Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, December 06, 2019

12/06 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Anti-Semitism Is a Unique Obsession; Israel a Sanctuary for Gays: Ignored or Jeered at by West; Red Yellow Journalism

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Anti-Semitism Is a Unique Obsession

Anti-Semitism is not a prejudice like any other. It has unique characteristics applied to no other group, people or cause. It's an obsessional and unhinged narrative based entirely on lies; it accuses Jews of crimes of which they are not only innocent but the victims; it holds them to standards expected of no one else; it depicts them as a global conspiracy of unique malice and power. Anti-Zionism has exactly the same unique characteristics directed against the collective Jew in Israel.

Judaism is indivisibly composed of the people, the religion and the land. To attack the right of the people to the land is to attack Judaism itself. The onslaught on Zionism and Israel has therefore legitimized and encouraged anti-Semitism, with behavior of a malice and virulence directed at no other community.

In Britain there is a false equation of anti-Semitism with anti-Muslim abuse. But Jews suffer proportionately vastly more abuse and attacks than Muslims. Synagogues and Jewish schools have to be under guard and behind barbed wire, not mosques and madrassas.

People can't stand the uniqueness of anti-Semitism because they can't stand the uniqueness of the Jewish people. The refusal to acknowledge the uniqueness of Jew-hatred merely demonstrates precisely that Jew-hatred.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Sanctuary for Gays: Ignored or Jeered at by West

"Israel has always embraced this path [of liberty] in a Middle East that has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different." – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to the U.S. Senate, 2011.

Adam and Rami are among scores of Palestinian members of the LTBGQ community who, in the past few decades, have fled their homes to seek shelter in Israel. Yet, their plight is totally ignored not only by human rights organizations, but by but by people who purport to be advocates of gay rights. This is part of a far more malignant story: when Israel looks good, the international community looks away.

Hate for Israel has blinded people to the point where they align themselves with their own executioners.

alQaws pointed out that some Palestinian groups actually celebrated the police threat against the LTBGQ community, "raising (yet again) disturbing questions about the Palestinian Authority's commitment to human rights."

Palestinian gays have two choices: hide their sexual preferences and lead double lives in their villages, or flee to Israel and live as normal human beings. Groups such as Queers for Palestine, though, are too busy bashing Israel on college campuses and the streets of San Francisco to take much notice of the sanctuary to which their gay Palestinian friends have chosen to relocate.

MEMRI: Algerian Interior Minister Describes Political Opponents as Homosexuals and Traitors

Algerian Interior Minister Salah Eddine Damoune said ahead of the General elections set to take place on December 12, 2019 that "colonialist ideology" exploits "Algerian children – or rather, quasi-Algerians, who are traitors, mercenaries, queers, and homosexuals." His remarks were made on December 3, 2019 on Beladi TV (Algeria). On the same day, Algerian journalist Alsaid Bensedira said on Al-Hurra TV (U.S.) that the Algerian people demand that the elections be boycotted and the Interior Minister, whom he referred to as "queer effeminate" is fired immediately. He concluded that he doesn't know any homosexuals, if the Interior Minister knows homosexuals he must be one of them.

Billy Broncho, the first star of Hollywood Westerns - and a Jew

From Wikipedia:

Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson (March 21, 1880 – January 20, 1971) was an American actor, writer, film director, and film producer, who is best known as the first star of the Western film genre. He was a founder and star for Essanay studios. In 1958, he received a special Academy Award for being a pioneer of the movie industry.

Anderson was born Maxwell Henry Aronson[2] in Little Rock, Arkansas,[3] the sixth child of Henry and Esther (Ash) Aronson, both natives of New York.[4][5][6] His family was Jewish, his father's parents having emigrated to the United States from Prussia, and his mother's from the Russian Empire.[7]

Here is one of his films:

But perhaps more importantly, Anderson directed this film - about a man who harasses women and how they get him back - which features the first "pie in the face" gag in movie history.

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12/06 Links Pt1: If NATO is going to fight terrorism, it needs Israel; Norway Threatens Palestinian Aid Cut Over Racism, Violence in Textbooks; Iran's Multi-Front War Against America and Its Allies

From Ian:

Caroline B. Glick: Preserving the peace with Jordan

Tuesday Israel’s Channel 13 reported that President Donald Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor Victoria Coates held a meeting at the White House last week with the ambassadors of Oman, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. She reportedly asked the emissaries to check whether their governments are willing to consider signing non-aggression pacts with Israel.

The story, which the White House did not deny indicates the Trump administration has embraced an Israeli initiative, raised publicly last month by Foreign Minister Israel Katz. The idea is that through the non-aggression pacts, which are less than peace treaties, Israel and its Arab neighbors will be able to sidestep the issue of formal relations, replete with embassy opening ceremonies, and simply engage in open relations, for the benefit of all sides.

