Some readers have been asking me to comment on the latest London Bridge terrorism incident. And if I have some reluctance it is only because although ennui comes from writing the same article over and over again, that’s nothing like the feeling you get from writing the same article so often that you don’t even need to change the name of the location of the attack each time now.
London Bridge 2 has been pored over enough in recent days. The heroism of certain members of the public has rightly been noted. Politicians of all the main parties have tried to pin the blame for the attacker’s early release on their political opponents. And everything goes on as usual.
But there are a couple of remaining things still worth noting about all this. The first is that if two innocent people hadn’t been killed and others wounded there would be something un-satirisable about Friday’s incident. A convicted terrorist is allowed out of prison after learning how to game the system, serves only half his sentence and then, at a prisoner rehabilitation session, goes full-crazy again and kills two of the young people involved in the rehabilitation business. The fact that the workshop Usman Khan was attending had one of those soppy modern Britain titles – ‘Learning Together’ – just completes the picture.
The problem remains that while we are happy to get caught up on discussions about prisoner release protocols and the like, we avoid the wider, and more sceptical, conversation we should have had by now. Conversations like the one we ought to have had about the whole de-radicalisation business, or industry.
Here in October, I mentioned in passing the whole phoney academic ‘discipline’ of ‘de-radicalisation’. I wonder whether now mightn’t be a good time to reassess some of our reliance on the claims and expertise of that industry?
We have come to see jihadists as passive individuals with little or no moral agency. This is why the discussion seems focused not on their ability to change, but on whether or not the resources are available to provide the correct intervention and monitoring.
Whether or not Islamists can ever be redeemed is a complex question. But Khan had certainly not ‘deradicalised’. Nor had he rehabilitated. It is wrong that Khan and people like him are entitled to be released without any consideration of the risk that they still pose to the public.
We have to recognise that someone who plots to blow up pubs in the name of a foreign fighting force is no longer, in any meaningful sense, a citizen. Of course, we should still show humanity towards those accused of any crime. They are entitled to a fair trial on the evidence, which Khan avoided by pleading guilty. But when people are convicted, or when they plead guilty to being committed jihadists, then normal rules cannot continue to apply.
Our belief in people’s capacity for rehabilitation should not extend to letting murderous jihadists back on to our streets. James Ford appears to have made a decision to change his life. It is important that society helps him to do that. But Khan and his terrorist friends are not criminals – they are traitors. They demand to be treated differently.
This brings me back to London Bridge. To jihadists, all the world either once belonged to Islamic jihad or is now again about to belong to Islamic jihad and sharia law. This is true for most countries in Western Europe where Islamists have created no-go zones, and engaged in gang-related crimes and in the mass rapes of infidel women. Some predict that by 2050, Europe will become, as Bat Ye’or once predicted, “Eurabia.”
All dreamy-eyed western do-gooders should pay close attention.
But here’s one of many problems: Our Jewish and Christian values dictate humanitarian concern for those in trouble and in need and for “victims” of alleged Western success. Both Christians and Jews strongly believe in helping, saving, and subsidizing immigrants, those in war zones, and/or mired down in poverty, illiteracy, and disease. We don’t want to become like our enemies i.e. intolerant, cynical, selfish, and more than “half in love with easeful death;” nor do we want to live in militarily patrolled sovereign entities, constantly on the lookout for and at the mercy of lone or collective jihad attacks—just as Israel has to do.
Western progressives still hope that we will not find ourselves surrounded by jihadists, both within and externally, although that is the position in which the West increasingly finds itself.
While a welcome break in this pattern seems to be happening, (some Arab states may make temporary alliances with the Jewish state), Israel has nevertheless been surrounded by jihadists on every border. Danger lies within as well. Contrary to all the Big Lies, the battle of Israel/Palestine has little to do with a land or refugee dispute and everything to do with the historical and indoctrinated Islamist hatred of and religious mandate to murder infidels.
This overwhelmingly clear fact is so overwhelming that most people refuse to consider it.
