Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 02, 2019

12/02 Links Pt2: Primo Levi, Zionist; And they call themselves the New Israel Fund?; Orphaned in Mumbai, Moshe Holtzberg celebrates his bar mitzvah

From Ian:

The influential philosopher and fanatical Israel-hater Judith Butler has favorably cited Primo Levi’s public criticism of the Jewish state’s war in Lebanon in the early 1980s to make him into a literary saint of anti-Zionism. But such a reading of the Italian-Jewish novelist and Holocaust memoirist requires ignoring what he had earlier written on the subject, explains Alvin Rosenfeld. Levi’s first encounters with Zionism came in Auschwitz, and later with the Jews he met while wandering Eastern Europe after the war:

[When] Levi first came to know young Zionists [he] was fascinated by them, so much so that he devoted an entire novel, Se non ora, quando? (If Not Now, When?) to telling their story. His narrative follows the exploits and wanderings of a small group of young Jewish partisans, who during the war lived in the forests and fought the Nazis and their allies. Following war’s end, they were determined to get away “from this Europe of graves” and make their way to the Land of Israel, where they would be “men among men” and work to reclaim “the honor of our submerged people.”

In addition, writes Rosenfeld, Levi was disturbed by the emergence of anti-Semitism in the form of anti-Zionism after World War II. In particular, like a number of other Europeans of the left at that time, he spoke in defense of Israel on the eve of the Six-Day War:

On May 31, 1967, . . . Levi gave a speech in the main synagogue of Turin, his native city, which was soon afterward published under the title “More than Any Other Country Israel Must Live.” . . . No other country, [Levi declared], is asked “to cease to exist,” but precisely such an end was being envisioned for Israel. Moreover, with Egypt in the lead, several Arab armies were preparing for the country’s liquidation. Levi’s response was that Israel “must survive.”

Why? Because, like every other country, “it has the right to live,” but, beyond this reason, “everyone should remember that the generation that created Israel consists almost entirely of people who escaped the massacre of Judaism in Europe. . . . For this reason, I say, Israel is not like other countries; it is a country to which the whole world is indebted, it is a country of witnesses and martyrs, of the insurgents of Warsaw, of Sobibór, and of Treblinka.”

Levi saw “the relationship of every Jew, even if he is not a Zionist, to the state of Israel [as] obvious and profound.”

Why I’m coming home to Israel

I was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1933 into an educated middle-class Jewish family of mixed ethnic origins. My mother descended from a prominent Sephardic family that had settled a few generations ago in Jerusalem; my father was an Ashkenazi Jew from Kiev, Ukraine, who spoke 10 languages perfectly well and made aliyah in 1924. My parents were married in Tel Aviv in 1925 and moved to Alexandria in 1926 to be with one of my mother’s brothers. There was a cultured European atmosphere in Alexandria at the time. A dozen languages were heard in the streets. While I was growing up, we enjoyed going to operas, concerts, and ballets performed by Europeans companies; we spoke Hebrew and French at home.

Despite the many golden memories which some former Egyptian Jews have of their life in Egypt, the relationship between the 80,000-strong Egyptian Jewish community and the Muslim majority during the 1930s and ‘40s was tenuous at best, even prior to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Under the influence of Hadj Amin el-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Egyptians hoped the Nazis would win World War II. Antisemitism, a defining characteristic of the theocratic Arab countries, was on the rise in Egypt under the influence of the Islamic revivalist Muslim Brotherhood. It reached one of its many convulsive climaxes on May 15, 1948, when seven Arab countries invaded the newly created State of Israel. My father was taken by the Egyptian police at dawn and interned at Abukir, one of four camps erected at the time to intern Zionists and communists. He stayed there for nearly a year until the police took him straight to the airport, where he was forcibly expelled from Egypt, never to return. My mother and I joined him with just three suitcases containing all our lifelong belongings.

Thus our saga as “refugees” began. Alongside 850,000 Jews from Arab lands who were forced to leave their homes, my family and I were accepted in the new State of Israel. After over 2,000 years of persecution and exile, the Jewish people had a country where they could freely practice their faith, share their culture, and speak their indigenous language. On becoming Israeli citizens, the State of Israel utilized my father’s linguistic abilities and sent him all over the world to publicize Israel’s needs through the newly created Israel Bonds. For 20 years, my father traveled to Latin America, where he spoke Spanish and Portuguese, and to Europe, where he spoke fluent French, German, and English.

The road between Saudi Arabia and Israel passes through Al-Aqsa

Realism means acknowledging that no Arab state in its present form existed before Israel did, and that its independence preceded that of most Arab countries. Jordan has failed to administer this holy site properly, to develop it and turn it into an attractive site for religious tourism, peace, and tolerance, rather than a platform for hatred. It is time for it to be under Saudi administration, managed along with the Two Holy Mosques in Mecca and Medina. Saudi Arabia has great ideas for the Temple Mount, to turn it into a tourist landmark and a center of peace and love, to connect these holy places – Mecca, Medina, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque – by train, so that pilgrims, visitors, and tourists can visit them all in one day, thereby developing economic and employment opportunities on all sides.

Arab, and particularly Saudi, public opinion today no longer rejects peace or the multifaceted evolution of ideas, and has begun to see peace without preconditions as the best option for development and success. If we consider the recent move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, we see that the Arabs did not go out to protest or condemn it. This shows that Arab public opinion has changed towards the Palestinian issue and has begun to acknowledge Israel and its right to exist. Peace between the Arabs and Israel will also check Iran and the terrorist organizations that are devastating the Arab world, shattering the dreams of millions and rendering millions more homeless.

As Saudis, we feel gratitude towards Israel, which has shown itself to behave particularly honorably toward Saudi Arabia during critical moments of public agitation against the Kingdom over Khashoggi and other issues. Israel’s position was also much better than that of Arab countries when Iran struck Aramco, and Israel remains ready to confront Iran alongside Saudi Arabia. These are all positions that demonstrate to us that Israel today is a friendly country and no longer an enemy state.

Sometimes, we need to move beyond our pain and put an end to futile wars and hatreds that, unchecked, could continue for generations to come. Today we find ourselves at a moment in history when we can achieve peace, especially with a leader as great as Muhammad bin Salman, someone who will continue to be an outstanding historic figure for a long time to come. He is the one person capable of taking historic decisions and reaching a comprehensive peace with Israel. Such a peace will be unique because it will rest on popular support. It will be a people’s peace more than a political one, and Israel’s leadership must recognize and seize this dazzling historic moment.