This has been the central goal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s diplomatic strategy. For decades, foreign policy practitioners and activists in the US, Europe, and the Israeli left have insisted that peace between Israel and the larger Arab world is impossible so long as Israel has not concluded a peace treaty with the PLO. This view gives the PLO the power to dictate if, when and under what conditions Arab nations will be "allowed" to have normal relations with the Jewish state.

Netanyahu’s goal has long been to rescind the PLO’s veto. By working behind the scenes to build constructive, stable ties with the states of the region predicated on mutual interests, Netanyahu has made great strides in achieving this goal. The very fact that Coates reportedly held the meeting with the Arab ambassadors in the White House is a testament to the success of his efforts.

The dimensions of Netanyahu’s achievement are clear when you compare Israel’s constructive, mutually beneficial ties with states with which it lacks formal peace treaties to its ties with Jordan.

Jonathan S. Tobin: If NATO is going to fight terrorism, it needs Israel

Turkey joined NATO, alongside its historical antagonist Greece, in 1951 – two years after the alliance was founded. Admitting Turkey made sense at that time for two reasons. One was that its strategic position bordering the Soviet Union made it essential to any effort to contain Moscow’s expansionist drive to both undermine the stability of the postwar world and to spread communism. Post-war Turkey was also a thriving secular democracy whose governing parties were interested in becoming part of Europe, rather than focusing on the lost glories of the Ottoman Empire.

But contemporary Turkey is a very different country. In the last two decades, the rise of the AKP Party and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has transformed an avowedly secular democratic republic into an Islamist authoritarian state. As such, it has turned away from NATO’s mission of defending European democracy. It plays both ends against the middle with respect to Russia by buying a missile-defense system from Moscow and refuses to coordinate security policy with the United States and NATO.

Erdoğan also criticizes NATO for being insufficiently concerned with terrorism. But by that he is referring to the understandable reluctance of the alliance’s members to share his enthusiasm for Turkey’s war on the Kurds. The Turks have attempted to wipe out Kurdish identity inside of their borders and regard Kurdish nationalism elsewhere as a threat to its own sovereignty, despite the sufferings of this group of people. There are, in fact, Kurdish groups considered to be terrorists, but to regard all Kurdish nationalism in that way is deeply wrong. And for a country like Turkey, which has consistently backed the terror group Hamas, the notion that it represents a bulwark against terror is absurd.

At the same time, the United States and NATO rely heavily on Israel when it comes to counter-terrorism. It’s no secret that the intelligence information shared by Israel is vital to US security and that of the alliance. Israel coordinates closely with the Americans and Western Europeans when it comes to the battle against ISIS and the threat from Iran. The joint exercises that America and some other NATO allies conduct with Israel are also an indication that even though the Jewish state is not part of a formal alliance structure like NATO, it is an essential element in the defense of the West. And yet Erdoğan was feted, along with the rest of the NATO leaders, at the anniversary summit in London while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was pointedly excluded.

Talk about scrapping NATO – whether it comes from “America First” neo-isolationist Trump supporters or leftists who view the projection of US power as inherently evil – are equally wrong. But if NATO is to continue to play the role in defending democracy that its founders intended, then it will have to change. It can start by figuring out a way to sideline Erdoğan’s Turkey, while either formally or informally bringing Israel inside the alliance.

Britain’s Terrorism Superstitions

On November 29, Usman Khan went on a stabbing spree in central London, killing two and wounding three. The episode, as Theodore Dalrymple puts it, would have seemed too absurd had it appeared in a work of satire: Khan, a previously convicted terrorist who had been released after attending one of Britain’s rehabilitation programs for “extremists,” attacked a conference celebrating one of those programs. Dalrymple writes:
In 2012, Khan, along with eight others, was convicted for plotting to blow up the London Stock Exchange, kill Boris Johnson, then the mayor of London, and plant bombs in synagogues, among other places; he had also planned to set up a military training camp for terrorists on his ancestral lands in Kashmir. His 2019 attack was evidently no flash in the pan or rush of blood to the head. After all, he was a disciple and close friend of Anjem Choudary, the extremist preacher and founder of the now-proscribed Islamist terrorist group, al-Muhajiroun.

Despite the attack, Dalrymple continues, Britons remain in the grip of three “superstitions” propagated by criminologists, sociologists, and psychologists:
The first superstition is that terrorists are ill and are both in need of and susceptible of “rehabilitation,” as if there existed some kind of moral physiotherapy that would strengthen their moral fiber, or a psychological vaccine that would immunize them against terrorist inclinations. The second is that, once terrorists have undergone these technical processes or treatments, it can be known for certain that the treatments have worked, and that some means exist to assess whether the terrorists still harbor violent desires and intentions. The third is that there exists a way of monitoring terrorists after their release that will prevent them from carrying out attacks, should they somehow slip through the net.