Having regard to Article 34-1 of the Constitution,
Having regard to Article 136 of the Standing Orders of the National Assembly,
Considering the European Parliament resolution of 1st June 2017 on the fight against antisemitism,
Having regard to the declaration of the Council of the European Union of 6 December 2018 on the fight against antisemitism and the establishment of a common approach to security in order to better protect Jewish communities and institutions in Europe;
Believes that the operational definition used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance makes it possible to identify as precisely as possible what contemporary anti-Semitism is;
Considering that it would constitute an effective instrument for combating antisemitism in its modern and renewed form, encompassing manifestations of hatred of the State of Israel justified solely by the perception of Israel as a Jewish community;
Approves the operational definition of anti-Semitism used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance as a useful guidance tool for education and training and to support judicial and law enforcement authorities in the fight against terrorism. their efforts to detect and prosecute antisemitic attacks more efficiently and effectively;
Invites the Government, in its pedagogical work, to disseminate it to educational, law enforcement and judicial services.
The explanatory statement is pretty good as well:
Ladies and gentlemen,
For several years, France, all of Europe, but also almost all Western democracies, are facing a resurgence of anti-Semitism probably unprecedented since the Second World War.
Antisemitic acts increased by 74% in 2018 in France. Again, for several years, anti-Semitism has been killing in France.
The hatred of Jews still tends today to perpetuate itself in its most terrible manifestations: murders, profanations of graves, sequestrations of fellow Jews on the sole ground that, because they are Jews, they "would have money".
It is also the aggressions of the everyday that multiply. Today in France, wearing a Kippa is tantamount to exposing oneself to insults or even physical aggression, which develops in our countrymen of Jewish confession a feeling of insecurity and ill-being in our Republic.
Anti-Semitism of the 21st century has changed. If the old French anti-Semitism has survived, new forms have developed.
Antisemitism is a negation of the Republic, a serious threat to national cohesion. He must be fought in his roots.
But anti-Zionist acts can sometimes obscure antisemitic realities.Criticizing Israel's very existence as a community of Jewish citizens is tantamount to expressing hatred of the Jewish community as a whole, as well as collectively holding Jews accountable for Israeli political actions is a manifestation of anti-Semitism. Increasingly anti-Zionism is "one of the contemporary forms of anti-Semitism," to use the words of the President of the Republic. To point to such drifts does not prevent any free criticism of the policies and positions taken by Israeli governments.
These new expressions of anti-Semitism, perverse because they are hidden, insidious because they are dishonest and hypocritical, have given rise to an important work by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Its thirty-one Member States, including France, adopted an operational definition of anti-Semitism on 26 May 2016:
"Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews that can be manifested by hatred against them. The rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism target Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and / or their property, community institutions and places of worship."
While this definition qualifies anti-Zionist attacks motivated by Jewish hatred as antisemitic, it does not recognize criticism of Israel's policies as anti-Semitic.
"It is a matter of clarifying and strengthening the practices of our police forces, of our magistrates, of our teachers, to enable them to better fight against those who hide behind the rejection of Israel the very negation of the existence of Israel ", as the President of the Republic has pointed out.
Faced with the return of the anti-Semitic scourge, the national representation must take a strong action and put words on what is the new anti-Semitism, in line with the European Parliament in 2017 and the Council of the European Union in 2018 , who recognized the accuracy and efficiency of the operational definition of the Alliance. This is the meaning of this motion for a resolution.
(h/t Gerald Steinberg)
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.
Q: You quote a writer describing the attendees at Third Zionist Congress, including “a bearded Persian” and “an Egyptian in a fez.” Did Herzl recognize a need for Zionism among Jews in Arab lands?
Hertzl was the quintessential European. He possessed a rare political genius. He looked at Zionism and the Jewish Question through the prism of Europe -- but he understood that for Zionism to really succeed, it had to capture the imagination of the Jewish world. It had to capture the imagination of the world leaders who could fulfill the mission of Zionism. It would have to be an international movement. He wanted to bring together as many Jewish communities as possible -- even though the majority of his efforts were centered on Europe. The early Zionist Congresses set the tone for the Zionism movement that was universal. It brought together American Jewry and European Jewry and the Jews of the Middle East. and it united them in a common purpose and a common mission.