Loose Change. That's the term fringe political movements use to describe people who join their organizations or show up to their events, not because such people believe in what the group stands for, but because such people want to be doing something, anything, to demonstrate they care about an issue.

For example, over the last two decades, several far-right European political parties found success among voters who didn’t care for the right’s political and economic policies, but who wanted to “make a statement” on Europe’s challenging immigration issues. In the US during that same two decades, people who came out to protest the war in Iraq, or joined Occupy or the anti-Trump “resistance” found themselves at rallies and marches where the messages from the podium or on banners and signs seemed to go far beyond the issue that brought them into the streets.

To the uncomfortable European voter or the bewildered American marcher, he or she was trying to take a stand about issues they found important. But to the organizations that claimed those voices as their own, these well-intentioned people were just so much loose change.

To see the relevance of this "loose change" in BDS debates, consider the many college campuses where BDS votes have taken place in student government and consider the outcomes (bad or good) that could come about if such those resolution wins the day.

Practically speaking, the BDS votes have no economic impact. College administrators who have had divestment pressed on them over the last decade have shown no interest in politicizing their investment strategies, especially based on lopsided and fact-free characterization of the Middle East conflict.

But if the practical repercussions of such resolution are small, the symbolic impact is more significant. For, whenever the BDSers win some student government vote, even by a small margin after a long string of defeats, that success if presented as the student body as a whole standing four-square behind the divestment movement’s real message: that Israel is a racist, apartheid state alone in the world deserving of punishment. One need only look at how such controversies play out on campus to see that, far from helping students better understand complex issues, divestment is helping to rub political, religious and ethnic wounds raw.

Given the limited practical potential and significant downsides of BDS activity, we are left searching for who benefits from such activity. And thus we are left with a handful of student leaders, some of them cynical ideologues, but many of them sincerely concerned about problems in the Middle East, and desiring to do something, anything, to make a statement. Even when they have no electoral mandate to make such statements, much less take action on international issues, a "Yes" vote gives them the feeling that they are doing something virtuous, even though the actual effects will be all bad for those they represent, as well as the Middle East. It would turn leaders trusted to do what's right for the students they represent into a handful of loose change in the pocket of the worldwide boycott Israel movement

There are times, most times, when we want our leaders to lead, to think about and act on issues on which the rest of us have entrusted them. There are also times when we want our leaders to follow, or at least listen to the people who have elected them more than the few month's preceding an election cycle.

Acting like loose change, however, does not represent either leading or following. It consists of being manipulated into taking harmful action in order to make oneself feel good. Another term for this would be "sucker" and while it is always sad to see people waste their own money or reputation taking a sucker's bet, it’s far worse once you realize they are betting with someone else’s name and reputation, an asset they are not empowered to sell.

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Nikki Haley's "With All Due Respect" is not exactly an autobiography. Instead, it is an account of her life as the governor of South Carolina and as the United States Ambassador to the UN, with attention paid to specific crises and events and how she handled them.

The first major crisis was the racist mass murder at the AME Church in Charleston, and Haley's attempts to ensure that things don't get out of hand - not least from national media who parachuted in with the assumption that South Carolina is a bigoted Southern state and this event reflects that bigotry. Haley herself, whose parents are from India, proves that this is not the case.

Haley shows a strong moral sense throughout the book, and a willingness to fight for what is right. She inherited a good ol' boys network where votes in the South Carolina legislature were done with voice only so there was no accountability as to who voted for what - including pay raises. She was blackballed from various committees when she tried to fight that system when she was in the legislature.

During the 2016 Republican primary race, Haley supported fellow child of immigrants Marco Rubio. She tangled with Donald Trump when she was campaigning for Rubio and called on Trump to release his tax returns; Trump tweeted that "The people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley!" She tweeted back with "Bless your heart," essentially a Southern woman code unmistakably meaning "screw you" in the most polite way possible. She says Trump respected her after that.

After he was elected, Trump first asked Haley to consider being Secretary of State, a position she knew she was not qualified for and told him that. Shortly thereafter he offered her the UN ambassadorship. Haley's response indicates a lot about her - and about Trump.

She said she would do it under three conditions: that she become a full cabinet member, that she become a member of the NSC, and that she could say what she thinks. She didn't want to report to anyone but Trump himself and she wanted a say in all policy decisions. Trump immediately agreed to all the conditions.

This served her well, but it meant that Trump had at least two representatives who could make foreign policy decisions independently of each other, Haley and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. If there is any villain in this book, it is Tillerson, who kept trying to undermine Haley and who worked with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to undermine the President, trying to recruit her. But a quote later in the book from Kelly laid out the problem: there were four "secretaries of state:" Haley, Tillerson, Jared Kushner and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. Haley doesn't spell it out but there was no real guidance from the White House to sync up their messages, and this is a severe shortcoming from a president who styles himself as an expert on business.

Haley was empowered, and she would often call Trump to make sure he agreed with her - although she makes it clear that she sometimes they disagreed. But from Haley's position at the UN, the US is meant to lead a world that is hungry for leadership, and it is meant to push for human rights throughout the world. Neither of these are what Donald Trump is known for, although he has done things behind the scenes for human rights that he does not get credit for - Haley points out how the Obama White House would promise to promote human rights in Syria or Crimea, but they did little, while the Trump administration did far more to punish human rights violators and attack Syrian chemical weapons factories.

She and the President agreed on other tenets of Haley's work at the UN: the US will not throw its friends under the bus as Obama did with Israel, and the US will start demanding its friends act like friends at the UN. She excoriated Obama not only for abstaining in the UNSC resolution 2334 against Israel, but also for abstaining in an annual General Assembly vote blaming the US for the poverty and oppression of the Cuban people.

Obama didn't even want to defend the US on something that outrageous. He thought if the US goes along with the rest of the world, everyone else will like the US better. Haley knows what every thinking person knows - if you don't respect yourself, no one will respect you.

Surprisingly, Haley was not a flag-waving Zionist before she was appointed to the UN. All she knew was that Israel was America's friend and that friends have each other's backs. As she took her crash course in international affairs, she realized that Israel was usually right in its positions; she concisely takes apart UNRWA in the book, for example. She pushed hard for moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem over the objections of Tillerson and Kelly.

There is much more - how she negotiated with China and Russia to get the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on North Korea; how she tangled with Tillerson on ending the bad Iran nuclear deal, how she called Trump after his statements of "fine people on both sides" after the Charlottesville killings and told him that his job was to heal the wounds of racism, not to stoke them, how she responded when being thrown under the bus for a screw-up where she announced one thing on Face the Nation when asked to by the White House but Trump changed his mind and the White House said perhaps she was "confused." "With all due respect, I don't get confused" was her sound bite response.