All three superstitions are false, though they have provided much lucrative employment for the tertiary-educated and have contributed greatly to Britain’s deterioration from a comparatively well-ordered society to a society with one of the West’s highest rates of serious crime. . . . Meanwhile, the father of the slain young criminologist said that he would not want his son’s death to be “used as a pretext for more draconian sentences.”

Palestinians seething that ICC is looking at "pay for slay" as a possible war crime

From Israel Hayom:

Palestinian officials expressed "great concern" Thursday over a report by the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor that includes a warning that Palestinian stipends to attackers and their families could constitute a war crime.

Ramallah's "pay-for-slay" policy has long been condemned by Israel and the US as a practice that encourages violence. The Palestinians argue these payments are a national duty to families affected by decades of violence.

The Palestinian Authority routinely spends hundreds of millions of dollars on payments to terrorists imprisoned in Israel and to the families of terrorists killed while carrying out attacks against Israel.

In 2018, for example, Ramallah spent $135 million on salaries and other payments to terrorists. In 2017, terrorists' stipends came to $358 million – 7% of the Palestinian Authority’s total budget for that year and about 20% of the foreign aid it receives. In 2016, the PA allocated $322 million to these payments.

Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Riad Malki said the prosecutor’s office’s report was "based on misleading narratives of a political nature ... rather than an objective and accurate description of the relevant facts."

The actual report by the prosecutor, in the middle of seven pages of allegations against Israel, says:

In addition, the Office has also received allegations that: (i) Palestinian security and intelligence services in the West Bank have committed the crime against humanity of torture and related acts against civilians held in detention centres under their control; and (ii) the PA have encouraged and provided financial incentives for the commission of violence through their provision of payments to the families of Palestinians who were involved, in particular, in carrying out attacks against Israeli citizens, and under the circumstances, the payment of such stipends may give rise to Rome Statute crimes. These as well as any other alleged crimes that may occur in the future require further assessment.

Apparently the prosecutor is just listing things that have been submitted to her; she has not even begun an investigation.

It is interesting that the PA jumps to defend the idea of paying salaries to terrorists, and doesn't even mention or deny the other charge of torture.

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Did the Chief Rabbi article affect UK voters at all?

Ever since November 25, when the UK's Chief Rabbi wrote an article for The Times of London about how toxic a Labour government would be for Jews, there has been daily coverage in the British press about antisemitism in Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.

The most recent bombshell was the leak yesterday of the Jewish Labour Movement dossier into the party's handling of antisemitism allegations that was submitted to the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Among the revelations by Labour members in that document:

One respondent who listed 22 examples of antisemitic abuse at party meetings where he was called “child killer”, “Zio scum”, and “Tory Jew” as well as being told “Hitler was right” and that he was “good with money”.
Another who witnessed a comment at a ward meeting that “the only reason we have prostitutes in Seven Sisters is because of the Jews”.
One member reported that other members defended an individual when they said it was “over-representation of Jews in the capitalist ruling class that gives the Israel-Zionist lobby its power”.
A parliamentary candidate who described a councillor being told by a fellow member to go home and count their money after being deselected.
A speaker at a fringe event at the 2017 Labour conference asserting the right to discuss whether the Holocaust happened.
One respondent reported that the membership secretary in South Tottenham, north London, objected to 25 applications for membership from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, and required home visits to these prospective members’ houses.

Given this wall to wall coverage of the antisemitism in Labour, even by left wing publications, has this had an effect on voter polling?

Since there are many factors and polling is an inexact science, this is difficult to know. Based on two pollsters, YouGov and SavantaComRes who have been polling often, it looks like Labour's numbers were improving from the beginning of November up until the antisemitism story blew up, and since then it has lost only a single percentage point.

It seems possible that people who might have been swayed to change their votes to Labour decided not to since the Chief Rabbi's article, but very few who had already leaned towards Labour changed their minds as a result.

A much scarier graph shows that young people are heavily pro-Labour, and antisemitism seems to bother them not at all.

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We have been told countless times how Muslims have to go through a gauntlet of oppressive checkpoints in Hebron. Entire NGOs are dedicated to documenting every incident and to harass Israeli soldiers.

Yet somehow, for the second Friday in a row, thousands of Muslims have gone to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the second holiest place in Judaism, to attend dawn prayers.

Hebron activists called on Muslims to come to the site in response to the tens of thousands of Jews who visited Hebron two weekends ago for Parashat Chayei Sarah.