Q: Usually, we think of Herzl as the father of modern Zionism and of the Jewish state. You describe 3 men as being leading inspirations of the Zionist movement: Leon Pinsker, Theodore Herzl and Chaim Weizmann with each making a different and unique contribution to the development of Zionism. What did each contribute?
There have been many great leaders, thinkers and theorists throughout Jewish history that have sought to unify the Jewish people, but I focused on Pinsker, Herzl and Weizmann, who were very different figures and each in their own way, represent different strands of the Zionist movement.
Leon Pinsker. Public Domain
Pinsker wrote a landmark seminal text, Auto-Emancipation. What was significant about Pinsker is that he came to the question as an Assimilationist. He believed fervently that by becoming fully immersed in the cultural social scientific and political life of Russia, the Jews of Europe could be saved. He believed that the sort of transformations that were happening across Europe that were granting emancipation and civil rights to Jews would eventually come to Russia. But he was rudely shaken out of his belief by the brutality of the pogroms. These did not come about as a result of peasant rage. They were deliberately and strategically incited by the very people Pinsker believed would bring the reform – the leaders, the clerics, the newspaper editors and the lawyers. His book Auto-Emancipation had a scintillating effect on Jewish thought throughout the European continent. But also, he stands for that kind of transformation from assimilation to nationalism.
Herzl's visit to then-Palestine. At dawn on deck as the ship reach
the shores of Jaffa. Public Domain
Herzl was very much his successor in that regard. I spend a lot of time discussing the Dreyfus Affair. It illustrates how extraordinary and unlikely the story of Zionism is. You have the Dreyfus Affair and the story of injustice and you have 34-year-old Herzl there as the Paris correspondent for a Viennese daily newspaper, by chance observing this himself. Herzl was also an Assimilationist, to the extent that he played with the idea of converting to Christianity. He argued that Jews should disappear into the crowd. But then he sees the Dreyfus affair. He sees the public degradation and humiliation of a man who exemplified the qualities of assimilation. He was a soldier, he was civically minded and patriotic. He had given everything to the public and it culminates in his being wrongly convicted, thrown into an island prison. The mob of Frenchmen chanted “Death to Dreyfus” and “Death to Jews” outside the courtroom.
Herzl also brings something else to the story of Zionism – the idealism and the philosophy of Zionism. Pinsker had done that as well, but Herzl then converted it into extraordinary political and diplomatic outcomes in a very short period of time before his premature death. Herzl is intriguing because he shows the need to not only have great views and ideas, but also to be practical and efficient. He had a frenzied appetite for hard work. He had that Romanticism but he could also roll up his sleeves and work tirelessly.
Chaim Weizmann. Public Domain
Then you have Weizmann, who is a different type of Jew altogether. He is sort of part Pinsker and part Herzl. He comes from Russia. He moves across the continent almost the same way that Zionism moved from Russia -- westward. He had been educated in Switzerland and Germany. He ends up in Great Britain where he becomes a lecturer in Organic Chemistry in Manchester. And again, in an extraordinary turn of events, Great Britain finds itself in a position where it is in desperate need of the chemical compound acetone, which when combined with gunpowder reduces the smoke generated by heavy guns in its naval battles with Germany in WWI. You wonder what that has to do with Zionism and the trajectory of the Jewish People. Weizmann is the one who discovered this formula, and through that work, he becomes associated with people like Churchill, Balfour and Lloyd George – the people who had it within their power to grant Jews their National Home. Lloyd George would later write in his memoirs that his conversations with Weizmann at this time were the origins of the Balfour Declaration.
These are 3 major figures who were possessed with a rare political genius, who have an extraordinary capacity for hard work and were able more than anyone else to transform this sort of shapeless journey to go home which the Jews had carried with them for 2,000 years and turn it into a precise political program that could be implemented.
Q: Chaim Weizmann found apparent Zionist-friendly Arab allies in Hussein ibn Ali and his son Amir Faisal -- both of whom apparently accepted the idea of a Jewish state. How did we get from them to someone like the Grand Mufti who allied himself with Hitler and tried to destroy Jews and the Jewish state?