It is a little hard to believe Haley when she says that she left the UN on her own and not in frustration of working with a dysfunctional administration. After all, she brought her own team to be her staff at the UN from South Carolina and they moved their families to New York with the expectation of being there for longer than they were.

She clearly doesn't want to pick a fight with Trump and treats him with respect throughout the book. Many of her defenses of him ring true. But while she downplays her differences with the President, one gets the impression that there was more there than she writes.

Altogether, my already high opinion of Haley has gone up. I hope she does run for President in 2024 (honestly, I wish she would run now!) Haley's America is one that we can all aspire to be a part of.

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12/02 Links Pt1: Col. Richard Kemp: London Bridge horror proves we need new solutions to 23,000 jihadists in the UK; Martyrdom-death promoted to kids on PA TV children's program

From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp: London Bridge horror proves we need new solutions to 23,000 jihadists in the UK

Two innocent people are dead because of the Government’s refusal to confront the threat Britain faces from Islamic jihad.

The chilling reality is that we are trying to deal with people who are fighting a war against us, using a criminal justice system designed for ordinary crime.

Since 9/11 it has been obvious we have faced a new and different challenge.

The Americans quickly recognised this and opened Guantanamo Bay as a form of PoW camp.

Meanwhile, the UK Government has kept its head in the sand.

MI5 claim there are 23,000 jihadists here who are of concern.

Friday’s horror on London Bridge shows new solutions are urgently needed.

We must ban anyone who has fought jihad overseas from returning.

We must deport any non-British citizen suspected of involvement or support for terrorism.

We must devise a method of judicial administrative detention to imprison those who cannot be deported or properly convicted through the normal legal processes.

In short, we must fight fire with fire.

'I hope when I'm gone, someone picks my soul up and thinks, I would have loved her': Poignant past message of Cambridge graduate Saskia Jones, 23, is revealed as she's named as second victim of London Bridge terror attack

The second victim of the London Bridge terror attack left a poignant past message on social media as her family paid tribute to the Cambridge graduate who was 'intent on living life to the full.'

Saskia Jones, 23, of Stratford-upon-Avon, died alongside Jack Merritt, 25, of Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, after Usman Khan, 28, went on a deadly knife frenzy in London on Friday.

On her Twitter account, Miss Jones left a touching message in January 2017, which said: 'I hope that someday when I am gone, someone, somewhere, picks my soul up off of these pages and thinks, 'I would have loved her.'

Both graduates were taking part in a prisoner rehabilitation conference that was trying to rehabilitate the likes of the terrorist who went on to kill them. Miss Jones was working as a volunteer and Mr Merritt as a coordinator.

The 23-year-old's family paid tribute to her 'funny, kind, positive influence', saying she was 'intent on living life to the full'.

Islamic State Alive and Well in Europe

"I think that the practice of automatic, early release where you cut a sentence in half and let really serious, violent offenders out early simply isn't working, and you've some very good evidence of how that isn't working, I am afraid, with this case." — UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson November 30, 2019, after the ISIS attack on London Bridge a day earlier.

At least 1,200 Islamic State fighters, including many from Western countries, are being held in Turkish prisons. Another 287 jihadis have been captured by Turkish forces since the start of an offensive that began on October 9 against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria.

Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced that Turkey would begin repatriating captured Islamic State fighters back to their countries of origin — even if their citizenship had been revoked.

"We could soon be facing a second wave of other Islamic State linked or radicalized individuals that you might call Isis 2.0." — Jürgen Stock, Secretary General, Interpol.

"From my point of view, it is better to know that these people are prosecuted in France rather than leaving them in the wilderness. How can we protect ourselves if we do not have them in custody? The best method is to judge and control them." — David De Pas, French anti-terrorism judge.

Antisemitic Linda Sarsour says Zionists think Jews are superior to everyone else (Video)

Here is an excerpt of Linda Sarsour's speech at the American Muslims for Palestine conference in Chicago this past weekend, where she asks progressive Zionists how they can claim to be against white supremacy when they support Jewish supremacy in Israel.

Yes, that is antisemitism.

(h/t kweansmom)

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A new field hospital is being completed in northern Gaza near the Erez crossing. Called the American Hospital, it uses equipment from a private US NGO called Ships that used to be in Syria, and it will host international doctors.

From the start, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have opposed the construction of a hospital whose entire purpose is to help Palestinians. The PA, which has been withholding medicines and medical care from Gazans, insist that they should be the ones to approve such a move - and they never will.

Hamas, meanwhile, says that the hospital is part of the cease fire agreements with Israel.

As the hospital nears its official opening, the rhetoric from the Palestinian Authority and Fatah is getting even more crazed.

Here is what the Palestinian prime minister tweeted today:

PM Shtayyeh: The ongoing #Israeli isolation of the #Gaza Strip through the siege & the latest economic temptations, such as the American hospital project, is only an elimination of the #Palestinian national project & is one of the outcomes of the #dealofthecentury pic.twitter.com/WbMzt6XsMA
— PM of Palestine (@PalestinePMO) December 2, 2019

Wafa reports:

Minister of Health, Mai al-Kaila, vehemently criticized and rejected the establishment of a US field military hospital in the northern Gaza Strip under the sponsorship of Hamas and the Israeli occupation.

“We reject the establishment of this hospital, which falls within the framework of the “deal of the century,” said the minister.

She stressed that the ministry does not know who will run the hospital, which she slammed as an advanced US-Israeli military fortress inside the Gaza Strip. “The media blackout about the construction of this hospital raises many big questions about its real goals.”

She said that nothing justifies the establishment of the military field hospital, especially that all the population of the Gaza Strip enjoy a free health insurance entitling them to all of the Ministry’s services, including referrals to hospitals in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Egypt.

“Every year, the Ministry [of Health] sends medications and medical supplies worth 60 million shekels to the Gaza Strip. Therefore, there is no need for this US military hospital, where US military and not doctors will be working,” al-Kaila added.

She's not the only one claiming the hospital is a front for a US military base that somehow Hamas allows in Gaza:

Fatah's central committee member Zakaria al-Agha said that there are several questions on the ‘advanced security base being established on the Palestinian territories in the north of Gaza Strip dubbed as advanced field hospital’.

It will be interesting to see if NGOs will support this hospital or follow the PA's lead in criticizing it.