There are no news stories about how Arabs couldn't make it. On the contrary, children were encouraged to rise and pray there, with no worries about Israeli security forces attacking or hurting them.

It is almost like all the news we hear from Hebron is twisted beyond belief.

Last Friday, an estimated 15,000 worshipers attended, which would mean that about 7% of the entire Hebron population went to the infamous H1 area.

Arab leaders freely admit this is a political action, not a religious one. The activists behind this gave it a military type name "The Great Dawn" to, as they said, "emphasize the Islamism of the mosque and protect it from Israeli ambitions."

Campaign activist Muhannad al-Ja'bari said: "We are sounding the alarm. We must protect the mosque and not leave it alone."

The head of the Muslim section of the Jewish holy space said "The mosque is purely Islamic, and there is no right for non-Muslims in it. "

Meanwhile, Saeb Erekat met with Christian pastors in the US and told them that the conflict was political, not religious.

This is only one proof that Palestinians disagree.

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EoZ Animated News Roundup

Something I've been playing with. This one took me about 75 minutes to make (using free video tools.) "My" eyes are shut a bit too often, and it looks like I am winking, but nothing I can do to fix i with the software I have.

Anyway, let me know what you think. I'm trying to keep it at about 2 minutes because you youngsters don't have a long attention span (and I want to be able to Tweet it.)

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12/05 Link Pt2: Bari Weiss: Inconvenient Murders; Corbyn fans accidentally admit he's racist; The Tikvah Podcast: Why No One Cares about Violence Directed at the Orthodox

From Ian:

Bari Weiss (published in the NYTs): Inconvenient Murders (free link)

Two years ago, a 27-year-old man named Kobili Traoré walked into the Paris apartment of a 65-year-old kindergarten teacher named Sarah Halimi. Mr. Traoré beat Ms. Halimi and stabbed her. According to witnesses, he called her a demon and a dirty Jew. He shouted, “Allahu akbar,” then threw Ms. Halimi’s battered body out of her third-story apartment window.

This is what Mr. Traoré told prosecutors: “I felt persecuted. When I saw the Torah and a chandelier in her home I felt oppressed. I saw her face transforming.”

One would think that this would be an open-and-shut hate crime. It was the coldblooded murder of a woman in her own home for the sin of being a Jew. But French prosecutors decided to drop murder charges against Mr. Traoré because he … had smoked cannabis.

If France’s betrayal of Sarah Halimi is shocking to you, perhaps you haven’t being paying much attention to what by now can be described as a moral calamity sweeping the West of which her story is only the clearest example. A crisis, I hasten to add, that’s perhaps less known because it has been largely overlooked by the mainstream press.

The most generous read of this enormous blind spot is that the story is not always straightforward; there have been some laudable steps to fight back. On Tuesday, for example, the French Parliament formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism when it passed a motion declaring anti-Zionism a form of Jew-hatred. Yet on the same day, more than 100 Jewish gravestones were found spray-painted with swastikas in a cemetery near Strasbourg — a potent reminder that governments are only as good as the culture and the people upholding them.

So allow me to put it plainly: We are suffering from a widespread social health epidemic and it is rooted in the cheapening of Jewish blood. If hatred of Jews can be justified as a misunderstanding or ignored as a mistake or played down as a slip of the tongue or waved away as “just anti-Zionism,” you can all but guarantee it will be.

The Tikvah Podcast: Avital Chizik-Goldschmidt & Batya Ungar-Sargon on Why No One Cares about Violence Directed at the Orthodox

A Jewish man hit in the face with a brick. An observant woman’s wig pulled off her head. An Orthodox mother and her baby assaulted in the street.

These incidents took place not in 19th-century Russia or pre-war Germany, but in Brooklyn—which has one of the densest Jewish populations in America—in 2019. The recent spike in anti-Semitic attacks in New York against the most visibly Jewish members of our community, the ultra-Orthodox, is a worrying sign in a nation experiencing rising levels of Jew-hatred. Yet the mainstream press and many on the political Left, groups otherwise worried about the supposed rise of racism and bigotry in America, seem blithely unconcerned.

In this podcast, Tikvah’s Jonathan Silver is joined by two Jewish journalists who have given these attacks the attention they deserve. Avital Chizik-Goldschmidt is the life/features editor at the Forward and Batya Ungar-Sargon is the Forward’s opinion editor. Founded in 1897, the Forward has long been a voice of the Jewish Left. Yet among progressives, few have been as honest and clear-eyed as our guests about the ideology that blinds the many on the Left to anti-Semitism directed at the ?aredi community. In this conversation, Chizik-Goldschmidt and Ungar-Sargon discuss the nature of the recent violence in Brooklyn and Monsey, what might be causing it, and why so many in the media have ignored this slow-moving pogrom.