In the context of the post-WWI peacemaking, the Paris peace conference, the treaty of Versailles, the redrawing of the Middle East after the defeat of the Ottoman empire, there were a lot of negotiations between the great powers and the people who had claims to that land. So you had Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points, one of which demanded the decolonization and the autonomous development of the liberated colonies of the Ottoman empire – which was basically the Arab world, including Palestine. And then you had the native peoples of that land making claims to that land. And you have the Balfour Declaration, the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, dealmaking and promises (sometimes contradictory), happening.
In that context, Palestine was viewed as a small prize, a sparsely populated backwater, hardly the most sought after part of the Middle East. They were always willing to sacrifice Palestine in pursuit of far greater and grander post-WWI demands. That is why people made agreements with Weizmann and make statements that Jews were native sons of the land and that they should be welcomed back with open arms, that their return will have wonderful economic benefits for the Arab people living there. That is out of a view that can be seen as moderate and tolerant and willing to accept the Jewish claim to Palestine – so that their territorial claims to land elsewhere in the Middle East would be met more rapidly and more easily.
Then from the 1920’s onward, you have the tactical fulfillment of Zionism taking place. You have Jewish migration and Jewish settlement of the land, the establishment of Jewish industry, and enterprises and trade unions and newspapers and universities and wineries and all this – changing the political and economic environment in the land. Some of the Arabs living there felt dislocated and disenfranchised and what was agreed to by the Great Powers and the Arab and Jewish leaders post-WWI did not help. These are people living on the land and see their future slipping away.
Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, who would become the grand mufti of Jerusalem, was remarkably skillful – not at soothing people’s concerns and placating them and negotiating and bringing people together, and alleviating violence – he was extremely skilled at raising the temperature, and inciting people to acts of violence to his own political ends. He is the founding father of Political Islam, turning political grievances into a way to rally the whole Arab world to his cause. He is the quintessential example of the unflinching, unerring Arab leader who never negotiates, never takes a backward step, and is absolutely dogged in their anti-Zionism.
He led his people to disaster.
In 1937, the Peel Commission considered how to deal with the issue of Palestine and the competing claims to the land. The Jews were offered a state on merely 4% of the full Mandate Palestine territory and they were willing to accept that. But al-Hussein rejected it out of hand. The Transjordanian leader at the time was the only Arab leader who had the sense to say ‘you have to accept this, otherwise Palestine will pass into Jewish hands whole. But al-Hussein could not take that into his anti-Zionism and his antisemitism – he could not fathom any sort of accommodation with the Jews.
So to explain that shift -- in the beginning, it was driven by Arab self-interest. They were happy to get their 7 states. And the Jews get Palestine.
Emir Faisal wrote a hand-written amendment that his support of the Balfour Declaration for a Jewish state in Palestine is contingent on the Arabs getting their claIms met. But al-Hussein was so set in his anti-Zionism that he could never take that approach.
Q: People are generally aware of President Truman’s support for the establishment of Israel, but US support for a Jewish state goes back to Woodrow Wilson. What role did Wilson play?
Jewish leaders at the time were desperate for Wilson to make some sort of public statement to endorse the Balfour Declaration in 1918 just as the Paris Peace Conference was about to begin and a new path was dawning in the Middle East. He had Jewish acquaintances like Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter and as a result of his own religious Christian background, he had a romantic view of the People of the Book returning to the land from whence they came.
But at the same time, there were forces pushing against that. There were Christian anti-semites urging him not to recognize Jewish national rights. The State Department was hostile to the idea of a Jewish state because of their desire to develop closer economic ties with the Arabs. So just as in the UK, Wilson also found himself torn between his own ideals and the forces trying to compel him against Zionism.
Then there were Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points, laying out the conditions for US engagement in WWI. They did not speak about the Jewish people, but they spoke about the autonomous development of the liberated lands of the Ottoman Empire. And that governing principle allowed the Jews to state their claim to what had become Palestine. There was the idea of the development of the native people of the Middle East – and the Jews were certainly one of those native people. And by extension, they had rights that should be recognized and were recognized.