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Survey proves that Jeremy Corbyn followers are much more antisemitic than followers of other PM candidates

This survey by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, analyzed by an expert from Kings College London, proves convincingly that the supposedly anti-racist UK Labour Party attracts more antisemites than any other political party in Britain.

Antisemitism on the far-left now exceeds antisemitism on the far-right. The leader of the once fiercely anti-racist Labour Party is now the candidate of choice for anti-Jewish racists, and 84% of British Jews feel that he is a threat specifically to Jews. Two in five British Jews have considered leaving the UK over antisemitism in the past two years alone, 85% of them because of antisemitism in politics, with two thirds expressly mentioning the Labour Party or its leader as their reason.

Digging into the details, we see that he survey asked seven questions of its respondents to indicate if they have antisemitic attitudes; the first five measuring positive answers and the last two negative answers.

“British Jewish people chase money more than other British people.”
“Having a connection to Israel makes Jewish people less loyal to Britain than other British people.” “Jewish people consider themselves to be better than other British people.”
“Compared to other groups, Jewish people have too much power in the media.”
“Jewish people talk about the Holocaust just to further their political agenda.”
“Jewish people can be trusted just as much as other British people in business.”
“I am just as open to having Jewish friends as I am to having friends from other sections of British society.”

Note that none of these questions are about Zionism and Israel - each of these exposes traditional antisemitic stereotypes.

58% of those who strongly liked Jeremy Corbyn held two or more antisemitic views, and 35% held four or more such views, compared to around 40% and 20% respectively among those who strongly liked each of the other three party leaders....The leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, appears to be the candidate of choice for many antisemites.

The survey also asked about examples of anti-Zionist attitudes that fit under the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. While the report didn't break down those results by political party affiliation, the results for British people altogether are most concerning, and multiplied by those who consider themselves far-Left. The worst example:

“Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews.”

Almost one third of Britons believe that Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews, which is an explicit example of antisemitism according to the International Definition.

The comparison invokes a double standard, as there is no objective justification for the claim and other states are rarely characterised in this manner. Moreover, it associates the Jewish state with what many consider to be the most evil regime in history and, above all, the comparison draws a parallel between the state that murdered half the Jews in Europe and the state to which the survivors and other
persecuted Jews fled.

This antisemitic belief has not been captured in previous surveys, yet it is held by 31% of the British population. Merely 26% of respondents rejected the antisemitic proposition. Still more worryingly, this statement was believed to be true by a staggering 60% of members of the ‘very left-wing’ boost sample.

This is a damning survey, not only for Labour Party followers but also for how bad things are in the UK altogether for Jews.

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McGill University Student Society legislative council member threatened to be removed if she visits Israel. Here's her story.

JTA reports:

MONTREAL (JTA)—A Jewish student leader at McGill University in Montreal is fighting efforts to oust her from the student union for accepting a trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Jocelyn Wright, a member of the Student Society of McGill University’s legislative council and board of directors, said she is “outraged and disgusted” by an SSMU call for her to resign Thursday for agreeing to the trip sponsored by Hillel.

Here is what Jocelyn Wright has to say about it in her own words:

Year after year, we have witnessed student leaders at McGill University being targeted as a result of their Jewish and pro-Israel identities. This year, that student is me.

I am a Jewish second-year Science student at McGill. I represent my peers to the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council and serve on the Society’s Board of Directors.

This winter break, I have decided to participate in a trip called Face to Face that is being offered by Hillel Montreal, an organization that I have been involved with since I first arrived at McGill. The trip entails visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories to meet with politicians, journalists, and locals from all sides to better understand a very nuanced geopolitical conflict. As a Jew, my connection to Israel is a core aspect of my identity, and I hoped that this trip would help me to experience Israel through a new lens.

As a result of my decision to participate on the trip, last night, the SSMU Legislative Council voted to call for my resignation from my positions in student government. The SSMU President personally singled me out, and actively encouraged others to attack me. Only I was targeted, despite the fact that another non-Jewish Councillor will also be joining me on the trip. I am outraged and disgusted, but not surprised. This is not the first time that Jewish students at McGill have been bullied out of student government.

I have also been subject to attacks by members of student government in my own faculty. At Science’s General Council last week, I was blindsided and interrogated on-the-spot for almost two hours about my participation in Hillel Montreal’s trip. Not only were the questions designed to target and intimidate me, but I was purposefully prevented from having sufficient time to find the information they wanted.

This week, the Science Executive Committee also voted to give me an ultimatum: either I withdraw from the trip, or I resign from my position. If I do not resign, I am being implicitly threatened with impeachment upon my return.

Those who have sought to remove me from student government frame my participation as a Conflict of Interest issue. If that were the case, then why is a SSMU Executive with a pro-BDS sticker on their water bottle not facing the same scrutiny? Every member of student government holds a multiplicity of personal political opinions, yet we constantly and necessarily separate these from our roles as student representatives. They take issue not with the fact that I have other involvements, but that these other involvements are associated with a political view that they personally disagree with.

In the past, I was warned about getting involved in student leadership at McGill. The toxic environment, countless scandals, prohibitive anti-Israel sentiment, and anti-Semitism have led to a tainted image of an unfriendly campus for Jews. Two years ago, three students were voted off of the SSMU Board of Directors simply for being Jewish or connected to pro-Israel organizations. Last year, a Political Science summer exchange course taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was the source of a controversy in which pro-Israel students were harassed and cyber-bullied. This year, I am feeling the discriminatory burden that our student politics routinely places on Jewish and pro-Israel students.

While the form may change, the messages are the same year after year. There is a double standard for anything that involves Israel at McGill. In this case, controversy surrounding my participation in Hillel Montreal’s trip resulted in a publicly humiliating witch-hunt, repeated interrogations of my personal life, and me being placed under an intensely unfair microscope. SSMU passed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which includes that holding Jews accountable for the actions of the Israeli government or holding Israel to a double standard is anti-Semitic. By scrutinizing only me for participating in a trip to Israel, SSMU is engaging in this kind of anti-Semitism by assuming I have to be held accountable for what the Israeli government is doing.

I have had friends and colleagues denounce, abandon, and slander me in professional contexts. I have been the subject of thinly-veiled and blatant anti-Semitism. Someone I used to consider a friend said I was “victimizing myself” when I voiced my concerns about my right to visit Israel as a Jewish student. On the other hand, I have had people I only knew in professional contexts before reach out and support me. Colleagues have turned into friends. Jewish and non-Jewish students alike have vocalized their support to me because they understand what’s happening is not right.