Losing the Semantic War on ‘Palestine’

Referring to the Israel-Palestine conflict also reinforces the idea that the dispute is over land. Often misleadingly described as a fight by two peoples over one land, the reality is more complex, as it involves politics, psychology, history, and religion. In recent years, the Islamization of the conflict has eclipsed other factors, as many Palestinians reject the historical Jewish connection to the land and will not contemplate Jews living on Islamic territory or ruling over Muslims.

The most pernicious aspect of the reference to “Palestine” is to create a false equivalency with the sovereign nation of Israel. Israel is a democracy that shares the values and interests of the West. Palestine does not exist; it may one day in the future, but for now, there is only the Palestinian Authority, which is autocratic, denies its people their basic rights, and does not share the values or interests of the West.

The equation is also a political statement that accepts the position that a Palestinian state already exists. One could argue this is reasonable given that “Palestine” is recognized, according to Wikipedia, by 138 of the 193 member states of the United Nations. That legitimacy is undermined, however, by the fact that the European Union, the United States, and other democracies such as Australia, Japan, Canada, and Mexico do not recognize a Palestinian state.

This usage is another reason for concern about the campus situation. Professors are knowingly presenting their students with this specious formulation, with all the aforementioned implications. Students are ill-equipped to challenge this narrative on the merits and will likely be castigated as anti-Palestinian if they try.

It is unlikely anything could have been done to preempt the shift in language, and now it is yet another genie that cannot be put back in the bottle. The usage is widespread. Still, it is important to point out the bias, inaccuracy, and misleading nature of the word “Palestine” when used in the context of the conflict with Israel.

Israel has more "human rights" NGOs than anyone else, yet gets accused of not allowing them

From a Twitter thread I wrote today:

------------------------------

For the past few weeks, @KenRoth and @hrw have been claiming that Israel not renewing the work permit of an anti-Israel activist shows how Israel treats human rights orgs.

Here's an indication of how many human rights NGOs are in Israel today. (I created this picture.)

Don't believe HRW's lies.

If any country on Earth has more NGOs per square kilometer, and more NGO workers per capita, than Israel, I'd love to know about it.

Yet instead of showing how open Israel is to criticism, these NGOs compete as to who can make Israel look the worst.

It's their business model!

Their mostly Western funders aren't paying them to find what is good about Israel, or how Israel compares favorably with EVERY other country at war in history. They only pay for dirt, and the workers know that their jobs depend on vilification, not accuracy and context.

Israel's very openness is what allows more NGOs to criticize Israel more, with more critical reports and articles and tweets, than any other state in history. (Any counterexamples are welcome. Don't think you'll find them.)

Who will pay to read a report that Israel is more tolerant of Muslims than France (burkini ban) or Switzerland (minaret limits)? No one cares. They want to show Israel is evil, and with enough money thrown at NGOs, amazingly, they find (or create) all the dirt they need!

It is an entire industry that is funded by people and organizations who generally have a problem with a Jewish state or Jewish sovereignty.

Yet these NGOs, and their funders, have no accountability. No independent audits of their methodology. No fact checkers. No ombudsmen.

So that's why @KenRoth can keep obsessing over Israel. He, and the other NGOs, have full impunity - the very thing they falsely accuse Israel of.

Besides @NGOmonitor and sites like mine there is essentially nothing that exists to check this power to unfairly vilify Israel.

Because Israel is indeed the democracy and open society that these NGOs all fall over themselves to say the opposite.

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Fight Erupts Between Jews Planting Ancient Zionist Evidence And God Planting Fossils (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Jerusalem, December 5 - Time-traveling Zionists tasked with manufacturing a convincing ancient history for Jewish presence and sovereignty in the Holy Land clashed with the Creator, witnesses report, over the former seeking to place objects in the same spot where the latter intended to place dinosaur bones as a test of faith in the literal truth of Scripture.

Eyewitness accounts place a group of three or four Zionist time-travelers at the scene of a hillside argument with the LORD this afternoon, with each side claiming precedence over the other for the privilege of planting fake historical or prehistorical evidence. Reports indicate that the LORD relented, allowing the Zionists to construct an elaborate series of structures with distinctly Jewish features such as ritual baths on the site, and to strew the bones of only kosher animal species, among other activities, while the Creator Himself selected a spot a short distance away that also proved suitable for the placement of paleontologic hoax material.

"As I understand it, the Zionists conceded that God did in fact have precedence," recalled an eyewitness. "They were simply arguing for some divine flexibility, given that they had planned a complicated site-specific project that would take an enormous amount of time and effort to adapt for some other location, whereas the Almighty could alter reality at will and simply adapt some other location for His purposes."