And Wilson actually did make a statement in 1918, a very tepid statement that endorsed the Balfour Declaration, that he was happy that the work of the Balfour Declaration was being implemented, delighted to see the foundation be set for Hebrew University. That was a very important signal to the Jewish World about which side of the issue Woodrow Wilson stood. It was highly significant.
Then at the Paris Peace Conference, the US representatives were very clear in there support for the Balfour Declaration and for the establishment for the Jewish National claim to Palestine.
Wilson played an important role in developing an international consensus about Zionism right around that time.
7. The history of Modern Zionism offers a counterpoint to the perceived passivity of Jews during the Holocaust. How do we explain that in contrast to the heroism of Trumpador and the Jews of the Mule Corp who impressed British officers with their heroism in WWI?
There was a view, both inside and outside the Jewish world that the Jews were led like lambs to the slaughter. In some regards, there were episodes where one could say that the Jews did not cover themselves with glory, that they could have resisted more actively and aggressively. The natural capacity of Jews to resist Nazism, to save themselves, to fight back, was mostly non-existent. And I talk about Raul Hilberg the great Holocaust historian, who spoke about a formulaic response to danger that the Jews had honed over 2,000 years of exile.
Basically, their response was to alleviate their pain, to try to lobby governments, to write op-eds and to try to convince the public that the antisemites were wrong. Once the tide had turned against them, the Jews became wholly passive and submitted completely. But at the same time, we have to realize that the Jews had no real ability to defend themselves against a military power of overwhelming strength with the mission of destroying every last Jewish life, aided by collaborationist governments and police forces and populations in almost every place they entered. Jews were unarmed.
But after the Holocaust, you have the Jews in Palestine seeing what happened to their brethren in Europe and saying this is what can happen to Jews who are weak and vulnerable and unarmed – and we must never allow that to happen to us.
This leads to a sort of rehabilitation of the Jew.
There were events before which had a similar impact. The Holocaust, being on a larger scale, had a bigger impact. The Kishinev pogrom, almost a miniature version of the Holocaust, incited by clerics and policemen and government officials in a terrible massacre of Jews – was followed by stories coming out of rapes and murders, making the Jews feel a sense of vulnerability but also a sense of solidarity with their own people. This invigorated the Jewish people and was turned into a major humanitarian concern. Yet also a sense of shame that this is what Jews had been reduced to.
This created in Zionism a redemptive quality: saving the Jews not only physically, but also spiritually and culturally. If you look at Zionism today, it is about a sense of Jewish pride – not a grotesque chauvinistic pride but rather a simple pride about belonging to a very special remarkable people, of who we Jews really are, and being willing to stand up for that and assert your rights and not fall prostrate in front of your tormentors.
Q: When it comes to the influence of external forces on Zionism and Aliyah, people think of the Holocaust. But you note that the early writings about Zionism as a political movement largely originated in the Russian Empire. Why would Russia have this influence?
By the late 19th century because of progressive migrations as a result of expulsions from Spain and Great Britain, and pogroms in Germany – Jews were moving further and further east. You had shifting borders in that part of the world so that you had more Jews living within the Russian empire than anywhere else. Along with that, you had unsparing brutality generation to generation such as the Chelminsky pogroms.
People look at Israel being a reaction to the Holocaust, but there is a long history and a long continuum that made the Holocaust not only possible, but also inevitable. When people ask how the Holocaust could have happened, the seeds of it can be found in Russia hundreds of years earlier.
Because of the emphasis on the Holocaust we see the view, especially by anti-Zionist activists, the claim that Israel is a burden on the Arabs to atone for European guilt. To assuage the guilt of 6 million killed, a Jewish state is planted in the middle of the Arab world. As if Jews are European interlopers with no claim to the land.
We have Rashida Tlaib with the claim that it warms her heart how the Palestinian Arabs warmly welcomed the Jews of Europe as refugees from the Holocaust. This is a double falsehood because it also claims they welcomed Jews when in fact there were boycotts, violence and strikes at every turn.