I am proud to be Jewish. Israel is the country with which I identify my heritage and culture, and I am lucky to call it a second home. My personal views do not preclude my sympathy for the continued suffering of the Palestinian people. I never hid my identity when I ran for my position. I am an open book, and Judaism is an integral part of who I am.

McGill’s student leaders consider themselves to be champions of equity, inclusivity, and diversity. I am appalled that McGill politics continues to exclude and discriminate against Jewish students.

It is time to end this pattern of anti-Semitism deeply embedded in the SSMU that continually targets Jewish or Zionist students year after year. We must demand better of the people we elected to serve us.

Science demands that I resign as a Councillor. SSMU demands that I resign as a Director.

I am Jordyn Wright, and I will not resign.

Hillel of Montreal says:

Hillel Montreal is deeply concerned and gravely disappointed with the passing of a motion by the Students Society McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council that calls for the resignation of a SSMU councilor who has chosen to apply for and attend Face to Face – Hillel Montreal trip, an opportunity to explore the nuances and complexities of Israeli and Palestinian societies, politics and the geopolitics of the Middle East. The SSMU Council has abused its authority, defying its own constitutional processes in order to attack this program and the students involved. Despite rulings from SSMU’s highest governing body clearing participants of any wrongdoing, those involved have been subjected to hours of hostile questioning and have had their reputations disparaged in Council because they have chosen to take part in a legitimate exploratory trip to engage with Israelis and Palestinians. The SSMU council is trying to deny these students the ability to exercise their personal and academic freedom in order to become better informed, an act that goes against SSMU's duty to enrich the lives and intellectual pursuits of McGill Students. This inequitable decision cannot be allowed to stand. Hillel strongly supports and will continue to stand behind all students affected by this antisemitic and anti Israel rhetoric.

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The European Council on Foreign Relations has created an extensive website, Differentiation Tracker, solely to determine to what extent different European countries are adhering to UNSCR 2334, the Security Council resolution that called all Israeli sovereignty to the east of the Green Line illegal, including the Kotel and the Jewish Quarter.

Paragraph 5 of that resolution "Calls upon all States, bearing in mind paragraph 1 of this resolution, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967." This website is an exhaustive list of how each EU member is doing that.

So far, there is very little adherence to 2334. Out of hundreds of agreements listed there between Israel and EU countries, only 18 adhere to the resolution - six from the Netherlands, three from the UK and six more from the EU altogether. Here's what the top of the France section looks like, showing zero compliance

This is an enormous amount of work, and it is only against Israel. No other territorial dispute or case of belligerent occupation has such an elaborate site dedicated to it.

The ECFR is sensitive to that argument of double standards, so it renames it "Whataboutism" and pretends to answer:

Defenders of Israel’s settlement enterprise regularly criticise the EU, and international law advocates more broadly, of a disproportionate focus on the Israeli occupation, to the detriment of other conflict areas. These ‘pro-settlement’ talking points are a mixture of spin and disinformation, ignoring important factual and legal differences.

Nevertheless, it is true that the importance of third state responsibilities, and business and human rights practices, in situations of occupation and annexation remains under-developed. It is also true that what limited implementation there has been tends to be uneven. For example, the EU has been much more diligent in enforcing its non-recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea than it has been towards Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara.

But instead of deconstructing international law to make internationally unlawful actions permissible – as supporters of the settler movement seem to advocate – a more correct approach would surely be to improve implementation and respect across the board. In other words, third states should be doing more, not less, to meet their international law-based duties in all situations of annexation and occupation.

In short - yeah, we do have double standards, and we should do more on other conflicts, but you gottta start somewhere.

The only problem with that logic is that international law is determined by actual state practice as much as it is based on written law. As Eugene Kontorovich remarked about this site, "The 'rule' they claim to apply is not written down anywhere. They deduce it from other rules. But int'l law is made by state practice when treaties silent. A rule that applies basically never is not a rule of in'tl law. "

The very fact that the EU created this elaborate site only for Israel while all but ignoring all other similar situations proves that these rules are applied only to Israel, which means they aren't rules at all.

The site has a FAQ that shows that the entire purpose of the site is to stop putting Europe on the defensive for these very reasons:

The EU must do more to counter Israeli efforts to build up a substantive case with which to put Europeans on the defensive, make EU consensus more difficult to attain, and block stronger EU action on settlements.

But later in the FAQ, when dealing with the differences between the territories and Western Sahara, it says:

There exist a number of significant differences between Western Sahara and the Palestinian territories. For one, there is a lack of consensus in Europe on whether the territory of Western Sahara is indeed “occupied” by Morocco or whether, as non-sovereign administrator of the non-self-governing territory, it is otherwise obligated to protect the people’s right to self-determination.

In other words, Morocco has already managed to destroy EU consensus on Western Sahara - mostly because greedy European countries want to make agreements to grab natural resources from the territory - so because of European greed, there is no consensus. But there is no EU interest in the resource-weak West Bank so there is more of a "consensus" - and that is the reason the two situations are different.

That has nothing to do with international law. It means that if Israel convinces an EU member country to follow the lead of the US on the legality of the "occupation" then the EU should drop the entire thing. (Like that will happen!)

The double standards is obvious, and the ECFR knows it quite well.

(h/t Irene)

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12/01 Links: Simon Sebag Montefiore: This antisemitism poisons any good Labour might do; Antisemites make up two-thirds of Corbyn’s strongest supporters; Israel struck by over 2,600 rockets and mortars over past two years

From Ian:

Simon Sebag Montefiore: This antisemitism poisons any good Labour might do

Obviously Corbyn is no Stalin. But the mural of hooknosed Jewish bankers, alliances with antisemitic terrorists and refusal to condemn many disgusting anti-Jewish confabulations are the rotten fruit of this ideology, now oozing from Corbynists all over the internet. Corbyn himself has met with Holocaust denier Paul Eisen. Stalin refused to admit Hitler’s final solution was any different from his killing of other Soviet citizens.

Why should this Jewish problem matter to non-Jews faced with Brexit, Tories, austerity? It undermines the Labour leadership’s ability to be real progressives at all. Hostile towards Western democracies for their “imperialism”, Corbynists support dictatorships in Russia, Iran and Venezuela while claiming that what is called “antisemitism” is not anti-Jewish, merely pro-peace, pro-Palestine, anti-Israel.

That is untrue. It is fine to criticise the Israeli government without being antisemitic. British Jews support a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But Corbynists are fixated with the destruction of Israel above all other causes – and that includes a strange neglect for the plight of any other Arab peoples such as the 500,000 killed in Syria by Bashar Assad. (Emily Thornberry recently insisted on Assad’s popularity in Syria.) This is not really about Israel but a preposterous worldview that requires Jews as enemies, only making sense in a shady cavern of conspiracy theories, the stupid path that has shamed a great party.

