmed Abdullatif Al-Dabous (26 years)
PIJ
Abdullah
Awad Saqib Al-Bilbisi (26 years) )
PIJ
Abdul
Salam Ramadan Ahmed Ahmed (28 years)
PIJ
Rani
Fayez Rajab Abi Al Nasr (35 years)
Fatah
Jihad
Ayman Ahmed Abu Khater (22 years
Fatah
Wael
Abdul Aziz Abdul Nabi "Abu Abed"43
Fatah
Mohammed
Salah Hassan Abu Shakal (31 years)
Human
Shield - killed with Fatah members
Alaa
Jaber Ishtawai
PIJ
Khaled
Moawad Farraj, 39
PIJ
commander
Ibrahim
Ayman Fathy Abdel Aal, 17
Human
shield - killed when IDF attacked their Hamas brother
Ismail
Ayman Fathy Abdel Aal, 16
Human
shield - killed when IDF attacked their Hamas brother
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.
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Monday, November 18, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