The right to a national home in Israel is not only a legal right, but it has also been established in the decades before the Holocaust and it is an existential necessity for the Jewish people.
When we look today at the persecuted and abandoned people of the world, Kurds, Syrians and Uighurs – it shows us what it means to be stateless and manipulated by the self-interest of others.
People like Sarsour are anti-Zionists and in my view antisemites who claim that Zionism is creepy and racist dedicated to negative purposes. But there are a lot of people who see through this and see Zionism as an inspiration.
I’ve seen in my own work, from the Assyrian community in Australia, the Muslims in China, Kurdish leaders. They look at the story of the Jews who have survived through 2,000 years inquisition, pogroms and forced conversions, yet retaining their culture and sense of peoplehood and formed a national movement that is compelling and coherent and actually achieved the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral land.
A lot of these abandoned, persecuted, stateless people are trying to take inspiration from that and are trying to model their own national movements from it.
Q: Before Great Britain became a bitter opponent to Jewish immigration into then-Palestine and successfully cut down the size of the state, there was a time that Great Britain had a romanticized view of Zionism and wanted to help the establishment of a Jewish state. What was that based on?
It came from a number of sources. It came from the Christian beliefs of people like Balfour, Lloyd George and Churchill, that the Jews should have the right to return home. When you compare them to the Christian Zionists of today, you see that it is such a beautiful concept for them. This is not the concept of End of Days or The Second Coming, requiring that Jews be in the land. This is a more benign and beautiful idea, that the Jews are the People of the Book who gave the world Ethical Monotheism. Who gave the Christians their foundation of texts and beliefs. They believed that the Jews who had been harried and persecuted throughout the world should have a national home.
Yes, there are also the realpolitik considerations.
In the early 1900s, there was a concern about a large Jewish refugee problem. This was a unique solution to that.
Another consideration that cannot be discounted is the work of Chaim Weizmann. He was able to captivate and engage everyone. He was a dynamic, magnetic personality. As mentioned earlier, Lloyd George in his memoirs credits his discussions with Weizmann as leading to the Balfour Declaration. The truth of that is open to speculation, but it is clear that Weizmann rendered an extraordinary service to the British and they were grateful.
So it was a combination of the practical and the idealistic.
But what you then have over the next 3 decades, is the change in government, waning idealism and of course much more urgent critical considerations. There is the growing Arab violence in the Middle East and the threats from Arab leaders.
When Trump made the recommendation for the recognition of Jerusalem, we heard about the threat of the burning of the streets of the Middle East, which did not transpire. But those threats were there then – and they are there now.
And the other great factor that changed the calculations and caused the British to overcome their idealism was WWII. During the leadup to WWII, the Balfour Declaration (which came in 1917, at the end of WWI) had come to be seen as a distant relic of the past and irrelevant when the major new threat was Nazism. The concern for the British, and Chamberlain expressed it, was that if we have to offend one side – let it be the Jews. He said that because he wanted the Arabs to be potential allies in the coming European war, which would metastasize the Middle East as WWI had.
This was politics because the Balfour Declaration had been enshrined into international law. Great Britain had a legal duty to bring about a National Home for the Jews, as contained in the covenant of the League of Nations and the San Remo Conference. The Balfour Declaration was not empty words – it was a binding legal promise that had been made.
These were jettisoned because there were more pressing political and economic considerations entering into their calculations.
Oil was also a consideration. Chamberlain made comments about that as well, that the center of gravity of oil production had now shifted to the Middle East. These were very real considerations by Great Britain and the US. The State Department was cognizant of the fact the Middle East was becoming crucial in international affairs. You had the Suez Canal, which was an important gateway. The romanticism and idealism became a secondary consideration.
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.
The chief prosecutor of International Criminal Court on Monday refused for the third time to open an investigation into the 2010 Gaza flotilla incident, saying any crimes allegedly committed during the raid were not severe enough to merit such a probe.