This racist rot poisons any good Labour might do. There are flickers of hope that calm reason can work amid Twitter shrieking. Tuesday: historian Sir Richard Evans tweeted he’d vote Labour. Thursday: after lawyer Anthony Julius wrote an open letter to the New Statesman, he courageously changed his mind.

Tragically, this is not just about one man: Labour is now controlled by this thuggish camarilla while frontbench “moderates” passively enable Corbyn. But Britain’s soul is at stake: many decent Labour supporters will surely show that they are better than the racism of their shameful shameless leadership.

And I am still grateful I was born Jewish in Britain.

Jonathan Tobin: An utterly, unspeakable wrong new ‘right’

Malkin is also apparently untroubled by groyper anti-Semitism. Other conservatives defend them on narrow free-speech and procedural grounds — instead of taking on their odious substance.

This isn’t the first time that the conservative movement has faced such a challenge. In the early 1960s, extremists from the John Birch Society peddled racism, anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories like those of today’s alt right. The Birchers were establishing a foothold in the GOP.

It was at that moment that conservatism’s intellectual leader, the late William F. Buckley, made it clear that Birchers wouldn’t be welcome in the movement or the GOP. Buckley ultimately succeeded, as the Birchers were forced to retreat to the fever swamps of American politics. In no small measure, Buckley’s efforts made the subsequent electoral victories of Ronald Reagan and other conservatives possible.

So it is important that a group Buckley founded to spread conservatism on college campuses, the Young American Foundation, has taken the first step toward isolating the groypers and those who condone them. YAF has taken Malkin off its speakers’ list over her refusal to disavow Fuentes.

That’s encouraging, but if this contagion is to be stamped out, it will require more such actions. The longer the White House fails to channel the spirit of Buckley and have Trump explicitly condemn groypers and the alt-right, the danger for both conservatism and American society will only grow.

Brendan O'Neill: It’s time to get real about Islamist terror

We’ve seen this for years now. Even to use the i-word — Islam — in relation to recent acts of terrorism is frowned upon. Anyone who gets angry about these attacks, whether it was 7/7 in 2005, the slaughter at the Manchester Arena in 2017 or yesterday’s stabbings, risks being denounced as ‘Islamophobic’. The left, including the left that currently runs the Labour Party, is myopically devoted to distracting attention from the Islamist threat. ‘What about the far right?’, they’ll say. Such cynical and spineless whataboutery wilfully overlooks that the far right has not killed anywhere near 500 people in Europe over the past five years — Islamists, on the other hand, have. ‘Don’t look back in anger’, we are told after Islamist attacks. In short, lay a flower, be sad for a day, and then move on — whatever you do, don’t talk about it.

This policing of emotion and of public debate about radical Islam is explicitly designed to suppress difficult questions. In particular questions about the divisive ideology of multiculturalism and the way it has nurtured a culture of victimhood, grievance and even violence among certain religious and social groups who have been convinced by officialdom for years and years that they are hated by ordinary Brits — or ‘dogs’, as Khan came to view us. This cultivation of separatism, this sowing of a victim mentality, this inflaming of community grievance and community bitterness — these are the ‘achievements’ of the ideology of multiculturalism and they have played an important role in the rise of Islamist violence in the UK.

It’s time to get real about Islamist terror. No more censorship. No more demonisation of people who are concerned about this violent threat. No more whataboutery. And no more treatment of self-styled holy warriors who want to slaughter us ‘dogs’ as run-of-the-mill criminals. The ideologies of victimhood and separatism have helped to give rise to Islamist violence and traitorism on a very worrying scale — let’s talk about them. Let’s find out why a holy warrior was released from jail to visit holy war on the citizens of London.

When US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US does not consider Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria to be illegal per se, PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said, ""The decision shuts the door on peace and opens the door on extremism, terror, corruption and violence. It will open the gates of hell.

These were the same dire warnings given if the US was to move its embassy to Jerusalem or recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

None of them came true.

Not that the PLO didn't try. Last week they called a "Day of Rage" to protest the US move. They closed schools to maximize the number of young people who would participate. Yet nothing major materialized, as I reported at the time. Israeli media noted this and picked up on the fact that most of the protests were held inside Palestinian cities and not near Jewish areas, minimizing friction.

A more telling report from Al Monitor notes that West Bank Palestinians stayed quiet even during the recent flare-up in Gaza between Israel and Islamic Jihad:

Amid the recent military flare-up in Gaza, there were no protests, sit-ins or strikes on the West Bank to express support for the Palestinians trapped in the besieged enclave. The lack of public displays of solidarity has reportedly left Palestinians in Gaza angry and bewildered.

Imad al-Frangi, former head of the Forum of Palestinian Journalists in Gaza, published an article on Nov. 17 in the newspaper Felesteen, which is close to Hamas, claiming that Gazans are in shock over the absence of supportive actions on the West Bank. Zakaria al-Agha, former member of Fatah’s Central Committee, wondered in a Nov. 15 Facebook post why this was so, noting that in the past, the Palestinians have reproached other Arabs for being apathetic to their suffering. He went on to say that Gazans had adopted “Ya wahdana” (“Oh we are alone”) as their slogan, borrowing from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish dedicated to Palestine.

...To those in Gaza, it was unacceptable that the official Palestinian television broadcast a FIFA qualifying match, Yemen versus Palestine, on Nov. 14 while the Israelis and factions in Gaza launched missiles at each other.

This mirrors the lack of protests in the Arab world towards the Palestinian issue in recent years. Anti-Israel protests are more spirited in London than in Libya (whose foreign minister just said he'd like to see normal relations with Israel while naming Turkey as an enemy.)

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The @NYtimes, pretending to be "even handed," promotes a fringe pro-Corbyn Jewish group

On November 7, UK correspondent for the New York Times Benjamin Mueller tweeted out asking for some help from an anonymous Twitter account called JewsAgainstBoJo (Boris Johnson):

The JewsAgainstBojo account has only 3000 followers (many of whom are not Jewish or British like Linda Sarsour), a GoFundMe page that has raised £3,492 to publish flyers against Johnson, and its biggest rally seems to have attracted 10 people.

In other words, it is patently obvious that JewsAgainstBojo is a fringe movement in the Jewish community. At the time Mueller reached out to them, the Twitter account was only a couple of weeks old.