"God didn't like that idea, mostly because He appears to prefer working with what's already there," added a second observer. "But it all worked out, if I recall correctly, because there was a place nearby that worked for the fossil thingies just as well as the original site.

Zionist time-travelers still operated at the site as of this evening, engaging in planting such items as coins minted to designate a certain period; potsherds associated with specific groups; and clay seals with names of personalities in the Bible. The group also spread ash at a certain underground level to indicate destruction of a Jewish town congruent with Biblical accounts.

The LORD, meanwhile, expressed satisfaction that He had planted the right fossils in the right place to fool those unwilling to believe the plain text in its strictest sense, so that He could reward those who disregard the eyes and capacity for rational analysis that He also planted within them.

"This is gonna be great," the Almighty pronounced. "I can't wait to see the hullabaloo that this sparks."

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12/05 Link Pt1: Plaque honoring teen suicide bomber at entrance to PA high school for girls; While Iran shoots protesters, Europe schemes to enrich it; Iran said exploiting Iraqi unrest to place missiles that could hit Israel

From Ian:

Evelyn Gordon: The Settlements, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Danger of Conflating Politics with Law

Most objections to the State Department’s recent determination that international law does not prohibit Jews from living in the West Bank were based, Evelyn Gordon notes, on prudential rather than legal grounds. Citing as examples the statements of the presidential candidates Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, she points to the dangers of this inability, or unwillingness, to distinguish policy from law:

[T]he concept of “it’s legal, but it stinks” has evidently gone out of style, especially on the left. When leftists think something stinks, they want it declared illegal, even if it’s not.

The advantages of this tactic are obvious. Policy questions, by definition, are disputable. . . . But law ostensibly eliminates controversy because once the courts rule something illegal, then everyone is supposed to accept that it must stop. . . . [The] problem is this tactic’s enormous cost, which far outweighs any possible benefit: when people start branding anything they object to as “illegal,” they turn the law into just another player on the political battlefield. And once that happens, legal decisions will be treated with no more respect than any other political pronouncement.

Gordon notes a perhaps far more dangerous parallel within Israel’s political system, in the form of the attorney general’s decision to indict Benjamin Netanyahu:

[T]he attorney general’s office and the courts have intervened in literally thousands of policy decisions over the past three decades, frequently in defiance of actual written law and almost always in the left’s favor. In short, both . . . have routinely behaved like political activists rather than impartial jurists. So rightists have no reason to trust their impartiality now.

[Moreover], Netanyahu has been targeted by frivolous investigations—including, in my view, two of the three now going to trial—ever since he first became prime minister in 1996. All involved genuinely repulsive conduct on Netanyahu’s part. But rather than treating such conduct as a problem on which the public, rather than the courts, must render judgment, the legal establishment repeatedly opened cases against him, to which they devoted countless man-hours before finally closing them.

Now, the legal establishment says it has finally found a real crime. But as in the story of the boy who cried wolf, Netanyahu’s supporters no longer believe it.

PMW: Plaque honoring teen suicide bomber at entrance to PA high school for girls

Every day when Palestinian girls enter their high school in Bethlehem the Palestinian Authority reminds them that the suicide bomber who was their age, 17-year-old Ayyat Al-Akhras who murdered 2 and wounded 28, is their role model.

At the entrance to this PA school is a sign in memory of the “Martyrs” of the PA terror campaign (the second Intifada, 2000-2005) in which more than 1,100 Israelis were murdered, many in suicide bombings. The memorial, which was established in cooperation between the Education Directorate under the PA Ministry of Education and Fatah’s Shabiba Youth Movement, specifically names suicide bomber and Fatah member Ayyat Al-Akhras who blew herself up near a Jerusalem supermarket on March 29, 2002:

Text on sign: “This memorial was established in cooperation between the Education Directorate (i.e., branch of the PA Ministry of Education) and the Fatah Shabiba [Youth Movement] organization, in order to commemorate the Martyrs of the Al-Aqsa Intifada at the Bethlehem High School for Girls for the anniversary of the outbreak of the Palestinian revolution
Jan. 1, 2003
Martyr Ayyat Al-Akhras (i.e., suicide bomber, murdered 2, wounded 28)
Martyr Nida Al-Izza (i.e., Palestinian who apparently was accidentally shot by Israeli soldiers)” [Facebook page of the Bethlehem High School for Girls, Nov. 19, 2019]

The wall to the left of the school entrance also bears a drawing of former PLO and PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, and to the right of it the logo of the Fatah Shabiba Youth Movement that includes the PA map of “Palestine” that presents all of Israel as “Palestine” together with the PA areas in the colors of the Palestinian flag.