Fatou Bensouda reiterated her position that there is no reason to launch an investigation into the matter “because there is no potential case arising from this situation that is sufficiently grave, to reconsider a case that she had repeatedly sought to close due to lack of gravity,” her office stated.
On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos killed 10 Turkish citizens aboard the Mavi Marmara, one of several vessels that was aiming to break the Gaza blockade. Israel said its soldiers were violently attacked by activists armed with clubs and metal bars when they boarded the vessel.
Israel has imposed a blockade on Gaza since 2007, when the Hamas terror group ousted the Palestinian Authority from the Strip, in a bid to prevent Hamas and other terrorists from importing arms and weapons into the enclave.
Israel did not immediately comment on the prosecutor’s decision, though officials in Jerusalem have long argued that the court was wasting its limited resources on a frivolous suit in a manner that reflected poorly on other outstanding cases.
The Lawfare Project, a New York-based pro-Israel group that had been involved in efforts to convince Bensouda to close the case, on Monday welcomed her decision.
“We’re extremely pleased the Prosecutor agreed with our analysis and reaffirmed her decision,” said Brooke Goldstein, the organization’s executive director. “It’s refreshing to see an international institution doing the right thing and standing up for law and justice rather than bowing to anti-Israel political pressure.”
The Hague’s six-year engagement with the Gaza flotilla incident started in May 2013, when the Comoros, a small Muslim-majority nation in the Indian ocean, asked the ICC’s prosecutor to investigate the Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara three years earlier, during which troops clashed with pro-Palestinian activists.
Ten Turks (including one Turkish-american) were killed and a number of Israeli soldiers were injured.
In the UNHRC urgent debate, I said: “Flotilla supporters chanted 'Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return.' One declared the aim of the flotilla was 'achieving martyrdom'. Are these humanitarians?”
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, will announce later today (Tuesday) his intention to file a resolution recognizing Jewish refugees from Arab countries, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
Danon will announce the resolution during a General Assembly discussion to mark 72 years since the November 29 partition plan.
During the event on Tuesday, the Palestinian representative to the UN is said to introduce a series of pro-Palestinian resolutions, including a resolution supporting the Palestinians' right of return. A similar session with similar resolutions will be taking place every year.
According to the Israeli Mission to the UN, the new resolution, asking the United Nations to recognize the 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran, is aimed to undermine the proposed Palestinian resolutions.
The Israeli Mission will also host an event to formally launch the new initiative in New York on Wednesday, featuring US Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism Elan Carr.
Britain had a moral & legal obligation to establish a safe haven & home for the Jews in their ancestral land per the Treaty of Sèvres, League of Nations Mandate & San Remo Conference. Why did they block Jewish immigration instead? Watch this historic newsreel📽️& find out. Hint:🛢️ pic.twitter.com/szMTDxNybj
Former Jordanian Information Minister Samih al-Maaytah stormed off the set of Al Arabiya after he saw an Israeli analyst was slated to be on the air at the same time to talk about Jordanian-Israeli relations.
Maaytah said that he refused to appear on air with an Israeli guest.
The Israeli ad to be interviewed first and only after his segment was over would Maaytah go on the air.
When he entered the studio at about 10:30 am, he was surprised that thethe Israeli guest was there. When he was asked his first question he said that he does not participate in interviews with an Israeli party, he is a Jordanian citizen who has a political position similar to the political position of the entire Jordanian people. He pulled out the microphone, removed the headset, put it on the table and left the studio.
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.
The President of the Republic of Italy, HE Mr. Sergio Mattarella, bestowed the honor of the "Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia " (Commander in the Order of the Star of Italy) upon HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, for his valuable contributions and the effort of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Global in strengthening the Italian, Jordanian and Arab relations.
Established in 1914, the Ordine Della Stella D'italia is one of Italy’s highest honors presented to global dignitaries who contribute in strengthening and promoting relations between Italy and other countries.
The Order was presented in a special ceremony attended by HE Mr. Fabio Cassese, the Italian Ambassador to Jordan, representing the Italian President and a host of Ambassadors to Jordan.
The Italian Ambassador read the official citation stating that Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh is "a close friend to Italy," and "a friend of all the international community."