So why is the New York Times correspondent in the UK interested in information from them? Because he wants to make them look mainstream.

He got his opportunity when he wrote the NYT story three weeks later about Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis' criticism of Jeremy Corbyn.

The chief rabbi’s rebuke instantly generated fierce debate among British Jews, with some seeing it as reflecting their fears of Labour and others saying that he did not speak for them.....

But some British Jews also criticized the way Labour’s political opponents were putting Rabbi Mirvis’s words to use. Not all British Jews recognize the chief rabbi as the leader of their communities.

And some people warned that Rabbi Mirvis had sidestepped a greater threat posed to Jews and other British minority groups by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has himself been accused of making racist and Islamophobic remarks and energizing parts of the far right similar to those responsible for recent attacks on Jews in the United States.

“We understand why so many in our community feel unable to vote for the Labour party, however we must not make the mistake of thinking the Conservatives are a safer alternative,” an organization called Jews Against Boris wrote on Twitter. “This is a party which is courting nationalist votes by demonizing and threatening minorities, and undermining the rule of law. The idea that this would be a safe environment for Jews is incredibly dangerous.”

The group, modeled in part on the efforts of American Jews to organize against President Trump, said keeping British Jews safe meant standing in solidarity “with all other communities experiencing oppression.”

The vast majority of British Jews who bitterly oppose Corbyn are not quoted. But an anonymous Twitter account is quoted, without even verifying if the account owner is Jewish, or even British.

This fringe account takes up over four paragraphs and is the only "Jewish" person quoted in response to Rabbi Mirvis' passionate article. As far as we can tell, Jews Against Boris didn't even respond to Mueller at all, and all his information came from their Twitter feed.

This isn't reporting. This is advocacy and mainstreaming a tiny pseudo-Jewish organization while downplaying the very real feelings and fears of the vast majority of the UK Jewish community.

(h/t Seth Mandel, who wrote a great thread about this)

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Israel, the United States and the Netherlands have all been reducing or stopping payments and aid to the Palestinian Authority because of their "pay for slay" program of giving lifetime salaries to terrorists.

I had heard in the past that some Hamas terrorists in Gaza who were former prisoners had not been getting their "salaries" from the Palestinian Authority, but it appears that some former prisoners in the West Bank have stopped receiving their pay as well.

For more that two weeks (or perhaps as many as 43 days) former prisoners have been holding a sit-in in tents in Ramallah, some holding a hunger strike, in order to protest the cuts in their salaries. This past Tuesday PA police tore down the tents; when the prisoners complained officials said that the space was needed for setting up a Christmas tree and the tent was relocated.

Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh offered to meet with the prisoners to work on their demands, but the meeting failed.

It is possible that these are Hamas members and the PA doesn't want to pay the. But it appears that this is one of those cases where no one has any desire to be upfront about the truth - Israel wants to maintain maximum pressure, and the PA wants its people to think that these payments to terrorists and their families are their highest priority - so any change in the PA's policy can only be gleaned by reading between the lines.

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11/30 Links: 'Breath-taking heroism': praise for Londoners who tackled knife attacker; Rabbi Mirvis’s message sounds the alarm over antisemitism; Transcendence: 50,000 Jews celebrated Zionism in Hebron

From Ian:

London Bridge killer, 28, was jailed for eight years in 2012 for plotting to BOMB the London Stock Exchange and build an Islamic terror training camp - but was RELEASED last year and had an ankle tag on when he stabbed two people to death

Scotland Yard has named the terrorist responsible for yesterday's attack on London Bridge as 28-year-old Usman Khan, who was convicted of a plot to blow up the London Stock Exchange in 2012.

Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu confirmed that a man and a woman were killed in the attack which saw Khan, wearing a fake suicide vest, stab up to five people before being shot dead by armed police.

Commissioner Basu also revealed that Khan, who was from Stoke-on-Trent, had a prior terrorism conviction and had been jailed for eight years in 2012.

He was released on licence in December 2018 and was still wearing a monitoring tag.

Anti-terror police have raided a house in Staffordshire area linked to the killer.

The commissioner also confirmed that Khan had been attending a seminar in Fishmongers' Hall run by Cambridge University's Criminology Department to help offenders reintegrate into society following their release from jail.

Khan had threatened to blow up the building at the start of his five-minute rampage which ended in his death on London Bridge.

Dramatic video footage showed him being tackled to the ground by at least six members of the public. One man chased the attacker with a fire extinguisher while another used a Narwhal whale tusk to restrain him.

Khan had previously been arrested on December 20, 2010, four days before he and his nine-strong Al-Qaeda-inspired gang had planned to plant a bomb in the toilets of the London Stock Exchange.

Police found a handwritten list of targets which included the U.S. Embassy and the homes of London Mayor Boris Johnson, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral and two rabbis.

'Breath-taking heroism': praise for Londoners who tackled knife attacker

Ordinary Londoners who showed "breath-taking heroism" in disarming a knife-wielding attacker were praised by politicians and members of the public alike after they intervened to stop an attack which injured several people at London Bridge on Friday.

Police shot dead the man, who had strapped a fake bomb to his body before stabbing a number of people, in what they said was a terrorism incident.

Videos on social media showed a crowd of people who had tackled the man to the ground, before being moved away by police who then shot him.
"I ... want pay tribute to the extraordinary bravery of those members of the public who physically intervened to protect the lives of others," Prime Minister Boris Johnson said. "For me they represent the very best of our country and I thank them on behalf of all of our country."

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said those who confronted the attacker would not have known that a bomb device strapped to his body was a hoax.

"What's remarkable about the images we've seen is the breath-taking heroism of members of the public who literally ran towards danger not knowing what confronted them," Khan told reporters.

"They really are the best of us," he added.

Bad to the bone: Moment hero Polish chef called Luckasz used a narwhal tusk to tackle London Bridge terrorist after grabbing it off the wall at Fishmongers Hall

A chef at Fishmongers' Hall who grabbed a narwhal tusk to fight off a knifeman is the latest hero to be identified in the London Bridge terror attack.

Luckasz, originally from Poland, tried to pin down knifeman Usman Khan, 28, who wore a fake suicide vest, using a five-foot narwhal tusk he took from the wall of Fishmongers' Hall yesterday.

One man - identified as Cambridge graduate Jack Merritt, 25 - and one woman were killed in yesterday's attack, and three others were injured.

Video exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail shows Luckasz using the narwhal tusk as he and a group of men try to pin down the attacker.

The Queen today praised the 'brave individuals who put their own lives at risk to selflessly help and protect others' during yesterday's attack.