Palestinian Media Watch has exposed the PA’s child abuse through its educating even young children to seek death as Martyrs for Allah and for “Palestine.” Telling teenage girls that a suicide bomber of their age is an honored “Martyr” on a prominent plaque they see daily at the entrance to their school, sends two morally deplorable messages: First, that murdering Israelis is not only acceptable but honorable and second, that killing oneself in order to kill Israelis is likewise heroic.

Bahrain textbooks, used today, insult Jews

Bahrain is universally considered one of the most moderate,and least antisemitic, Arab regimes.

But everything is relative.

From Studies in the Sira (Prophetic Biography) – High School level - Tenth Grade 2018 (Third edition)

pages (75-78)

Chapter 5

The Danger of the Jews and the Hypocrites on Islam and the Muslims

The Jews Breaching Treaties:
The Jews ignored what was mentioned in their book and didn’t enter Islam except the very few.

They were not loyal nor serious regarding the treaties they signed with the prophet, they quickly breached them, showed hostility towards the Muslims, attempting to pre-occupy the Muslims from spreading Islam and establishing a state so that they could remain in control of the Arabian Peninsula through maintaining a monopoly on money and loaning it to others with usury as well as having a monopoly on weaponry they manufactured in which they found it to be a profitable trade amongst the fighting Arab tribes.
The Jews saw in Islam an arch-enemy, since the (Islamic legislation) will end their control and dominance over people as Islam forbids usury which (put a stop) to the Jews from exploiting the needy and sucking their blood.
The fighting Arab tribes became compassionate after embracing Islam which lead to a slump in weapons trade for the Jews.

When the thorn of the Muslims intensified and the prophet’s dawah (invitation to Islam) extended, the Jews took part in conspiracies to weaken the Muslims and disgrace them.

The next pages go into details of the four conspiracies, which are:

1- Inflaming the fire of fitnah (civil strife) between Muslims
2- Expressing hostility (towards) the Muslims
3- Backing the polytheists against the Muslims
4- Attempt to kill the prophet

Activity
Search for other conspiracies by the Jews against Islam and Muslims and write it in your notebook.

Another textbook, Islamic Education (Part 1) -9th Grade 2018 has a section on usury (pages 53-54):

"The Jews claim usury is a necessary system the world economy is based on that you can’t get rid of so they could remain taking advantage of world’s wealth, the economists responded to them and determined usury is a corrupt system and the reason for world crises as it increases the money for the lenders and reduces the consumer purchasing power"

(h/t WC)

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One of the "political" leaders of Hamas, Mahmoud al-Zahar, stressed that the current calm between Gaza and Israel is not permanent and Hams only accepts it to regroup and re-arm.

Speaking to "Felesteen," Zahar said, "Truce with the occupation is a means for the resistance to catch our breath and use it as a project of resistance to accumulate the tools of the struggle for liberation."

Anyone who tries to portray the truce as a kind of security cooperation or agreement with the occupation is wrong," he added.

"We must not lose sight of the basic goal. Our banner will never come down. Our project is a project for the liberation of all Palestine, no borders for Gaza or the West Bank or the 1948 lines, these are temporary borders and our natural borders [is all of Palestine] with neighboring Arab countries," Zahar emphasized..

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Last night the "Red Carpet Human Rights Film Festival" began in Gaza.

A large screen was placed in front of a cinema that has been closed for decades for the opening. The festival's artistic director Montaser Al-Sabe told reporters that the festival will include about 45 films to be shown in various venues throughout the Gaza Strip until December 11.

The theme of the festival this year is "I am a human being" to send a message that there are more than 2 million people in the Gaza Strip living under Israeli "blockade" for more than 12 years.

Organizers said that Hamas facilitated the organization of the festival.

Yes, a terror group - one that could easily have allowed some of the 11 shuttered cinemas in Gaza to re-open since it took over, but didn't - is positioning itself to be a champion of human rights by allowing a film festival.

Not one film tackles the issue of human rights violations in Gaza by Hamas or by other Islamist groups. No films about harassment of Christians, of honor killings of women, of armed groups recruiting children, of indoctrinating generations into hating Jews and Israel. Not one filmmaker who pretends he is brave for attacking Israel will dare say a word about actual human rights violations in Gazans' day to day lives.

This censorship, and self-censorship, is not unusual for the human rights community. After all, human rights film festivals in London wouldn't dare say anything negative about Hamas either. There is only one narrative that is acceptable - the one that Ken Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, has been pushing on his Twitter account - that Israel is the only human rights violator in the Middle East worth mentioning every day.

A real human rights community would object to how obscene it is for a recognized terror group to facilitate a farce of a "human rights film festival." Sadly, the world has no such human rights community.