It turns out that the honoree is an antisemite.
From MEMRI, translating a 2012 Al Ghad interview with Abu-Ghazaleh:
Abu Ghazaleh cites numerous examples of persecution of Jews, including their expulsion from various countries between the 14th and 18th centuries, and examples of leaders and public figures who spoke out against them: "Henry Ford saw the Jews as an international problem, and wasted much money on media and other means to wage a campaign against them. He also presented his ideas in a book called The International Jew: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, The World's Foremost Problem [sic]. American president Franklin Roosevelt saw the Jews as an American problem, and claimed that the day would come when the Americans would regret that there were Jews in their midst...
He concludes: "The Jews became known for manufacturing lies and carrying out crimes and terror. [They] created a negative model for establishing a state when the occupation authorities began bringing the 'Haganah' gang into Palestine, and later enlisted all the armed Jewish movements, after calling on all the Jewish residents of all the countries in the world to immigrate to Palestine and establish a state [there]..."[3]
(h/t WC)
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.
Sami, a transgender Palestinian originally from Hebron, who now lives in Tel Aviv, was severely beaten on Monday afternoon in Kfar Aqab, a village close to Ramallah.
Sami and his friend were able to escape after reaching the Kalandia checkpoint, not before the youth damaged his car and destroyed much of its exterior body.Because of his transgender identity, Sami was kicked out his home by his family, later gaining refuge in Tel Aviv. The circumstances surrounding the incident are still unclear.
According to social media, the victim went to Ramallah to get a rhinoplasty.
Video of the incident is online. Apparently, the original videos were far worse and the worst violence has been edited out.
The attackers gleefully filmed the victim's women's undergarments in the car trunk.
This is the victim.
I could not find a word about this in the left-wing, pro-gay rights, anti-Israel Twitter accounts I follow.
Neither was there any outrage from the alQaws Palestinian gay rights group, or from "Queers for Palestine."
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
"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.
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.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
A 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 #dealofthecenturypic.twitter.com/WbMzt6XsMA
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.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
This 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
Weekend long read
-
1) The ITIC reports on documents found in the Gaza Strip showing Iranian
support for Hamas. “Hamas documents captured by IDF forces during the...
The pos...
Weekend long read
-
1) The ITIC reports on documents found in the Gaza Strip showing Iranian
support for Hamas. “Hamas documents captured by IDF forces during the...
The pos...
Censor the Internet to Save the Planet
-
“Governments Should Act Now to Curb Climate Disinformation” demands a
letter backed by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Center
for Count...
A Friend Indeed
-
[image: Dry Bones cartoon, Trump, MAGA, President, Jerusalem, Embassy,
America, Huckabee,]
Welcome Ambassador Huckabee!
* * * And *IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO MAK...
▶ What Is the Crisis at CBS News?
-
View this post on Instagram A post shared by HonestReporting
(@honestreporting) From employing a Gaza producer with terror ties to
forcing journalists ...
An open letter to the police and CPS
-
To the police and CPS. With reference to complaints made by Gabriel
Kanter-Webber about Rupert Nathan. I understand that the matter has now
been referred...
7 Biggest Dungeons In Elder Scrolls Games
-
Please verify your email address. Labyrinthian in Skyrim is a maze of
Nordic ruins with fiends to battle and treasures to find. Sundercliff Watch
in Oblivi...
Gaza: A Brief Modern History Outline
-
Pre-1917 - Gaza part of the Ottoman Empire
1917 - Gaza conquered by British Army and subsequently becomes part of
Mandate Palestine
1948 - Gaza conquere...
One Choice: Fight to Win
-
Yesterday Israel preempted a potentially disastrous attack by Hezbollah on
the center of the country. Thirty minutes before launch time, our aircraft
destr...
Yom Hashoah 5784 – 2024
-
Israel’s Yom Hashoah began at sundown this evening with the annual ceremony
at Yad Vashem with torches lit in memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of
the...
Closing Jews Down Under Website
-
With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
past...
‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
-
Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
the govern...
Tuesday, December 03, 2019