Hero Luckasz's colleague, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Times: 'Luckasz grabbed a nearby pole and ran at him, getting stabbed in the hand in the process but continued to pin him down.

'Being stabbed didn't stop him giving him a beating. Luckasz is a hero.'

Luckasz is thought to have suffered from cuts but is not critically injured.

11/29 Links Pt2: Jeremy Corbyn Reminds Us Why Israel Exists; Liberal Jews and their anti-democratic, anti-liberal critique of Israel; Canceling Roger Waters; The BBC portrayed Raed Salah as ‘the Gandhi of Palestine’

From Ian:

Jeremy Corbyn Reminds Us Why Israel Exists

Israel looms large in Corbyn’s worldview. The Corbyn-led Labour Party was initially unable to adopt The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance of anti-Semitism until tremendous outside pressure compelled them. Why? Because the guidelines conflicted with its anti-Zionism, the most significant and consequential form of Jew hatred that exists in the world today. Anti-Zionism is now the predominant justification for violence and murder against Jews in Europe and around the world. Corbyn is one of its champions.

“It’s not anti-Semitic to be critical of Israel,” Corbynites, and their progressive ideological cousins here in the United States like to say. And, of course, they’re correct. Curiously enough, though, those who reserve special opprobrium for a Jewish state they view as an inherently racist and colonial endeavor, as most Corbynites do, also seem to have odious views about the people who democratically govern that small strip of land.

As Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis correctly points out, Corbyn hasn’t merely “tolerated” anti-Semitic attitudes — as so many publications like to claim — but rather he has actively transformed Labour, once one of the most important political parties in the free world, into a safe haven for Jew hatred. As Mirvis notes, under Corbyn, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, Labour has “hounded parliamentarians, members and even staff out of the party for challenging anti-Jewish racism.”

Perhaps Corbyn’s rise simply reflects a new — or is it a renewed? — reality in Europe? A recent ADL poll claims that a quarter of Europeans hold anti-Semitic views. Around 45 percent of Poles and 42 percent of Ukrainians admit to pollsters that they believe that “people hate Jews because of the way Jews behave,” a view that over 30 percent of our old friends the Austrians and Germans share. And one of the fastest growing groups in Europe, Muslims, are importing an even deeper enmity towards Jews than is found in Poland, Ukraine, Germany, and elsewhere. Muslims in Western Europe are anti-Semitic at almost three times the rate of the general population. Thus far, Corbyn has appeased, rather than tried to extinguish, this hatred.

If Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party ends up winning next month, Britain will be led by an openly anti-Semitic government. Mirvis warns that such a result is an existential threat to Britain’s Jewry. What he can’t say, but implies, is that people such as Corbyn are exactly why Israel must exist.

🚨 BREAKING: Video emerges of @jeremycorbyn bashing the @BBCWorld on Iranian TV for “believing that Israel has a right to exist.” pic.twitter.com/OounUIxtyi
— Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) November 29, 2019

Daniel Gordis: Liberal Jews and their anti-democratic, anti-liberal critique of Israel

All of this ultimately proves the central thesis of my book. What separates American Jews and Israel is, well, everything. The majority of Israeli Jews and the majority of American Jews are demographically different, have different instincts when it comes to concessions for peace, and differ when it comes to visions for Jewish life. It was inevitable that Jews who constitute 2% of the population of the country in which they live and those who constitute some 80% would see the world differently and create radically different visions of what Jewish life can and should be.

Israel was not created in order to enable American Jews to feel virtuous – it was created to be a sanctuary of Jewish survival. Israelis have fashioned different instincts than American Jews on the ideal balance between risk and the quest for peace and have made their own unique determinations about what Jewish cultural survival looks like.

We ought to celebrate those differences, not bemoan them, for it is our disagreements that give us what to learn from each other. The first step toward that mutual learning, however, is not preaching, but listening, seeing each other through the most generous lens we possibly can.

Sadly, condescending and paternalistic attitudes to each other (in Rabbi Yoffie’s concluding words, “It may be that Israelis themselves don’t see as clearly what US Jews see from there”) take us in precisely the wrong direction.

David Collier: The orthodox Rabbis, the letter and the offices that weren’t

Did you see the letter supposedly written by the Orthodox Rabbis supporting Jeremy Corbyn? This week has been full of drama. It started on Monday, when the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis wrote a scathing article about Jeremy Corbyn, claiming he is ‘not fit’ for high office. The Chief Rabbi was supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury and British Hindu leaders. The timing could not have been more problematic for the Labour Party. The article came as they prepared to launch their ‘race and faith manifesto’. Instead of a positive news cycle, the headlines were telling the story of Labour’s total failure on the antisemitism issue.

The situation did not get any better. On Tuesday morning, Corbyn was late for the launch of the manifesto. The reason? An anti-Corbyn demonstration by British Jews was taking place. Worse still, three vans had parked outside the venue displaying billboards about Labour’s failure to deal with antisemitism. Corbyn’s team did not want him to be filmed walking past such a demonstration, so they held him back. Eventually, as neither the demonstration nor billboards left, they had to send Corbyn in anyway. A few minutes before he arrived a few loud and large pro-Corbyn activists appeared – clearly a damage limitation rent-a-mob – and there was a scrum as he made his way to the venue.

Tuesday night saw the car-crash interview of the decade. Andrew Neil destroyed Jeremy Corbyn in 30 excruciating minutes. The interview was littered with not-to-be-missed disaster moments. Jeremy Corbyn and his election campaign were on the ropes. Corbyn’s activists needed some ammunition to deflect the tsunami of criticism.
The Orthodox letter arrives

Suddenly and without warning a pro-Corbyn letter emerged. It was apparently written by a group of ultra-orthodox Rabbis presenting themselves as a group called ‘United European Jews’. The letter condemned the words of the Chief Rabbi. It was dated 26th November, signed by a Rabbi Mayer Weinberger and it carried a letterhead with several other Rabbi’s listed.

The pro-Corbyn machinery sprang to life. Jewish Voice for Labour, Socialist voice, the Canary and Skwawkbox all pushed the letter. JVL’s tweet alone had over 1000 retweets. Official Labour outlets such as ‘Southgate Labour’ retweeted it. The letter went viral. In just one day, Jewish advocacy groups on Facebook had to delete 1000s of repetitive posts, placed by Corbyn activists who wanted to argue that Chief Rabbi Marvis is a Tory, doesn’t represent many Jews and it is all one big media smear. Suddenly everyone was an expert in the divisions of the Jewish community.