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Balancing Act (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

My home town of Fresno, California has a tiny Jewish community. The metropolitan area of about a million people, in almost the geographical center of the state, has only about 1000 Jewish families. There are three congregations: a Reform temple with several hundred members, a much smaller Conservative shul, and a Chabad house.

I haven’t been to the US since moving back to Israel more than five years ago. But I keep in touch. So recently I noticed an announcement on the Facebook page of the Reform congregation for a talk by a Rabbi John Rosove on the subject “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, an American Zionist Perspective.” I thought that was interesting, since I, too, am a Zionist and (you can tell by my accent) will always be an American.

Rabbi Rosove went to Berkeley (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and Hebrew Union College, and is Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Israel in Hollywood. Investigating further, I found that the talk would be about “… the destructive impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinians, Israelis and the future of Israel’s democracy.” And I noted that Rabbi Rosove is a national co-chair of the J Street Rabbinic Cabinet, and is associated with several “Reform Zionism” groups.

This is not my kind of Zionism – it demands a suicidal “two-state solution,” and wrongly analogizes our conflict with the Palestinians to the American civil rights struggle, two things that couldn’t be more different.

A word or two about J Street. It would like you think that it has a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” platform, but ever since its beginnings in 2007, it has advocated against Israel’s interests. J Street lobbied against sanctions on Iran and for the nuclear deal, refused to denounce the Goldstone Report that falsely accused Israel of war crimes, lobbied against a congressional letter criticizing Palestinian incitement, invited numerous anti-Israel speakers and BDS supporters to its national conventions, called for the US to support an anti-Israel Security Council resolution in 2014 and applauded the Obama Administration’s abstention on one in 2016. More recently, it criticized Israel’s use of force to protect its border with Gaza, and on and on and on. One would think that maybe it isn’t “pro-Israel” at all.

But nothing is more telling than the sources of J Street’s money. One of the biggest contributors to anti-Israel organizations is George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. It pledged $750,000 to J Street for its first three years. J Street lied about it until an investigative reporter exposed the facts. J Street also got contributions from sources linked to Saudi Arabia and Iran, as well as a Turkish film producer, and even stranger places. Of course much of its funding does come from Jewish “useful idiots.”

Let’s assume that Rabbi Rosove is one of these. His talk is being held at Clovis Community College, next door to Fresno, and is free. But who paid Rosove’s expenses? The announcement for the talk indicates that it is sponsored by GV Wire, a local progressive news website. GV Wire is a very slick production, with a professional staff including Bill McEwen, a former Fresno Bee columnist and editorial page editor.

The “GV” in GV Wire stands for Granville Homes, one of the biggest real estate developers and homebuilders in the Fresno area. And Granville Homes is owned by the Assemi family, who came to California from Iran just before the revolution. Among the founders of the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno, the Assemis are among the biggest philanthropists in the Central Valley of California. Granville has done some projects in the downtown area which have improved parts of town that many people thought were lost forever. They donate large amounts to numerous causes and organizations, especially “progressive” ones.

The publisher of GV Wire is Darius Assemi, Granville’s President and CEO. He is deeply involved in local politics, and is probably one of the most powerful people in the area. And of course, he’s no friend of Israel. He’s described Israel’s shooting terrorists climbing its border fence as a “massacre.”

So why would he bring a self-described “Zionist” speaker to the area (even if he’s as much a Zionist as I am Queen of England)?

The explanation is the reaction to Assemi’s previous speaker, Alison Weir, who appeared on September 18 (her presentation can be viewed here). Weir is viciously anti-Israel and antisemitic, to the point that even pro-BDS groups like Jewish Voice for Peace have disavowed her. Her position is that the Israel/Jewish lobby dominates the US government, causing it to act against American interests in order to help Israel oppress, exploit, and murder Palestinians, which it does in the most sadistic way possible. She asserts that US media, controlled by Jewish interests, is biased in favor of Israel, and that any criticism of Israel is derailed by accusations of antisemitism. She is a low-key, persuasive speaker, and if you don’t recognize the lies, lack of context, and distortions, she will convince you.

Weir was originally invited by the college, which canceled the event following complaints by the ADL and other Jewish organizations.

But Assemi thought that she should be heard, so he had GV Wire sponsor the event and rent the hall, absolving the college of responsibility. ADL and the others protested again, but rather than cancel the event, Assemi decided to also invite “a speaker who will explain the deadly realities in this region from the Jewish perspective.” Balance. That would be Rabbi Rosove.

So now we will get a “Jewish perspective” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Jew who says he is a Zionist, but represents an organization that is actually anti-Zionist, and is even supported financially by Israel’s enemies. And a Jewish house of worship is advertising it.

Welcome to the highest level of useful idiocy!

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